CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library PG 3435.L79 „Two Russian reformers 3 1924 027 512 726 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027512726 TWO RUSSIAN REFORMERS TWO RUSSIAN REFORMERS IVAN TURGENEV LEO TOLSTOY BY J. A. T. LLOYD STANLEY PAUL & GO. 1 CLIFFORD'S INN, LONDON CONTENTS PAGE IVAN TURGENEV ^ ' • LEO TOLSTOY . • . 219 1 ILLUSTRATIONS IVAN TURGENEV Fronttspicce PAGE AVENUE AT SPASSKOE 5 A TYPICAL ISBA lOI SPORT IN THE STEPPES 1 35 TURGENEV IN OLD AGE 1 69 COUNT LEO TOLSTOY 235 TOLSTOY'S WORKROOM 269 TOLSTOY AT WORK 3O3 " My one desire for my tomb is that they shall engrave upon it what my book has accomplished for the emancipation of the serfs." Ivan Turgenev. TURGENEV " CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD is only too often a bondage which is never explained; but the child- hood of genius, a martyrdom though it may be, not infrequently finds eventual ex- pression. This interpretation, however, of the vague years with their formless misgivings and regrets, their unreasoned revolts, their gasps of antipathy and thankfulness—all this is usually toned down delicately in a mirage of memory in which resentment escapes in a half-whimsical sigh or a smile of forgiving irony. But in some very rare instances the dreams of early youth penetrate into the world of art without any such softening process of memory. One of these exceptional cases is the childhood of Ivan Tur- genev. Born at Orel on October 28, 1818, Turgenev was the son of a rich landed proprietor, and re- ceived at Spasskoe, his mother's property, the usual cosmopolitan education of Russians of his class. Here Fraulein, " Misses," and " Mammzell instructed him in their respective languages. Here, too, he was constantly beaten, and ex- 13 14 Two Russian Reformers perienced in all its bitterness the acrid distress of childhood. Long afterwards, in one of those projections of memory almost physical in their intensity, he was to picture himself as " drinking, with a kind of bitter pleasure, the salt water of his tears." But it was here, too, that he breathed in those unforgettable impressions of Russian country life with which he was after- wards to charm and to astonish Europe. At Spasskoe he learned to become a sportsman, and commenced those wandering habits which were to give liberty, through his " Annals of a Sportsman," to millions of human beings. His love of nature was at this time almost a passion, and he has told us that in the evenings he would often steal out by himself to meet and to embrace —a lime-tree. Over and over again in his novels he returns to that mysterious Russian garden in which there seemed to ferment the drowsy, humming life of all the summers in the world. One sees him escaping to the solace of this haunted garden, a lonely boy, spied upon by parasites and often punished with malignant severity. One sees him becoming involuntarily a watcher, as though he had been born a con- noisseur of souls. For, here on the very thres- hold of youth, disillusion has come to him. The difficult relations between his father and mother were not concealed from these young, questioning eyes. Child as he was, he had learned to suspect Turgencv 15 those nearest to him. Long afterwards he ex- claimed, with a knowledge of Hfe that had its origin " in his very childhood : But as for marry- " ing, what a cruel irony ! And it was not only with lime trees that he kept appointments in this garden of wonder. Very soon he knew what it was to wait breathlessly for hurried footsteps on the fine sand. Very soon he divined some, at least, of the secrets of that human passion which retained for him to the very end something of freshness and mystery and tenderness. He met once suddenly among the raspberry bushes a young serf girl in whose presence he became speechless. Perhaps it was she who came to him in the blazing heat of a summer day and, though he was the master, seized him by the hair as she uttered the one word, " Come." The name of this girl was Claudie, and forty years later Turgenev recalled with intense emotion "ce doux empoignement " of his hair. But neither Claudie nor any other serf girl taught him to believe in love, and he had already ceased to believe in the bounty of Providence. " It is here in this same garden," he wrote from Spasskoe in 1868, " that I witnessed, when quite a child, the contest of an adder and a toad which made me for the first time doubtful of a good Providence." In order to understand not only the childhood of Ivan Turgenev but also the whole trend of his work, his aspirations, his reasonable patience, one i6 Two Russian Reformers must know something of Madame Turgenev, his mother. For, it was she, more than any one else, who imbued his youth with the idea of tyranny and his manhood with an unceasing resistance to it. Madame Turgenev had experienced tyranny in her own childhood. Her step-father hated her and ill-treated her until she reached her seventeenth year, when he began to persecute her with still more sinister attentions. She escaped from his house half-dressed, and took refuge with her uncle, Ivan Loutovinoff, at Spasskoe. In spite of the demands of her mother, her uncle retained the guardianship of his niece, and at the age of thirty she inherited his immense fortune, including the property of Spasskoe, where her husband, Serguei Nicolaevitch Turgenev, whom she married soon after her uncle's death, came to live. Here she lived the life of a Russian chatelaine of the old school. She had her own chapel and her own theatre, the actors being recruited from her serfs, who also provided her with an orchestra. Her adopted daughter admits, in one passage at least, that though she was neither young nor beautiful, and in spite of the fact that her face was pitted with smaU-pox, she was so spintuelle that she was always surrounded by a crowd of adorers. Her relations with both her sons seem to have been always more or less difficult, but this entry in her private journal, dated 1839, is addressed to her " son Ivan : C'est que Jean, c'est mon Turgenev 17 soleil a moi; je ne vois que lui, et lorsqu'il s' eclipse, je ne vois plus clair, je ne sais plus ou j'en suis. Le coeur d'une mere ne se trompe jamais, et vous savez, Jean, que mon instinct est plus sur que ma raison." It was stated in a review that Madame Turgenev bequeathed this journal to her son, but her adopted daughter maintains that it was burnt in the garden before her eyes in 1849. " Is it in virtue," she asks, " of the fatal law of heredity that Ivan Turgenev in his turn refused to publish his own journal, and, following the example of his mother, burnt it at Bougival in a garden ? " Both of these journals are a loss, the one to literature, the other to all those who would seek to understand the mental attitude of the serf-owners of long ago. Madame Turgenev could not understand how her son, who was a noble, could wish to become a writer. A writer, she tells him, is a man who scratches paper for money. Her son should enter the army and serve the Czar. She was not, how- ever, wholly hostile to the Arts ; and when Liszt came to Moscow, as he did that very year, Madame Turgenev went with her son to the concert-hall. She was unable to walk, and as, through an over- sight, the customary means of conveying her had been neglected, Ivan carried her in his arms up the steep steps of the concert-haU. When Madame Viardot came to Moscow in 1846 Madame Turgenev, in spite of her disapproval of her son's enthusiasm, i8 Two Russian Reformers went to hear her. " II faut avouer pourtant," she admitted grudgingly, " que cette maudite " bohemienne chante fort bien ! But if Madame Turgenev was disdainful towards artists, she was absolutely tyrannous towards her serfs, even towards the doctor, Porphyre Karta- cheff, who accompanied Ivan when he was a university student in Berhn. Porphyre acted as a kind of superior valet, and when they returned to Russia the relations between master and servant were most cordial and Madame Turgenev alone continued to treat him as a serf. Ivan implored his mother to emancipate him, but she absolutely refused. Once, when her adopted daughter was ill, Madame Turgenev wished to call in other doctors, but Porphyre assured her that it was un- necessary and that he himself would cure the patient. Madame Turgenev looked him in the " eyes as she said : Remember, if you do not cure her you will go to Siberia." Porphyre accepted the risk and, fortunately for him, his patient recovered. The chatelaine was equally inflexible in her attitude towards her son, Nicolas, who aroused her anger by wishing to make a love-match with a Mile Schwartz. " Just as Ivan Tvirgenev," com- ments his adopted sister, "was Russian in appear- ance, so his brother was English. When I read the romance of * Jane Eyre ' I could not represent to myself Rochester except with the features of Turgenev 19 Nicolas Turgenev." For the rest, Nicolas seemed to her to be a born tease, was a master of languages, had a strong voice as opposed to Ivan's shriU one, and was far less anxious than Ivan to render services to his fellow beings.