His description of the death of my Uncle Nikolai is
characteristic in this connection. In a letter to his other
brother, Sergei Nikolayevitch, in which he described
the last day of his brother's life, my father tells how he helped
him to undress.
"He submitted, and became a different man. . . . He had a
word of praise for everybody, and said to me, 'Thanks, my friend.'
You understand the significance of the words as between us two."
It is evident that in the language of the Tolstoy brothers the
phrase "my friend" was an expression of tenderness beyond which
imagination could not go. The words astonished my father even on
the lips of his dying brother.
During all his lifetime I never received any mark of
tenderness from him whatever.
He was not fond of kissing children, and when he did so in
saying good morning or good night, he did it merely as a duty.
It is therefore easy to understand that he did not provoke any
display of tenderness toward himself, and that nearness and
dearness with him were never accompanied by any outward
manifestations.
It would never have come into my head, for instance, to walk
up to my father and kiss him or to stroke his hand. I was partly
prevented also from that by the fact that I always looked up to him
with awe, and his spiritual power, his greatness, prevented me from
seeing in him the mere man--the man who was so plaintive and weary
at times, the feeble old man who so much needed warmth and rest.
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