"You must have guessed that your decision means failure to me; you know it full well; but on the other hand I am glad to think that it will be easier for you to live after abandoning your ideal, or rather after mingling your ideal with baser aspirations, by which I mean having children."23
In spite of this double warning, Masha stood her ground, announced her engagement and, since Nicholas Obolensky had not a kopeck to his name, came forward twisting her skirts and hanging her head to reclaim her share of the inheritance she had previously disdained. Tolstoy clothed his disappointment in a dignified silence. But Masha's brothers and sisters protested vehemently, because they had been counting on dividing up her share among themselves. And Sonya exulted, with a bitter smile: she alone had known all along what would happen. You had to be crazy like Lyovochka to imagine that any normal woman could forget she had a womb.
Another obstacle arose when the time came to set the wedding date. Masha had stopped confessing and taking communion long ago, so the Church would not bless her marriage.. Prince Obolensky suggested they bribe a priest, which would cost only one hundred and fifty rubles. Tolstoy indignantly replied that any such monkey-business as that would be performed over his dead body. Since his daughter had decided to return to the common herd she must abide by its rules, even the most ludicrous ones, and in particular its religious ceremonies. It was a question of integrity. Weeping at her relapse, she yielded, confessed, took communion and, on June 2, 1897, in the presence of her family and dressed in her everyday clothes, married Nicholas Obolcnsky, the "sponger," the "long-eared lazybones," as Sonya callcd him.
"Masha is married," wrote Tolstoy on July 16. "I feel all the compassion for her I would feel for a purebred racehorse put to work hauling water."
His grief at Masha's departure was sharpened by his suspicion that his gentle, high-spirited Tanya was also about to elude him. After rejecting quantities of suitors out of devotion to the Tolstoyan ideal, she had fallen wildly in love with a man much older than she, Michael Sukhotin, who was married and the father of six children; he was in his fifties, had a middle-aged paunch and was both charming and witty. Tanya carried on a kind of platonic romance with him, met him secretly, suffered from the falseness of the situation but could not bring herself to break it off. "I am ashamed when I think of Sukhotin's wife and children," she wrote, "although he assured me that I am depriving them of nothing and although I know his wife stopped loving him long ago."24 And also, "Papa is the great rival of all lovers and none has been able to vanquish him yet. But this love of mine is competing more strongly than any other has done so far."25
Sukhotin's wife was very ill, and Tanya was sometimes horrified to catch herself hoping she would die, which, with admirable tactfulness, she did soon afterward, and on October 9, 1897 the thirty-thrcc- year-old virgin wrote to her father announcing her desire to many her widower. This was the last straw. His hatred of the ties of the flesh revived. With the fierce selfishness of an old man who cannot tolerate happiness in others except on his own tenns, he replied to his daughter on October 14:
"I have received your letter, dear Tanya, and I simply cannot give you the answer you would like. I can understand that a depraved man may- find salvation in marriage. But why a pure girl should want to get mixed up in such a business is beyond me. If I were a girl I would not marry for anything in the world. And as far as being in love is concerned, for either men or women—since I know what it means; that is, that it is an ignoble and, above all, an unhealthy sentiment, not at all beautiful, lofty or poetical—I would not have opened my door to it. I would have taken as many precautions to avoid being contaminated by that disease as I would to protect myself against far less serious infections such as diphtheria, typhus or scarlet fever. Just now it seems to you that life is not possible without it. Tin's is also tine of alcoholics and smokers, except that when they break the habit they discover life as it really is. You have not managed to avoid this intoxication, and now you feel it is impossible to live without it. And yet it is possible! After saying this, without any real hope of convincing you or inciting you to change your way of life and rid yourself of your addiction, and without any hope of avoiding the other diseases that will infect you later, I shall proceed to tell you how I view your state.
"Uncle Sergey told me that one day (I was not there) he went to see the gypsies with our brother Nicholas and some other people he hardly knew. Nicholas had had too much to drink. Whenever he went drinking with the gypsies, he would begin to dancc, badly, hopping about on one foot and flapping his arms convulsively in a way that was meant to be bold and reckless, and suited him about as well as a saddle on a milch-cow. He, a quiet, sober man, awkward, modest and homely, would suddenly begin to fling himself into contortions while the people around him laughed and seemed to be encouraging him. It was a dreadful spectacle.
"It happened that this particular day, Nicholas wanted to dance. Sergey and Basil Perfilyev begged him not to but he wouldn't listen, and, sitting on a chair, began gesticulating incoherently and awkwardly. They bcsccched him; but when at last they saw he was too drunk to hear what they were saying, Sergey simply told him, in a defeated and mournful voice, 'Then go dance!' And, heaving a sigh, he put his head down in order not to see this humiliating spectaclc which seemed to the drunken man (and to him alone) an admirable exhibition, joyful and delightful to all.
"Tliat is how I sec your desire. All I can say to you is, 'Then go dancer I take comfort in the thought that when you have finished dancing you will become as you were before, and ought always to be. 'Dance!' If it has to be, I can but repeat it. But I cannot fail to see that you have become irresponsible; your letter proves it. I cannot see what interest and importance there can be for you in the fact that you will be seeing him one hour more. By way of explanation, you tell me that you are thrilled at the mere thought of receiving a letter from him. This is confirmation of my opinion that you arc acting with the total unconsciousness of one possessed. I might have understood that a thirty-three-year-old virgin should choose to love a man past his prime, who is good, honest and not a fool, and should determine to unite their destinies. But then she would not attach such a price to one more hour of conversation or the approach of the moment when she might receive a letter, because she would know that neither the continuation of the conversation nor the contents of the letter could give her anything more. If there is this emotional strain, that means there is also an artificial stimulus, in other words, that the soul is not at ease. And when the soul is not at case, the thing to do is not to bind oneself to someone else, but to lock oneself up in a room and throw the key out of the window."
This time Tolstoy's aim was better. Wounded, Tanya bowed to her father's will. But she returned to the charge a few months later—she must have Sukhotin, she wanted to be his wife for better or for worse, she begged her parents to let her go. The marriage took place on November 14, 1899. Tolstoy sobbed as lie led his eldest daughter to the church. On November 20 he wrote in his diary:
"I am in Moscow. Tanya has gone away—God knows why—with Sukhotin. It is pitiful and humiliating. For seventy years my opinion of women has done nothing but sink steadily, and yet it must go lower still. The problem of women? One thing is sure! It is not solved by allowing women to run one's life, but by preventing them from destroying it!"
During 1897 Tolstoy was wrestling simultaneously with the follies of his wife and daughters and with a book by which he set great store: What Is Art? He had long felt the need to explain the tragic contradiction between the prophet and the writer in him. In his essay What Then Must We Do? he had already said that artists who neglected their vocation as educators were prostituting their talent. The older he grew the more self-evident this principle seemed to him. He defended it so vehemently to his family and friends that, in Sonya's words, "everyone's sole wish was that he would stop talking as soon as possible!" The advent of Tanayev at Yasnaya Polyana had strengthened his hatred of "immoral and idle" art. His attacks upon music, painting ancl literature as entertainment were so many kicks in the pants of this weakling Sonya had the effrontery to pretend she was in love with. He added the recriminations of the jealous husband to the vaticinations of the apostle. Sonya, who was rccopying the essay, noted on June 25, 1897, "So much fury and meanness, even in this text. I feel clearly that he is attacking an imaginary foe (would it be Sergey Ivanovich [Tanayev] he is jealous of?) and that his one and only purpose is to destroy him."