Tolstoi's Death-bed.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 361, 9 April 1903, Page 7

Tolstoi's Death-bed.

At the moment when I am writing these lines, the fate of Tolstoi is still trembling in the balance; bj the time they axe before my readers, he may have passed away. In any case we are at the closing Bcenes, in all probability, of one of the greatjost and moet potent fives of our time.

I oace rather surprised an audience in which Russians were present, by the declaration that one of the reasons why I had always found Bussian literature so intensely interesting was that it reminded ma in its leading features bo much cf Irish ideals and Irish life. In both countries being mainly inhabited by peasants, in their intense absorption in religion—in the turning to potations of drink from a gloomy climate and the many squalid cares of life—in these things the two races, with all their vast differences, have a ceitain similarity. Tuey belong to two churches which have been separated for centuries, and which differ in many most important points of discipline j and yet who that understands the part that the Catholic Church plays

> in the life of Irishmen, can fail to underI fltand the part which the Orthodox Cbnrch plays in the life of tho BussianP Both churches have the same gorgeous ! ritual and ceromoaial; in both the clergy- | man hsa the same association with the congregation—though among Catholics there is the profoundest reverence for the priest, while among the Orthodox he seems to be regarded with something like good-natured contempt; both have the great sacraments of confession and of communion; in both the presence in the bedchamber and about the house of sacred images isalmoßt univeisal; in both there is (he ever-present sense of trsnscience of life -of the imminence, the terror, and the infinitude of the eternal life beyond the grave. Finally, in both, ail the factors, religious and economical, produce a spirit over which' there broods ever the sombre spirit of life's essential Badness, or tbe almost Oriental resignation to the dark decrees of Fate.

And all these things one has to remember in considering the life of Tolstoi. He is the most Russian of Bussians. Tnrgenieff, with all hia splendid genius, and his even greater artistic skill than Tolstoi, was a cosmopolitan. He lived a good half of his life in Paris, and in that atmosphere the Russian had been subdued to a large extent from the standpoint of the foreign observer. Melancholy wrapped him around as in a Nessusgarment before he died j but it was product d r*ther by physical disease and the liferf Paris and perhaps a not wholly harpy love affair—and was not of the saite character as the Slavonic sadness that cornea from creed and climate and environment. But Tolstoi, though he had travelled much, really spent most of his life in Bussia. He remained for the latter period of hie life a pure Buesian landlord, dwelling amtng his own people; and looked at Russian affairs from near and not through tVe haze of distance and from the very different atmosphere of a foreign capital. And, therefore, in some respects tbe life of Tolstoi is a morbid life—the character of Tolstoi is a morbid character. There are traces of such a character in most reflective minds which are brought up in the spirit of intense religious feeling. And perhaps this tendency, as time goes os, is rather augmented than diminished by the fact that in early youth the stoma and fever of young blood rises in successful revolt against the great doctrineß of purity, Belf-rennnciation, and the view of this life as a mere tiny chamber to the vast courts of Eternity. In Tolstoi these tendences wer<? increased also by the fact that hn was always—from childhood even to old age—intensely self-conscious and intensely reflective. You see these things in his character from the very first of his recorded memories. A certain depreciatory attitude of mind towards personal appearance is one of the first symptoms and one of the earliest sufferings of the self-conscious, the reflective, and the shy. And so it was with Tolstoi. He thought himself atrociously ugly—he certainly was not handsome—and his self-depre-ciation was aggravated by the fact that he had a brother of an extremely prepossessing appearance: Moments of despair (he says) often visited me. I fancied that there was no happiness on earth for a person with such a wide nose, such thick lips, and such small grey eyes as I had; and I b sought Ged to work a miracle, to turn me into a beauty, and all I had in the. present, or might have in the future, I would give in exchange for a handsome face. And then he goes on to give the following very unflattering self-portrait: I could not comfort myself with the consolation usual in such cases; 1 could not say that my face waß expressive, intellectual, or noble. There was nothing expressive about it; the features were of the coarsest, most ordinary «nd homeliest. My small prey eyes were stupid rather than intelligent, particularly when I looked in the mirror. There was still less manliness in my visage, although I was not so very diminutive in stature, and was very strong for my age. All my features were soft, flabby, and unformed. There was not even anything noble about my person; on the contrary, my face was exactly like that of a common peasant (muzhik); and I had just such big hands and feet. This seemed to me at that time very disgraceful. Here was the fi*?t f-rtoT in aurror/Jng Tolstoi's tendency to Alo her came when he began to lead the life which was then not merely common, but universal, among the aristocratic classes to which he belonged. Here, again, I seem to be reading about the lives which used to be led when I was a boy by the Irish landlords— that doomed class which, inheriting wealth, power, and everything that seemed to promise eternity of superior happiness, has ended in wretchodness, political impotence—sometimes in starvation—often in the workhouse. For theßussian nobleman of Tolstoi's youth and the Irish landlord of my boyhood were practically of the same family. There was just this important difference, that the Russian was brought up in a .greater degree of refinement than some at least of the same class in the povertystrickenwestern isle! There were four things, Tolstoi wrote, which were thought worthy of attention by a young Bussian aristocrat:

First, a perfect pronunciation of French; second, long, clean, polished finger nails; third, a knowledge of how to bow, dance, converse; and fourth, a very important one, indifference to everything, and the constant expression of a certain elegant scornful ennui.

At the University he got a chance of being cured of some of these follies. The students around him were mostly poor, and didn't care about personal appearance and for social distinctions, but they had read and worked and thought: If he attempted to display his knowledge of music, or language, or literature, he found that they knew everything better than he did, and were not in the least proud of it. And yet, for some reason, he felt superior to them, and of different clay. At times he would ask himself,' What is that height from which I look down upon them ? My acquaintance with Prince Ivan Ivanovitch ? My pronunciation of French ? My drczhky ? My cambric skirts ? My cambric nails ?' —M. A. P.