'"
Soon after this my father came to know Fet intimately, and
they struck up a firm and lasting friendship, and established a
correspondence which lasted almost till Fet's death.
It was only during the last years of Fet's life, when my
father was entirely absorbed in his new ideas, which were so at
variance with Afanasyi Afanasyevitch's whole
philosophy of life, that they became estranged and met more rarely.
It was at Fet's, at Stepanovka, that my father and
Turgenieff quarreled.
Before the railway was made, when people still had to drive,
Fet, on his way into Moscow, always used to turn in at
Yasnaya Polyana to see my father, and these visits
became an established custom. Afterward, when the railway was made
and my father was already married, Afanasyi
Afanasyevitch still never passed our house without coming
in, and if he did, my father used to write him a letter of earnest reproaches,
and he used to apologize as if he had been guilty of some fault. In those
distant times of which I am speaking my father was bound to Fet by
a common interest in agriculture as well as literature.
Some of my father's letters of the sixties are curious in this
respect.
For instance, in 1860, he wrote a long dissertation on
Turgenieff's novel "On the Eve," which had just come out,
and at the end added a postscript: "What is the price of a set of
the best quality of veterinary instruments? And what is the price
of a set of lancets and bleeding-cups for human use?"
In another letter there is a postscript:
"When you are next in Oryol, buy me six-hundred weight of
various ropes, reins, and traces," and on the same page: "'Tender
art thou,' and the whole thing is charming.
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