LOVE LETTERS OF TOLSTOY.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 1910, 19 November 1913, Page 5

LOVE LETTERS OF TOLSTOY.

GANOID VIEWS. LITERARY LIKES AND DISLIKES. Throughout their forty-eight years of married life, Countess Boplua Andreevna Tolstoy kept all her husband's letters, and from time to tiniE copied them and kept them arranged in order of date. The originals are iimv in the Moscow Historical Museum, and the Countess has published from[her copies all tho 656 letters, beginning with ins proposal of marriage in September, 1362, and ending in June, MO. _In a short preface she writes: "Before leaving life to join the man I love in that spiritual region where he has gone, I Irish, to share with people who love and respect his memory his letters to me, so that they may follow our fortyeight years of almost to the end happy union." In his first letter Count Leo Totetoy writes: "Tell me as a.n honest being— Do you wish to be my wife? But only if with all your sonl say 'Yes.' Better 'No' if you have a shadow of doubt. It would bo dreadful for mo to hear 'No,' but I would find strength to support it." He says that if ft month before someone had told him "what I am suffering, and'fortunately suffering, I would have died of laughter." The letters during the first years of mairied.life are devoted to intimate family messages, and., like the entire correspondence, breathe perfect tenderness and candour. He writes; "When I was young I used t& think that the only room needed at home was the schoolroom; and now that I am grown up I feel that no one is necessary except five or six of those dearest to us,"

First Breakdown In Health, He began in 18C7 tp suffer seriously in bealtn, and: for many years this is a leading topic in his letters. He speaks of periods of great depression and of insomnia. He consulted the- famous iUoscow Professor .Zacharin, who told him that his nervous system was utterly deranged, and that he was also threatened with other troubles and gossibly diabetes. "1 answered him," writes Tolstoy, "that.l would not drink his medieni.es. My conditions were that 1 should live in the country and not in the towtts and 1 am willing to take the waters aiiil follow the mode'of life that he lirescribed." He speaks at this time of lying awake, and "feeling such torture as 1 wish to God that no one may feel, I ordered them to harness the horses, but- while they were harnessing them I went to sleep and woke up quite well." He began in 1871 to visit the steppes; of Samara, where he drank koumiss (mare's milk). These visits benefited, him greatly. He writes: "When I arrived I felt that I was not seeing people with the love that I used to do. I saw in myself what I used to despise : in others. This passes off here,; and ■ everything is interesting and new," In a later visit he writes:-'"! have; recovered from the, error of holding , that others must look at things as 1 do. . . . I do not know who is less '. useful or more charlatan —priests or doctors." Separation From His Wife. Writing in 1881 of his absences from his wife,.. Tolstoy says: "1 am guilty before you, but unconsciously. In order to .work with such concentration and create something, one must forget all. . . . . Tho evil of town life is that one must always dispute and deny false judgments or agree with them without dispute. Which is worse? To dispute arid deny nonsense and falsehood is the most useless and occupations." °

. Ihlßß4'a '.letteiv.say.s: "If money is needed it will be found (unfortunately). We may sell;my works; they will probably be published this year. . . . we may sell the forest, Unfortunately, money is and always will be, and there. are always volunteers to spend other people's earnings. As I has"e said, every conscious and willing reduction of expenditure in our family by five roubles a month is worth more than acquiring fifty thousand roubles." Later in tho same year he writes: "1 just remember that I am 36 years old, and I have heard and remarked that every seven years'- period brings a change in a man. The chief change in me was at 7 x.7 - 49, at the time when I turned to that road on which I am standing now'. Tho seven years have been a great break ia my inner life, in my self-explanations, in daring and in breaking." Onco, writing from Samara, he says: "I. read the Bible every day," and adds in French to the Russian text: "Tbujours avec phis grand plaisir." Love for Tourgerieff. At the time of Toufgene-ff's death in ISB3 he writes: "I love him very much, and feel myself constantly living with him. I am again reading his work, which is beautiful and .charming." Tolstoy offered to attend an assembly in Moscow in memory of Tourgeneff and give a reading; but tho Government forbado tho meeting._ Ten years later, when Maupassant died, Tolstoy's letters contain many references to him,. One says: "Tania (his daughter) and I are passing all our time reading. Mail* passant." Other letters ask his s family to send him more of Maupassant's work. But his final judgment is: "Zola, Maupassant, Tehekhoff demoralise people, for they do not distinguish what is good from what is bad." When Tchaikovsky died in 1893 Tolstoy wrote: "I am much grieved about Tchaikovsky; because it seemed to me there was an affinity between us. I was at his house and I invited him to mine. But I believe he was offended, that I did not go to see his 'Evghenye Onegiii.' I grieve for him as a man with whom something was not quite clear, more than as a musician." There is a reference in the letters to Kipling, whose vcrk'he calls ,: poor." "Ho strives after originality, but remains only dishevelled." '

After\ reading Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar in 1893; Tolstoy writes: "Julius Caesar is amazingly bad. \Vere I young and impetuous t would write ail article on it to relieve people of the necessity of pretending that they like it." —"Daily News" Review.