There was no way the liberal-minded Nikolay Grot could publish Tolstoy’s article in his journal now. Conversations at court revolved around whether Tolstoy should be locked up in the Suzdal Monastery prison (the traditional place of incarceration for heretics in Russia), sent into exile abroad, or committed to a lunatic asylum (the link between holy fools and madness was well established in Russia).156 In faraway Smolensk there was even a rumour that Tolstoy had already been exiled to the Solovetsky Monastery prison (the place of his ancestor Pyotr Andreyevich’s incarceration), and before the writer and journalist Jonas Stadling left his native Sweden to volunteer, he heard reports that Tolstoy was a ‘prisoner on his estate, and that he was to be banished from the country’.157 But once again Alexander III opted for clemency – not for the first time was Alexandrine forced to answer for her wayward relative at court, but her very proximity to the Tsar was a guarantee of his safety.158 Tolstoy was longing for martyrdom, so was infuriated that he could continue unhindered. But as Suvorin pointed out in a letter he wrote at the time, Tolstoy was the only person who managed to do anything, while everybody else had to clothe their ideas ‘in velvet’ in order for any action to be taken: ‘they are persecuting him, but to no avail; he can’t be touched, and even if he is, he will just be pleased, for how many times has he said to me: “Why aren’t they arresting me, why aren’t they putting me in jail?” It’s an enviable lot.’159
Sonya was concerned that their whole family was on the brink of ruin, and she wondered what had happened to Tolstoy’s doctrine of love and pacifism.160 Her commitment to the cause had brought them together, however, which made him very happy, and she also came out to Begichevka for a ten-day visit at the end of January 1892.161 She had been collecting donations and publishing reports, and now she saw for herself emaciated, shivering peasants dressed in rags, their sad expressions speaking of the humiliation they felt to receive charity.162 She also saw what difficult and exhausting work it was for her husband and daughters (Tolstoy sometimes sat up until three in the morning in an attempt to continue with his writing). Apart from the physical challenges of working during the freezing winter months in villages where people had no means of feeding themselves or heating their homes, the sheer scale of the disaster was sometimes demoralising – it was impossible to help everyone. When she returned to Moscow in February, Sonya found herself having to nurse Vanechka (just about to turn four), who was seriously unwell again, and conduct a damage-control operation. The repercussions of Dillon’s translation of Tolstoy’s article in the Daily Telegraph amongst ministers and court officials were such that she was obliged to send mollifying letters, and make repeated visits to Governor General Grand Duke Sergey Alexandrovich and his wife Elizaveta Fyodorovna.163
The Tolstoys’ famine-relief work proved to be infectious; soon they were joined by friends and relatives who wanted to help, and then by foreign volunteers like Jonas Stadling, who arrived in February 1892. In the book he later published about his experiences, Stadling described accompanying Tolstoy’s daughter Masha on her visits on his first day, including one to a schooclass="underline"
We stopped at one of the izbas, in which the Count had opened a school and eating-room. For some time after our entrance we could see nothing distinctly, but our feet told us that the naked soil served as floor. When our eyes grew accustomed to the gloom we saw a number of benches, and standing between them about thirty children, silently looking at us … In one corner were a couple of elderly people. From the neighbourhood of the [stove] came heavy breathing, and lying on top of it, we saw three children, covered with black small-pox. I suggested that these ought to be removed at once, and the Countess replied that it would be done as soon as possible, but as there were no hospitals, and almost every house was infected, it was not easy to isolate the sick. These poor children had been brought to the school ‘because it was warm there’.164
When there was no longer any money to pay the teachers, the local schools had been forced to close, but Tolstoy had done what he could to reopen some of them. Stadling was full of admiration for all the Tolstoys – for the indefatigable Sonya, dealing on her own with an enormous correspondence in Moscow, for Lev Lvovich, heading the relief effort in Samara (where Stadling also volunteered), and the two dedicated daughters Tanya and Masha, who assisted their father not only with the operation of the soup kitchens and the establishment of separate premises for feeding children, but also with the procurement of feed for the horses and the distribution amongst the peasants of fuel, seed for planting, and flax and bast, to give them some work.
By the autumn of 1892, when Tolstoy eventually returned to Yasnaya Polyana, donations of over 100,000 roubles, plus two ships from America with a cargo of flour, grain and potatoes, had helped with the setting up of 212 emergency soup kitchens in four districts, which had functioned until July. Along with teaching at the Yasnaya Polyana school, and his work on the ABC books, Tolstoy later declared that this had been one of the happiest times of his life. In September he returned to Begichevka for another visit, and carefully toned down his language when he wrote a moving account of how the donations received between April and July had been used. It was published on 31 October in the Russian Gazette, and at least 5,000 extra copies had to be printed to meet the demand.165 Tolstoy would continue to make further visits to Begichevka in the winter of 1893, but he was now free to spend more time working on the treatise about non-violence which he had begun two years earlier. He had worked further on it during the three weeks he had spent resting in Moscow back in January, and in April Chertkov had sent out to him in Begichevka not only his latest manuscript, but also a young peasant with good handwriting keen to work as a copyist. Tolstoy had thus been able to continue writing, and now that he was back in the peace and quiet of Yasnaya Polyana he was able to give his treatise his full attention.
After Tolstoy’s religious writings began to be published abroad, he had started to receive letters, books and pamphlets from enthusiastic readers from all over the world who were sympathetic to his cause. When Alice Stock-ham had come to visit Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy had been greatly interested in what she had to tell him about all the various branches of Christianity in America which were ‘moving towards practical Christianity, towards a universal brotherhood and the sign of this is non-resistance’.166 He began to learn for the first time about Universalists, Unitarians, Quakers, spiritualists, Swedenborgians and also Shakers. On 30 March 1889 the Shaker Asenath Stickney had sent Tolstoy photographs of the leaders of their community, and two books: The Shaker Answer and George Lomas’s Plain Talks upon Practical Religion: Being Candid Answers to Earnest Inquirers. In the autumn of 1889 Tolstoy entered into correspondence with another Shaker, Alonzo Hollister, explaining where he agreed and disagreed with their beliefs.167 Tolstoy also now came into contact with the Quakers, who had preached non-resistance for over 200 years, and refused to take arms even in self-defence. Wendell Garrison, who edited a journal called Non-resistance, sent Tolstoy works by his father, the famous abolitionist and social reformer William Lloyd Garrison (who had died in 1879). And in 1889 Tolstoy was also sent Adin Ballou’s Catechism of Non-violence, which he was very impressed by. Ballou was an abolitionist pastor who had formed a utopian community to live a rigorous life of Christian non-violence in Massachusetts back in 1841. Tolstoy exchanged warm letters with the eighty-seven-year-old pastor in the last year of his life.168