Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby; Dorothea Ponsonby

During a terrible famine in Russia, when Tolstoy and his family worked night and day and gave all they possessed to the starving peasants, the priests tried to frighten them and preached against Tolstoy, saying he was Antichrist and they should not eat his food.

But the excommunication of Tolstoy had really quite the opposite effect to what was intended. It shocked the whole world, and Tolstoy’s name was received with more and more sympathy.

The views he expressed and the books he wrote had greater influence than ever before. The Russian people themselves seemed to realize that they possessed one of the greatest moral teachers in the world. But as the people of Russia became freer in their views and less subservient to authority, so in proportion the Government became harder and tightened its hold upon them. Tolstoy had not hitherto written on political life, but the cruel repression of all forms of liberty by violence roused him at the end of his life to write against the Government of his country a tragic letter which he published in the European papers, entitled: “I can keep silent no longer.” He said his life was made unendurable by the suffering of his people, and he begs all to cease from hatred and revenge.

Mr. Aylmer Maude, Tolstoy’s English biographer, visited the great man at Yasnaya Polyana towards the end of his life. He says what struck him most then about Tolstoy was his sympathy and kindness more than his intellect. He had mellowed with age, and from having been impatient, violent in argument, and often obstinate and unjust, he had become patient and gentle, though he was still intensely alive and caring as ardently for things as most people of twenty-five.

The atmosphere he created round him in his old age was peculiarly peaceful, and yet a lively and intelligent interest was taken by every one in everything. The influence of Tolstoy seemed to make all who came into contact with him kind and simple. There were no shams anywhere. Tolstoy had not forced his views on his children, as he was afraid they might follow him insincerely. He wanted them to be completely free and sincere.

When he was eighty-two Tolstoy left his home. His reasons for doing so are not quite clear, and we must form our own conclusions about it. A letter written to his wife some years before, to be opened after his death, explains a good deal.

Tolstoy wanted to devote his last days entirely to God. He wanted complete solitude and peace, in order to avoid at the end any sort of discord between his life and his beliefs. If he had talked about this plan, and told his family, there would have been discussions and perhaps quarrels, and he could not bear that. So he decided to slip away quietly without any one knowing. In the letter he explained that it would not mean that he was angry with his wife or any one else: indeed, he could not bear the idea of giving her pain. He said he should lovingly remember what his wife had been to him. But when the time came he was very weak and had been near death several times. He confided his secret plan to his youngest daughter Alexandra, for she, since his favorite daughter Masha had died a few years before, had been his companion and confidante. So one snowy night at the end of October she helped him to depart. He went with a doctor friend of his who had been living in the house for some time past.

His first wish was to visit his old sister and to take farewell of her. She was living in a convent, and seeing her ending her days so happily and peacefully, he wished he might have been able to enter a monastery, if only it had not been necessary to believe in the Church. On his journey by train—he had not yet made up his mind where he would settle down—he caught cold and had to stop at a little wayside station. There, in the station-master’s house, the cold developed into pneumonia, and as he was very weak there was little hope of his recovery. After a week of suffering he passed peacefully away, surrounded by his family and friends.

Before the end came, a telegram arrived from a high dignitary of the Church urging Tolstoy to return to the bosom of the Church. But it was not shown to him, for a similar message had been sent some years before when Tolstoy was very ill, and he had said, “How is it they do not understand that even when one is face to face with death, two and two still make four?”

Hundreds of people had flocked to the little country station when it was known that Tolstoy lay ill there. It was an extraordinary scene. Peasants who loved him jostled newspaper men who wanted the latest news. Photographers and police officers, literary people and aristocrats were there, and messages and telegrams arrived from all over the world. Multitudes of his poor peasants came to his funeral, and many wept aloud.