And although the minor disciples did not question Chertkov's supremacy, the most important ones, such as Biryukov or Aylmer Maude, Tolstoy's English translator, criticized his tyrannical and scheming nature. "It was very painful to me," wrote Biryukov, "to sec how he [Chertkov] tyrannized Tolstoy and sometimes forced him to do things that were completely at odds with his ideas. Tolstoy, who was sincerely attached to Chertkov, visibly suffered from this subjugation, but resigned himself without a murmur bccause it served the principles most dear to him."2 Maude commented: "I never knew anyone with such a capacity for enforcing his will on others. Everybody connected with him either became his instrument, quarreled with him or had to escape. . . . [But] discarding physical violence seemed to leave him the freer to employ mental coercion, and he was expert in its use."3 As Maurice Kues, the Swiss tutor, portrayed Chertkov: "Together with a profound and sincere faith, the kind that leads people to renounce the world for an ideal, he had all the essential attributes of a sectarian: the blind inflexibility in matters of doctrine, and the aridity, the stubbornness and crudeness, refusing to recognize any subtleties or shades, and the heartless indifference to human contingencies."
Everything vague, uncertain, profound, sensitive ancl tragic in the master corresponded, in the disciple, to narrow, restrictive conviction, a total barrenness of heart and a lack of tact that was all the more inexplicable in a man who had received such an elegant education. A believer in non-violence, he nevertheless considered that every means of imposing the ideas he served, short of actual physical force, was fair play. He would have sacrificed Tolstoy's peace of mind without a qualm to ensure the fame and posterity of the Tolstoyan cause. Instinctively, he knew that true apostles are a nuisance, because their acts may at any moment belie their words. Therefore, he thought, it was his duty to keep watch over the old man, filter all his rash remarks and writings, transform him into a statue, a public monument, and appoint himself custodian of it.
He spent his first days in Russia with Tolstoy; then, after a short trip back to England where he had business to clear up, he settled in the neighborhood of Yasnaya Polyana. Sasha sold him half of her property at Telyatinki, and on it, two miles from the Tolstoy house, he built a big, very ugly, two-story wooden villa, in which the rooms opened off a long corridor as in a hotel. The upper floor was set apart for the "collaborators," that is, those performing any form of work at the Chcrtkovs'—secretaries, gardeners or dishwashers. These collaborators, of whom there were a score, all practicing Tolstoyans, disdained creature comforts and cleanliness and slept in their coats on straw pallets on the floor. Downstairs, however, Chertkov and his wife, his mother and his son Dima occupied more decently furnished rooms. When the disciple showed his old master around the new residence, Tolstoy leaned over to his daughter Sasha and murmured: "It pains me. ... It pains me to see Chertkov build such a house, too big and too handsome, and spend so much money on it!"
At that time Chertkov began an enormous anthology': The Collected Thoughts of L. N. Tolstoy. Hunting through Tolstoy's fiction and philosophy, letters and private diaries, for the best phrases to define and illustrate his doctrinc, he hired a team of avant-garde intellectuals and placed them under the supervision of the philosopher F. A. Strakhov.® This little band spent the whole of every day going through the patriarch's works with a fine-tooth comb to cull out the main ideas. The day's sittings were then examined by Chertkov, who dccidcd what to accept and reject. Sometimes he fulminated against a suspect passage, accusing Tolstoy of some anti-Tolstoyan heresy and demanding the deletion of a line or the replacement of one word by another, and Tolstoy generally consented to his inquisitor's dictates.
At noon, all the inhabitants at Telyatinki, among whom there were also some ordinary laborers, farm hands and shepherds, gathered around the big rcfectory tabic. Forty famished people held out their bowls to the steaming cauldrons. In theory, this Tolstoyan colony was
• No relation to Tolstoy's friend, the critic N. N. Strakhov, who died in 1896.
governed by the sacred laws of equality, mutual assistance and love. But Sasha Tolstoy, who often dropped in for a neighborly call, observed that the "brothers" were divided into three classcs, like passengers 011 a train. At the top of the table sat Chertkov and his family; in the middle were the Collected Thoughts team—secretaries and typists; and at the far end, the laborers and peasants and laundresses and night watchmen. Those in third class, who were given nothing but "porridge in oil," envied those in the first class who fed on pork chops, stew and preserves. Strange remarks were heard among the humble:
"Look at Alyosha, he's trying to get into firstl"
"What about you, have you finished ogling the cutlets?"
Chertkov's mother, an aristocrat accustomcd to associating with the court, lived by herself at Tclyatinki, took tea in her room and demanded starched white cloths, silver tableware and porcelain cups; and Chertkov himself always had an air of elcgance about him, in spite of his coarse canvas blouse and heavy shoes. His only son, Dima, on the other hand, was revoltingly filthy and undistinguished; his Tolstoyism was confincd to refusing to study and wash. Covered with vermin, he scratched himself as he talked and was always sprawling on the sofas in his muddy boots. To his father's mild remonstrances he retorted that in order to become one with the muzhiks it was neccssary "to live simply in everything."
Chertkov usually arrived at Yasnaya Polyana in the morning, while Tolstoy was working. It was a rule that no one could enter his study during his hours of creative activity without an invitation from the master; but this injunction, which was all very well for the hoi polloi, could not, of course, apply to the great disciple. He entered, peered over the old man's shoulder, read what he was writing, approved, criticized:
"It would be better to changc that passage."
"Ah, you think so?"4 murmured Tolstoy. And, irritated and uncomfortable, he gave in once again.
Chertkov often brought a photographer with him, who interrupted the writer to take photos for the Tolstoyan propaganda campaign. Sonya, who adored photography, began by rebuking her husband for allowing her fewer "shots" than the outsider. But she soon had more serious cause for complaint. She quickly came to realize that by taking root at the source, Chertkov was intercepting everything that flowed from Tolstoy's pen. Not only did he see Lyovochka's articles before anybody else, he even appropriated the manuscripts. He had access to the diary day and night. Sonya was revolted and frightened by this intimacy. She felt that her rights were being usurped and her loyalty
betrayed. In the past, she had been able to tell herself that in spite of their quarrels and misunderstandings, her husband was attached to her by his desire. But now she was a withered woman of sixty-four with badly deranged nerves, and he an octogenarian no longer tormented by sexual desire. When he looked at her, all he saw were her wrinkles. Ilis respect for her as the mother of his children must also have vanished, after the "Tanayev affair." The pianist had returned to Yasnaya Polyana in February 1908. He had played the Songs Without Words for the countess; she wept. What had Lyovochka thought then? She was sure he had told all to his beloved confidant. Chertkov was probably well aware that she was 110 longer either bedfellow or advisor to her husband, and he was exploiting her past mistakes to consolidate his own domination. But she was not going to give up without a fight. She had not lived forty-six years of her life with a genius, sharing his work, keeping his house, copying his manuscripts, giving him children, nursing him and loving him, to step aside now for some mere valet of Tolstoyism. Her life was meaningless unless she could remain the admirable and irreplaceable consort of the great man to the end. It was her very ration d'etre she was defending against Chertkov. But Chertkov was also defending his raison d'etre against her: he, too, considered that his sacrifice and his efforts had earned him the exclusive right to represent Tolstoy in the eyes of posterity. For him, too, nothing else mattered except his place at the master's right hand. Certain he understood the essence of the doctrine better than anyone else, he wanted to preserve it from all corrupting influences. To do that, he thought, the author must be kept from backsliding under his wife's influence, now that he had grown old and feeble.