Suddenly she had an idea that would save them all! Why should the profits from the sale of his books go to others? Following the example of Dostoyevsky's widow, Countess Tolstoy would publish her husband's works too.
At first Tolstoy was horrified at this mercenary scheme, but he eventually admitted that in the present state of their finances he had nothing better to offer. He, who devoutly desired to abandon his land to the muzhiks, refuse the income from his writing and live half-naked —here he was, literally about to sell his soul in order to please his family. To avoid compromising his principles entirely, he decided to sign over to Sonya the right to manage his copyrights as well as his property, which she was already handling. That way, at least, he would not have to soil his own hands in these diabolical affairs of money. As a matter of form, she protested that he was trying to push over onto her what lie regarded as a foul sin, but at heart she was delighted. As a limitation upon this concession to filthy lucre, he decided to restrict his wife's rights to the titles published prior to 1881, the year of his "rebirth." But the titles published before 1881 included War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Cossacks, Childhood, Boyhood, Youth and the Sevastopol Sketches: the cream of his literary production.
Sonya immediately saw the enormity of the task that lay before her, as well as the profits that could accrue to the family from it. Overworked as she was, as wife, mother and head of the household, she valiantly launched out in her new business venture. Capital was needed. She borrowed ten thousand rubles from her mother and fifteen thousand from Stakhovich, a landowner and friend of the family. In a pavilion next to the main house on Khamovnichesky Street, she opened the "Publishing Office for the Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy." Every time he passed the sign Tolstoy glowered. It was himself they were selling in there. He, whose writing should have been a gift to mankind! After publicly proclaiming his indifference to worldly goods, he might well be taken for a hypocrite now, incapable of prac-
ticing what he preached. And all this in order that his daughter could buy more dresses and his sons stuff their faces! Soon piles of books mounted inside the shed. A clerk was hired to take charge of their distribution to booksellers. The money began to come in. . . .
Fortunately, to offset the degrading effects of this commerce, the pure, the irreplaceable Chertkov had suggested another, perfectly in keeping with the master's principles. Together they would found a publishing company, the Intermediary, to produce small, inexpensive, high- quality books for the common people. A publisher, Ivan Sitin, agreed to print and sell these booklets. The secretarial work was entrusted to a friend of Chcrtkov's named Paul Biryukov, a cultivated young aristocrat who had abandoned a career in the navy to devote himself to the ideas of Leo Tolstoy.t Together, Tolstoy and Chertkov selected the texts. The first scries included three stories by Tolstoy: A Captive in the Caucasus, What Men Live By, and God Sees the Truth but Waits, and a story by Leskov: Christ Visits a Peasant. Other "popular" stories by Tolstoy followed, works by Russian and foreign authors, translations of the classical philosophers.
At the helm, Chertkov proved a remarkable organizer and a stern defender of the Tolstoyan faith. He cared less for the artistic value of the works than for their potential influence upon the masses. Often, to point some moral lesson more strongly, he demanded that Tolstoy revise sentences that might create confusion in a simple mind. Although annoyed by this uncompromising rigor, the author ultimately yielded to the arguments of the critic. Little by little, Chertkov was becoming a cumbersome incarnation of Tolstoy's own conscience. However, the little books of the Intermediary series—costing five kopecks apicce— were selling by the thousands all over Russia. The author gained nothing from them, except greater fame. In six years, more than twenty million copics were printed.
Not to be outdone, Sonya, too, printed, published and sold. But her firm, unlike the Intermediary, was distinctly profit-making. In February 1885 she went to St. Petersburg with her daughter Tanya, to apply to the administration for authorization to include in her husband's Complete Works such hitherto unapproved titles as Confession, What I Believe and What Then Must We Do? Permission was refused. However, she took advantage of her stay in the capital to call on Dostoycvsky's widow. The two authors' wives-turned-busincsswomcn amicably compared notes. Mrs. Dostoyevsky, who had more experience, gave Mrs. Tolstoy some sound advice. They talked cost price,
I Paul Biryukov, introduced to Tolstoy on November 21, 1884, later became his devoted biographer.
handling expenses, registration and profit margins as they sipped their tea. "In the last two years she has netted 67,000 rubles," Sonya enthused. "I was very surprised when she told me she only gives five per cent to the booksellers."12
She was even more affected by another encounter. While she and Tanya were paying a social call to her aunt Shostak, the empress was suddenly announced. Flutter in the drawing room. The hostess snatched up her cane and limped hastily to the door. The ladies sank into deep curtsies. "I came forward," Sonya wrote to her husband, "and Mrs. Shostak presented me to the empress. Then she presented Tanya. I said, 'Ma frfleI frankly admit that I was in a dither, but I kept my wits about me."
Amiable and languid, the empress began a conversation with Sonya, in French: "Have you been here long?" "No, Madame, only since yesterday." "Is your husband well?"
"How kind of Your Majesty to inquire. He is very well." "I hope he is writing?"
"No, Madame, not just now; but I believe he is planning something for the schools, along the lines of What Men Live By." At that point, old Mrs. Shostak intervened with a honeyed smile: "He will never write another novel. He said so to Countess Alexandra Tolstoy."
Turning to Sonya, the empress murmured: "And do you not wish him to? That surprises me!" Sonya, taken aback, could not think what to answer and, with a naive ignorance of etiquette, suddenly said: "I hope Your Majesty's children have read my husband's books." The empress nodded magnanimously and uttered, with a smile: "Oh, I believe they have."
After reporting this conversation word for word in her letter to Lyovochka and the children, Sonya bubbled:
"I can hear you now. You're saying, 'Maman's head's been turned.' Truly, this meeting was the last thing in the world I was expecting."13 Lyovochka's answer was acid:
"That certainly was a stroke of luck! You wanted it so badly, that meeting. I am highly flattered by your account, but I dislike it. Nothing good can come of this. I remember there always used to be a man in the Pavlovsk Park, sitting among the bushes imitating the song of the
• (My daughter.)
nightingale. One day I struck up a conversation with him and from his unpleasant way of speaking I gathered he was connected with some member of the imperial family. Take care that the same thing doesn't happen to you." And he added:
"Why did you speak to her of what I am not writing instead of what I am writing? Were you too timid?"14
Sonya returned to Moscow at the end of February 1885, and on March 12 Tolstoy left for the Crimea with his friend Leonid Urusov, vice- governor of Tula, who was in the final stages of tuberculosis.
lie was moved to sec Sevastopol again—the heights where he had camped, the sites of the enemy cannon, all those places where violence and terror had once reigned. As he went over his war memories in his mind he felt, to his own astonishment, "a flush of energy and youth." Finding a half-buried cannonball, he even persuaded himself that it had been shot by a cannon from his own regiment, and was childishly pleased at the thought. Everything that belonged to his past—even his soldiering days—was pleasant; everything that belonged to his present- even his children—was a burden. The moment he returned to Moscow, he wrote in his notebook: "Today I thought alxmt my poor family: my wife, my sons, my daughters, who live with me and carefully erect screens between themselves and me in order not to see what is true and good. ... If only they could understand that there can be only one justification for idleness made possible by others' labor: to devote all their leisure to thinking and understanding themselves. Instead of which, tlicy spend it in futile rushing about, with the result that they have less time for thinking about themselves than laborers burdened by overwork. ... I have wondered why so many intelligent and good men live so blindly and badly. The reason lies in the power that women have over them. They let themselves be carried along by the current because that is what their wives or mistresses want. The whole story is told in bed."16