The Last Days of TolstoyChertkov, V. G. (Vladimir Grigorevich)
General
The Last Days of Tolstoy
Chertkov, V. G. (Vladimir Grigorevich)
Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828-1910
There was also another disagreeable side to this business for Leo
Nikolaevitch. To avoid in connection with the will any altercations
and dissensions, which would have been undesirable in themselves and
would have made the position of Alexandra Lvovna, as legal heiress of
his manuscripts, utterly impossible in the family, Leo Nikolaevitch
resolved not to tell anyone of his will. Though to keep the fact of
the existence of a will secret is a fairly usual thing to do in such
circumstances, it will be readily understood that it was against the
grain for Leo Nikolaevitch, and he resolved to act in this way solely
because he saw no other alternative.[17]
Sofya Andreyevna's fears that Leo Nikolaevitch might make a will
depriving his family of the copyright of his works were the
underlying cause of her hostile attitude to him. It was on account of
this that she made such efforts, on the one hand to wring out of him
the complete transfer of all rights in his works to her, and on the
other hand by incessant watchfulness over him to eliminate all
possibility of his signing any business document without her
knowledge. And it was for this same reason that she was filled with
such hatred for me personally, assuming, though quite mistakenly,
that the initiative in Leo Nikolaevitch's renunciation of his
copyrights and the arrangements for carrying this out came from me.
Leo Nikolaevitch was so firm in his resolution to leave his writings
for the free use of all, that with his own hand he wrote a will in
accordance with that idea, not once only but several times, owing to
the fact that the legal form of the documents he composed were never
sufficiently correct to secure the required authority for them. The
last time he made his will while Sofya Andreyevna was watching over
him most vigilantly, during a ride on horseback in the thickest part
of the forest, having previously invited three persons of the circle
of friends living with me at Telyatniki near Yasnaya Polyana to meet
him there and witness his signature.
By making this will Leo Nikolaevitch secured that after his death his
writings became accessible to all, and not the property of his
family. This result in itself is of vast social importance, seeing
that it gave the working people--the poorest class of all
countries--access to Tolstoy's works in the cheapest form, since
it was open to any number of publishers to print them, and the
competition between them would bring down the price of the books.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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