A Talk About Tolstoy

Kai Tiaki : the journal of the nurses of New Zealand, Volume II, Issue 2, 1 April 1909, Page 55

A Talk About Tolstoy

A. H. Grinling

(A lecture delivered before the Dunedin Trained Nurses' Association,

by

Invited to talk to you about Tolstoy, I am faced with the fact that to the members of this Association, accustomed to discuss subjects of a more or less technical character, my selected topic is outside your usual range ; and yet perhaps, not so far divided from the world in which }^ou live and move, and have your being, as at first sight appears. For the relation of literature to life is exceedingly intimate ; indeed, literature, in more senses than one, is the reflection of life itself. Many of the most notable reforms which the world has seen were pioneered in literature. As a popular example of such pioneering, permit me to claim Charles Dickens as the virtual founder of the Trained Nurses Associations ; for he it was who set the forces in motion which evolved from the " Sairey Gamps " and " Betsey Prigs " of sixty years ago, with their odious vices anel criminal incompetence, which rendered the very name of nurse a by-word and a scandal, the scientifically trained and well disciplined ladies of the nursing profession to-da}^. For as Dickens declares in his preface to " Martin Chuzzlewit," in the year 1384 : " Mrs. Sarah Gamp was a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness, while Mrs. Betsey Prig was a fair specimen of a hosp ; tal nurse." Foster tells us, in his " Life," that the original of Mrs. Gamp was in reality a person hired by a most distinguished friend of Dickens' to take charge of an invalid very dear to her, and the common habit of his nurse in the sick room, was to rub her nose along the top of the tall fender. It is one of the triumphs of the humour of Dickens, that while on the one hand he has immortalised Mrs. Gamp, on the other, by his gentle satire, he virtually put an end to her existence. Could there be a greater contrast than the neatly-uniformed, well trained, and sympathetic nurse of to-day, anel, what Foster elubs, 'the portentous Mrs. Gamp, with her grim grotesqueness, her filthy habits, anel foul enjoyments ; her thick, and damp, but most amazing utterances, her moist, clammy functions, her pattens, her bonnet, her bundle and her umbrella." Yet Charles

Dickens was the men who set rolling the ball of public opinion, which within the last half century has brought into being this and its kindred Associations, and who is therefore fully entitled to be styled the patron saint of the nursing profession. Should there be anyone present not sufficiently grateful for the proud position at present occupied in the community by the members of the medical profession, and for the respect in which they are now universally held, I would advise them to turn again the pages of " Martin Chuzzlewit," and peruse that delightful chapter in which the reader is brought into communication with some professional persons to wit, " Sairey Gamp," and her friend and acquaintance " Betsey Prig," to say nothing of her " alter ego," the mysterious Harris. This digression into the realm of Dickens and his characters gives birth to the thought of what a delightful study it would prove to introduce you to the nurses of fiction, commencing at the heights of world literature, with the great Shakespeare, who created Dame Quickly, anel Juliet's nurse ; right down past Sterne's Dr. Slop and the nurse, and Susannah Tristram Shandy, to the nurses of the present day. But this takes me away from my first point, which is that the seed of every great reform which the world has known, has been sown by one or other of the great writers of the world. Charles Dickens is responsible for many of the reforms which, during the last half century, have blessed the people of England. Count Leo Tolstoy for the past 30 years at least, has been actively engaged in sowing the seed of great and sweeping reforms, which must ultimately bring forth a mighty harvest of happiness in Russia, freeing the people of that vast empire from the bonds of oppression anel the fetters of tyranny by which they are at present so grievously bound. There is another reason why a study of the life anel work of Tolstoy should prove helpful anel inspiring to the members of the nursing profession. I have lately been reading a most fascinating book calleel " Confessi Medici," written by a doctor, and manifestly a modern version of old Sir Thomas Browne's

quaint and famous treatise, " Religo Medici." In his" opening chapter this doctor remarks on the difference between profession and vocation, that the eloctor has a profession, while the priest has a vocation. Aud he then proceeds : " It is certain that some men are indeed called to be doctors, and so are some women. They are, as we say, born doctors ; they were shapen in medicine. So apt are they to their work, and it to them, that they almost persuade me to hold the opinion with Pythagoras, and to believe that in some previous existence they were in general practice. Or their ability may be the result of inheritance ; but we know next to nothing about inheritance, neither is it imaginable by what physical processes the babe unborn is predisposed for one profession. Still, there are men and women, not a great number, created for the service of medicine, who were called to be doctors while they were not yet called to be babies." Certainly these remarks, if true, concerning the medical profession, are doubly true of the nursing profession — which is yet another digression. But in the following chapter of the same book, there is an essay on " Hospital Life," in which the writer remarks that " sickness shows us things as the}' are, the mask is torn off, the facts remain. That is the spiritual method of the hospital, it makes use of sickness to show us things as they are." It seems to me that it is impossible for any thoughtful men and women to be engaged in a profession which brings them into such close and continuous contact wdth sickness, without over and O'er again asking themselves the question : " What is the meaning of life, why did we come into this world, to what purpose and for what end ?" Now, the reason why Tolstoy differs from his fellow-men is, because, almost as soon as he began to think, he asked himself this question concerning life ; and, not content with the self-inquiry, he has endeavoured to inspire others to ask themselves. And so far as his own country and his own countrymen are concerned, the future of Russia depends largely upon the extent to which adequate reply is forthcoming to the question. In order to understand Tolstoy, and obtain a grasp of his meaning and ambitions, it will be well to take a preliminary glance at his environment, his country, and his times. Professor Weinen, whose " Anthology of Russian Literature," is one of the best authorities on the subject, points out that the

peculiar conditions of Russian literary life are the result of the whole social structure of the country. The literate class of the people of Russia is, at the present time, but a small part of the total population, and the cultured elements of society form but a small percentage of all those who can read and write Russian. Thus literature has been in Russia the field in -which all the battles of progress have been fought. As there does not exist a representative government where political opinions may struggle for recognition, and as there cannot exist a public opinion based on tradition and class interests, literature alone appears as the medium for advancing social and political ideas ; and, since scientific treatises reach but a vanishing proportion of the nation in Russia, the main means of inculcating and propagating great truths has been literature, notably stories and preferably the short story. In the telling of there latter Tolstoy pre-emintly shines. Some good examples of these stories will be found in a small shilling volume in the World's Classics entitled, " Twenty-three Tales by Tolstoy," and the gem of the collection is undoubtedly the story entitled " Where love is, there God is also." Although still living, Tolstoy certainly belongs to a group of writers and thinkers who have stampeel their names indelibly upon the record of the latter half of the nineteenth century. Balzac has said that there are three classes of men in the world : Those who revolt, those who struggle, and those who accept," and the pages of history represent the successive cycles of revolution, struggle, and acceptance on the part of nations and individuals. But, whilst struggle and acceptance may be carried on in the mass, the action of rebellion necessarily implies a leader. Thus the prelude to revolution in any department of life or section of society is the uprising of men of genius, leaders of thought, avenues of expression for the mutterings of the multitude. Thus in the latter half of last century arose a notable quartette, whose attitude of revolt against custom and convention has paved the way for the social revolution now in active manifestation amongst us. And curiously enough each of the four represented in his own person, one of the four forms of popular expression : viz., philosophy, the drama, music, anel literature. Thus it is no figure of speech to dub Leo Tolstoy the foremost living man of letters ; he is that and much more. He

represents the only survivor of the remarkable quartette who dominated European literature during the latter half of the nineteenth century. With Frederich Wilhelm Nietzsche, the German moralist (1844-1900) ; Emil Zola, the French novelist (1840-1902) ; and Henrik Ibsen, the Norwegian dramatist (1828-1907) : Leo Tolstoy, the Russian reform t, constitutes the four presidents of dying nineteenth century literature. And Tolstoy has this m common with the other three that, although his fame as a novelist has gone out to the ends of the earth, he is far from being a mere professional storyteller. Pie is an original thinker ; he is the leading man of his race ; he is a social reformer, and he is an interpreter of religion. He has written a number of novels, a multitude of short stories, sketches, social, religious, and art studies, chapters of biography, and tracts dealing with almost every subject under the sun. Roaming over every field of human life, he has discussed m turn such all-embrac-ing topics as the authenticity and harmony of the gospels, the evils of militarism, and nationalisation of the land ; the relation of the sexes, the ideals of education, the mistake of patriotism, and the limits of government, social organisation, art, industry, wealth and poverty. The list of publications and translations which bear his name fill more than 40 pages of the catalogue m the British Museum. He is a good linguist, reading English with facility, and speaking it well, besides having a full command of Russian, French, and German. He also has a knowledge*^ Italian, and a good grounding m Greek, besides a smattering of Latin and Hebrew. He belives m learning languages because such knowledge promotes the brotherhood of man, or rather that closer intercourse which must eventually bring brotherhood about. He is a personage of such world-wide significance that he is, m a sense, above government, for he has secured for himself freedom of speech and immunity from imprisonment or banishment by sheer moral and intellectual ascendancy. The wonderful extent to which Tolstoy has freed himself from the hampering and injurious effect of an untoward environment may best be gauged by glancing for a moment at the conditions of life m Russia, and by calling to mind the fate which overtook many of the novelists' predecessors, friends, and contemporaries. Here is the tragic tale condensed into a sentence by a writer m a recent issue

of the " Edinburgh Review "— " Rykeief was hanged as a conspirator ; Gogol committed suicide at 43 ; Pushkin was filed in a duel at 38 ; Lermotnoff, twice in exile, died in the same way at 30 ; Shevtchenko, beaten, tortured and robbed by imprisonment of half his life, died at 47 ; Venevitinof succumbed to insult and outrage at 22 ; Koltzof died at 23 of a broken heart ; Belinsky perished of starvation and consumption at 38 ; Chernishevski, after two years imprisonment, was sentenced to the mines at 35 ; Herzen was imprisoned, twice exiled, and finally banished ; Dostoyevski, led out to be shot at 27, was only released from Siberia ten years' later, broken in mind and spirit." Yet, as Professor Wiener remarks : ' Nor can Governmental policy, nor severity of citizenship be made accountable for the short-lived literary influence of each individual Russian author, nor for the early maturity of genius, and the wide chasm between the author's sunny youth and his old age in the same instances when he has lived beyond his fifties. At 40 years of age, rather earlier than later, all Russian w r riters have reached their apogee. Most authors have gained their reputation long before that, and their old age passes by unnoticed, or in mystic abstractions, and in nearly all cases out of tune with the realities of the day. Thus, in striking contrast to the pathetic passing at an early age of so many of his contemporaries, we see Tolstoy, more than 80 years of age, and possessed of comparative vigour of body and full vigour of mind, it may be said of him in a very real sense, that he has found the truth, and the truth has made him free. As uncompromisingly and impossibly individualistic as Ibsen, albeit in a radically different way, his name has become the watchword of a cult, and the battle-cry of an unorganised body of disciples, to whom he has been a voice in the wilderness rather than a leader to a definite reconstruction of society. To quote Loliee, " The influence of Tolstoyism, like the Darwinism of another branch of letters, has been one of the most powerful factors of modern thought . ' One of Tolstoy's outstanding characteristics is transparency allied to an intense sincerity. He despises concealments anel compromises of every kind. Thus his writings are human documents in which his own personality figures prominently ; his real biograph}" is to be found in his novels.

Manifestly, it will not be possible, in the brief time at my disposal, to give more than a bare outline of the remarkable career of a remarkable man. Leo Tolstoy was born on 28th August, 1828, at Yasmaya, Polyana the now world-renowned estate, situated about 150 miles south of Moscow. His ancestry is highly aristocratic, he being descended at several removes from St. Michael, Prince of Montenegro ; his father was Count Nicolai Tolstoy, and his mother Princess Volonskaya. The family of Tolstoy's father had rendered great service to the Russian Government, and had held high official positions. When Tolstoy was two years of age his mother died, and he, with his brothers and sisters, was handed over to the care of a distant relative, a maiden lady — Tatyana Yergotskaya. Seven years later, in 1837, Count Nickolai removed to Moscow to give his eldest son the opportunity to enter the university. But in that very year the Count died suddenly. In 1843, when he was fifteen years of age, Leo entered Kazan University, but rebelling under its discipline, he left suddenly three years later, having spent one year at oriental languages, and two at law, and returned to Yasnaya Polyana, which he inherited under his father's will. To rightly understand Tolstoy's character, and the impulses and environments which went to make him what he is to-day, a careful study of " Childhood, Boj'hood, and Youth," is essentail. The first of these three stories, " Chileihood," to be shortly followed by " Boyhood," was contributed by Tolstoy in 1852, when he was but 24 years of age. This marked the commencement of Tolstoy's career as a writer. The stories were a great success. They were essentially biographical, and in them the reader may gather the remarkable evolution of a remarkable temperament, Young Tolstoy's type of mind was a strange mixture of passion, intimidity and idealism. Instances of all three qualities are to be found in abundance in the self revealing pages of this book. His childhood was a tragedy, consequent upon his introspectiveness anel compunction, and he was particularly sensitive in regard to his personal appearance. This comes out in almost all his novels, for every character which claims to be autobiographical is depicted as uncouth, ungainly, and awkward in the extreme. He was unhappy because he was misunderstood, he chafed against his artificial environment,

and yearned for a life of freedom. Especially did he rebel under the discipline of school anel university, since his instincts demanded that he should follow his own desultory fashion of picking up learning. Each anel all of these characteristics may be traced in their fuller evolution in the subsequent phases of his after life. His almost uncontrollable passion, with its inevitable reaction, led him to indite a violent protest against modern love and marriage ; his morbidity anel introspection causeel him to explore the sphere of religion and ask, and endeavour to answer the question : ' What is Life ?" His dissatisfaction with existing educational methods impelled him to experiment wdth school teaching among the peasants ; his love of nature caused him eventually to adopt the cult of the simple life. The dominant note of " Childhood, Boyhood, anel Youth," is its severe simplicity. The following brief extracts instance this, anel, in addition, reveal something of Tolstoy's sensitiveness anel morbidity : — " I remember very well how once — I was six years olel at the time — they were discussing my looks at dinner, and mamma was trying to discover something handsome about my face. She said I had intelligent eyes, an agreeable smile, and, at last yielding to papa's arguments and to ocular evidence, she was forced to confess that I was homely ; and then, when I thanked her for the dinner, she tapped my cheek and said : ' You know, Nikolinka, that no one will love you for your face ; therefore you must endeavour to be a good anel sensible boy.' These words not only convinced me that I was not a beauty, but also that I should without fail become a good, sensible boy. In spite of this, moments of despair often visited me. I fancied there was no happiness on earth for a person with such a wide nose, such thick lips, and such small, grey eyes as I had. I besought God to work a miracle to turn me into|a beauty, and all I had in the present or might have in the future I would give in exchange for a handsome face." The boy's mind was full of fancies, his imagination was a vivid one. He had been punished for some slight offence by his French tutor, St. Jerome, and the iron of the disgrace had entered into the sensitive soul. Under the heading of "Fancies," Tolstoy indulges in the following strange soliliquy :- 1 It occurs to me that there must exist some' cause for the general dislike and even hatred

of me. (At that time I was firmly convinced that everybody, beginning with grandmamma and down to Philip, the coachman, hated me, and found pleasure in my sufferings). It must be that I am not the son of my father and mother, not Volodya's brother, but an unhappy orphan, a foundling, adopted out of charity, I say to myself ; and this absurd idea not only affords me a certain melancholy comfort , but even appears extremely probable. It pleases me to think that I am unhappy, not because I am myself to blame, but because such has been my fate since my very birth, and that my lot is similar to that of the unfortunate Karl Ivanitch." For the next four or five years Tolstoy alternated between Yasnaya Polyana, and Moscow and St. Petersburg. Externally, while in the cities, he led the life of most young men of the Russian aristocracy, but internally he experienced a continual reaction against the dissipated life he was leading. Thus his carouses and orgies at Moscow and St . Petersburg were followed by seasons of sincere repentance at Yasnaya Polyana. An insight into his riotous course of life —

possibly somewhat exaggerated and dramatised—is given in his " Notes of a Billiard Marker," translated into English as, " The recollections of a Scorer." The same atmosphere and environment is also reflected in "Albert," and "Lucerne." In 1851 his eldest brother, Nikolai, fresh from the Caucasus, came to stay at Yasnaya Polyana, and Leo Tolstoy eagerly embraced the opportunity to escap3 from his distasteful surroundings, more especially as he had become financially embarassed owing to the contraction of considerable gambling debts. Thus, renouncing the life of an ideal aristocratic youth, he volunteered for the Caucasus, and entered the military service, and received as a non-commissioned officer, or yunker, he went to serve in a Cossack village on the banks of the Terek. His experiences at this time are vividly recorded in " The Cossacks." Here, amid the beautiful mountain scenery of the Caucasus, the literary instinct which had lain dormant in Tolstoy's mind began to awake. It was while here with Irs reginrnt that he sent to The Contemporary " his first literary experiment — " Childhood."

(To be continued.)