I was very glad to come together with Tolstoy, and I spent three pleasant days with him; his whole family are very sympathetic, and his wife is charming. He has grown very quiet and has matured. His name begins to gain European celebrity: we Russians have long known that he has no rivals.
The course of the story has swept me a little past Tolstoy's fiftieth birthday—the point at which I intended to close this first part of my work. Besides giving some brief survey of his writings during his first twenty-five years of authorship, all that now remains is to give a summary of that remarkable work, his Confession, which shows us vividly, though with some amount of involuntary artistic heightening, what had been going on in his mind and soul from 1874 to 1879, the year in which it was written.
By way of brief preface to his Confession, it will be in place to say a few words about two different tendencies which, each in its own way, influenced Tolstoy. On the one hand there was the religious life of the people, with all its Medieval traditions. Tolstoy had only to go a short walk from his house to reach the highroad, on which pilgrims going afoot to the shrines of the Saints could always be met; and he had many a conversation with these pilgrims at the rest-house they frequented. Among them there were many to whom the things of this world were certainly less precious than obedience to the will of God as they understood it; and Tolstoy's stories show us how closely he observed these people, and how near some of them came to his soul. On the other hand he was influenced by the quite modern and very remarkable movement that was at this time beginning to make itself felt in Russia; a movement having its roots in conditions of life which greatly disturbed Tolstoy's own mind, and which took as one of its watchwords the motto 'Towards the People'—a sentiment quite in harmony with his own attitude.
In 1875 public attention was aroused by the trial of the Dolgoúshin group of propagandists; and the trial of 'The Moscow 50,' in March 1877, revealed the fact that a number of girls of wealthy families were voluntarily leading the life of factory hands working fourteen hours a day in over-crowded factories, that they might come into touch with working people, to teach them, and to carry on a social and political propaganda among them. Then followed the historic trial of 'The 193' in 1878.
These and many other indications showed that in spite of the repressive measures of the Government, a steadily increasing number of Russians felt (what Tolstoy also felt strongly) that the existing order of society results in the mass of the people having to live in conditions of blighting ignorance and grinding poverty; while the parasitic minority who live in plenty and sometimes in extravagant superfluity, render no service at all equivalent to the cost of their maintenance. The mere statement that those who had received an education thanks to the work of the masses, owe service to the masses in return, sufficed to rouse to action some of the young men and women of that day. They left their wealthy homes, lived the simplest lives, ran fearful risks, and according to their lights—sometimes not very clear ones—devoted themselves to the service of the people.
While this was going on around him, a man with such a temperament as Tolstoy's, could not be at rest.
Already in 1875 Mihaylóvsky had published a remarkable series of articles on The Right and Left Hand of Count Tolstoy, in which he pointed out that that author's works reveal the clash of contrary ideals and tendencies in the writer's soul, and that especially his educational articles contain ideas quite in conflict with certain tendencies noticeable in War and Peace. With remarkable prevision Mihaylóvsky predicted an inevitable crisis in Tolstoy's life, and added:
One asks oneself what such a man is to do, and how he is to live?... I think an ordinary man in such a position would end by suicide or drunkenness; but a man of worth will seek for other issues—and of these there are several.
One of these he suggested would be, to write for the people (Tolstoy's Readers had already been published) or to write so as to remind 'Society' that its pleasures and amusements are not those of the mass of mankind, and thus to arouse the latent feelings of justice in some who now forget the debt they owe to their fellows.
In fact, the trial of 'The 193' or the movement from which it arose, had a vital, though indirect, influence on Tolstoy, who at this time had engaged V. I. Alexéyef, a graduate of Petersburg University, as mathematical master for his son. Alexéyef had been a member of the Tchaykóvsky group which carried on an educational propaganda in elementary Socialism in the early '70's. The activities of this group were so restricted, and they were so hampered by the police, that some of its members, feeling a need of freer activity, migrated to Kansas, where for two years they carried on an agricultural colony. Dissensions arose among them, and their experiment failed. Alexéyef returned to Russia; Tchaykóvsky settled in England, where he spent many years, and only returned to Russia after the amnesty of 1905, to be again arrested and to spend more than a year in prison awaiting a trial which ended in his acquittal. Tolstoy noticed that Alexéyef was a man who shaped his life in accord with his beliefs, and he respected him accordingly, and through him made acquaintance with some of the best representatives of the immature Socialist movement then brewing in Russia. We have here a remarkable example of the indirect way in which thoughts influence the world. Auguste Comte wrote a philosophy. Having filtered through the minds of G. H. Lewes and J. S. Mill, it reached Nicholas Tchaykóvsky when he was a schoolboy of fourteen in the Seventh Gymnasium in Petersburg. 'It fascinated me to such an extent,' says he in the reminiscences contributed to G. H. Perris's interesting book, Russia in Revolution, 'that, while sitting in school, I longed to get back to our lodgings and to my chosen reading. The more I progressed, the more I was absorbed. This study powerfully affected my mind and systematised my ideas.' A few years later Tchaykóvsky, having read much meanwhile, formed his group, which sowed the seeds of changes yet to come. Progress, however, was very slow, and he felt 'the ineffectiveness of ordinary political and socialistic propaganda among a deeply religious peasantry, still hopeful of benefits from above.' This forced him to reconsider the whole situation. 'I met,' adds he, 'some friends with whom I began to work upon the rather Utopian idea of formulating a new religion, and, for the sake of more effective experiment, we were soon compelled to transfer ourselves with this stupendous mission, to the steppes of Kansas.'