Restored to bachelorhood, he redoubled his intellectual activities. During the three weeks he spent in Brussels, he continued his tour of schools, wrote an article on education, ordered banks of large type to use in children's primers and began to write his story Polikushka, based on an incident in Russian peasant life told to him by one of Prince Dondukov-Korsakov's sons. It was strange to be writing about the serfs when their independence had just been proclaimed. Overnight, the everyday, ordinary present had become history. One had to write about them in the past tense. Really, it was time he went back to Russia to see the faces of these new free men.
On March 27 (April 8), he started out. But instead of going straight through Germany he stopped at Eisenach, Weimar and Jena, doubled back to Weimar where he was presented to the grand duke, "surrounded by idiotic court ladies," and received permission to visit Goethe's home, still closed to the public. In every town and hamlet he rushed to tour the schools and kindergartens. He would often walk into classrooms unannounced, with the high-handed manners of the boyar. Once he appropriated all the notebooks of the pupils of the German schoolteacher Julius Stoetzer, for his personal documentation. When their master respectfully pointed out that their parents, most of whom were poor, might not be overjoyed to have to buy new notebooks, he rushed away, bought out a stationer's shop and came back with his arins full of fresh white sheets of paper 011 which the pupils recopied their lessons for him. Then he identified himself with a flourish: "I am Count Tolstoy of Russia," collcctcd the papers and handed them to a servant who stood waiting in the courtyard.
At Jena he met a long-necked student named Keller, who had just finished his studies in the Department of Science and, in a surge of comradeship, took him on as instructor for the Yasnaya Polyana school
I Marya Tolstoy's still unpublished letters are preserved in the Tolstoy Museum.
at a salary of two hundred rubles a year, traveling expenses paid. "I think I have made a lucky find in Keller," he wrote in his diary.20 But he had misgivings two days later when he met the young man's mother: "When I first saw the lady I realized that by taking her son away with mc, I had become responsible for him."81 Well, come what may! He sent Keller on ahead and went back to Dresden. Passing through Berlin he rejoiced to see Auerbach again ("the most admirable man alive") and met Professor Diesterweg ("unbending, heartless pedagogue, who imagines he can guide and cultivate children's minds with rules and preccpts")He was told at the hotel that "young Keller," who had passed through a few days before, had l>ccn drinking Rhine wine at his expense. This annoyed him "bccausc of the exchange," and also bccausc he was afraid he had misplaccd his confidence.
At last he strapped his bags shut, piled his latest acquisitions—more books—into crates, and, as St. Petersburg could not be reached by water at that time of year, decided to go home by rail, via Warsaw. Crossing the frontier on April 12 (24), 1861, he noted, "Frontier. Health good. Am happy. Scenes of Russia go by unnoticed." Sitting "among Jews" in an ice-cold railway car, his head lulled by the rocking train, he dreamed of opening schools, publishing an educational review and, having failed to be the first liberator of the serfs, becoming at least their first instructor.
[i ] Nicholas Tolstoy, father of Leo Tolstoy
[2] Tolstoy as a student (by an unknown French artist)
[4] Tolstoy at St. Petersburg in 1856
5] Sofya Bchrs
[6] Tolstoy and his wife, Sofya, 1881
[7] Tolstoy and his family in 1887
4. "Arbiter of the Peace' arid Schoolmaster
Russia, for Tolstoy, was neither St. Petersburg nor Moscow, but Yasnaya Polyana. Nevertheless, he took advantage of his presence in the two cities to see Druzhnin, who was also suffering from tuberculosis, Nckrasov, Katkov, his babushka Alexandra and one or two of the young ladies he had thought he might be in love with. This time Katerina Tyutchcv seemed "a ravishing girl, but too much of a hothouse plant, too well schooled in every refinement, too nonchalant," to share his life and work. "She is accustomcd to concocting moral bonbons, and I deal in earth and manure."1 Lisa, the eldest Bchrs daughter (aged nineteen), on the other hand, quite appealed to him, although he did not dare "to think of taking her for my wife."2
He carricd this vague regret away with him to the country; but for the present, his mind was more taken up with friendship than with love. As soon as he put into port at Yasnaya Polyana, he received a letter from Turgenev, also home from abroad, inviting him to Spasskoye, "while the nightingales are still singing and the spring smiling down." From there they might go to Stcpanovka, the nearby residence of their friend Fet. "Excellent program!" opined Tolstoy, who was ravenous for some literary conversation.
On May 24, 1861 he was at Spasskovc. After dinner, Turgenev settled him in the drawing room on his famous couch, nicknamed the sarno- son3 ("on which one goes to sleep automatically"), set out cigarettes and cool drinks for him and placed in his hands the manuscript of the novel he had just finished: Fathers and Sons. Was it travel fatigue, digestion after a heavy meal or the dullness of overpolished prose? Whatever the cause, after skimming a few pages, Tolstoy's eyes refused to focus and he drifted off to sleep. "I awoke with a most peculiar sensation," he later said, "and saw Turgenev's back retreating into the distance."4 His young colleague's lack of interest in his work rankled, but Turgenev did not let it show. Tolstoy, on the other hand, felt guilty at being caught in the act of inattentiveness and fumed because he could not justify himself by saying frankly that he did not like Fathers and Sons. No explanations were given. The book remained on the table by the samo-san. And the next day the two men left for Stepanovka, fifty miles away, as though nothing had happened.
Fet and his wife Marya Petrovna gave them such a cordial welcome that their malaise rapidly vanished. The following morning, May 27, they sat down with their hosts in the dining room, around the samovar. Knowing that Turgenev attached great importance to the education of his illegitimate daughter Paulinctte, Marya Petrovna asked him whether he was satisfied with his English governess, Miss Hinnis, who was looking after the girl in Paris. Turgenev immediately became defensive. He suspected his friends of criticizing him behind his back for allowing Paulinctte to be brought up in the Viardot home, with the result that she knew hardly a word of Russian and, so to speak, had neither family nor country. He boasted that the governess was "a real pearl" and employed British methods at all times. As an example, he told how, at Miss Hinnis' demand, he had been required to fix the amount Paulinctte might spend every month "for her poor."
"Now," he added, "the governess insists that my daughter go in person to collcct the clothcs of the needy, mend them herself and take them back to their homes."
"And you think that is a good thing?" asked Tolstoy, his thick brows beetling over a piercing glare.
"Of course! That way the benefactress is put into direct contact with real poverty."
"Well! What I think," growled Tolstoy, "is that a little girl sitting in a fancy dress with dirty, foul-smelling rags on her knees is putting on a hypocritical, theatrical farce!"