Tolstoy

Tolstoy took part in several forest-clearing expeditions that spring, and the following year he would start distilling his experiences into the story ‘The Wood-Felling’, but his first priority was to complete Childhood, and when he came back to Starogladkovskaya in March he began working on his third draft. It was ironically just at the time that he joined the army that he began distancing himself from his rowdy fellow officers, who found his aloofness arrogant. Nikolay was happy to sit up all night drinking, but not Lev, who now began to prefer chess and fencing, and sitting with a book. His army duties were fairly light. In April he travelled a little way east to Kizlyar where he consulted a doctor about his poor health, and May found him undertaking a much longer journey, a few hundred miles west this time, to Pyatigorsk in the foothills of the north Caucasus, where he would undertake treatment. He would not return to Starogladkovskaya until August, by which time he had not only finished and submitted Childhood, but learned that it was accepted for publication.

Pyatigorsk (‘Five Mountains’), so-called because it is overlooked by the five peaks of Mount Beshtau (a Turkish name meaning ‘five mountains’), was founded as a Russian fortification in 1780. Following the discovery of its mineral springs it was developed as a health spa by imperial decree, and had become a thriving and fashionable resort embellished by Italian architects by the time Tolstoy arrived in 1852. It was, in fact, the most fashionable Russian spa throughout the nineteenth century. Pyatigorsk had also seen its fair share of drama: Lermontov was shot in a duel near the town’s cemetery in 1841, and there was still a very real threat of raids by marauding Circassians, which gave an edge to otherwise peaceful rest cures. Tolstoy knew Pyatigorsk in his mind before he arrived because he had read A Hero of Our Time: it provides the setting for the longest of its stories. He followed the recommended treatment of bathing in Pyatigorsk’s sulphurous springs for six weeks, and then travelled on to the springs of Zheleznovodsk (‘Iron Waters’), situated a little way to the north, for three weeks of treatment there.

Tolstoy rented a little house on the outskirts of Pyatigorsk which had a garden and a beehive and a view of the snowcapped peak of Mount Elbrus, and rolled up his sleeves to get down to work. He did a lot of reading during his cure, particularly of Rousseau, whom he read and re-read, but he also did a lot of writing. On 27 May he finished the third draft of Childhood, and four days later he started on the final draft. In early July, finally happy with his manuscript, he resolved to send it to the editor of The Contemporary, Russia’s most prestigious literary journal, without revealing his identity beyond the initials ‘L.N.’.⁵⁶ The Contemporary was a St Petersburg-based journal which had been founded by Pushkin in 1836. Since 1847 it had been edited by the poet Nikolay Nekrasov, who had cemented its reputation as the platform of the progressive, liberal-minded intelligentsia by publishing the work of leading Westernisers such as Herzen and Turgenev, and inviting the collaboration of prominent critics like Vissarion Belinsky.

On 29 August, three weeks after arriving back in Starogladkovskaya, Tolstoy received a reply from Nekrasov, informing him that he had been impressed by Childhood and would be printing it in the next issue. Tolstoy was over the moon – until he finally received the September issue of the journal at the end of October. He was incensed to see that his text had been mutilated by the censor and, furthermore, was now called A History of My Childhood.⁵⁷ He had expressly not set out to write the story of his childhood, he remonstrated in the angry letter he drafted to Nekrasov, which he ultimately (and wisely) decided not to send. Tolstoy was also crestfallen not to be paid a royalty. He was desperately short of money, and unaware of the practice of Russian literary journals not to pay fledgling authors for their first publication. He had no option but to acquiesce, and at least had the enviable consolation of having an editor who wanted to publish more of his writing. Tolstoy had a very warm reception for his first published work. Critics particularly praised the gifts of psychological analysis which brought Childhood to life. The Russian reading public were also full of praise for the mysterious but extremely promising new author. The members of the author’s own family, who had not been forewarned, reacted with delighted surprise when they discovered his identity.⁵⁸