# Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Chapter 12
## The Second Journey Abroad — His Brother's Death

In February 1860, Fet wrote to Tolstoy to consult him as to an intention which he had of buying some land and devoting himself to agriculture. Tolstoy's answer was very sympathetic, he approved of Fet's plans, offered his help, mentioning certain lands for sale, and after this businesslike part of the letter, of no general interest, he expressed the following important thoughts about some works of Turgenev and Ostrovskiy:
Tolstoy had arrived at the conclusion that a man endowed with brains and enriched with knowledge must, before deriving pleasure from them for himself, give a share in the benefit of them to those who are deprived of both. Accordingly, he had devoted to the school the time he had free from his work on the estate. In these occupations he passed the winter of 1859-60. At the same time, while doing reading, serious reading, he had come to the following conclusions:
Then he reads Auerbah's storie, "Reynard the Fox" by Goethe, and finally about the same time he jots down the following thought:
These thoughts were fully developed in his educational works, as we shall see later on, and also in the self-analysis contained in his confession quoted above.
Tolstoy's friends were watching his literary career with intense interest, treating condescendingly and half-jokingly "the foolishness and eccentricity", as they called them, of those manifestations of the deep inner growth in Tolstoy, which most of them wholly failed to understand.
Thus, Botkin casually wrote to Fet on March 6, 1860:
Turgenev's attitude was the same: here is part of his letter to Fet of the same year:
In the spring of 1860, Fet and his wife paid their usual visit at Yasnaya Polyana on their way from town to the country Fet made a short not of his stay there on this occasion.
Further on, Fet tells of the coming of Nikolay Tolstoy to their place:
Since we have to speak of Tolstoy's relations to his brother during his life and at his death, it may be well to quote Fet's character sketch of this remarkable man:
N. N. Tolstoy wrote very little. We only know of his "Memoirs of a Sportsman."
E. Garshin in his "Reminiscences of Turgenev" quotes the following opinion of his concerning N. Tolstoy:
To the general joy of his friends, N. Tolstoy's journey abroad was actually settled. This joy, however, was of short duration.
He left Russia via St. Petersburg with his brother Sergey.
Turgenev, who had a strong regard for him, felt very anxious and wrote to Fet fromSodene on June 1, 1860:
He repeats the same in the postscript of the same letter:
Of course Tolstoy was very much alarmed by his brother's illness. Here is a letter written about that time by him to Fet, in which, besides his anxiety about his brother, he expressed certain views on agricultural work:
At that time a pause ensued in the literary activity of both Tolstoy and his friend Fet, who, though feebly, yet accurately reflected the inner process going on in Tolstoy's life.
The following are examples of the well-reasoned letters written by Druzhinin to Tolstoy and Fet, inciting them to literary work. His letter to Tolstoy is particularly interesting:

## Footnotes

* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p324
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p325
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p326
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p217
* ↑ E. Garshin, "Reminiscences of Turgenev" Historical Review, November 1883.
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I", pp 328, 329