Nicolas possessed great talents; Leo always generously and obstinately believed this brother more gifted than himself, and quotes, with warm approval, Turgénief's opinion: "Turgénief quite correctly observed that he only lacked the imperfections necessary for the making of an author. He did not possess the principal and necessary defect—vanity. But the qualities of an author which he did possess were a refined artistic instinct, an exceedingly delicate sense of proportion, a good-natured gay humour, exceptional and inexhaustible imagination and high moral conceptions, and all this without any conceit. He had such an imagination that for hours he could tell humorous tales and ghost stories."
Tatiana Yergolsky was exceedingly religious, and one of the customs of Yasnaya Polyana was to extend hospitality to all types of pilgrims—monks and nuns and beggars, who led a life of humility and deliberately courted contumely.
Tolstoy's early life was spent in a peculiar poetic and religious atmosphere, an atmosphere mediæval in its tone. This should never be forgotten, for, after a whole lifetime of experience and achievement, we find him returning once more to the beliefs of his youth, stripping them of supernaturalism and ecclesiasticism, but holding with all his heart to the virtues of these pilgrim friends—humility and simplicity and love.
The Tolstoy brothers all went in turn to the university of Kazan. Leo first chose the faculty of Eastern languages, intending to enter the diplomatic service; he then tried law and other courses, but was capricious and unsuccessful; few great writers have ever cared so little for studies or been so scornful of intellectual attainment in others. Tolstoy left the university in disgust, and returned for a time to Yasnaya Polyana, intending to devote himself to his peasants.
There is a study of his life at this period in the book entitled A Landed Proprietor, which gives an account, at once graphic and sombre, of the enormous difficulties of the task. We are shown typical days in the life of the hero—Nekhlúdof—as he visits the peasants who have asked for his aid. Many of them live in wretched hovels—this, for example, is the house of one Churis: "The uneven, smoke-begrimed walls of the dwelling were hung with various rags and clothes; in the living-room the walls were literally covered with reddish cockroaches, clustering around the holy images and benches.... In the middle of this dark foetid apartment, not fourteen feet square, was a huge crack in the ceiling; and in spite of the fact that it was braced up in two places, the ceiling hung down so that it threatened to fall from moment to moment.
"'It will crush us to death, it will crush the children,' cried the woman."
Nekhlúdof is annoyed that Churis should have allowed his house to sink into such a condition, but he discovers that Churis has been ruined through the exactions of a land-agent (employed by Nekhlúdof's grandfather), who had cheated the peasant family out of their best land. We see how early and how decidedly Tolstoy has traced the miseries of the peasants to their landlords' exactions. Yet he does not disguise the faults of the peasants themselves: in another hut which Nekhlúdof visits the owner is thoroughly idle, lying on the oven all day and sleeping; his wife has been worked to death, and the old mother bears all the burden of the house and fields. She begs Nekhlúdof to find her a new daughter-in-law, but, with disgust and anger, he declines to force a fresh martyr into the wretched hovel. The overseer recommends that this particular peasant should be flogged, but the "barin" decides to take him into his own house and try to teach him how to labour. Tolstoy has often been accused of idealising Russian peasants, but, as these most graphic pictures attest, he perceived the worst that could be said. Indeed Turgénief complained of this particular book that it was pessimistic and did not do justice to the peasants.
After a brief space Tolstoy left the country and returned to St. Petersburg, where he plunged into dissipation; it was, morally considered, the most ignominious portion of his life. He confesses in his diary: "I am living like a beast, though not entirely depraved; my studies are nearly all abandoned, and spiritually I am very low."
In his religious work, My Confession, he speaks with bitter anger of this period of his life.
"I honestly desired," he says, "to make myself a good and virtuous man; but I was young, I had passions, and I stood alone, altogether alone, in my search after virtue. Every time I tried to express the longings of my heart for a truly virtuous life I was met with contempt and derisive laughter; but directly I gave way to the lowest of my passions I was praised and encouraged.... I cannot now recall those years without a painful feeling of horror and loathing. I put men to death in war, I fought duels to slay others, I lost at cards, wasted my substance wrung from the sweat of peasants, punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose women, and deceived men. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, and murder, all committed by me, not one crime omitted, and yet I was not the less considered by my equals a comparatively moral man."