The lad came to me in a black overcoat of good cloth and wearing boots for which he had paid eight rubles. A few days earlier he had taken ten rubles in advance from my brother and had bought the boots. And my children, who have known the lad since childhood, tell me that he really considers it necessary to provide himself with a watch. He. is a very good-natured lad, but he thinks he will be laughed at till he has a watch. So a watch is necessary. This year in our house a housemaid, a girl of eighteen, had an affair with the coachman.
She was dismissed. Our old nurse, with whom I spoke about it, reminded me of another poor girl whom I had forgotten. She too during our short stay in Moscow ten years ago had an affair with a footman. She also was dismissed, and ended in a brothel, dying of syphilis in the hospital before she was twenty. We only need look around us to be horrified at the infection which-not to speak of the factories and workshops that serve our luxury-we by our luxury directly and immediately diffuse among the very people we afterwards wish to help.
And so looking into the nature of the town poverty I was unable to help, I saw that its first cause was that I collect what the country folk need and take it to town. The second cause was that here in town, by means of what I have collected in the country, I by my insensate luxury tempt and corrupt those country folk who follow me to town in order to get back somehow or other what was taken from them in the village.
CHAPTE’R XIV
FROM quite an opposite side I came to the same conclusion. Remembering all my relations with the city poor during that period, I saw that one reason I was unable to help them was that they were insincere and untruthful with me. They all regarded me not as a man but as a means. I could not get into touch with them: perhaps, thought I, I do not know how to; but without sincerity it was impossible to help them. How can one help a man who does not tell one his whole position? At first I blamed them for this (it is so natural to blame others), but a single word from a remarkable man-namely, Sutaev,1 who was staying with me at the time, explained the case to me and showed me where the
1 Sutaev (previously alluded to) was a peasant sectarian whom Tolstoy held in high esteem.-A. M.
cause of my failure lay. I remember that Sutaev’s remark struck me forcibly even then, but I only understood its full significance later. It was at the time when my self-delusion was at its height. I was sitting at my sister’s; Sutaev also was there and my sister was asking me about my enterprise. I began telling her and, as always happens when one is not sure of what one is doing, I told her with great enthusiasm, warmth, and verbosity, both what I was doing and what might come of it.
I told her how we were going to look after the orphans and old folk, to send back to their villages peasants who could not get on in town; how we should make the path of reform easy for the vicious, and how, if only this affair succeeded, not a single man in Moscow would be left without help. My sister sympathized with me and we talked about it. During this conversation I glanced at Sutaev. Knowing his Christian life and the importance he attaches to charity, I expected his approval and spoke so that he should understand me. I addressed my sister, but what I said was meant rather for him. He sat immovable in his black tanned sheepskin coat which, peasant-fashion, he wore indoors as well as out of doors, but he seemed not to hear us and to be absorbed in his own thoughts. His small eyes were dim as though directed inwards. Having said my say, I turned to him and asked what he thought of it.
‘It’s all useless,’ said he.
‘Why?’
‘The whole Society you’re starting will be no use, and no good will come of it,’ repeated he with conviction.
‘Why not? Why will it be no use to help thousands, or even hundreds, of unfortunates? Is it wrong to clothe the naked and feed the hungry as the Gospel tells us to?’
‘I know, I know! But you’re not doing the right thing. Is that the way to help? You go out walking and a man asks you for twenty kopeks. You give it. Is that charity? Give him spiritual charity, teach him! But what have you done? Merely got rid of him!’
‘No, that’s not what we are talking about. We want to find out the need that exists, and to help with money and work and find employment for those who require it.’
‘You won’t do anything with those people that way.’
‘What do you mean? Are they to be left to die of cold and hunger?’
‘Why should they die? Are there so many of them?’
‘Many of them !’ said I, thinking he treated the matter so lightly because he did not know what an immense number there were. ‘Do you know that in Moscow alone there are, I suppose, some twenty thousand cold and hungry people? And in Petersburg, and in other towns…!’
He smiled.
‘Twenty thousand! And how many homes are there in Russia alone? A million?’ ‘Well, what of it?’
‘What of it!’ His eyes gleamed, and he became animated. ‘Why, let us divide them among us. I am not rich, but I will at once take two. There is that lad you had in your kitchen. I have asked him, but he won’t come. If there were ten times as many we could place them
all. You take one, I’ll take another. We could go to work together. He would see how I work, and would learn how to live. We would sit at one table and he would hear a word now from me and now from you. That is charity, but your scheme is quite useless.’
This simple remark struck me. I could not but acknowledge its justice; but it then seemed to me that, though it was true, what I had begun might perhaps also be useful. But the farther I went with the affair and the more I came in contact with the poor, the oftener I remembered those words and the more significance for me did they acquire. Indeed, I drive up in an expensive fur coat, or in my own carriage; or a man who has no boots sees my two thousand ruble lodgings, or even merely sees that I give away five rubles without regret because it comes into my head to do so; and he knows that if I give away rubles like that, it is because I have collected many and have a lot of superfluous ones I have not given away but on the contrary have extracted with ease from other people. What can he see in me but a man who has taken what ought to be his?
And what feeling can he have towards me but a desire to get back as many as possible of the rubles I have taken from him and from others? I want to get into touch with him, and complain that he is not frank; but I fear to sit on his bed lest I should get lice or be infected, and I dare not let him into my room. When he comes, hungry, to see me, he has to wait in the hall (if he is lucky) or in the porch. Yet I say he is to blame that I cannot get into touch with him and that he is not frank!
Let the most cruel of men try to gorge himself on five-course dinners among people who have eaten little and eat only black bread. No one will find it possible to eat and see the hungry folk licking their lips. So, to be able to eat tasty food where there are hungry people, it is first of all necessary to hide oneself from them and eat where they cannot see one. And that is just what we do first of all.
And I looked more simply at our life and saw that to come in close touch with the poor is not difficult for us just by accident, but that we purposely arrange our life so as to make such contact difficult.
More than this, standing on one side to look at our life-the life of the rich-I saw that all that is considered as welfare in our life consists in, or at any rate is inseparably bound up with, what separates us as far as possible from the poor. Indeed all the efforts of our wealthy life, beginning with food, clothes, dwellings, our cleanliness, and even our very education-have as their chief aim to segregate us from the poor. And on thus dividing ourselves-separating ourselves with impassable walls-from the poor, at least nine-tenths of our wealth is spent. The first thing a man who gets rich does is to cease to eat out of the common bowl;1 he gets crockery, and separates himself from the kitchen and the servants.
He feeds his servant well that
