# Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Chapter 11
## The First Journey Abroad—Life in Moscow—Bear Hunting

January 29th [1857] Tolstoy left Moscow and traveled by mail post to Warsaw and from Warsaw by rail to Paris, where he arrived on February 21 [1857].
There turgenev awaited him. As early as January 23rd the latter wrote to Druzhinin:
After meeting Tolstoy, Turgenev wrote to Polonskiy:
In a letter to Kalbasin dated March 8, 1857, from Paris, Turgenev said:
This is Tolstoy's estimate at that time of Turgenev and Nekrasov, whom Tolstoy found in Paris, as quoted by Botkin in his letter to Druzhinin of March 8, 1857.
Tolstoy writes thus about his interview with him:
Turgenev writes that Nekrasov suddenly went away again to Rome. Tolstoy's letter is only a page but full of vitality and freshness. Germany interests him very much and he intends to study that country more fully by-and-by. In a month's time he starts for Rome.
This correspondence shows that the relations between Tolstoy and Turgenev were always unsatisfactory, and that with all their efforts, they could not become cordial friends.
In March, Tolstoy and Turgenev made a journey to Dijon and spent a few days together there. While there, Tolstoy wrote the tale about the musician Albert. Then they came back to Paris, where Tolstoy witnessed an execution which he described in his "Confession," and which made an indelible impression upon him, of which he made a brief entry in his diary:
This is what he says on the subject in "How I Came to Believe":
Tolstoy put off his journey to Rome till the autumn, and in the spring set out from Paris for Geneva, from which place he writes to his aunt Tatyana:
From Geneva, Tolstoy went on foot to Piedmont with botkin and Druzhinin, who had come there; after that he settled down on the banks of Lake Geneva at the little village of Clarens, from which he wrote an enthusiastic letter to his Aunt Tatyana:
Besides these friends in the neighborhood of Geneva, there lived at that time in the village Baucage, near the lake, Tolstoy's friend, the Countess A. A. Tolstaya, who was maid of honor to the grand duchess Marya Nikolayevna, who there gave birth to a son Count Stroganov. It was a very great pleasure to Tolstoy to visit them.
He spend about two months at Clarens and resolved to continue his journey on foot. Having made the acquaintance of a Russian family there, he invited one of them, a boy named Sasha, of the age of ten, to go up the mountains with him. At first they were to have walked to Friburg, crossing the gorge Jaman, but after having crossed it, they changed their minds and turned in the direction of the Chateau d'Oex, from which they proceeded to Thun by the mail post.
Among the unpublished manuscripts of Tolstoy are his notes of this journey, from which a few descriptions of Swiss landscape may be quoted. He first of all went by steamer from Clarens to Montreux.
Again, as they climbed up the mountains:
They passed the night at Avants. After the ascent, Tolstoy wrote the following reflections:
Continuing his journey, in July [1857] Tolstoy reached Lucerene, from which he wrote to his aunt:
During his stay at Lucerne, he had an adventure, which he describes in "The memoirs of Prince Nekhludov". The tale referred to the year 1857 and is therefore connected with his own journey.
In this tale, as we know, the lovely description of Swiss nature is interrupted by expressions of indignation at the way in which its harmony is spoiled in order to please the well-to-do tourists, chiefly English.
What strikes him especially is the contrast between the dull respectability of the "table d'hote" and the wild, but soft and exhilarating beauty of the lake. The feeling is intensified in him when he hears the song of a street singer with a harp. As if by magic, this song attracts general attention and strikes a chord in his soul to which he is unable to give tone.
The same dull, respectable English surround this beautiful flower of poetry like a black frame.
The singer finished and held out his hat beneath the windows of a grand hotel, on the veranda of which stood a crowd of smartly dressed listeners, who non of them gave him anything.
Amazed at the stony indifference of these people, Tolstoy ran after the musician and invited him to the hotel to partake of a bottle of wine. This defiant action created a sensation in the hotel, but that was precisely what he wanted. His object was to wound those self-satisfied tourists; he wanted to express his indignation at their heartlessness. However, the sensation passed away and was almost forgotten, leaving the author with a bitter feeling against the injustice of men and their incapacity to understand the highest happiness, the simple, humane, and at the same time sympathetic attitude toward nature.
An outcry of astonishment broke forth from his heart in the presence of the riddle of the tangled chain of men's relations to each other and their petty feelings as compared with the harmonious grandeur of sovereign nature. The author expressed his feelings in a pathetic artistic form and thus finished his tale:
From Lucerne Tolstoy continued his journey up the Rhine, Schaffhausen, Baden, Stuttgart, Frankfort, and Berlin.
On August 8th [1857] he was in Stettin, and from there arrived in St. Petersburg by boat on August 11th (July 30th, O.S.).
He remained in St. Petersburg a week, visited the circle of "The Contemporary", called on Nekrasov and read to him his tale "Lucerne", which was printed in the September number of "The Contemporary" in 1857. On August 6th he left for Moscow and then went straight on to tula.
Soon after his arrival at Yasnaya Polyana he plunged into business in connection with his estate.
In his diary of that period the following entry is found:
A little later he wrote:
August [1857] he devoted to reading and studied two remarkable subjects, Homer's "Iliad" and the Gospels. Both produced a strong impression upon him.
"I have finished reading the inexpressibly beautiful conclusion of the `Iliad'." Thus he expresses himself, and the beauty of both these subjects makes him regret that there is no connection between them. "How could Homer fail to know that the only good is love?" he exclaims, mentally comparing these two books. And he himself answers: "He knew of no revelation -- there is no better explanation."
In the middle of October [1857], Tolstoy moved to Moscow, together with his eldest brother Nikolay and his sister Marie. His diary shows that he arrived there on the 17th. On October 23 [1857], he left that city for St. Petersburg, intending to stay there a few days.
His tale "Lucerne" (Memoirs of Prince Nekhludov), printed in "The Contemporary", was not appreciated by the critics and therefore made no impression.
The silence of the critics gives striking and obvious proof how narrow-minded, short-sighted, and incapable they were. On the whole, from 1857 up to 1861, according to the opinion of Zelinskiy, who published a collection of critical essays on Tolstoy, there were no criticisms on Tolstoy's works in spite of the fact that during that time he printed such remarkable works as "Youth," "Lucerne," "Albert," "Three Deaths," and "Family Happiness."
Tolstoy was aware of the indifference of the critics, and after his return from St. Petersburg in October 1857, he wrote in his diary:
Tolstoy returned to Moscow on October 30 [1857]. During his stay there, he very often saw Fet, who in his Reminiscences thus described his visits:
The Moscow life of Tolstoy at this period (the end of the 1850s) had no remarkable feature. At this time his physical nature was in full glow and strength and drew him in the direction of ambitious enterprises, amusements, and society life in general.
Fet relates that sometimes in the evening they had concerts in which Countess Marie Tolstaya joined, herself a pianoforte player and a lover of music. Sometimes she would arrive accompanied by Lev and Nikolay, sometimes by the latter only, who would say,
"Lev has put on his evening suit again and gone to a ball." [A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, 1848-1889", Part I, p. 216]
Fet gives the following account of these recreations:
In the beginning of January 1858, Countess Aleksandra Alekseyevna Tolstaya, a friend of Tolstoy in his youth, paid a visit to Moscow. He saw her off to Klin by the Nikolayevskiy railway, and then went to stay at the house of the Princess Volkonskaya, whose name was introduced in the chapter of Tolstoy's forefathers on his mother's side. This Princess Volkonskaya was the cousin of Tolstoy's mother; she used to pay long occasional visits at Yasnaya Polyana, and she was able to tell Tolstoy many things of great interest about his father and mother.
Tolstoy cherished a most pleasant remembrance of this visit; it was during his stay that he wrote the tale "Three Deaths".
The idea of death began seriously to absorb his attention, and, as usual, his desire was to make the solution of the great problem consist in a harmony of the human soul with nature. Any divergence from this solution involves unutterable suffering; its attainment, eternal good; "the sting" of death therefore then disappears.
He returned to Yasnaya Polyana in February [1858]. Then he went again to Moscow, and in March to St. Petersburg for a fortnight. In April he again returned to Yasnaya Polyana, and he remained there the whole summer. During this period, Tolstoy devoted much of his time to music, and in Moscow, in association with Botkin, Perfilev, Mortier, and others, founded a Musical Association. Madame Kareyevskaya lent her hall for the concerts got up by this association, which eventually resolved itself into the Conservatoir of Moscow. In the same year, while in Moscow, Tolstoy became very intimate with the family of S. T. Aksakov, the elder.
Springtime generally exhilarated Tolstoy. The influx of energy which he experienced is well described in a letter to his aunt, A. A. Tolstaya, written in 1858.
This letter is rather long but very interesting. It would, in fact, be interesting for its close alone, at which Tolstoy makes the following request:
During this spring, Fet and his wife, while on their way through Moscow to their country abode, paid a visit to Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana.
In his Reminiscences, Fet thus described this visit, giving at the same time an interesting notice of Tolstoy's aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya:
The scanty but valuable information which Tolstoy gives about the servants who surrounded him during his childhood is exceedingly interesting. This information may serve as a supplement to what is described in his published story "Childhood". We find this description in his Reminiscences as well.
Though Tolstoy did not spend the whole of the summer of 1858 in Yasnaya Polyana, being often away in Moscow, yet peasant life interested him more and more, and he made an effort to get in touch with "common" people.
In his Reminiscences Fet quotes the words of Tolstoy's brother Nikolay, full of fine humor concerning those efforts:
In May of the same year [1858], Tolstoy wrote to Fet from Yasnaya Polyana:
And then another:
After discharging his summer duties at the estate, Tolstoy would take his share in works of public interest.
A meeting of noblemen of the Tula province was held in the autumn of 1858, from September 1 to September 4, for the election of representatives to the Tula Committee for the Improvement of the Status of the Peasantry. At that meeting, in virtue of the statute regulating elections, by which the nobles have a right to express their opinion on the wants of their province and on provincial affairs generally, a hundred and five noblemen handed over to the Tula Marshal of nobility the following resolution, to be presented to the Provincial Committee:
We must return to Fet's Reminiscences.
October 24th [1858] he wrote from Moscow:
In December 1858, during a hunting expedition, Tolstoy met with an accident which nearly cost him his life. Fed describes it this way:
Having got over the shock, Tolstoy hastened to inform his aunt of the incident and, in his letter of December 25th [1858] thus described what had happened.
This episode served as a subject for his tale "The Wish Is Stronger Than Bondage", published in the "Books to Read". There are many artistic details left out by Fet with which the fancy of the artist adorned the real facts of the incident. That is why, in relating it, we preferred to use the reminiscences of Tolstoy's friend and his own letter, as better serving our purpose.
The early months of 1859 Tolstoy spent in Moscow, and in April he went to st. Petersburg, where he spent ten days in the company of his friend A. A. Tolstaya. He cherished the most grateful memories of this visit.
At the end of April [1859], Tolstoy was again at Yasnaya Polyana, and there he remained for the whole summer.
During the summer, Tolstoy paid a visit to Turgenev at his house at Spasskoye.
In verses sent to Fet on July 16, 1859, Turgenev wrote:
These lines show that their relations continued mutually respectful and amiably cold.
However, the visit went off smoothly. In his letter to Fet of october 9th of the same year [1859], Turgenev thus speaks of their meeting:
In August [1859], Tolstoy is again in Moscow, where he spent the autumn.
The year 1860 found him again in a perturbed mood.
Yet during the winter of 1859-60 he enjoyed rest and pleasure in his schools. In his "Confession" he speaks of that time in the following terms:
This constant feeling of dissatisfaction with himself, this searching for the meaning of life, was a permanently active force, leading him forward on the path of his moral progress.
In February [1859], Tolstoy was admitted a member of the Moscow Society of Admirers of Russian Literature.
On February 4, 1859, a meeting of the Society was held, under the presidency of A. S. Khomyakov.
Tolstoy was present at this meeting and was one of the newly elected members; and, in accordance with the rules of the Society, he had to make an inaugural address. In it, as stated in the records of the Society, he mentioned the advantage of the purely artistic element in literature over all temporary tendencies. Unfortunately, this speech has never been preserved. In the minutes of the sitting it is stated that at first it was resolved to have the address printed, together with the works of the Society, but afterward, the works not being published, the speech was returned to the author, who has probably mislaid it along with useless papers.
We can get some idea of this speech from the excellent reply made by A. S. Khomyakov, which we quote in toto:
The prophecy of Khomyakov was fulfilled. Apart from the denunicatory element of all Tolstoy's work of the first period, twenty years later Tolstoy came forward with his own penitence, and then with his denunciation of contemporary evils. And in this cause he has concentrated all his powerful artistic gifts.

## Footnotes

* ↑ From papers by Druzhinin, "Twenty-five Years' Manual", St. Petersburg, 1884.
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, 1848-1889", Part I, p. 214
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, 1848-1889", Part I, p216
* ↑ From Tolstoy's Manuscript Memoirs
* ↑ "The Contemporary" 1858, vol. lxxii, p300
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p226
* ↑ A. Fet, "My Reminiscences, Part I" p305
* ↑ The Moscow Society of Admirers of Russian Literature, "The Collection of Minutes." One of the few remaining copies is in the British Museum.
* ↑ "Russian Archive", 1986, No. 11 p491. Article of V. N. Lyaskovskiy, "A.S. Khomyakov: His Biography and His Teaching."