The Lion and the Puppy: And Other Stories for Children
CLEAR GLADES Country House of Count L N Tolstoy That was plain enough The children knew they had to keep out How surprised and not a little afraid they were when one day they heard that the Count had summoned them to his mansion The word soon spread through the village What did he want them for Rumor had it that he wanted to teach them to read and write What a strange idea In those days there were few enough schools in the towns fewer still in the countryside Very very rarely could a villager read or write If a letter needed to be written people went to the deacon and had to pay a tidy sum for it There were no books in the village no newspapers no schools Yet now it seemed that the Count had a mind to open a school for poor children And to teach them himself The children were shy But on the appointed day they put on their Sunday best a clean shirt and fresh birch bark shoes smoothed down their unkempt hair with yellow sunflower oil or brown rye juice and set off in a crowd for the Big House The year was 1849 The gold and russet trees of autumn had laid a crisp carpet of leaves along the drive as the children made their way to the house Once past the dark still waters of the lake a big house suddenly came into view set back behind the trees The tall two story building seemed like a palace to boys and girls who had grown up in squat smoke begrimed huts under straw thatched roofs Nervously the knots of village children stood before the house waiting for the Count to appear Finally he appeared on the veranda a tall broad shouldered figure with long straggly hair a large fleshy nose and a bushy black beard As he fixed them with his fierce stare from under the most enormous vili
eyebrows the children drew back in alarm Yet the moment he smiled and spoke their shyness seemed to melt away The school at Clear Glades was open all day long and children could come and go as they pleased No one forced them to attend and no one forced any lessons upon them Each child did whatever took her or his fancy drawing reading writing sports And by all accounts the chil dren came to the school very willingly some arriving as early as seven in the morning and staying until late evening Such was their eagerness to learn But it was not all sitting at desks Tolstoy loved games In summer he taught the children croquet on his lawn and rigged up a small gym in the barn He took them on nature rambles through the woods and down to the river to swim And when the winter snows and ice came there was no end to the games the children played speeding downhill on great sleds snowballing tumbling in the snow with the Count himself in the thick of them They cleared the snow from the big lake to make a skating rink they held races there but few could beat Tolstoy who was an excellent skater At Christmastime he decorated a big fir tree inside his house and held a party for all the children on his estate Of course the thin ragged village children had never had such a party in their lives In those days children's lives were hard As soon as they were strong enough about the age of ten they had to drive a wooden plow and toil in the fields from dawn to dusk Childhood ended early in Russia at that time peasant families were but serfs slaves to the lords Yet here was a lord Count Tolstoy who was opening the doors of his house with its polished wooden floors lofty ceilings and bright win dows to the village children It all seemed a fairy tale But it was real enough And so was their teacher's love for them Throughout his long life Tolstoy loved children It hurt him to see so much poverty and ignorance among the children in the countryside But
he also knew how miserable the lives of the children in the towns were His heart ached at the sound of the factory whistles at dawn and dusk from the mill beyond the village He once visited that mill and wrote in his diary I visited a stocking mill and learned what the whistles mean At five o clock in the morning a boy takes his stand beside a machine and stays there till eight At eight he drinks tea and then stands till midday and at one he begins again and stands till four then he works through from half past four to eight in the evening Every day seven days a week That's what the whistles mean we hear in our beds He wondered how such children had time to live children whom whistles set in motion at five in the morning and stopped at eight in the evening When would they learn read books have time to play Tolstoy's school was the first in Russia for village children But when he came to seek school books that were easy to read and interesting he was disappointed What few children's books existed were dull and more likely to put out the spark of interest than kindle it So the great writer known throughout the world for his famous books sat down to write stories for children that were easy to read and interesting that would teach right from wrong good from bad Even though his great works took up much of his time and energy he always found time for the children The stories he wrote were not only for the village children around Clear Glades They were intended for all girls and boys who wish to open up their hearts to truth and beauty
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE The stories are taken from Tolstoy's Azbuka Primer which consisted of four Russian Reading Books four Slav Reading Books a section on teaching reading handwriting and arithmetic and guidance for teach ers Although the Primer was not published until 1872 it was based on notebooks Tolstoy had kept from his first teaching experience at his school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana Clear Glades from 1849 and at other schools he founded for peasant children in the Tula Province The stories vary widely some are based on Aesop's fables others on Russian and foreign folk tales some on nature studies and others on the work of children themselves As an example of the latter the Young Boy's Stories all come from the storytelling of peasant children whom Tolstoy encouraged to read and write in their own words What distinguishes all the stories in the Primer from children's sto ries current in Russian schools at that time is that they are largely free from the heavy moralistic homilies and religious preaching that Tolstoy abhorred Moreover they are written in a simple language style for a new audience as Tolstoy put it that has to be counted in many thousands even millions
