My Life

Some years previous she had also tried to conduct a village school independent of the priest's, but she was finally forced to give it up on account of clerical opposition. As neighborhood physician and nurse, however, she had ample opportunity to teach the peasants what she believed, and to reason with them about following the dictates of their own consciences rather than the behests of the clergy and the orders of the military. At the time of my visit I think she had made most headway among the men, unwilling taxpayers in Russia at all times. To be told that the priests and military should support themselves without assistance from the peasantry was sweet music indeed. "Think how much more money we can have for vodka!" many an Ivan must have whispered when Maria was exhorting them not to be soldiers, and to refuse their financial support of the church.

In one cabin we visited together Maria noticed several colored portraits of the Imperial family hanging on the wall. They were set in metal frames.

"How comes it," Maria exclaimed, "that I see so many emperors this morning?"

The big, burly peasant looked sheepishly at her, and then, mumbling that his wife was to blame, swept the pictures into his hands and threw them into a cupboard.

"The woman likes such things," the man explained. "I put them away, but she gets them out again."

Maria thought that the peasant was sincere in his renunciation of Tsar worship, and perhaps he was. I think, however, that, like many of the other peasants on the estate, he found it financially profitable rather than spiritually consoling to have Maria think him one of her converts.

Only two days before our call at this cabin, for instance, he had stolen some wood from the Countess. I believe that it was a log "which he thought the Countess would not need." The superintendent had discovered the theft, and the peasant had been, or was to be, reported.

"But, Maria," he said, when begging Maria to intercede for him with her mother, "tell the Countess how much more I could have taken. Just a log like that – that is no crime, is it?" Maria told him that she would do what she could, and we left the man happy, Maria's promise of intercession seeming to be as good to him as the forgiveness of the Countess. Nothing was said about the return of the log.

In this, as in many other cases, Maria was doubtless exploited by the cunning peasants – the Ninghik can be uncommonly cunning in small things – but she said in reply to my suspicion in this regard: "Even so. Who could expect such people to be upright in everything? Besides the man confessed his offense. He is a good fellow in his way. Seldom beats his wife and does not drink overmuch. I believe in building all that one can on such good qualities as he shows, and if I intercede for him it may increase my influence for good in his family."

"It may also confirm him in his pilfering habits," I interposed. "He will learn to expect friendly interference on your part on such occasions."

"Perhaps so, but I prefer to think not," and that ended Maria's argument in the matter, as it did in many other talks I had with her, the Count and those neighbors who could be called his "disciples."

Their principles and religious beliefs were never given prominence in general conversation unless they were directly asked about them. They chose by preference to live them as best they could, rather than polemicize about them. Only on two or three occasions did Maria, for instance, advance any of the ideas about how the world was to be made better, and then only because I had quizzed her point-blank. Day after day she went her quiet way, haying, nursing, doctoring, and when she could spare the time, enjoying herself on the tennis court.

Her older sister, Totyana, was by no means so active in her acceptation of her father's teachings. Indeed, in 1896 she was still very undecided about them. She told me, one day, laughingly, that for the present she was only half won over; "perhaps when I am as old as my father I shall be wholly won over." In her way she seemed quite as happy as Maria; all of the children, in fact, saw life on its brighter side, even to one of the older boys, who was a soldier, and put much store on multi-colored uniforms and ornamented cigarette cases. What the Countess really thought about the whole business I never found out. We had one short conversation about the Count and his work, during which she delivered herself of these remarks: "You will hear many things here that I do not agree with – I believe it is better to be and do than to preach." I judged from these sentiments that Tolstoyism as a cult had not captured her. That she thought much of the Count as a man and husband was evident from her solicitous care of him.

The Count himself, although very approachable, was so busy with one thing and another during my stay, that only on two occasions did we have anything like a satisfactory conversation. And these two opportunities could be only partially improved by me because I honestly did not know what to talk about with the old gentleman – or rather there was so much that I wanted to ask him, but did not know how to formulate in the way that I fancied such a great man would expect questions to be put, that the time went by and I had done but little more than observe the man's manners, and listen to what he volunteered to say without being questioned. We spoke in English and German, as it happened to suit.

Now, that I look back over the experience and recall the old gentleman's willingness to talk on any subject, I regret exceedingly that I did not quiz him about literary contemporaries and affairs. The principal thing he said along these lines that comes to mind now concerned poetry and how it impressed him. We were sitting in the music room, and some one had said something about the relative values of prose and poetry as methods of expression. Tolstoy preferred prose.

"Poetry," he said, pointing to the parquet floor, "reminds me of a man trying to walk zigzag across the room on those squares. It twists and turns in all directions before it can arrive anywhere. Prose, on the other hand, is direct; it goes straight at the mark."

Talking about America and Americans, one afternoon, he was much interested in William Dean Howells, Henry George and the late Henry Demarest Lloyd. He told me that there were four men in the world that he was very anxious to bring together; he believed that a conference between them would throw much light on the world's needs. Two of the men, if my memory is correct, were Mr. Howells and Mr. Lloyd.

Only one strictly theological, or rather religious bit of conversation occurs to me now. We were walking in the fields, the Count having spent the day at his friend's house where the Four Gospels were being overhauled. The talk wandered along in a rather loose fashion until we came to the subject of miracles – we also tackled parables before we got through.

I had become a little mixed in understanding the Count, and said something like this: "And the miracles you consider so illuminating?"

"No, no, no," he returned, "anything but illuminating; they are befogging. It is the parables that I find so clear and instructive. The miracles will have to go, but the parables we could not possibly spare."

On no occasion did the Count ask me what I believed. The matter seemed to make very little difference to him, or, at any rate, if I believed anything and was made happy thereby, he did not see the use in taking it up in conversation.

In the dining room, one noon, he said to me: "I see that you like tobacco." There was no critical or reproachful accent in the remark; he merely noted what was a fact.

"I used to be fond of it," he went on, looking down at the floor, "and I used a good deal of it. I finally thought that it was doing me harm and let it go." Other things that had been "let go," liquor and meat, for instance, had apparently been given up on the same simple ground – they were injurious to his health. Religion, self-denial for self-denial's sake, "setting a good example," etc., these matters did not appear to have influenced him. At any rate, he did not speak of them when talking about his renunciations, and, in the case of tobacco, frankly said that if he were young again, "no doubt it would be pleasant to use it again." In a word, his vegetarianism and self-service, so far as anything that he said to me is concerned, were due as much to hygienic notions as to religious scruples. And yet I was told by a very trustworthy person that the old gentleman regrets very much that the simple life, as he sees it, cannot prevail throughout his home. At table, for instance, he would prefer that all hands should help one another, and that the Countess' white-gloved servants be dispensed with. In his personal life he seemed to be trying to be his own servant as much as possible.

CHAPTER XVIII

SOME ANECDOTES OF TOLSTOY

A good illustration of Tolstoy's irresponsibility on the estate, or what he meant to be such, is the way he invited me to stop one night at his house. I had gone swimming with the boys to a pool perhaps a quarter of a mile from the house, and it was getting to be time for me to know whether I was to sleep at the Tolstoy's or in the neighbor's barn. While we were drying and dressing ourselves, I heard a voice in the brushwood near-by saying: "Meester Fleent, my wife invites you to spend the night with us." It was the Count himself, who had come all that distance to tell me that his wife had told him that he was to seek me out, and deliver her invitation, not his. I shall always remember his face as it appeared through the twigs, and the errand-boy accent in his voice and manner. I have never before seen greatness in such a humble posture. It was openly said to me by one of the Count's friends that this humility has given the old gentleman considerable trouble, in its acquirement as well as in its exercise. Probably we shall know much more about all this when the Count's Journal is published. I learned this much on the spot: Tolstoy feels very keenly the seeming inconsistency of his life, the fact that he cannot make his altruistic notions harmonize with his daily life. His chagrin has, on one or two occasions, nearly made a coward of him. At night, when no one was looking, he has slunk away toward Moscow, like a tramp, to be himself somewhere. But always, before he has got far, a voice has said to him: "Lyoff Nicolayevitch, you are afraid. You dread the remarks of the crowd. You shrink on hearing that you preach what you don't practice. You are trying to run away from it all, to be comfortable yourself whether others are or not.

"Think of your wife and children, of the home you have made. Is it your right to sneak away from all this just to make yourself look and sound consistent? Have you not duties toward your wife and children to observe? Do you think you can throw over all that you were to them and they to you merely to satisfy your vanity – vanity, Lyoff, and nothing more. You are vain in your very sneaking. You insist upon appearing all that you think you are.

"Back, back, back! Remember your wife and children. Remember that you have no right to make them think and live the way you would. Remember that to sneak away is cowardly. Back, Lyoff Nicolayevitch!" And back the old man has trudged, to take up his burden as a citizen.

One night he talked with me about my tramps. He asked me why I had made them, how the vagabonds lived, and why I had not continued to live among them. I told him the truth. He stroked his white beard and looked dreamily at the chess-board.

"If I were younger," he said at last, "I should like to make a tramp trip with you here in Russia. Years ago I used to wander about among them a good deal. Now, I am too old – too old," and he ran his hands rheumatically up and down his legs.

When leaving Yasnaya Polyana, I asked the Count's neighbor in whose house I had slept whether there was anything I could do for him or the Count during my travels. My railroad pass was good yet for a number of weeks, and it occurred to me that, perhaps, during my wanderings I could run some errand for Tolstoy. At the time, I had no thought that my proposition could get him, myself or anybody else into trouble. To be sure, Mr. Breckenridge, the American Minister at St. Petersburg, had given me, in addition to my passport, a general letter "To whom it may concern," recommending me to everybody as a bona fide American citizen and gentleman, and bespeaking for me in advance the friendly offices of all with whom I might be thrown. But I failed utterly to see how I was going back on this letter in offering to render a service that the Count, or rather his neighbor, asked me to render.

When it came time to go, the neighbor handed me a large sealed envelope, containing letters, which I was to deliver, if possible, into the hands of one Prince Chilkoff, a nephew I believe of the then Minister of Railways, who was temporarily banished to a rural community in the Baltic Provinces, about two hundred miles from St. Petersburg. I knew nothing about the Prince, or what he had done to offend the powers that be. What the letters contained, was, of course, a private matter into which I knew enough not to inquire. There was a promise in the undertaking which attracted me, and I willingly accepted the commission. Arriving in St. Petersburg I called on Mr. Breckenridge and happened to mention the errand that I was on. I told him that Chilkoff was banished in the sense that he had to live within given boundaries, but that I hardly thought he had done anything very serious, adding that his uncle was one of the Ministers of State. All that I know to-day about young Chilkoff's offense was that he was alleged to have been mixed up too intimately for his own good with the Donkhobors and other more or less tabooed religious sects in the Caucasus.

At first Mr. Breckenridge did not see anything out of the way in my errand, and very kindly offered to assist me officially in seeing the Prince, i. e., he suggested that we openly ask for governmental permission to proceed to the Prince's home. Then I mentioned the secret package of letters. The Minister's manner changed. "Suppose you dine with me to-night," he said, "and we will discuss those letters." I did so, and the upshot of the meeting was that the package of letters was ordered back to Yasnaya Polyana. At the time it seemed a pretty humiliating trip to be sent on, but I am glad now that I did not shirk it. "I have recommended you as a gentleman to the Russian government and people," said the Minister, "both in the letter I gave you to the Minister of Finance when you were getting the correspondent's pass and in the later one of a general character. For you to undertake secret missions of this character may very easily make the government wonder whether I knew what constitutes a gentleman when I gave you those letters."

I have had to eat a number of different kinds of humble pie in my day, and tramp life let me into some of the inner recesses of humiliation that no one but a tramp ever knows about; but no journey has ever made me feel quite so cheap and small as that return trip from St. Petersburg to Tula, the railway station where visitors to Yasnaya Polyana leave the train. I telegraphed ahead advising the Count's neighbor of my coming, and expected that he would meet me at the station. What was my surprise, on arriving at Tula, to find the old Count himself waiting for me.

"Ah! Meester Fleent," he exclaimed as I got off the train and greeted him, "have you brought me news from Prince Chilkoff?"

I wished at the time that I could sink out of sight under the platform, so pathetically eager was the Count's expectancy. There were only a few moments to spare, and I clumsily blurted out the truth, trying at the same time to explain how sorry I was. The Count calmly opened the envelope and glanced at the letters.

"Oh, it wouldn't have mattered," he said, and after shaking hands, went back to his house. He neither seemed vexed nor embarrassed. A suggestion of a tired look came into his face – he had ridden seventeen versts – that was all.

One of his "disciples," referring to this affair and my connection with it, some weeks later, ventured the statement that I had "funked" in the matter. I hardly think the Count felt this way about it, whatever else he may have thought. At the time, however, as he rode away on his horse, the letters tucked carelessly under his blouse, I would have given a good deal to know exactly what was in his mind. I remember very accurately what was in mine – a resolution, that, whatever else I did or did not do in life, I would never accept an official letter to the effect that I was a gentleman and then proceed to do something which was likely to get the letter-writer into trouble. "Either leave such letters alone," I counseled myself, "and be your own interpreter of gentlemanliness, or know, before accepting them, what will be expected of you."

Tolstoy, no doubt, has long since forgotten this episode, but I never will. In a way it left a bad taste in my mouth, and I felt that I had spoiled my experience at Yasnaya Polyana. I outgrew this feeling, however, and often think now of my visit to the Count and his family as I did when I drove away to Tula in the two-wheeled cart. I likened myself at the time to a dog "caught with the goods on," so to speak, and slinking away with his tail between his legs, but with the "goods" held tight in his mouth. Something, I know not what, unless it was the sweet peace and kindliness of the Count and his surroundings, seemed such forbidden fruit for me of my tempestuous career to taste of, that I felt very much as I used to feel as a boy when caught trespassing in other people's orchards. It did not seem right that one who had been through what I had should be allowed to enter into such an atmosphere of good cheer. Nevertheless, I was glad that entrance had not been denied me, and made many solemn resolutions to profit by the experience. Whether the resolutions have been kept with the fervor and determination that animated me in 1896, I would rather not say. But one remembrance is as vivid and dear to me to-day as when I rode away in the cart: the Count and his desire to do the right thing. "If to be like him," I have often caught myself saying, "makes one a fakir, then let us all be fakirs as quickly as possible." Unpractical, yes, in some things; a visionary, perhaps; a "literary" reformer, also perhaps. But my simple testimony about him and his is that I have yet to spend ten days in a gentler and sweeter neighborhood than those I enjoyed in and about Yasnaya Polyana.

CHAPTER XIX

I MEET GENERAL KUROPATKIN

It is a far cry from Count Tolstoy and Yasnaya Polyana to General Kuropatkin and Central Asia, but while dealing with men and things Russian I might as well tell here as elsewhere of my visit to Central Asia in the fall of 1897. Again the motive was journalistic, and again I was the proud holder of a pass over all the Russian State Railways, not over the private lines, however, as the year before. I have to thank Prince Chilkoff, the Minister of Railways, for this second pass. He had become considerably interested in my travels, and on learning that I contemplated excursions into remote parts of Russia he kindly offered to ask the Tsar to grant me free transportation for three months "in order that my investigations might be facilitated." When the transportation finally reached me, it read: "With Imperial Permission." I have always thought that there was an undue amount of red-tape in getting the pass, but Prince Chilkoff personally assured me that he must formally ask the Tsar for it before it could be issued. This being true, the poor Tsar has more to attend to, particularly in these later days, than ought to fall to the lot of one man. Truly, he is an overworked man, if he must give attention to such minor details. No wonder if some anarchist pots him. There is not a railroad manager in the United States that could do all that the Tsar is alleged to have his hand in on the railroads, and at the same time run a great nation, a national church, and the largest army in the world. Consequently the Imperial permission did not make the impression upon me that it would have, had I believed that the Tsar had done anything more than nod his head, or make a scratch of the pen, when Prince Chilkoff asked for the pass.

I had seen the Tsar the year before, just after his coronation in Moscow. The occasion was the Imperial return to St. Petersburg, following the terrible accident on the Chodyuka Field in Moscow where thousands of men, women and children were crushed to death in the mad scramble for the coronation mugs. Rumor darkly hinted at the time that the scramble was a forced affair, that certain officials charged with furnishing the crowd with mugs and refreshments, had made a deal with the purveyors of these things whereby a much smaller supply than was necessary should be furnished, the surplus money paid out for an adequate supply going to the crooked officials and dealers – that the scramble, in a word, was a preconcerted scheme to cover up their devilish machinations. Charges of graft and corruption are so numerous and haphazard in Russia that one can seldom find out the truth. Whether this particular deal was actual or not, however, the look on the Tsar's face when he rode down the Neffsky Prospect on his return from Moscow was dismal enough to make almost any rumor credible. I had a window on the Prospect directly opposite the Duma (City Hall), where the Tsar and Tsarina accept bread and salt from the city fathers on such occasions. A good shot could have picked off the Tsar at that moment with ease.

A more tired-out, disgusted, bilious-looking monarch than was Nicholas during that Neffsky ride I have never seen. The ceremony at the Duma over, he and his wife were whisked away toward the Winter Palace, bowing languidly to the right and left. "Insignificant" was the word I heard from those about me at my window, and it sums up the man's looks, and I am afraid his importance as well.

In 1897, the local Tsar of Russian Central Asia was General Kuropatkin, the soldier who seems at the present writing to have buried his reputation as a commander-in-chief in Manchuria. At the time in question he was looked upon as one of the ablest and most popular generals in the Russian army. He was also supreme "boss" in the district under his command. When the visit of the party of which I was a member was about over, and we were to leave Central Asia, two or three enthusiastic Britons thought that it would be worth while to wire our gratitude to the Tsar. Kuropatkin was asked about the advisability of such a proceeding. I was not present when the question was put to him, but one who was present told me that Kuropatkin replied: "What's the[Pg 248][Pg 249] use? I represent the Tsar here and will transmit your message to him." The telegram was sent nevertheless, via the British Embassy, and, as usual, in such cases, we eventually learned that the Tsar had, metaphorically speaking, spent his entire time wondering how he could make our visit in his dominions more entrancing.

The excursion was the first of the kind ever permitted in Russia's Central Asia possessions. It was really a commercial undertaking on the part of a tourists' agency in London, but because it was unique in Central Asian history and also on account of Kuropatkin's hospitality, it received a significance, social as well as political, which does not ordinarily accompany such enterprises. The tourist agency had gathered together thirty-odd Britons at the last moment, two lone Americans, a Southern lady from South Carolina, who, when reaching Samarcand and learning that she was almost directly opposite Charleston, South Carolina (on the other side of the world), cheerfully said: "How dear!" – and myself. The British Foreign Office was asked to appeal to the Russian Foreign Office to let us into the forbidden country – forbidden in the sense that one required a special passport from the Russian War Office before he was allowed to cross the Caspian. At least this was the story told in those days, and Englishmen were eager to believe it because the Russians had pushed their southern frontier so affectionately toward Afghanistan and India. It seemed to be their idea that the Russians were afraid to let them see what they (the Russians) were doing on their side of the Afghanistan fence. The Russian War Office communicated with Kuropatkin at Askabad, asking him whether he was afraid to let the Britons see how the Russian side was getting on. Kuropatkin replied: "Let them come in."