Further, we know that certain of the characters which we meet with in this work are copies from life. We will mention them here as they will throw some further light on the group of persons among whom Tolstoy's childhood was spent.
Thus, the German, Karl Ivanovich Mauer, is certainly Feodor Ivanovich Kessel, the German tutor, who really lived in Tolstoy's home, and whom we have mentioned before. Tolstoy speaks of him in his Earliest Memories. He must undoubtedly have influenced the spiritual life of the child, and we may presume that the influence had been for good, since the author of Childhood speaks with great love of him, where he sketches his "honest, straightforward, and loving nature."
It is not without reason that Tolstoy begins the story of his childhood with a description of this character. Feodor Ivanovich died in Yasnaya Polyana, and was buried in the parish churchyard.
Another real character in Childhood is the half-crazy Grisha. Though he is not a real person, many traits of his character are true to life; he had evidently left a deep trace in the child's soul. To him Tolstoy dedicates the following pathetic words describing the evening prayer of the pilgrim, which he overheard:
"His words were incorrect, but touching. He prayed for all his benefactors (thus he called all who received him), among them for my mother, and for us; he prayed for himself and asked the Lord to forgive him his heavy sins, and repeated, `O Lord, forgive mine enemies.' He arose with groans, still repeating the same words, prostrated himself upon the ground, and again arose, in spite of the weight of the chains that emitted a grating, penetrating sound as they struck the ground. …
"Grisha was for a long time in this attitude of religious
ecstasy, and he improvised prayers. Now he repeated several times in succession, `The Lord have mercy upon me,' but every time with new strength and expression; now, again, he said, `Forgive me, O Lord, instruct me what to do, instruct me what to do, O Lord!' with an expression as if he expected an immediate answer to his prayer; now, again, were heard only pitiful sobs. He rose on his knees, crossed his arms on his breast, and grew silent.
"`Thy will be done!' he suddenly exclaimed with an inimitable expression, knocked his brow against the floor, and began to sob like an infant.
"Much water has flowed since then, many memories of the past have lost all meaning for me and have become dim recollections, and pilgrim Grisha has long ago ended his last pilgrimage; but the impression which he produced on me, and the feeling which he evoked, will never die in my memory.
"O great Christian Grisha! Your faith was so strong that you felt the nearness of God; your love was so great that words flowed of their own will from your lips, and you did not verify them by reason. And what high praise you gave to the majesty of God, when, not finding any words, you prostrated yourself on the ground."
Are we not entitled to regard this man as the first who taught Tolstoy that faith of the people, which, after his fruitless wanderings through the labyrinths of theology, philosophy, and positive science, satisfied his soul. A faith which he in his turn has lighted with his own light of reason, purified and intensified in the struggle and sufferings which unavoidably accompany the search for truth. He gives a few indications of this in his Reminiscences.
Of other secondary characters in the novel we will mention Mimi and her daughter Katenka, "something like the first love." Under the name Mimi is presented the governess of a neighboring house, and Katenka is Dunechka Temeshova, an adopted member of the tolstoy family. Tolstoy in his Reminiscences, speaks of her thus:
"Besides my brothers and my sister, a girl of my age, Dunechka Temeshov, grew up with us, and I must tell who she was and how she came to be in our house. The visitors whom I remember in childhood were my aunt's husband Yushkov, of an appearance strange to children, with black mustaches and whiskers and wearing spectacles (I shall yet have much to say about him); and my godfather, S. Yazikov, a remarkably ugly man, saturated with the smell of tobacco, his big face possessing a superfluity of skin which he kept twisting incessantly into the strangest grimaces, and our neighbors Ogarev and Islenev. Besides these we were also visited by a distant relative through the Gorchakovs, a wealthy bachelor Temeshov, who addressed my father as brother, and had a peculiarly enthusiastic love for him. He lived forty versts from Yasnaya Polyana, in the village Pirogovo, and once brought with him from there some sucking pigs, with tails twisted into rings, which were placed on a tray on the table in the servants' hall. Temeshov, Pirogovo, and sucking pigs are blended into one in my imagination.
"Besides this, Temeshov retained a place in the memory of us children by his playing on the piano in the hall some dancing tune--it was all he could play--and making us dance to this music, and when we used to ask him what dance we were to dance, he would say that all dances could be danced to that music. And we liked to take advantage of this.
"It was a winter evening. Tea was over, we were soon going to be taken to bed, and my eyes were already blinking, when from the servants' hall into the drawing-room, where we were all sitting, and where only two candles were burning, and it was half dark, there came suddenly and quickly through the big open door a man in soft boots who, having reached the middle of the room, fell down on his knees. The lighted pipe with its long stem, which he held in his hand, struck against the floor, and the sparks flew out lighting the face of the kneeling man--it was Temeshov. What Temeshov told my father, while kneeling before him, I do not remember nor indeed did I hear, but only afterward I learned that he had fallen on his knees before my father because he had brought with him his illegitimate daughter, Dunechka, concerning whom he had previously spoken, and arranged that my father should accept her and bring her up with his own children. Thenceforth a broadfaced girl appeared among us, of the same age as myself, Dunechka, with her nurse Eupraksiya, a tall, wrinkled old woman with a hanging chin, like a turkey in which there was a ball which she used to let us feel.
"The introduction of Dunechka into our house was connected with a complicated business agreement between my father and Temeshov. The agreement was of this sort:
"Temeshov was very wealthy. He had no legitimate children; he only had two little girls, Dunechka and Verochka, the latter a little hunchback, born of a former serf girl, Marfusha, who was subsequently set free. The heirs of Temeshov were his sisters. He made over to them all his estates except Pirogovo, in which he lived, and this he desired to transfer to my father, on the understanding that my father should remit to the two girls its value of 30,000 pounds sterling. It was always said of Pirogovo that it was as good as a gold mine, and was worth much more than that sum. In order to arrange this matter the following method was devised: Temeshov drew up a conveyance according to which he sold Pirogovo to my father for 30,000 pounds, while my father gave promissory notes to three unconcerned persons--Islenev, Yazikov, and Glebov--to the amount of 10,000 pounds each. On Temeshov's death my father was to take possession of the estate, and having previously explained to Glebov, Islenev, and Yazikov for what purpose the notes were given them, he was to pay them the 30,000 pounds which were to go to the two girls.
"Perhaps I may be mistaken in the description of the whole plan, but I positively know that the estate of Pirogovo passed over to us after my father's death, and that there were three promissory notes payable to Islenev, Glebov, and Yazikov, that our guardians redeemed these notes, and that the amount of the first two was paid to the girls, 10,000 to each; whereas Yazikov misappropriated the other 10,000; but about this later.
"Dunechka lived with us, and was a nice simple, quiet, but not clever girl, and much disposed to weep. I remember how, when I had already learned French, I was made to teach her the alphabet. At first it went well (we were each five years old), but later she probably became tired, and ceased to name correctly the letter I pointed out. I insisted. She began to cry. I also. And when the elders came we could not pronounce anything owing to our hopeless tears. I remember another incident about her. When a plum was found to be missing from a plate and the culprit could not be discovered, Feodor Ivanovich, with a serious face and not looking at us, said that its being eaten did not much matter, but that any one who swallowed the stone might die. Dunechka could not restrain her terror, and said that she