Was Tolstoy a Humbug?

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20669, 6 March 1937, Page 12 (Supplement)

Was Tolstoy a Humbug?

SIDELIGHTS ON HIS LAST YEARS

Tolstoy’s desertion of his wife and home at Yasnaya Polyana on October 28th, 1910, and his death at the railway station of Astapov ten days later, has provoked a sufficiency of description, interpretation, speculation and Comment. The weight of available evidence (writes Hugh Ross Williamson in “John O’London‘s Weekly”), has seemed to point to his wife’s having made his life Intolerable by her continual opposition to his views on the ownership of property. That he had renounced the copyright of everything he wrote after 1881 seemed to her unjust to their “five children and twenty-three grandchildren”; and when she suspected the truth that he had secretly made a will, at the instigation of his editor and publisher, Chertkov, to ensure that this arrangement was legally binding on his heirs, her attempts to get possession of the document and to discredit Chertkov in his eyes knew no limits. Indeed, they were in great part responsible for driving Tolstoy to his death. The Countess’s Diary Chertkov’s own version of events (in his “Last Days of Tolstoy,” published in 1922) and such remarks as that of N. N. Gay—who called Chertkov “an evil Pharisee”—that he found the Countess "tormented by belated and •Impotent remorse,” have furthei prejudiced people against Tolstoy’s wife. Even the palliative theory that the state of her health was at least partly to blame was categorically denied by Chertkov, who wrote:— Some people have tried to convince themselves and others that Sofya Andreevana’s relations to Leo Nikolaevich, which rendered his further residence with her impossible, arose chiefly from considerations quite unrelated to any Interest In his literary property. They attribute her conduct to various causes, chiefly to her Illness, diseased psychic condition, and the sickly and abnormal state of her nerves. Against such an explanation I feel It my duty. In the Interests of truth, most resolutely to take exception. But how at last the truth—tad not Chertkov’s truth—is accessible. In “The Final Struggle” (Allen and Unwin), Mt Aylmer MaUde has translated Countess Tolstoy’s Diary for 1910, Including with it extracts from Tolstoy’s diaries of the same dates. Sergey Tolstoy, who is responsible for the publication and the Russian edition, writes in the preface;— Though twenty-flve years have passed since then, the writer of this Introduction can still not think without pain at the heart of the events that occurred at Yasnaya Polyana in 1910. That, however, does not prevent his taking an objective view and not suppressing anything. Uhder Chertkov’s Domination Referring to Chertkov’s denial of the Countess’s illness, he points out that such an assertion contradicts both the doctor’s diagnoses and Tolstoy’s own opinion, and that she "undoubtedly suffered from an acute form of hysteria.” “The Final Struggle,” however, makes a total impression which IS far other than a belated apologia for a sick woman. It even prompts the query whether the Countess Was more hysterical than circumstances warranted. Chertkov becomes the villain of the piece—though that is hardly an unexpected discovery when, as Mr Maude says, "many people who know Chertkov . . . express surprise that Tolstoy should have made close a friend of so domineering, quarrelsome, and vindictive a man.” The real revelation is that of Tolstoy as something not far removed from a senile humbug, whom his wife alone had seen through, and yet after forty-eight years of married life still loved with an overwhelming and passionate devotion. He, on his side, was indifferent and even hostile to her and, in her opinion, gave What affection he had to Chertkov. Rightly or wrongly the Countess regarded Chertkov as standing between her and her husband and as being responsible for the withdrawal of his love. The passages in which she denounces a physical attraction masquerading as a spiritual affinity may be Interpreted (as her opponents interpret them) as symptoms of pathological hysteria; but, on the other hand, they may equally well be the comments of a simple honesty, tortured by jealousy beyond endurance. Ban on Photographs One does not need to be a partisan of the Countess to sympathize with her annoyance at Chertkov's fifty-seven photographs of her husband (when "in the old days he was angry with me and even shouted at me when I asked him to let me photograph him”): It was repulsive to me that his Idol should photograph Leo Nikolaevich like an elderly coquette In woods and ravines, and that he should despotically turn the old man all ways 11 order to take pictures of him and make a collection of photo- ■ graphs as Well as of manuscript. The obsession against Chertkov was not due primarily to any question of the custody of manuscripts; it was not even a matter of her resentment of his many calumnies on her. The final struggle is not a financial •quarrel; it is a domestic tragedy. Like all tragedies, it has moments of pure comedy. On August 17th, for instance, part of the Countcss’s entry runs:—

Later on Leo Nikolaevich played bridge animatedly till twelve o'clock. He asked Tanya for some light French novel to read. How weary he Is of his role of religious thinker and teacher. How tired he Is of Itl Tolstoy's entry for the same day Is:— tt Is good that t was melancholy, for the melancholy expressed Itself In prayer and consciousness. Tolstoy’s Blindness On her own birthday (“I am sixtysix and am still as energetic, acutely Impressionable, passionate and, people say, youthful"), she writes:

1 asked God to give me back my husband's love before our death. And I believe that my prayer for that love will be answered, so many tears and so much faith do I put Into It.

But it took Tolstoy—in the interval of composing such diary entries as "Tranquillity is the most precious thing. The state of my sbul is serious and strict," which contrast piognantly With his wife’s prayers for his tenderness and ironically with her matter-of-fact entries about his delight in “cards and music and chess and merry company”—until September 30th to realize: “To-day I perceived for the first time a possibility of overcoming her by love and kindness." But, by then, there was less than a month left. The final tragedy is too well known to need retelling, but even here the Countess's private dairy speaks in her favour as nothing else can, and its publication at last grants her hope, expressed more than once in its pages, that the world should know the truth of her love for Tolstoy.