Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby; Dorothea Ponsonby

TOLSTOY IN 1906
From Aylmer Maude’s “Life of Tolstoy”

Tolstoy and his three brothers and a sister were brought up at Yasnaya Polyana by a distant relative, whom they called Aunt Tatiana. She was rather a remarkable character, and Leo was devoted to her. He tells us she greatly helped to form his character. Writing about her, he says: “Aunt Tatiana had the greatest influence on my life. From earliest childhood she taught me the spiritual delight of love. She taught me this joy not by words, but by her whole being she filled me with love. I saw, I felt how she enjoyed loving, and I understood the joy of love. This was the first thing. Secondly, she taught me the delights of an unhurried, quiet life.”

His aunt used to welcome all sorts of pilgrims to Yasnaya, beggars and monks and nuns, people despised by the rest of the world, so that Leo was brought up in a strange, almost mediæval atmosphere—an atmosphere that was religious, poetical, simple, and very far from worldly. We find Tolstoy after a long life of varied experiences returning again to the habits and beliefs of his youth, and to a life of humility and simple living.

Tolstoy had the greatest admiration for his eldest brother Nicholas, who, he always said, was a much greater man than himself; but Nicholas died before he had time to show what he was capable of. This brother invented a game called “Ant Brothers.” He told Leo and his two brothers of six and seven that he possessed a secret and, when it was known, all men would become happy; there would be no more disease, no trouble, and no one would be angry with any one else; all would love one another and become “ant brothers.” The game consisted of sitting under chairs surrounded by boxes, screening themselves from view with handkerchiefs, and cuddling against one another in the dark. Tolstoy says: “The ‘ant brotherhood’ was revealed to us, but not the chief secret: the way for all men to cease suffering any misfortune, to leave off quarreling and being angry, and become continuously happy: this secret Nicholas said he had written on a green stick and buried by the road at the edge of a certain ravine, at which spot (since my body must be buried somewhere) I have asked to be buried in memory of Nicholas.”

Writing when he was over seventy, Tolstoy says: “The ideal of ant brothers lovingly clinging to one another, though not under two armchairs curtained by handkerchiefs, but of all mankind under the wide dome of heaven, has remained the same for me. As I then believed that there existed a little green stick, whereon was written the message which could destroy all evil in men and give them universal welfare, so I now believe that such truth exists, and will be revealed to men and will give them all it promises.”

Tolstoy’s early childhood was on the whole very happy, in spite of his far-seeing, sensitive, and rather morbid nature. At times he was certainly very miserable, but, on the other hand, he had an immense power of enjoyment, and loved games and horses and dogs and the country itself, and his affections were very strong.

One of the things that worried him as a child was his own looks; he thought himself so plain. He says in his autobiographical novel “Childhood”: “I imagined there could be no happiness on earth for a man with so broad a nose, such thick lips, and such small gray eyes as mine. I asked God to perform a miracle and change me into a handsome boy....” He tried to improve his appearance by clipping his eyebrows, with most disastrous results, as of course he was uglier and unhappier than ever.

Tolstoy showed no particular talent for anything as a child, though he was very original, and quite determined not to do things like other people. When he came into the drawing-room, for instance, he insisted upon bowing to people backwards, bending his head the wrong way, and saluting each person thus in turn. He was not good at his lessons, and mentions somewhere that a student who came to teach him and his brothers said about them: “Serge both wishes and can, Dmitry wishes but can’t (This was not true), and Leo neither wishes nor can (This I think was perfectly true).” This was characteristic of Tolstoy, who was always hard on himself. But if the tutor lived to see what Tolstoy became, he must have been rather ashamed of his lack of perception.

Before Tolstoy was sixteen he entered a university with his brothers. There was no doubt that, like many other young people, he hated study, though he worked hard and passed well in languages. In history and geography he failed, and being asked to name the French seaports, he could not remember a single one. He left the university rather disgusted with himself and despising intellectual things. His companions had not really understood him, for he was a strange mixture. Sometimes he was very proud and aristocratic, yet with advanced Liberal views; and he was moody, at one moment wildly gay, at another sunk in gloom. He always looked upon the worst side of himself, and wrote in his diary that he was awkward, uncleanly, irritable, a bore to others, ignorant, intolerant, and shamefaced as a child: there was no end to the names he called himself. He admits that he is honest and that he loves goodness, but on the whole he is very unfair to himself, for the reason that he had set up such a high ideal to live up to.