PATHETIC DOCUMENT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5355, 23 November 1928, Page 4

PATHETIC DOCUMENT.

DIARY OF TOLSTOY’S WIFE.

STORY OF THE ESTRANGEMENT.

The; publicatio.il of the diiary of Tolstoy’s wife for the years 1860-1891 casts a new light on the family dissensions which darkened the last years of the great author’s life and led to his spec.tacular. flight fr.om his ancestral estate on the; very eve of death. In her vivid narrative and analysis of the tragedy ojf her own life the author reflects, as in a mirror, the corresponding tragedy of her husband.

Counters Tolstoy reveals herself in the diary as an intensely emotional, highly-strung woman, predestined, perhaps, tQ love and unhappiness. A dominant note in her writing is jealously in regard to he*r husband, not ordinary physical jealousy, but rather an all consuming possessive passion that led her to Icfok with suspicion and hostility on his past, on his friends, and, finally, on his changed world outlook, which she could not share. A PRE-MARRIAGE DIARY. At the time of their marriage Tolstoy gave his young bride the diiary of his former life, which, of course, had been far from puritanical. This produced on her a very string impression, from which she perhaps never fully recovered. On 8, 1862, only two weeks after the marriage, the following entry appears in her diary:— “All his past is so terrible to me; that it seems I shall never reconcile myself with it.’’

And on November 23 of the same year her possessive jealousy finds another form of expression :—

‘“I am tired of him with his people. I feel that it is either, I, as the representative of the family, or the people, jvith burning Iqve for (him, Leo. This is egotism. Let it be. I live only for him, and I desire the same thing for myself.”

In succeeding years outbursts of protests against what she regards as her husband’s indifference (“Leo simply destroys me with his complete indifference and absence of any participation in what affects me” ) alternate with strong half-fearful testations of love, such as one finds in the diary for July 31, 1868 “Soon I shall have been married six years. And I only love and more. Often hq says that this is nc,t love —that we have so lived together that one cannot be without the other. And nevertheless, I love him restlessly and passionately, and jealously and romantically, and his tranquility somqtimes grieves me.” TH WIDENING RIFT. Although Countess Tolstoy loved her children devotedly, the physical and mental cares incideintaj to the bearing and bringing up of such * large family (altogether she had thirteen children, whom sevqral diqd at early ages) unmistakably heightened her susceptibility to nervous strain, and tended to widen the rift between herself and her husband. She insisted more and more; that TOlstoy should take an active interest in every detail of family life, and the diary contains many re.cords of trivial quarrels which developed <>n this basis.

The first signs of Tolstoy’s religious and philosophical tra<nsformation are noted) quite smypathetically in the diary, an excerpt of December 26, 1877, reading as follows :— “The character; of Leo Nikolaevitch (Tolstoy) changes more and more. Althougjh he was always modest and unassertive i,n all his habits now he bcomes still morq modest •andi patient. And this eternal struggle, which began from youth, fqr the objective of moral self-completion is being crowned' with full success.”

But in the end Tolstoy’s changed viqws proved the decisive factor in destroying the harmony of the household. His wife did l not share his new sense of the essential wrongness of private property, his feeling of mWal responsibility sometimes rising almost to a sentiment of perscpnl guilt before Russia’s tens cf m'iLTions of oppressed and poverty-stri icken peasants. The compromise by jvhich Tolstoy turned over the mar lagemept of the Yasnay Polyana estate to hislbife may have held the fanrily together, but it placed a fatal sixain on the already difficult marital relations. The role of an unappr.ee iated Martha is never, vqry agreeable ’ for the person who assumes it, and it proved peculiarly intolerable for the nervous, highlystrung Countess,, w;ho was already labouring unde r a sense of neglect and injustice. She states her side of the case vigorously in her diary for October 25., 1886.

“All the people in the house, especially Leo and, after him, like a flock of sheep, all thq chi Idren, impose on mq the rple of a wlj dp. Having east on ine all the weight of responsibility for the children, the estate, all money matters, education, the whole mahagemqnt of affairs, and everything material, profiting by all this more than I myself,, they c.ome to me with <old, matter-of-fact t faces fo ask a horse for a peasant, money, flour, etc. I am not occupied, r with agriculture — for this I have mi ither the time nor tile knowledge—l it cannot give order,s, not knowing whether horsqs are necessary for farm’jqng at the present moment and the matter-of-fact requests, combined' .with ignorance of the slt'a.te of affairs , confuse and irritatq me.”

IDEALS AND IDEAISTS. Tolstoy’s disciples were another thorn in the side c>f his wife. Like every gr,e.at teacher, his personality and views inevitably attractejd, along with sincere idealists, a certain number of eccentric, per "sons and some ■mere; hunters a,ftci‘ sensation and curiosity. The Coun t ess makes little distinction amqng tinei p; she is almost morbidly jealous c;f all the; new figures in her husbanii’s life ; but' her. observations on tbq Tolstoyans are sometimes character'ise <1 hy hire ness that often miarl [s sketches of persons whom one d isl ikes. On Ju.ly 19, 1887, she writes .: —

“Hqw unsympathe tic all the

types which adhere to the teachings of Leo Nikolaevitch! There is not one normal man. Most of the women are also hysterical. Marya Alexandrovna Schmidt has just left. Formerly she wanted to be a nun ; nqw she is an enthusiastic devotee of the ideas of Leo Nikolaevitch. When she meets or parts with him she weeps hysterically.”

And on Decepber 17, 1890, she writes:—

“Dark figures have come; the stupid Popov, an eastern, lazy, weak man. and the stupid, at merchant Khoklov. And these are the dcciplep of a gr.eat man I Pitiful qffspring of human society, talkers without professions, la.zy people without education.”

“THEN LEO IS SAVED.” One cannot read through the diary o Counters Tolstoy, sometimes hysterical and bitter, but always intelligent and often sympathetic, without feeling that the sorrows of Tolstoy’s later years cannot be reduced to such a simple formula as the conflict between an idealistic philosopher and a selfish and worldly woman. The situation possessed subtler and more irreconcilable elements of tragedy, worthy of eihbodiment in a great novql or drama ; there was a crash of human personality and world outlook in which neither individual may be pronounced wholly guilty or wholly guiltless. Tolstoy’s flight was his most eloquent expression of his side of the case ; his wife’s is pqrhaps to be found in this poignant excerpt frprn her diary of December 11, 1890 "

“If the salvation of a human bejng, the salvation of his spiritual life, lies in killing the life of the one who is nearest him, then Leo is saved.”