November 20, 2008

The Short, Unhappy Death of Leo Tolstoy (1910)

The world watched as Leo Tolstoy died today, and all because he had had it up to here with his wife.

It didn't start out that way. For 15 years, his marriage to Sofia was a loving and fruitful partnership. She copied his manuscripts — including his masterpiece, "War and Peace" seven times — ran his household and bore his 12 children, five of whom died in childbirth.

Then, Tolstoy underwent an intense spiritual conversion and the aristocratic author became something of a limousine liberal. He renounced property, advocated non-violence, and thought one should live simply, like the peasants. He gave away his money and dressed in peasant clothes and boots. As Tolstoy grew in moral authority, he began to attract disciples, one of whom, Vladimir Chertkov, began to help run Tolstoy's affairs. This spiritual growth didn't sit well with the Russian Orthodox Church, and he was excommunicated in 1901.

This did not sit well with Sofia, either, who preferred life as the wealthy Countess Tolstoy. They grew estranged, and bitter arguments filled their country house, Yasnaya Polyana. With Chertkov's help, he began keeping secrets from her, and she snooped into his diaries and papers, and listened to his conversations.



The last straw came in 1910, when Tolstoy decided to give up royalties to his writings. Sofia complained: "The Government which you and he have denied and abused in every way in all your pamphlets, will, under the law, take the last piece of bread from the mouths of your heirs and give it to Sytin and to different rich printers and swindlers, while Tolstoy's grandchildren, following his vicious and vainglorious desire, will be dying of hunger."

He demanded that his wife leave his papers along, and when she refused, Tolstoy had enough. In the pre-dawn hours of October 10, the 82-year-old Tolstoy dressed in his rough clothes and fled his country home, carrying $17 and accompanied only by his doctor. To his wife of 48 years, he left a note:

My departure will distress you. I regret it; but please understand and believe that I cannot act differently. My position in the house has become unbearable. Apart from everything else, I can no longer live in these conditions of luxury in which I have been living, and I am doing what old men of my age commonly do: leaving the worldly life to spend the last days of my life in peace and solitude.

Please understand this and do not follow me if you learn where I am. Your coming would only hurt your position and my own and would not alter my decision.

He spent little more than a day at a convent where his sister was a nun. There, his daughter, Alexandra, whom he had told of his plans, caught up with him. He had intended to stay a week before moving south, but he grew worried that his wife would catch up with them. The next day, they fled in a carriage and, at a train station, bought third-class tickets. Tolstoy hoped he could find a secluded place where he could spend the rest of his life in peace.

His sudden disappearance, however, had the opposite reaction. Sofia threw an old-fashioned Russian shit-fit. She raged against her husband and tried several times to drown herself in the pond. Her family and servants kept a close eye on her that long day, and took away her pins and scissors. She wept and demanded that her family tell her where he was.

Meanwhile, riding in a drafty, unheated railcar with his beloved peasants, Tolstoy's robust health failed. Worse, he was recognized. As word spread, the literary celebrity huddled in his blanket and came down with fever and chills. His doctor decided he wouldn't make it to the next large town, and they disembarked at Astapovo, a small junction station only 80 miles from his home. Tolstoy was put to bed in the stationmaster's house.

Tolstoy had hoped to keep his flight secret, little knowing that the telegraph had spread the story that Russia's greatest novelist had abandoned his family. Not knowing that he had taken ill, The New York Times called Tolstoy's self-seclusion "pathetic but not admirable" and raked him over the coals:

"Once Tolstoy was a notable artist in the field of letters, a writer with a clear vision, remarkable powers of observation, a coherent style. Latterly he had been obviously deranged. He looked about him and saw only evil. All material progress, every individual triumph, all successful achievements in science, mechanics, politics, art, were evil. .... Now, if the reports are true, he has gone off to die in the wilderness like a wild animal. It is the tragic ending of a long, varied and strange career.

Meanwhile, newspaper correspondents, government agents and priests gathered at Astapovo. The reporters harassed the family members and passed along daily bulletins about the great man's temperature and pulse like a stock ticker. An article Tolstoy wrote critical of capital punishment was released and published. His wife arrived in a special train with more relatives, but Tolstoy was firm: he would not see her.

Tolstoy's cold became bronchitis and he faded in and out of consciousness. Only near the end, when he sunk into a coma after uttering, "Truth — I have much love," was Sofia allowed into the death room. As his daughter observed:

I bent over father, he was hardly breathing. For the last time, I kissed his face, his hands. Mother was led in. He was already unconscious. I left his bedside and sat down on the divan. Nearly all those present were subduing their sobs; mother talked, lamented. Someone asked her to keep silent. One last sigh -- there was dead stillness in the room. Suddenly Shchurovskiy said something in a loud, sharp voice, mother replied, and all began to talk in loud voices.

I understood that he could hear us no longer.

Born: Thomas Chatterton, poet, Bristol, Gloucestershire, 1752; Selma Lagerlof, author, Marbacka, Sweden, 1858; Chester Gould, cartoonist, Pawnee, Okla., 1900; Alistair Cooke (ps. Alfred Cooke), journalist, commentator, Manchester, England, 1908; Thomas McGarth, poet, author, Sheldon, N.D., 1916; Nadine Gordimer, novelist, short-story writer, Springs, South Africa, 1923; John Gardner, novelist, Seaton Delaval, Northumberland, 1926; Don DeLillo, novelist, New York City, 1936.

Died: Leo Tolstoy, novelist, Astapovo, Russia, 1910; V.F. Calverton (ps. George Goetz), editor, author, 1940.

Quote for the Day: "There is almost no wrong way to write fiction; there are only ways that, for a given writer, are more efficient or less." — John Gardner, who was born today in 1926. (Quotation from "On Becoming a Novelist," a worthwhile book for writers to investigate.)

Also from the "Writers 365" project:

• Last act for Chekov (1904)
  
• Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein Meet Cute (1907)
  
• The Love Song of Edith Wharton (1908)
  
• Katharine Mansfield elopes (1909)
  
• Thomas Mann inspired (1911)

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Poor Sofia. I hope she found some happiness after that nut.

One would hope, but with her family helping Tolstoy escape and keeping her from him, the groundwork was laid for a lot of guilt trips.

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