t A lieutenant, one of his friends.
441 am ugly, awkward, untidy and socially uncouth. I am irritable and tiresome to others, immodest, intolerant and shy as a child. In other words, a boor. Whatever I know I have learned by myself—half-learned, in bits and snatches, without any structure or order—and it is precious little withal. I am excessive, vacillating, unstable, stupidly vain and aggressive, like all weaklings. I am not courageous. 1 am so lazy that idleness has become an ineradicable habit with me. ... I am honorable, that is, I love the path of virtue . . . and when I depart from it I am unhappy and am glad to return to it. Yet there is one thing I love more than virtue: fame. I am so ambitious, and this craving in me has had so little satisfaction, that if I had to choose between fame and virtue, I am afraid 1 would very often opt for the former. . . . Today I have to reproach myself for three violations of my rules of life: (i) forgot the piano; (2) did nothing about the report concerning my transfer; (3) ate borscht, in spite of my diarrhea which keeps getting worse."
A week later he was no better satisfied with his deportment: "I am very displeased with myself, primo because I spent the whole day removing the pimples all over my face and body, which are beginning to annoy me; secundo, because of my pointless outburst against Alyoshka at dinner."
The war was still on, however, and at the end of the evacuation begun the previous month, the staff left Bucharest 011 July 19, 1854, en route for the Russian frontier. Throughout this dreary tramp, which was to last more than a month, Tolstoy unflaggingly pursued his self- interrogation. On bivouac, in his tent, in barns, he continued his written indictment of his errors with the same morbid delight he had felt in squeezing the pimples on his face. On August 16 he inaugurated a new moral therapy. Henceforth each daily note in his private journal would conclude with the same statement: 'The most important thing in life for me is to correct the following three Wees: laziness, lack of character and bad temper." He kept his word. Between August 16 and October 21, 1854 the sentence recurred more than twenty-five times. But the exorcism was without effect.
On September 9, after traversing Foegani, Barlad, Jassy and Skulyany, the staff finally set up headquarters at Kishinev. As soon as Tolstoy had set foot 011 Russian soil, he tried to interest some friends in founding a periodical with him—The Military Gazette—intended to bolster the soldiers' morale. 'The Gazette," he wrote to his brother Sergey, "will publish less cut-and-dried and more accurate accounts of the bat- tics than the other papers; reports of heroic deeds, biographies and obituaries of the bravest men, chosen chiefly from among the humble and unknown; war stories, soldiers' songs, simplified articles 011 artillery and military engineering."15
Money was needed for this undertaking. What is money? The previous year, when he had been afraid he would not be able to cover his gambling debts, Tolstoy had instructed his brother-in-law Valerian, in Pyatigorsk at the time, to sell the big family house at Yasnaya Polyana, without the land. Ilis ancestors would just have to do without the respect he owed to them. After all, a good many of them had been gamblers, too. They must be feeling sorry for him up there, maybe even approving him. In September 1854 the house was dismantled, board by board, loaded onto telegas and transported to the estate of the buyer, a neighbor named Gorokhov, to be reassembled there. All that remained at Yasnaya Polyana were the two pavilions which formerly flanked the mansion house. Nicholas wrote to his brother in November 1854, "You already know, no doubt, that the house at Yasnaya Polyana has been sold, dismantled and carried away. I went there recently. Its absence surprised me less than I had expected. The overall appearance of Yasnaya Polyana has not suffered."16 In any event, Gorokhov had paid up—five thousand rubles. \ To finance The Military Gazette, he need only dip into the till. Valerian received an order to remit fifteen hundred rubles to editor-in-chief Leo.
As for copy, there was no shortage of that. Tolstoy was confident that he could fill the paper single-handed. Without further ado he began writing short stories: How Russian Soldiers Die and Uncle Zhdanov and the Horseman Chernov. In the latter he told how the non-commissioned officers flogged the young recruits, to instill a respcct for discipline in them: "Zhdanov was not beaten to punish him for his faults, but because he was a soldier and soldiers must be beaten," he wrote with passion. Then, remembering that the story was intended for an official military paper, it occurred to him that the censor would never let it pass and he abandoned it. He wrote an article to replacc it, and the specimen issue was sent to the minister of war by Prince Gorchakov. But, Tolstoy himself confessed, even the article was "not very orthodox."- In fact, his knowledge of the tsar should have discouraged him from the attempt altogether. I low could Nicholas 1, for whom discipline reigned supreme, tolerate the presence in his army of a periodical with humanitarian pretensions? Too much solicitude softens the men in the ranks; what they gain in learning, they lose in obedience! Once again, Tolstoy had mistaken his fancics for fact: sud-
{About $14,100.
0 The specimen copy of The Military Gazette has never been found, and nothing is known of the "not very orthodox" article by Leo Tolstoy.
denly bitten by the teaching bug, he saw himself educating the soldiers and—why not?—their leaders, too.
The truth of the matter was that the latter did not seem quite equal to their task. News from the front was increasingly alarming. On a mission from Kishinev to Letichev Tolstoy learned that the French and English forces had disembarked near Sevastopol and the Russians had been defeated at the Alma. He was staggered. So long as the fighting remained on foreign soil, his interest in the war had been that of a dilettante, an artist. But now that the enemy had a foothold on the Russian earth, he felt directly concerned by his aggression. And yet at Kishinev the intrigues and entertainment and dancing went on as before, and Grand Dukes Nicholas and Michaelt came to the ball and charmed the ladies. Tolstoy could not bear it. "Now that I have every comfort, good accommodations, a piano, good food, regular occupations and a fine circle of friends, I have begun to dream of camp life again and envy the men out there," he wrote to Aunt Toinette.17 On a furlough, he visited Odessa and Nikolayev, where the port was blockaded by the English fleet. He saw some English and French prisoners and was surprised by their robust appearance. "The air and manner of these men gives me, why I don't know, a sinking certainty that they arc far superior to our soldiers," he wrote in his diary.18
Back at Kishinev, he abruptly applied for a transfer to the Crimea. He had now been promoted to the rank of second lieutenant. This time he did not ask to be attached to a general staff, but left his fate in the hands of his superiors. He set out the reasons for his decision in a letter to his brother Sergey: "I have requested a transfer to the Crimea, partly to see this war at first hand and partly to get away from Serzhputovsky's staff, who do not exactly thrill me; but mostly out of patriotism, a sentiment which, I confess, is gaining an increasingly strong hold on me.""