COUNT TOLSTOI.

Evening Star, Issue 11495, 12 March 1901, Page 8

COUNT TOLSTOI.

Press Association.—By Telegraph—Copyright. LONDON, March 1.1. The Synod of the Russian Church have excommunicated Count Leo Tolstoi, owing to his anti-Christian teaching. THE TOLSTOI FAMILY. The death of Luovitch Tolstoi, eldest sou of Couont Tolstoi, was recently announced, from St. Petersburg. He had little sympathy ■with Lis famous father. As a boy he was his father's favorite, and seemed destined to grow up with the.same views, but his opinion of life changed with riper years, and he not only lost his sympathy with the religion of his father, but couceived it his duty to place himself in direct opposition to the Count. He wielded a gifted pen. and wrote a book against certain aspects of his father's teaching. His chief work, apart from many excellent stories, was a book urging universal matrimony as a counterblast to ' The Kreutzer Sonata.' Though it was of course painful to Tolstoi to lose the sympathy of his favorite son, the change of belief did not affect their natural relations. Tolstoi has the courage of his opinions, and he holds them in spite of the world, hut he recognises everj- man's right of freedom of thought and action. There is, as a matter of fact-, little mutual sympathy between Tolstoi and his family. Now that his son is dead, Tolstoi's family consists of nine—the Count and his wife, three daughters and four sons. They are tolerably clever, but noue of them, save the one. just dead, have distinguished themselves in any special manner. Only two members of the family, both daughters*, have any sympathy with their father's views. Tolstoi married before he had formed his present opinions, and his wife, who is rich, has nothing in common with her husband. She figures in the society of Moscow, and lives as ostentatiously as' she pleases, quite regardless of what, people may think. But Tolstoi is not pedantic. When they are all at home, he site down at, the tabic with his ■wife, and allows the servants to wait on him as they wait on her, but when he is alone he does everything for himself, and will not allow the servants to work for him hi any w . a Y" Tolstoi, in fact, is simply a guest in his wife's house. He digs his own potatoes, cooks his own food, makes his own fires, chop? his own wood, and even makes his own boots. One of his most intimate friends says that he once saw him take off his boots and giro them to a beggar in the street, and the c.ilv time when he carries money is v.hcn he asks his wife for a. few coppers to give to a passing tramp. But the Tolstoi household is happy, nevertheless. The Count and his, wife" are devotedly atta-ched to each other, and Tolstoi is always so perfectly contented that he forgets'the little ironies of his home life, and enjoys himself as if there were no such thing as ,% troubling conscience in the world.