TOLSTOY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 120, 13 July 1911, Page 8

TOLSTOY.

A BRILLIANT REYIEW. Mr (I. Bernard Shaw con tributes a In illiaut review of Mr Aylmer Maude’s '■/.life of Tolstoy'’ to the “Fabian Nows.” Mr Aylmer Maude knew Tolstoy well, had visited him in his famous home, is a master of the Tolstoy literature, and has a line equipment as biographer. TOLSTt )Y 'id .1 XCURABLE I )KFEC I’. The review is a merciless exposition of the littleness and greatness of Tolstoy. “On the whole,” says Mi Shaw, “we must conclude that 't was a grave and incurable delVi t in Tolstoy’s training that no had never been obliged to do a real job of real work, and do it for his living. His spell of soldiering was of no use to him in that way; a man learns nothing of affairs from being cooped up in a battery and fed like an artillery borso whilst, lie fires cannons at the French and English, and is fired at by them. Everything else that ho did he played at, and soon got tired of, except literature. In that he was a giant; in business and practical politics ho wai so inferior to his biographer that the hook is a combination of eulogy an apology; Aylmer Maude lias to say, in effect, ‘This man was so great—so impressive—that lie made me accept him as my leader in matters in which he was, compared to me, a baby! And ! still accept that position ,though I am hound to show you how mischievously impractical he was.’ A TREMENDOUS BABY.

“Everybody clso was forced into the same position. Whether it was Tchertkofl' caricaturing his absurdities, or Maude carefully testing them by experiment, or the Countess rescuing him from them with a strong, practical hand, the result was always the same; nothing mattered provided the baby was not crying.

“If you have a baby who can apeak with Czars in the gate, who can make Europe and America stop and listen when lie opens his mouth, who can smite with unerring aim straight at the sorest spots in the world’s conscience, who can break through all censorships and ail barriers of language, who can thunder on the gates of the most terrible prisons la the world and place his neck under the keenest and bloodiest axes, only to find that for him the gates dare not 'open and the axes dare net fall, then indeed you have a baby that must be nursed and coddled and petted, and let go his own way, in spite of all the wisdom of governesses and schoolmasters. And the reviewer is as helpless as anyone else. Tolstoy is not even a prendre on a laisser. “You have to take him whether you like him or not, and take him as ho is,” writes Mr Shaw. “Maude’s book, which will stand, I think, among the big biographies of our, literature, must bo read, no matter what you may try to think of its hero. THE LADY AND HER SERVANTS. “Mr Maude’s Book,” says Mr Shaw, “is an admirable book to put into the hands of those converts to Socialism who imagine that the way to ho a Socialist is to begin at once acting ,as if Socialism were already established; that is, acting like a lunatic. There are such people still in spite of Fabian propaganda. The lady who suddenly drags her servants into the drawing-room, introduces them to her friends, and tells them virtually that unless they consent to bo treated as friends and fellow-citi-zens they will be discharged without a character, is still quite a possible phenomenon; for there is hardiy any limit to the childishness and want of social sense which our system makes possible in genteel ‘independent’ private life. A MAN OF GENIUS. “The most astonishing part of Aylmer Maude’s book is its revelation of the extent to which this sort of folly was carried by Tolstsoy. He was a man of genius in the first flight of that rare species. Ho had the penetrating common sense characoristic of that first flight. And yet no English old maid of county family living in a cathedral town on £3OO a year could have made more absurd attempt to start an ideal social system by private misconduct than he.

‘'Ho put on the dress of a rnoujik exactly as Don Quixote put on a suit al armour. He tried to ignore money as Don Quixote did. He left his own skilled work to build houses that could hardly be induced to stand, and to make boots that an army cantractor would have been ashamed of. He let his property drift to the verge of insolvency and ruin like the laziest Irish squire, because bo disapproved )f property as an institution. And ho was neither honest nor respectable in bis follies. He connived at all sorts of evasions. He would not take money on a journey, but ho would take a companion who would buy railway tickets and pay hotel bills behind his hack He would not own property or copyrights; hut he would make . them over to his wife and children, and live in their country house in Yasnaya and their town house in Moscow very comfortably, only occasionally casing bis conscience by making things as difficult and unpleasant for them as possible. HIS i\CONSISTKXCIMB. “Ho insisted on celibacy as the first condition of a worthy life; ami liis wife became thirteen times a mother. In the ordinary affairs of life he shii.kod every uncongenial responsibility whilst availng Inn,self of every luxury he really cam! for. And be railed at his wife and family for enabling him to do it, healing bis wife as ethically inferior because she insisted on saving the family from ruin, until at last she gave him up as impossible and managed for him

without saying anything harsher than her .Russian formula, ‘Nothing matters so long as the baby is not crying.’ HIS Ti RESUME FOLLIES. “Probably many of I’olstoy s admirers dismissed those facts during ids lifetime as silly legends invented by people who did not understand him. But it. seems clear now that they were quite true. Not, of course, that Tolstoy was fact-proof. He so a. found out by experience that his follies wore tiresome; and ho never did anything when lie was once tired of it, though, ho did not always cease to recommend others to do it. But one is none the less left asking why he did not foresee the inevitable breakdown of bis attempts to behave like a disciple in Jerusalem 1900 years ago. After reading Alynor Maude’s book 1 was tempted to answer that he never foresaw anything, and learnt what he did by the Ample process of knocking his head against it. . . . TOLSTOY’S EXTRAORDINARY WORK.

“So much for that part of the social burden which Tolstoy flatly refused to shoulder. After ail, wo cannot quarrel very deeply with him for his refusal; if a man does more than his share of extraordinary work for the world, we can hardly con - plain because he refuses to lo the ordinary tasks which society offers him, and which are calculated b>r quite another sort of man. But it must be said that his own peculiar work would have been much better done in some respects if he had managed his estates and administered and exploited his copyrights instead of leaving all this instructive drugery to his wife.”