The second night after my arrival at the house where I was a guest I was taken over to Yasnaya Poliana. Tolstoi had been informed of my presence in the neighborhood, and had graciously suggested to my friend that she bring me to see him. The fast-falling, late autumn night was settling over the snow-fields and silver woods as we climbed the knoll upon which Yasnaya Poliana house stands. In summer the place must have a fascinating charm, for all the elements of a beautiful country park are there—flower-beds and wildwood, orchards, groves and arbored walks, a bit of water, fields rolling toward distant horizons, broad sky and vistas that hold one. Surmounting the knoll, a pleasant house, large enough without being grand, comfortable without pretension. At the door a black poodle barked a welcome. A man-servant helped us to unload the heavy garments we wore against the cold of a Russian November night. With not unexpected directness we were taken straight to the count’s study. There he sat—near a table-desk which was littered with piles of letters and papers. “Good evening,” he called cheerily and quite as though I were an old friend. His hands, which were extended in welcome, were warm as if the fires of his strong life and body still burned fiercely, as when he commanded men on Sebastopol bastions, ranged over the unconquered Caucasus, and hunted with the most daring of his comrades through great Russian forests. He had been horseback-riding in the afternoon, he told us. Surely few men carry the weight of seventy-eight years with more vigor.
The first words of greeting over, he began to ask about his friends in America, men whom he knows personally or by reputation. A conversation with a neighbor from one’s own home town on a chance meeting in a foreign land would scarcely have been different. There was a delightful eagerness for word-of-mouth news. Names of men in New York slipped as easily from his tongue as from one of their own circle.
Shelves of books in many languages walled the room from floor to eye level, while above hung portraits of many thinkers who have, or should have, influenced the world. Prominent among them Henry George and William Lloyd Garrison.
“Do you read Garrison?” Tolstoi asked, as my wandering eyes rested on the portrait of our own champion of liberty. “Do you read Channing, Thoreau, Emerson? I always ask Americans about those four great men. They should be read by the young men of to-day.”
A tall candle burning on the table by his right side threw its restless gleams across the old man’s rugged face, and involuntarily my mind ran incredulously over the intensely human career whose latter days are now marked by such inspiring serenity.
We could not long keep off the subject of Russia and her troubles, however, and at last I ventured to ask him what was his interpretation of the movement of things in Russia at the moment.
Tolstoi pointed to an old volume of Rousseau’s “Émile” lying on a table at the other side of the room, and asked me to bring it to him. Turning over the pages of Book IV till he found the paragraph he sought, he paused, then read very slowly and with emphasis, these sentences: “On dit qu’il falloit une révélation pour apprendre aux hommes la manière dont Dieu vouloit être servi; on assigne en préserve la diversité des cultes bizarres qu’ils ont institué, et l’on ne voit pas que cette diversité même vient de la fantaisie des révélations. Dès que les peuples se sont avisés de faire parler Dieu, chacun l’a fait parler à sa mode et lui a fait dire ce qu’il a voulu; si l’on n’eût écouté que ce que Dieu dit au cœur de l’homme, il n’y auroit jamais eu qu’une religion sur la terre.” The last sentence he read twice, and then handed the book across the table that I might absorb the passage. “That is what we have all got to learn,” he said, “to listen to the words God speaks to us in our hearts. We need no other religion or philosophy than this. We need no institution like a church. This message is for the people of America as well as for Russia, and the whole significance of the present terrible situation in Russia is that the Russian people are being brought to the point where every other channel will be closed and only by turning to God will they be able to save themselves.” In other words, Tolstoi sees, as every one in Russia must see, that the drift of things is toward an abyss, and Tolstoi reads into this tendency a deeply religious meaning; he accepts it as part of a Divine plan, and he firmly believes that the Russian people will come to look upon their situation as a call from God to discard their ancient superstitions and to inaugurate a new era in which each individual will endeavor to readjust his life into conformity with the infinite.
Tolstoi appreciates, as does every one in Russia, that the Russian liberal movement aims to effect a social revolution, and that a successful political revolt will only mark the beginning of the struggle. Tolstoi does not view this as do most Russian thinkers, however. He does not accept the accomplishment of a socialistic state as a goal at all, for he distrusts the economics of socialism, and as a philosophy he rejects socialism vehemently. “It is not a second-rate, but a hundredth-rate philosophy,” he says. “The present growth of socialism,” he went on in explanation, “is to be accounted for in precisely the same way as the present popularity of inferior literature, poetry, drama, and art. It is all part of a passing phase.”
“Monsieur Leroy Beaulieu, the French writer,” said Tolstoy, “was here not long ago, and he said to me: ‘The Russian revolution? It is for fifty years.’ That may be. But in the end—whether ten years or fifty years—a new era of righteousness will be established in Russia.”
Late in the evening we adjourned to the dining-room, where were the countess and a party of about a dozen. A more varied group one seldom meets under one roof. There was the count, strong in his faith, confident in the truth of his own philosophy of “Christian anarchism.” There was a son, who, during the Japanese War, was a patriot, a loyal subject of the Czar, and as such volunteered for service in arms and served in Manchuria. There was the eldest brother of this soldier son, a Constitutional Democrat, or middle-of-the-road-man, and next him a sister who is married to a man who is an “Octoberist,” a conservative deputy to the first Duma, and she shares her husband’s political opinions. Also there was a disciple of Count Tolstoi, who believes not in war or parliaments at all; and a Social Revolutionist, who believes ardently in revolution and even in terrorism. Each was true to his own convictions and perfectly outspoken. When the count had drunk his glass of tea, little heeding the babel of conversation around the board, he pushed back his chair and for several moments slowly paced the room. The huge dining-room, warm with hospitality, afforded a striking picture that night. Against the high, dark walls stood out several life-size oil portraits. In one corner a grand piano, near it a table on which were strewn a pack of cards, and opposite a cozy-corner. In the center of the room, the long dining-table around which were gathered the company; at one end a steaming samovar. Slowly, back and forth, paced the count, now in the shadow, now in the light, his shaggy gray beard against his dark-blue peasant blouse. So stalwart, so vigorous, so keen to all things he seemed. Above all, so serene in spirit; for he glories in the present dark hour of his country, believing it harbingers the approach of dawn—the awakening of the Russian people to a consciousness of a grander destiny than they have dreamed of before, when as true sons of God they shall realize that heaven of which the dogmatic preachers talk, only not in a distant future, but here on earth.