The Complete Plays of Leo Tolstoy (Annotated). Leo Tolstoy

right track, but his article was printed, and he entered on the duties connected with the census. He was assigned to a quarter of the city in which was situated a stronghold of the direst poverty, popularly known under the name of the "Rzhanoff house," or the "fortress." On the appointed day, the students who were to assist him made their appearance at that house early in the morning, but, as he did not rise until ten o'clock, and had to drink his coffee and smoke for his digestion, he, the benefactor, did not reach the fortress until twelve o'clock. His description of the sights which he witnessed there is graphic and terrible, as was to be expected; but at the end, he was ashamed to confess that he felt rather disappointed to discover that these people were not in the least peculiar, but exactly like his ordinary associates. He had gone there with the idea that he should find people in need of immediate assistance, and he saw petty artisans of various sorts, all cheerful and busily working. Where help was required, it had already been given by the poor people themselves. What these people needed, like people in the higher ranks, was to have their false views of life corrected. A comparison between the miserable women whom he found in this house and ladies of the higher classes has been suppressed by the censor. Among the children, he was particularly struck with a lad of twelve, named Serozha. He took Serozha to his own house, and installed him in the kitchen, being unwilling to introduce to his own children a boy fresh from the haunts of vice. Having thus, as he expresses it, shifted the feeding of the boy upon the cook, and presented him with some old clothes, he felt himself to be extremely good and benevolent. The child remained there one week, in the course of which Tolstoi addressed a few words to him on two occasions, and spoke to a shoemaker about taking the lad as an apprentice, as the latter had refused an offer to go to the country. At the end of the week, the boy ran away, and hired out for thirty kopeks a day, as one of a band of savages in costume, who led an elephant in a procession, and he appeared utterly ungrateful for Tolstoi's kindness. Thereupon the latter blames himself for having brought the boy into demoralizing contact with his own children, thereby imbuing him with the notion that enjoyment without labor was permissible to him also, since he saw the little Tolstois soiling and spoiling everything about them, breaking the dishes, eating dainties, and flinging to their dogs food which would have seemed a delicacy to this beggar lad. His criticism of his own course is very frank. His experience of giving assistance with money was a bitter disappointment; genteel beggars were voracious in their demands, and the really poor lied and deceived him, until his faith in his scheme was destroyed. Not one of the people who had offered their help or had promised money (he had reckoned their subscriptions at 3000 rubles) ever gave him a single kopek; but the students who were under his charge contributed what they received for their work on the census, - about twelve rubles. To this was added twenty-five rubles, sent to him by the city authorities, in compensation for his own work. "And I positively did not know," he adds, "to whom to give them." Before he went to the country for the summer, he made a special trip to the Rzhanoff fortress, for the purpose of "getting rid of those thirty-seven rubles." He found one poor old man to whom he gave five rubles. He gave the rest to a trustworthy man, for distribution in the neighborhood, as he could find no proper subjects for charity himself, and as those who begged of him were too well known to him, and in a roistering carnival state. Thus ended his scheme of benevolence, and he went off to the country, irritated with others because he had done a stupid and unprofitable deed. But though his experimental philanthropy was at an end, the thoughts evoked by it and the sentiments with which it had inspired him did not cease, and the inward conflict proceeded with redoubled vigor.

      In the country, he says, he had done very little for the poor, but the demands upon him were so moderate that this little created an atmosphere of love and union with the people, which enabled him to believe what he had always heard, namely, that wealth is the gift of God, and that one can help the poor while continuing a life of luxury. A short personal investigation of city poverty convinced him that these wretched working classes could not be helped, because the very fact of their toil attached them to life more closely than he was himself attached, and because their chief misfortune lay in their being exactly the same as himself. For a long time, a false shame, and a liking for the self-satisfaction of feeling himself to be a benefactor, prevented his abandoning his attempts to render material aid. His mistake, which it took him three years longer to discover, lay in thinking that in order to live a good life it was necessary to amend the lives of others, not his own. The result of his reflections has been suppressed by the censor. It is, that the first cause of peculiar poverty of the city, which he was unable to alleviate, lies in the fact that he deprives the country people of their necessaries, and carries them off to town with him. The second cause is, that he employs the goods which he has collected in the village in senseless luxury, thereby demoralizing those country people who follow him thither, in the hope of in some way recovering a portion of their property. One day, as he was talking to his sympathizing sister, and to a peasant named Siutaeff, the latter gave him the first real gleam of light on the subject of true charity, and as to the reason why Tolstoi had been unsuccessful with his gifts of money. "True charity," said Siutaeff, "consists in teaching the poor. Take your proportion of the poor, work beside them in the fields, and they will learn; eat at the same table with them, and let them hear your words." At this point the censor intervenes, and cuts out over a thousand words containing reflections on this theme. Every effort in the life of the wealthy, says Tolstoi, from their food, clothing, and dwellings, down to their cleanliness and their culture, is directed towards keeping the poor at a distance, and nine tenths of their money is spent in attaining this object alone. His socialistic utterances upon this subject are delightfully unconventional, but those on cleanliness, which is regarded as a moral virtue, though in reality only valued as a mark of class distinction, are of the most radical sort. "White hands love other people's work," is the proverb which he takes for his motto. The popular idea of the grades among the upper classes is thus defined: Culture signifies fashionable clothing, political conversation, and clean hands. In the circle next above, a knowledge of French, the ability to play the piano and to write a letter in Russian free from orthographical errors, and a "still greater degree of outward cleanliness" are the requisites. The next step in the social scale brings a knowledge of English, a diploma from one of the higher institutes of learning, and still greater personal cleanliness. "I am convinced," he says, "that between the poor and the rich there rises this wall of cleanliness and culture, and that in order to assist the poor we must break down this wall, first of all, adopt the plan of Siutaeff, and receive the poor among ourselves."

      Another of Count Tolstoi's experiences puzzled him not a little. If he gave a beggar a few kopeks, when requested, without stopping to speak to him, the beggar looked grateful, and the Count was conscious of an agreeable sense of benevolence himself. But if he conversed with the man he felt obliged to give more, and the more he gave the more displeased the beggar appeared. The gift of ten rubles caused the beggar to look as though he had been insulted, and to walk off without saying so much as "Thank you," leaving Tolstoi feeling conscience-stricken and guilty. He concludes that this is the result of deliberately abandoning the rôle of a good-natured passer-by, and assuming that of a kind-hearted man. The solution of this puzzle was furnished him by a little scene at his country place, which the censor has seen fit to omit. He wanted twenty kopeks to give to a tramp, and sent his son to the house to borrow it of some one. It was lent by the cook. Shortly afterwards Tolstoi wanted another twenty kopeks for a tramp, and went to the kitchen to see if the cook cold change a ruble for him. The cook called to his wife to take the money, and she, supposing that it was a gift, kissed Tolstoi's hand, whereupon the latter fled from the kitchen, groaning with shame, and did not undeceive her. The conclusion which he comes to is, that if any man asks three kopeks, or twenty, or even several rubles, one must give them, if one has them, this being merely a "matter of politeness, and not charity," with which view the censor, evidently, does not agree.

      When Tolstoi first went to Moscow to live, he took up the habit of going to the Sparrow Hills to saw wood with a couple of peasants, for the sake of the exercise. One night he walked into town with them, and gave twenty kopeks to an old man who begged of them, thinking what a good impression such charity would make on Semyon, one of the peasants. Semyon pulled out his purse, gave the man a three-kopek piece, and asked for two kopeks in change. The man had but one, and after a momentary hesitation Semyon took off his cap, crossed himself, and went on, leaving the man the money. This set Tolstoi to thinking. Semyon had a wife and two children, and no reserve fund; Tolstoy had about 600,000 rubles saved up. In order to proportion