And to Druzhnin, who had asked for a story for his review The Reading Library: "I'm not much use as a writer any more. I have written nothing since Family Happiness and I don't think I shall ever write again. At least, I am presumptuous enough to believe that. . . . Now that I have become mature, life is too short for me to fritter it away making up books like the ones I write, which are a source of embarrassment to me afterward. ... If at least there were some subject that was really nagging at me, demanding to take shape, impelling me to be bold, proud and strong. Then, yes! But really, to write novels that are charming and entertaining to read, at thirty-one years of age! I gasp at the thoughtl"31
Tolstoy put the education of the people at the top of his list of occupations that were worthy of a man. He had already opened one school at Yasnaya Polyana in 1848, but had been forced to close it when he went to the Caucasus. He decided to try again. However, by educating these primitive beings, would he not arouse desires in them that could not be satisfied afterward? Would he not be condemning them to lives of frustration, by trying to force his form of happiness upon them? The master was apprehensive, but his serfs were even more so, although for different reasons. As always, they thought only of what he could be trying to gain for himself from his scheme. Perhaps he wanted to turn their sons into foot-soldiers so he could send them to the army and be paid by the tsar. Long palavers were required to allay their fears. At last Tolstoy managed to collect twenty-two children, whom he led into a converted bedroom on the third floor of the house and, scarcely containing his joy and pride, began to chalk the letters of the Russian alphabet on a blackboard.
Of course, there were recurrences of the parental misgivings. One muzhik did not want his son to continue at the school because no floggings were administered there and he would lose the habit of being beaten. Another was persuaded that the master was withholding something from his pay for his son's lessons. Forccd to control his anger, Tolstoy told himself that his peasants' thickheadedness was providing him with an opportunity to learn evangelical forbearance. His educational system was founded on total freedom—of the teacher in relation to pupils, and the pupils in relation to their teacher. Only those came who wanted to learn. If they did not feel like working, nobody forccd them. The teacher's moral authority should be enough to keep the class under control. No lessons to be memorized at home, no written work to prepare, no surprise quizzes to dread. "The pupil brings nothing to the classroom but himself, his rational mind and his certainty that school will be as much fun today as it was yesterday."32 In this schoolboy's paradise Tolstoy taught spelling, arithmetic, religious history, history and geography, all mixed up together. The children listened distractedly, retained an occasional word; but their faces were becoming more alert every day. The enrollment rose from twenty-two to fifty, whereupon Tolstoy decided to publish an educational periodical. "I am working at something that comes as naturally to me as breathing and, I confess with culpablc pride, enables me to look down on what the rest of you are doing,"83 he wrote to Chicherin.
And to Borisov: "I am swamped with work, and fine work it is. A far cry from writing novels!"31 His friends hid their smiles and shrugged their shoulders: their Leo had clcarly gone off his head! The eternal about-face, another new craze, words thrown to the winds. "Leo Tolstoy is continuing his nonsense," Turgenev wrote to Fct. "It must be in his blood. When will he turn his final somersault and land on his feet at last?"35
During the warm weather, all the pupils at Yasnava Polyana had to work in the fields and the master shut down the school. Besides, he did not have a free moment himself. He rose at four in the morning to help his muzhiks with the heaviest chorcs: "After sweating blood and tears, everything seemed beautiful to mc, I began to love mankind,"38 he wrote. Then, broken with fatigue, radiant, ravenous, he went off to meet his serf-mistress Axinya Bazykin. As time passed, he had grown so fond of her full white peasant flesh that he could no longer do without it. "I am afraid when I see how attached to her I am," he wrote in his diary. "The feeling is no longer bestial, but that of a husband for his wife." What to do? lie did not want their liaison to bccome official, and yet he did not have the courage to break it off. The best solution, he thought, would be to go away for a while. Conveniently, his brother Nicholas, who was suffering from tuberculosis, was planning a trip to Soden, a little German town whose waters were said to be very effective in pulmonary cases. Sergey and the patient set out together in the last days of May, and in spite of the summer work which should have kept the master at Yasnava Polyana, Leo decided to follow them. Too bad for Axinya. school and harvest! This time, he would travel en famille; he took his sister Marya, who was ill herself, and her three children, Nikolenka, Varya and Lisa.
On July 2, i860 they sailed from St. Petersburg on the Prussian Eagle, a paddle steamer bound for Stettin. Tolstoy was seasick. Since Dmitry's death he had been haunted by the fear of tuberculosis. When he stepped ashore at Stettin after a very rough two-dav crossing, his mind was full of dire forebodings and his jaw swollen with toothache.
From Stettin Leo and Marya Tolstoy and her children went directly to Berlin to consult a lung specialist, Professor Traube. He reassured everyone: there was not the slightest trace of tuberculosis in the lungs of the distinguished foreigners who had comc to him for auscultation. However, to give weight to his reputation, perhaps, and to justify his fees, he advised Marya to take the waters at Soden, recommended sea baths for Varya, who was delicate, and treatment at Kissingen for Leo's dental neuralgia. On the orders of this leading light of medicine, the family separated. Leo stayed on in Berlin. When he thought of poor Nicholas coughing out his lungs at Soden, he told himself that lie ought really to be there by the side of his dearly beloved elder brother. But the memory of his last interview with Dmitry was so chilling that, without admitting it to himself, he was afraid of another ordeal of the sort. With the unconscious selfishness of the healthy, he invented a thousand reasons for putting off a meeting which could give him nothing but grief. And to begin with, was it not his duty as an educator to acquaint himself with foreign teaching methods? He visited museums, went to the University to hear Droysen the historian and Du Bois-Rcymond the physiologist; he toured the famous Moabit Prison, where the American practice of solitary confinement had been introduced, with Fraenkel, the student, as his guide, and he attended evening classes for workingmen. There, the students—all adults—asked whatever questions they liked by means of a question box, and classes took the form of an informal dialogue. In the children's classes, on the other hand, rigid discipline prevailed, at which the traveler was incensed. Leipzig, Dresden—everywhere he found the same teaching by rote, the same brutal punishment. "Summer in school is awful," he wrote. "Prayer for the king, cuff on the head, everything by heart, children terrorized and benumbed."1
From Stettin Leo and Marya Tolstoy and her children went directly to Berlin to consult a lung specialist, Professor Traube. He reassured everyone: there was not the slightest trace of tuberculosis in the lungs of the distinguished foreigners who had comc to him for auscultation. However, to give weight to his reputation, perhaps, and to justify his fees, he advised Marya to take the waters at Soden, recommended sea baths for Varya, who was delicate, and treatment at Kissingen for Leo's dental neuralgia. On the orders of this leading light of medicine, the family separated. Leo stayed on in Berlin. When he thought of poor Nicholas coughing out his lungs at Soden, he told himself that lie ought really to be there by the side of his dearly beloved elder brother. But the memory of his last interview with Dmitry was so chilling that, without admitting it to himself, he was afraid of another ordeal of the sort. With the unconscious selfishness of the healthy, he invented a thousand reasons for putting off a meeting which could give him nothing but grief. And to begin with, was it not his duty as an educator to acquaint himself with foreign teaching methods? He visited museums, went to the University to hear Droysen the historian and Du Bois-Rcymond the physiologist; he toured the famous Moabit Prison, where the American practice of solitary confinement had been introduced, with Fraenkel, the student, as his guide, and he attended evening classes for workingmen. There, the students—all adults—asked whatever questions they liked by means of a question box, and classes took the form of an informal dialogue. In the children's classes, on the other hand, rigid discipline prevailed, at which the traveler was incensed. Leipzig, Dresden—everywhere he found the same teaching by rote, the same brutal punishment. "Summer in school is awful," he wrote. "Prayer for the king, cuff on the head, everything by heart, children terrorized and benumbed."1