Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/37

Biography happy married life (1862-1878). There was no subject, from cricket and football to the most abstruse branches of philosophy, in which Tolstoi did not take a lively interest, and though his acquaintances were few, they numbered among them some of the most enlightened and interesting men in Russia, including N. N. Strakhov, Prince Urusov, and the mathematician, A. Fet. As his sons grew up they became his closest companions. At his call they would joyfully come running out to join him in his long rambles (he rarely went a shorter distance than twelve miles at a stretch), or in a course of Swedish gymnastics, or compete with him at hurdle racing, or go a-hunting or shooting. In the winter the father and sons would be skating or sledging together, or bombarding snow fortifications of their own construction. Indeed Tolstoi asked for nothing better than to pass his days in the bosom of his family. He hated to be away from his wife and children even for a single day, and hastened back to them with rapture when the detaining business had been happily transacted. It was at this time of his life that an acquaintance said of him that he was laughing all day long.

But Tolstoi had other and more serious work during the long winter evenings. It was in the midst of this period of supreme domestic felicity that his two immortal masterpieces, "Peace and War" and "Anna Karenina," were composed.

"Voina i Mir" ("Peace and War") was begun immediately after his marriage, under the happiest auspices, and was completed in five years. That xxix.