"I feel in all my being," he wrote to Teneromo, "the truth of these words: that the husband and the wife are not separate beings, but are as one.... I wish most earnestly that I had the power to transmit to my wife a portion of that religious conscience which gives me the possibility of sometimes raising myself above the sorrows of life. I hope that it will be given her; very probably not by me, but by God, although this conscience is hardly accessible to women."[15]
It seems that this wish was never gratified. Countess Tolstoy loved and admired the purity of heart, the candid heroism, and the goodness of the great man who was "as one" with her; she saw that "he marched ahead of the host and showed men the way they should follow";[16] when the Holy Synod excommunicated him she bravely undertook his defence and insisted on sharing the danger which threatened him. But she could not force herself to believe what she did not believe; and Tolstoy was too sincere to urge her to pretend—he who loathed the petty deceits of faith and love even more than the negation of faith and love.[17] How then could he constrain her, not believing, to modify her life, to sacrifice her fortune and that of her children?
With his children the rift was wider still. M. Leroy-Beaulieu, who saw Tolstoy with his family at Yasnaya Polyana, says that "at table, when the father was speaking, the sons barely concealed their weariness and unbelief."[18] His faith had only slightly affected two or three of his daughters, of whom one, Marie, was dead. He was morally isolated in the heart of his family. "He had scarcely any one but his youngest daughter and his doctor"[19] to understand him.
He suffered from this mental loneliness; and he suffered from the social relations which were forced upon him; the reception of fatiguing visitors from every quarter of the globe; Americans, and the idly curious, who wore him out; he suffered from the "luxury" in which his family life forced him to live. It was a modest luxury, if we are to believe the accounts of those who saw him in his simple house, with its almost austere appointments; in his little room, with its iron bed, its cheap chairs, and its naked walls! But even this poor comfort weighed upon him; it was a cause of perpetual remorse. In the second of the tales published by the Mercure de France he bitterly contrasts the spectacle of the poverty about him with the luxury of his own house.
"My activity," he wrote as early as 1903, "however useful it may appear to certain people, loses the greater part of its importance by the fact that my life is not entirely in agreement with my professions."[20]
Why did he not realise this agreement? If he could not induce his family to cut themselves off from the world, why did he not leave them, go out of their life, thus avoiding the sarcasm and the reproach of hypocrisy expressed by his enemies, who were only too glad to follow his example and make it an excuse for denying his doctrines?
He had thought of so doing. For a long time he was quite resolved. A remarkable letter[21] of his has recently been found and published; it was written to his wife on the 8th of June, 1897. The greater part of it is printed below. Nothing could better express the secret of this loving and unhappy heart:
"For a long time, dear Sophie, I have been suffering from the discord between my life and my beliefs. I cannot force you to change your life or your habits. Neither have I hitherto been able to leave you, for I felt that by my departure I should deprive the children, still very young, of the little influence I might be able to exert over them, and also that I should cause you all a great deal of pain. But I cannot continue to live as I have lived during these last sixteen years,[22] now struggling against you and irritating you, now succumbing myself to the influences and the seductions to which I am accustomed and which surround me. I have resolved now to do what I have wished to do for a long time: to go away.... Just as the Hindoos, when they arrive at their sixtieth year, go away into the forest; just as every aged and religious man wishes to consecrate the last years of his life to God and not to jesting, punning, family tittle-tattle, and lawn-tennis; so do I with all my strength desire peace and solitude, and, if not an absolute harmony, at least not this crying discord between my whole life and my conscience. If I had gone away openly there would have been supplications, discussions, arguments; I should have weakened, and perhaps I should not have carried out my decision, and it ought to be carried out. I beg you therefore to forgive me if my action grieves you. And you in particular, Sophie—let me go, do not try to find me, do not be angry with me, and do not blame me. The fact that I have left you does not prove that I have any grievance against you.... I know that you could not, could not see and think with me; this is why you could not change your life, could not sacrifice yourself to something you did not understand. I do not blame you at all; on the contrary, I remember with love and gratitude the thirty-five long years of our life together, and above all the first half of that period, when, with the courage and devotion of your mother's nature, you valiantly fulfilled what you saw as your mission. You have given to me and the world what you had to give. You have given much maternal love and made great sacrifices. ... But in the latter period of our life, in the last fifteen years, our paths have lain apart. I cannot believe that I am the guilty one; I know that I have changed; it was not your doing, nor the world's; it was because I could not do otherwise. I cannot blame you for not having followed me, and I shall always remember with love what you have given me.... Goodbye, my dear Sophie. I love you."
"The fact that I have left you." He did not leave her. Poor letter! It seemed to him that it was enough to write, and his resolution would be fulfilled. ... Having written, his resolution was already exhausted. "If I had gone away openly there would have been supplications, I should have weakened." ... There was no need of supplications, of discussion; it was enough for him to see, a moment later, those whom he wished to leave; he felt that he could not, could not leave them; and he took the letter in his pocket and buried it among his papers, with this subscription:
"Give this, after my death, to my wife Sophie Andreyevna."