The Journal of Leo Tolstoi (First Volume — 1895–1899) · 71

In explanation of this letter Järnefelt communicated the following to the editors: “I quickly answered Tolstoi’s question. I was convinced that he wanted to leave Yasnaya and to plan an escape. But when we met later in Moscow in 1899, Tolstoi immediately said: ‘Yes, yes, you understood me, but the temptation passed by me in time.’ And then glancing about him with a deep sigh of pain he said, ‘You will excuse me, Järnefelt, that I live as I do, but probably it is as it ought to be.’ And we did not speak any more about this matter.”

And so, in his letter to Järnefelt of December 16, 1898, i.e., still before this meeting with him, Tolstoi wrote: “If I should ever meet you, which I want to very much, I will then tell you what kind of help I expected from you. Now the temptation which forced me to seek help from you has passed.”

In his letter to V. G. Chertkov of July 21st of that year, i.e., three days after the above mentioned note in the Journal, Tolstoi wrote: “Read this to no one. I teach others, but do not know how to live myself. For how many years have I given myself the question, Is it fitting that I continue to live as I am living, or shall I go away?—and I cannot decide. I know that everything is decided by renouncing oneself and when I attain[374] that then everything is clear. But they are rare moments.”

348. See Note 347.

349. A collection in the church Slavonic tongue, Love of Good, or Words and Chapters of Sacred Sobriety, collected from the writings of the Saints and God-inspired fathers. In his library, Tolstoi had a volume of Love of Good with a great many notes in the margin made in his own hand.

350. With I. I. Gorbunov, who came for a short time to Ovsiannikovo to his brother, who lived there at this time, the actor N. I. Gorbunov. At this meeting, Tolstoi said to I. I. Gorbunov that it was the gentlemanly state of his life that had become more agonising to him, that he was “ashamed to look in the eyes of his lackeys” and that he wanted to go away. He said among other things that he was thinking of going away with I. I. Gorbunov to Kaluga (where Gorbunov lived at that time)—and further than that, he still had another plan... perhaps it was the plan about which Tolstoi had written a little while before to Järnefelt. (See Note 347.)

351. Tolstoi’s brother, Count Serge Nicholaievich.

352. Tolstoi’s sister, Countess M. N. Tolstoi.

353. The English authorities of the Island of Cyprus asked a money guarantee of about two hundred and fifty roubles for each man from the Dukhobors emigrating there, so that in case of need they would not have to be supported at the government expense. At that time it became known, that in Russia several influential governmental persons had begun to zealously urge the government to send the Dukhobors to Manchuria for[375] the Russification of those Chinese borders adjacent to Russia. It was necessary to hurry with the emigration of the Dukhobors; the English Quakers pulled them out of their helpless position, who first of all persuaded the English Government to decrease the guarantee from two hundred and fifty roubles to one hundred and fifty for each man, and afterwards in several days, collected among themselves a guarantee of one hundred thousand roubles, which, together with the fifty thousand roubles which were contributed at that time by various people, made up the necessary sum for giving the guarantee for the whole party of Dukhobors. In his letter to the Dukhobors of August 27, 1898, Tolstoi ended thus: “May God help you to accomplish His will with Christian manhood, patience and faithfulness, in establishing this change in your life.”

354. M. N. Rostovtzev, the daughter of Madame M. D. Rostovtzev, a land-lady of Voronezh, and a follower of Tolstoi, on coming from the Chertkovs, was arrested on the border because, at the custom examination some pieces of proof of a forbidden book were found on her. She was soon freed.

355. The interruption in receiving letters from V. G. Chertkov was caused by the secret police looking through them. Therefore Chertkov was forced to carry on a part of this far-distant correspondence through a circuitous address. In the letter to him at the end of August, 1898, Tolstoi, informing Chertkov that one of his letters was kept back a month, wrote: “Yesterday I received your letter of August 5th. It is terribly vexing, this interference with our communications which now[376] have become so specially important. And what is it for?”

356. See Note 355.

357. L. A. Sullerzhitsky went to the Caucasus to help the Dukhobors arrange for their emigration abroad.

The first group of Dukhobors, to the number of 1,126 persons, who had suffered the most from exile, hunger and illness, left on the 6th of August, 1898, for the Island of Cyprus while other lands be found and sufficient money collected for the transportation of those remaining to a more suitable place.

At the request of Tolstoi, L. A. Sullerzhitsky later accompanied a group of Dukhobors to Canada. He wrote a book about this journey, In America With the Dukhobors, issued by Posrednik, Moscow, 1905.

358. The sister of Tolstoi, Countess Maria Nicholaievna. A month later, September 30, 1898, Tolstoi wrote to V. G. Chertkov: “Yesterday my sister, M. N., left, with whom I spent a very friendly month, never having been so loving.”

359. V. A. Kuzminsky, a niece of Countess S. A. Tolstoi.

360. Countess Vera S. Tolstoi, a niece of Tolstoi, daughter of Count S. N. Tolstoi.

361. Tolstoi’s seventieth birthday, celebrated August 28, 1898.

362. According to the contract with the publisher of Niva, A. F. Marx, Tolstoi at the conclusion of the contract, received the whole of his royalty for only the first 200 pages of Resurrection.

363. In regard to the false rumours which were reaching[377] Tolstoi at this time, about the affairs of the emigrating Dukhobors.

364. One of the Dukhobors exiled to Siberia, V. N. Pozdniakov, was sent by his brethren to the leader of the Dukhobors, P. V. Verigin, who was then in exile in the village of Obdorsk in the province of Tobolsk. Receiving a letter of instructions from Verigin for the group in general, he brought this letter to his brethren in the Caucasus and on his way reached Yasnaya Polyana. He showed Tolstoi marks on his body from ill-treatment he had suffered three years before.

365. Herbert Archer, an English co-worker with V. G. Chertkov, who went at his request to Tolstoi to transmit information to him with regard to the Dukhobors and to dissipate the false rumours about them which had reached Tolstoi from outsiders. About this time, in his letter to Countess S. A. Tolstoi, Tolstoi wrote about Archer: “He looks insignificant, but he is a very good man and a remarkably clever one.” (Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoi to his Wife, March, 1913, page 555.)

366. This thought Tolstoi changed in the following form for The Reading Circle: “Now I consider as myself my body with its senses, but then something entirely different is being formed in me. And then the whole world will become different, since the whole world is not something different, only because I consider myself such a being separated from the world and not another. But there may be an innumerable quantity of beings separated from the world.” The Reading Circle, issued by Posrednik, Volume I, Moscow, 1911, for April 16.

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367. Tolstoi’s son, S. L. Tolstoi, and L. A. Sullerzhitsky went to the Caucasus to accompany the remaining Dukhobors to Canada. Tolstoi in order to protect them from the oppression of the authorities wrote a letter to the commander-in-chief of the Caucasus, Prince G. S. Golitsin.

368. Tolstoi sometimes could not remember which thought from his pocket note-book he had written out into the Journal and which one he had not. This explains the fact that several thoughts are entered without any changes at all in the Journal, in places not far from one another.

369. In the eighties and nineties the Tolstois went yearly from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow to spend the winter.

370. Princess E. V. Obolensky, niece of Tolstoi, daughter of his sister, Countess Maria Nicholaievna.

371. In the finished form, the novel had 129 chapters.