The Caucasus
The unsuccessful attempt to keep house, the impossibility of
establishing good relations with the peasants, and the passionate, perilous life, full of all kinds of excesses, which was mentioned in the previous chapter, induced Tolstoy to search for a means of changing his mode of life.
According to his own testimony, his life was so insipid and
dissipated that he was ready for any change in it. For instance, his brother-in-law, Valerian Petrovich Tolstoy, being engaged, was going back to Siberia to arrange some business matters there before his marriage, and, as he was leaving the house, Tolstoy jumped into his tarantas [Russian traveling cart], without a hat, and in his blouse only; and it seems as if the only reason why he did not join in the journey to Siberia was simply that he found there was no hat on his head.
At last a serious incident took place that induced a change of
life. In April, 1951, Nikolay, Tolstoy's eldest brother arrived
from the Caucasus; he was an officer in the Caucasian army and on
leave of absence, and had shortly to return. Tolstoy seized this
opportunity, and in spring, 1951, started with him for the
Caucasus.
They left Yasnaya Polyana on April 20, and spent two weeks in
Moscow, and from there he wrote to his aunt Tatyana at Yasnaya:
"I have been to the promenade at Sokolniki during detestable
weather, and therefore have not met any of the society ladies I
wish to see. As you assert that I am a man of resources, I went
among the plebians in the gypsy tents. You can easily imagine the
inner struggle which there took place for and against. However, I
came out victorious, i.e., having given nothing but my blessing to
the merry descendants of the illustrious Pharaohs. Nikolay has
made the discovery that I should be a very agreeable traveling
companion, were it not for my cleanliness. He gets irritated over
my changing my underclothing, as he says, a dozen times a day. For
my part I find him a very pleasant companion, were it not for his
uncleanliness. I don't know which of us is right."
From Moscow they passed through Kazan, where they visited V. T. Yushkov, their guardian-aunt's husband, with whom they had lived in Kazan, and also saw Madame Zagoskin, a friend of this aunt's, the directress of the Kazan Institute, an eccentric and clever woman.
In Zagoskin's house Tolstoy met Z. M., an ex-pupil of the
Institute, and conceived for her a sentimental kind of love, which, as usual, owing to his bashfulness, he could not make up his mind to express, and which he took away with him to the Caucasus.
In Madame Zagoskin's house, as that lady always secured the
young men who were the most comme il faut, he met and almost made
friends with a young lawyer, the procurator Ogolin, and took a
journey with the latter into the country to pay a visit to V. [J.]
Yushkov. Ogolin was a new type of the official of that late
period.
Tolstoy used to relate how Yushkov was--being accustomed to see
a procurator as a grave, respectable, and hoary personage in a
uniform, with a cross on his breast and a star--when he beheld
Ogolin, and got acquainted with him, under circumstances of ease
and freedom.
"When Ogolin and I had arrived and approached the house, opposite which was a group of young birch trees, I suggested to Ogolin that, while the servant was announcing our arrival, we should compete as to which of us would climb these birches best and highest. When Yushkov came out and saw the procurator climbing up a tree, he could not recover himself for a long time."
Tolstoy, as he told me himself, was in his most stupid and
worldly mood during this trip. He related to me how his brother
made him feel his stupidity in Kazan. They were walking about the
town when a gentleman drove past them in a dolgusha [a kind of
jaunting-car on four wheels], leaning with ungloved hands on a
stick resting on the step of the carriage.
"How evident it is that this man is some sort of `scallywag,'" said Lev Tolstoy, addressing his brother.
"Why?" asked Nikolay.
"Why, because he has not no gloves."
"Why should he be good-for-nothing because he has no gloves?" asked Nikolay, with his hardly noticeable, kind, clever, and mocking smile."