《War And Peace》 Epilogue1 CHAPTER VII
by Leo Tolstoy
IN THE AUTUMN of 1813, Nikolay married Princess Marya, and with his wife, and
mother, and Sonya, took up his abode at Bleak Hills.
Within four years he had paid off the remainder of his debts without selling
his wife's estates, and coming into a small legacy on the death of a cousin, he
repaid the loan he had borrowed from Pierre also.
In another three years, by 1820, Nikolay had so well managed his pecuniary
affairs that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bleak Hills, and was
opening negotiations for the repurchase of his ancestral estate of Otradnoe,
which was his cherished dream.
Though he took up the management of the land at first from necessity, he soon
acquired such a passion for agriculture, that it became his favourite and almost
his exclusive interest. Nikolay was a plain farmer, who did not like
innovations, especially English ones, just then coming into vogue, laughed at
all theoretical treatises on agriculture, did not care for factories, for
raising expensive produce, or for expensive imported seed. He did not, in fact,
make a hobby of any one part of the work, but kept the welfare of the
estate as a whole always before his eyes. The object most prominent to
his mind in the estate was not the azote nor the oxygen in the soil or the
atmosphere, not a particular plough nor manure, but the principal agent by means
of which the azote and the oxygen and the plough and the manure were all made
effectual—that is, the labourer, the peasant. When Nikolay took up the
management of the land, and began to go into its different branches, the peasant
attracted his chief attention. He looked on the peasant, not merely as a tool,
but also as an end in himself, and as his critic. At first he studied the
peasant attentively, trying to understand what he wanted, what he thought good
and bad; and he only made a pretence of making arrangements and giving orders,
while he was in reality learning from the peasants their methods and their
language and their views of what was good and bad. And it was only when he
understood the tastes and impulses of the peasant, when he had learned to speak
his speech and to grasp the hidden meaning behind his words, when he felt
himself in alliance with him, that he began boldly to direct him—to perform,
that is, towards him the office expected of him. And Nikolay's management
produced the most brilliant results.
On taking over the control of the property, Nikolay had at once by some
unerring gift of insight appointed as bailiff, as village elder, and as delegate
the very men whom the peasants would have elected themselves had the choice been
in their hands, and the authority once given them was never withdrawn. Before
investigating the chemical constituents of manure, or going into “debit and
credit” (as he liked sarcastically to call book-keeping), he found out the
number of cattle the peasants possessed, and did his utmost to increase the
number. He kept the peasants' families together on a large scale, and would not
allow them to split up into separate households. The indolent, the dissolute,
and the feeble he was equally hard upon and tried to expel them from the
community. At the sowing and the carrying of the hay and corn, he watched over
his own and the peasants' fields with absolutely equal care. And few landowners
had fields so early and so well sown and cut, and few had such crops as
Nikolay.
He did not like to have anything to do with the house-serfs, he called them
parasites, and everybody said that he demoralised and spoiled them. When
any order had to be given in regard to a house-serf, especially when one had to
be punished, he was always in a state of indecision and asked advice of every
one in the house. But whenever it was possible to send a house-serf for a
soldier in place of a peasant, he did so without the smallest compunction. In
all his dealings with the peasants, he never experienced the slightest
hesitation. Every order he gave would, he knew, be approved by the GREater
majority of them.
He never allowed himself either to punish a man by adding to his burdens, or
to reward him by lightening his tasks simply at the prompting of his own wishes.
He could not have said what his standard was of what he ought and ought not to
do; but there was a standard firm and rigid in his soul.
Often talking of some failure or irregularity, he would complain of “our
Russian peasantry,” and he imagined that he could not bear the peasants.
But with his whole soul he did really love “our Russian peasantry,” and
their ways; and it was through that he had perceived and adopted the only method
of managing the land which could be productive of good results.
Countess Marya was jealous of this passion of her husband's for agriculture,
and reGREtted she could not share it. But she was unable to comprehend the joys
and disappointments he met with in that world apart that was so alien to her.
She could not understand why he used to be so particularly eager and happy when
after getting up at dawn and spending the whole morning in the fields or the
threshing-floor he came back to tea with her from the sowing, the mowing, or the
harvest. She could not understand why he was so delighted when he told her with
enthusiasm of the well-to-do, thrifty peasant Matvey Ermishin, who had been up
all night with his family, carting his sheaves, and had all harvested when no
one else had begun carrying. She could not understand why, stepping out of the
window on to the balcony, he smiled under his moustaches and winked so gleefully
when a warm, fine rain began to fall on his young oats that were suffering from
the drought, or why, when a menacing cloud blew over in mowing or harvest time,
he would come in from the barn red, sunburnt, and perspiring, with the smell of
wormwood in his hair, and rubbing his hands joyfully would say: “Come, another
day of this and my lot, and the peasants' too, will all be in the barn.”
Still less could she understand how it was that with his good heart and
everlasting readiness to anticipate her wishes, he would be thrown almost into
despair when she brought him petitions from peasants or their wives who had
appealed to her to be let off tasks, why it was that he, her good-natured
Nikolay, obstinately refused her, angrily begging her not to meddle in his
business. She felt that he had a world apart, that was intensely dear to him,
governed by laws of its own which she did not understand.
Sometimes trying to understand him she would talk to him of the good work he
was doing in striving for the good of his serfs; but at this he was angry and
answered: “Not in the least; it never even entered my head; and for their good
I would not lift my little finger. That's all romantic nonsense and old wives'
cackle—all that doing good to one's neighbour. I don't want our children to be
beggars; I want to build up our fortunes in my lifetime; that is all. And to do
that one must have discipline, one must have strictness … So there!” he would
declare, clenching his sanguine fist. “And justice too—of course,” he would
add, “because if the peasant is naked and hungry, and has but one poor horse,
he can do no good for himself or me.”
And doubtless because Nikolay did not allow himself to entertain the idea
that he was doing anything for the sake of others, or for the sake of virtue,
everything he did was fruitful. His fortune rapidly increased; the neighbouring
serfs came to beg him to purchase them, and long after his death the peasantry
preserved a reverent memory of his rule. “He was a master … The peasants'
welfare first and then his own. And to be sure he would make no abatements. A
real good master—that's what he was!”
