Lyeff Nikolaevitch Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana on August 28th (September 9th new style), 1828. His father, Count Nicholas Tolstoy, was a member of the old Russian nobility. In 1813, after the siege of Erfurt, he was taken prisoner by the French and afterwards retired from the army holding the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Having assumed the burden of many family debts, he succeeded in paying his creditors in full, thus gaining a reputation for unfailing perseverance. Tolstoy has described his character in “Childhood and Youth.” “He was a man of the last century,” he wrote, “and, like all his contemporaries, he had in him something chivalrous, enterprising, self-possessed, amiable, a passion for pleasure.... His life was so full of all kinds of impulse that he had no time to think about convictions; and besides, he had been so happy all his life that he did not feel it necessary to do so.” His father died before Tolstoy reached the age of ten years, seven years after the death of his mother, of whom he wrote: “When I try to recall to mind my mother as she was then, only her brown eyes arise before me, always the same look of love and kindness in them. If during the most trying moments of my life I could have caught a glimpse of her smile, I should not have known what grief is.”

Tolstoy’s early years were passed in the country on the old-fashioned Russian estate, which resembled somewhat in patriarchal habits, aristocratic manners, democratic familiarity, shiftlessness, and superstition, a Southern Plantation in the days of slavery. After the death of his father in 1837 the family was taken charge of by an aunt, the Countess Alexandra Osten-Saken, and three years later by relatives of his mother who lived at Kazan. In 1843 Tolstoy entered the University of Kazan, where “Impervious to the ambitions of scholarship and research, unimpressed by the provincial aristocracy, too nice to enjoy the rough revels of the students, and repelled alike from aristocrats, professors, and students by an unsocial and what, with our English emphasis on government, we should call an unregulated disposition, he seems to have had during these two or three years a thoroughly unhappy and unprofitable experience.”[1] Having left the University in 1846 without graduating he returned to the old country home. Yasnaya Polyana descended to Tolstoy from his mother. The estate, which covers an area of some 2,500 acres, partly arable and partly wooded, lies a hundred miles due south of Moscow. It was at one time Tolstoy’s intention to dispossess himself entirely of his property and live as a peasant. Instead of this, however, he has made over the whole of the land to his wife and children, and lives in the house nominally as a guest.

At the entrance to the park are two towers, medieval in style, which were erected by Tolstoy’s maternal grandfather. From them the road runs through the park, rising as it approaches the house, and becomes merged in a level avenue of birch trees. Glimpses of a pond are caught through the dense foliage and of a square smoothly rolled space used as a tennis-ground, the game being one in which Count Tolstoy participates with great enjoyment. It will be noticed that in the photograph on page 31 he is holding a tennis racket in his hand.

The house itself is a plain white rectangular two-storied building of stuccoed brick, and it would be hard to imagine a simpler and less pretentious place than the home in which Tolstoy has spent the greater part of his life. It boasts neither piazzas nor towers; indeed, no architectural ornaments of any kind, nor are vines or other creepers trained upon the flat walls to relieve their striking whiteness or soften their rectangular outlines. The house was not completed all at once, but was enlarged in proportion to the needs of the family. On one side, devoid of windows, there is a low porch, near which stands an old elm tree, called “The Tree of the Poor.” Close to its trunk is a bench on which the peasants sit to await the coming of Count Tolstoy. Here he listens with unwearying patience to many stories of distress and difficulty, and gives in return, not only sympathy and advice, but such material assistance as may lie at his command.

It was during the period following upon his University career that Tolstoy threw all his energies into the task of raising both the economical and moral standard of peasant life, and suffered much disappointment at the hands of the peasants, who refused to allow him to pull down their dilapidated hovels even that he might erect new and convenient ones at his own cost. The result was that Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana for St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1847, resolved to prosecute his studies with the intention of taking a degree in law. With this choice of a career, however, he was dissatisfied, and returned again to his estate in 1848.

For a few years he lived the ordinary life of the Russian nobleman, enlisting at the age of 23 as cadet in a regiment of artillery in which his elder brother Nicholas was captain. Discontented with the idle life he was leading and out of harmony with his gay surroundings, he decided to jot down his recollections of the homeland he loved so well, and it was at this time that he commenced writing “Childhood and Youth” (which, however, was not published in its complete form until six years later) and “The Cossacks.”

Subsequently Tolstoy was appointed to a post on Prince Gortchakoff’s staff in Turkey, and was present at Sevastopol in 1855, having attained the rank of divisional commander. His experiences during the war are pictured in his three sketches, “Sevastopol in December 1854,” “In May 1855,” and “In August 1855.” These were published the following year and at once made his literary reputation. At the end of the campaign he left the army and visited Western Europe, in order to study various school systems, and upon his return to Yasnaya Polyana he established several schools of his own.

In September 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, the daughter of a military doctor. He was at this time thirty-four years of age, his bride being sixteen years younger. Miss Behrs was not only beautiful, she was an exceedingly cultured girl, having passed various examinations at the Moscow University. According to her brother, the manner of their courtship was practically identical with that of Levin and Kitty in “Anna KarÈnina.” Countess Tolstoy at the age of forty-eight is described by Sergyeenko in “How Count Tolstoy Lives and Works,” as having “An open, expressive countenance, with vivacious, fearless eyes, which she constantly brings near to the objects at which she is looking. At her very first words one feels her straightforward nature. In her manner there is not even a shadow of truckling to suit the tone of any one whomsoever; her own individual note is always audible.”

About the time of his marriage, Tolstoy was described as “a tall, wide-shouldered thin-waisted man, with a moustache, but without a beard, with a serious, even a gloomy expression of face, which, however, was softened by a gleam of kindliness whenever he smiled.”

Living at Yasnaya Polyana winter and summer, with but rare intervening visits to Moscow, Tolstoy interested himself in all the practical details of farming. Probably his own experiences of the physical labour of mowing are depicted as those of Levin in “Anna KarÈnina.” “The work went on and on. Levin absolutely lost all idea of time, and did not know whether it was early or late. Though the sweat stood on his face, and dropped from his nose, and all his back was wet as though he had been plunged in water, still he felt very well. His work now seemed to him full of pleasure. It was a state of unconsciousness: he did not know what he was doing, or how much he was doing, or how the hours and moments were flying, but only felt that at this time his work was good.”

Tolstoy was also an enthusiastic sportsman—a diversion which occasioned him two serious accidents—and, in addition to fulfilling the duties of a Justice of the Peace, he set himself to grapple with the novel conditions of land-owning, a complicated and arduous task to which he applied himself with characteristic energy and shrewdness. Indeed, his interests were manifold and exacting. Yet during this busy period he by no means neglected his literary work. The composition of his novel “War and Peace” began immediately after his marriage, and extended over a period of eight years. His wife copied out the manuscript of this work no less than seven times as he altered and improved it. “War and Peace” was followed by “Anna KarÈnina,” which was not completed until 1876.

In his method of working, Tolstoy may be likened to the old painters. Having settled upon a plan of work, and collected a large number of studies, he first makes a charcoal sketch, as it were, and writes rapidly without thinking of particulars. He then has a clean copy of the work made by his wife or one of his daughters, and this is again subjected to careful remodelling. It is still in the nature of a charcoal sketch. The MS. is speedily covered with erasures and interpolations. Whole sentences replace others. The work is then copied again, and some chapters Tolstoy writes more than ten times. He usually writes on quarto sheets of cheap plain paper in a large involved hand, and sometimes covers as many as twenty pages in one day. He regards the interval between nine o’clock and three as the best time for work.

His study at Yasnaya Polyana is a small room with an uncarpeted floor, a vaulted ceiling, and thick stone walls. Formerly it was a store-room, and on the ceiling are heavy black iron rings, on which hams used to hang and which were used later for gymnastic exercises. The study is very cool and quiet, and contains various implements of labour, such as a scythe, a saw, pincers, tiles, etc.

After his morning labours, Tolstoy generally goes out, often riding on horseback or on his bicycle, according to the state of the weather. He is strict vegetarian, eating only the simplest food and avoiding all stimulants. He long ago ceased to smoke. Attaching great importance to manual labour, he takes a share in the housework, lighting his own fire and carrying water. At one time he learned bootmaking, and it is wonderful what an amount of physical exertion he was able to undergo at the age of seventy in the way of heavy labour in the field, of riding scores of versts on his bicycle, or of playing for hours at lawn tennis.

Tolstoy has always dressed extremely simply, and when at home his costume consisted of a grey flannel blouse, which in summer he exchanged for a canvas one of a very original cut, as may be judged from the fact that there was in the whole district only one old woman who could make it according to his orders. In this blouse Tolstoy sat for his portrait to Kramsky and RÉpin, the painters. His over-dress was composed of a caftan and half-shouba, made of the simplest materials, and, like the blouse, eccentric in their cut, being made evidently not for show but to stand bad weather. The Hon. Ernest Howard Crosby has given an interesting description of Count Tolstoy’s appearance. “He is dressed like a peasant in a grey-white blouse of thin, coarse, canvas-like material, with a leather belt; but his toilet differs from a peasant’s in being scrupulously clean. His features are irregular and plain, and yet his figure is so strong and massive that the tout ensemble is striking and fine-looking. His little blue eyes peer out from under his bushy eyebrows with the kindliest of expressions.”

Count and Countess Tolstoy have had fifteen children of whom only seven survived. The system of their upbringing has been fully dealt with by M. C. A. Behrs in his “Recollections of Count Leo Tolstoy.” Toys and playthings were rigorously banished from the nursery. With the first child the trial was made to dispense altogether with a nurse. But later it was thought well to yield to the requirements of their social position and to the habits of contemporary life, and the children were put under the care of nurses, bonnes, and governesses. The parents, however, exercised a strict and unremittent surveillance over both the children and those who had the care of them.

The greatest possible liberty was allowed to the children, and all put in authority over them were strictly forbidden to have resort under any pretext to violent or severe punishments.

Tolstoy believed that these principles were nowhere so generally accepted as in England, and, accordingly, from their third to their ninth year, the children were placed under the charge of young English governesses engaged directly from London.

Countess Tolstoy is an excellent housewife, attentive and hospitable. All the complicated and troublesome management of the housekeeping and direction of household affairs is under her charge. She is indefatigable, and brings her brisk energy, thriftiness, and activity to bear in every direction, and this she does without help. Her three eldest sons live apart, each occupied with his own business matters. Her daughters have their own interests and duties, which take up the greater part of their time.

Tolstoy’s eldest daughter, Tatyana Lvovna, a girl of exceptional talent, in particular works very hard. In addition to copying much of her father’s manuscript, she conducts his vast correspondence, consisting of an almost incredible number of letters received in all languages from every part of the globe.

This is probably the most striking of all the portraits of Count Tolstoy, representing him when at the height of his popularity and power. In 1884 he was at work on the Popular Tales and Sketches which sold by millions throughout Russia, and from which we reproduce two or three illustrations—viz., one by H. R. Millar from the English edition of “What Men Live By,” written in 1881; another by the same artist from the English edition of “Where Love is there God is also,” and a third showing the cover of this tract, which was written in 1885, and issued in rough pamphlet form at the price of a few farthings.

During the last twenty years Tolstoy has written the following books:—“My Confession,” “A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology,” which has never been translated, “The Four Gospels, Harmonized and Translated,” “What I Believe,” “The Gospel in Brief,” “What to Do,” “On Life” (also called “Life”), “The Kreutzer Sonata,” “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” “The Christian Teaching,” “What is Art?” which in Tolstoy’s own opinion is the best constructed of his books, “Resurrection,” his last novel, begun about 1894, and then laid aside in favour of what seemed more important work to be completely rewritten and published in 1899 for the benefit of the Doukhabors, and latterly “What is Religion and what is Its Essence,” published in February 1902. The illustrations reproduced from “Resurrection” on pages 19, 29, and 34 are from the remarkable drawings by Pasternak. Concerning these pictures there is an interesting note in the preface of the French edition of the novel from which it may be gathered that the drawings tallied very closely with Tolstoy’s own conception of the appearance of his characters. It was the artist’s usual custom to submit each design on its completion to the eminent novelist for his opinion. Invariably Tolstoy showed his approval of the clever realisation of his ideas. But when it came to the sketch of Prince Nekhludov, Tolstoy went so far as to enquire of M. Pasternak whether he was acquainted with the person who had served him as a model. At this the artist showed extreme surprise—he had not even been aware that the character was copied from an original.

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