Guy Spier - The Education Of A Value Investor

There’s a lot I liked about this book and most of it is connected to the author’s honesty and approach to investment. It’s very light on bullshit, sophistry and intellectual posturing; all of which are ordinarily the lifeblood of the fund management industry and its practitioners. He’s honest about his limitations, the intellectual dishonesty of huge swathes of the industry and the crippling effects of watching prices on Bloomberg. He even details some mistakes he’s made, about which I’ll write more later. Reading about, and speaking to, most investors about their performance and experiences would give you the impression that they pick 90% winners. Sadly, the statistical truth is much closer to a 50:50 ratio! He is also willing to talk about the emotional and personal pressures that have an inevitable and sizeable effect on investment decisions. He writes, “great investors don’t often talk publicly about their emotional challenges” (p121) but Spier does and the book is all the better for it. This is very rare, with most fund managers prefering to peddle the illusion that they are either totally rational or so aware of their emotional and psychological biases that they can override them. Both are utter nonsense to my mind and are worryingly deluded notions. Most investors would try to paint themselves as masters of their subcortex but he is honest and intelligent enough to admit the impossibility of that. “I accept my fallibility. Instead of pretending to be perfectly rational, I find it more helpful to be honest with myself about my irrationality. At least then I can take practical steps that help me to manage my irrational self. Perhaps this is the best that any of us can do.” (p119) Hear, hear! I really like the way he doesn’t make psychological limitations something that only amatuer or lesser investors suffer from, which is all too common within the professional fund management community. Rather he genuinely recognises and embraces their existence and attempts to find solutions. It’s so refreshing!


Another aspect of it that I really loved and wholeheartedly agree with is the link that is drawn between the author’s life and his investment style and process. To me, these are totally inextricable. If successful investment was simply following a set of rules or applying a set of scientific methods then there would be an unbelievably expensive and competitive school where these things would be taught and all the best investors would go there. As it is, the world’s best investors are a pretty ragtag bunch coming from all sorts of different intellectual and personal backgrounds. Furthermore, successful investors can use violently disparate styles and strategies to achieve this success; ranging from totally quantitative algorithms to totally qualitative nose following. So what can be made of this? I feel the crucial thing is to adopt a style that suits your personality. Guy Spier is an excellent example of this. It seems the more he learns about himself, the more he refines his style and the better he becomes as an investor. In no way am I trying to suggest that a person’s investment style must be totally personal and not be subject to outside influences. Learning from others is absolutely essential. The author is refreshingly upfront about his respect for, and extensive borrowing from, Buffett, Munger and Prabai amongst others. Lots of investors try to pass off what they have learned or borrowed from others as their own ideas, which is yet another example of the intellectual dishonesty that is so rife in fund management. Why does an idea have to be original to be good or to help you make money? The answer is it doesn’t but lots of people can’t admit that; Guy Spier can and it’s another example of the extreme and excellent honesty there is in this book. I’m reminded of a quote from Jose Mourinho, the famous football manager, “with a mentor you can improve and have a base for evolution, but when you try and copy, the copy is never the same as the original. So I think you have to learn from people with more experience who have had success, but always keep your own personal identity”. Spier is a self-confessed Buffet-ite but it would be idiotic to assume that he doesn’t express his own personal identity in thousands of ways through his psychology, process, philosophy and, ultimately, through his portfolio. He recognises this too, “There’s no doubt that Warren [Buffet] and Mohnish [Prabai] have inner landscapes that better equip them to make clear headed financial decisions involving money. But I can’t spend my life yearning to be them. Instead, I need to understand what makes me different, then make investments that I can handle emotionally, based on this self-knowledge”. I think that’s really insightful. The sections on how he organises his office, his work schedule and his choice of city to live in are very helpful.


Another aspect of self-knowledge, and its utility in fund management, that Spier mentions is recognising the flaws in your brain and adapting the environment you occupy and the process by which you make investments to account for them. He writes, “I discovered that it’s critical to banish the false assumption that I am truly capable of rational thought. Instead, I’ve found that one of my only advantages as an investor is the humble realisation of just how flawed my brain really is. Once I accepted this, I could design an array of practical work-arounds based on my awareness of the minefield within my mind” (p107). One of these is removing himself from what he calls “the vortex” of the high octane, high testosterone environment of the finance industry in New York. I couldn’t agree more with this, whether London or Geneva really represent that much of a deviation or are simply different vortexes is debatable and highly subjective. One example that didn’t really ring true to me was his friend, Nick Sleep, who set up shop on the King’s Road in Chelsea (p112). Part of what I felt was so truthful about his recognition of the negative effects ‘the vortex’ was having on his decision making were the feelings of envy and competitiveness that sprung up in insanely wealthy communities in London and NY. Anyone who knows London knows that the King’s Road is still an incredibly affluent area occupied by a lot of financial types. So for him to dress it up like it is Dalston or Brixton is a bit silly in my mind and doesn’t really exemplify what he is talking about. Clearly, that’s just my take on it and perhaps he doesn’t know anyone who set up anywhere less ‘vortexy’ but the difference between Mayfair and the King’s Road is pretty marginal to my mind!


The book also foregrounds quirky ideas like having photos of Buffet and Munger in his office to keep them, and their principles, in the front of his mind as he works. A bit like yogis and their gurus! He suggests he may even commision photos of all his investors to keep them in mind as he works and makes decisions. Often, the end user is very far from a fund manager’s mind when he makes decisions. They are thinking about their performance, their bonus, the effect this investment might have on their career, their perception within the firm, their own history of investments of this type etc. etc. etc. It really is a minefield and the ultimate client and their aims often get lost amidst all the other considerations. The photos may be a bit culty for some people’s taste but I love the way he comes up with his own ideas and wholeheartedly agree with the motivations behind them.


All good investors have rules. This is a commonplace observation. What’s less so is; all good investors break these rules! I’ve read so many fund managers’ books where they trumpet their rules. Then you take a look at their portfolios, or even read other stories in the same book, and think, ‘hang on a minute I thought he didn’t buy commodity stocks’ when you see or read about just that type of investment. I don’t think of the breaking of rules as a bad thing; there are an almost infinite variety of situations and companies and what may be true 99% of the time can still be untrue 1% of the time. But I do think it is dishonest and unhelpful not to recognise that. The setting of ‘target prices’ and sell disciplines is rife with rule breaking, denial of the same rule breaking and goal post moving. But Spier isn’t one of these self-deceivers! “We can all claim to have clear rules - for example, declaring that a stock must be sold when it reaches 80% of its intrinsic value. But the truth is that this is an incredibly inexact science. There are stocks in my portfolio that, on a purely rational basis [if such a thing exists!], I should probably sell. But I often hold on to them anyway. One reason is that I’m trying to manage myself, not just my portfolio. And I believe that my investment returns will be better over several decades if I master the trigger happy side of my nature”. “Bravo!”, I thought when I read that, “someone telling the truth for once”. My old boss also once told me that his extensive, miniscule holdings of 0.1-0.2% were ‘post it notes’ so he didn’t forget about companies he wanted to follow or wanted to build larger holdings in at better prices. At the time I thought that he should just have a ‘watchlist’ and not ‘waste’ money buying such inconsequential positions. Now I understand that this would not have been the same thing at all and he was really doing what Spiers is doing; managing himself, which is arguably the central part of the enterprise! Whether or not he would have been so honest with the clients is another question! I’m sure many of them, like me at the time, wouldn’t have understood it and seen it as unprofessional or profligate. Another, arguably even starker, example of Spier’s willingness to break his own rules occurs on p166 when he talks about how, “I want to invest in companies that control their own destiny”. This would lead me to think he doesn’t want anything to do with businesses whose fortunes are largely determined by the price of commodity outside of their control. However, on the next page he talks about how he made a lot of money in Alaska Milk; a company whose fortunes are determined by condensed milk, a commodity totally outside of its control! Spier even explains this in detail so it is not like he doesn’t understand that he is breaking his own rule stated only a few lines above! The point isn’t that he’s ‘wrong’, more that his is prepared to break his own rules and use the inverse of his normal thinking to identify opportunities. I would see this as pretty run of the mill for most fund managers. In general, you don’t want to buy businesses like this under normal circumstances. But, equally, when the commodity price has moved against the company in a way that is presumed to be unsustainable or over exaggerated then the company could begin to look attractive as investors with a shorter term focus sell it. He’s aware of this and is not constrained by dogma; although that does make for confusing reading in this instance! Some might say that it’s a funny way to demonstrate a rule by giving an example of how you broke it, but at least it is honest!


As well as being honest about his personal experiences and where he has got lots of his ideas about investment, the author is really serious about sharing this with the readers of this book. In an industry as competitive as fund management, lots of people want to keep what they have learnt to themself unless it would benefit them to share it with other people. For example, lots of people talk up stocks they have already bought in the hope that others will buy them too and push up the price. However, Spier really seems to want to share his insights for the enjoyment it brings him and because he feels it is the right thing to do. This was unusual and refreshing as well. He also includes an extensive reading list; showing where he is getting his ideas from and pointing anyone in search of further information in the right direction. Everyone gets their ideas from somewhere but so often in fund management people want to bolster their status or ego by claiming that ideas are their own and concealing their intellectual ancestry!


One aspect of his investment philosophy which is anathema to me is his insistence that it’s a bad idea to meet management. To be sure he makes good arguments to support it: don’t meet someone who is trying to sell you something, don’t be seduced by personalities etc. However, to my mind, it’s wrong to rubbish meeting management when he is so keen on individuals like Buffett and buys the stock of his company on the basis of their personality and track record. Why isn’t this theory applicable to other people and companies? All companies are managed by people and this is the primary determinant of their performance with the exception of the nature of the industry. I’m reminded of the famous Buffet quote, “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for bad economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact”. Granted, industries can be better or worse from an investment perspective but the differentiator in the long term is surely management. So here I find it impossible to agree with Spier even though I in no way think this makes him a bad investor. This may be the best way for him to manage his personality and, therefore, his portfolio. Indeed, many fund managers think themselves good judges of character and end up making terrible decisions because of this assumption. However, I do think it is a bit inconsistent to have such huge admiration and respect for the power of good management in building a portfolio but then to dismiss it out of hand when applying the same principles to building a company.


There are a few other areas where I would disagree with or criticise his writing, philosophy or honesty too and I feel I would be remiss not to take issue with these. In the main, Spier is assiduous about referencing his sources and giving credit to those who have aided his thinking. That’s why it’s such a surprise to read this passage about Tony Robbins, “was Robbins just some poor player, strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage? Was he just an idiot telling his story, full of sound and fury, but signifying nothing?”. Perhaps it is because this is such a famous Shakespeare quote he feels he doesn’t have to attribute it. Nonetheless, in a book which, quite correctly, makes a point of referencing everything, has an excellent index and really goes out of its way to attribute the work of others it is astounding that The Bard doesn’t get a shout out for his masterful work in Macbeth!


Another issue I have with the book are the examples of mistakes that are offered. You might think I am being churlish as most investors won’t offer any examples of mistakes! However, I don’t feel like Spier really does share his biggest mistakes with the reader and this is a rare example of what I would describe as an ego driven decision. I’m fairly sure most investors of Spier’s vintage and longevity in the market will have suffered a total loss in a position or something pretty close (e.g. >90%). But none of the mistakes he mentions in the book even come close to that. Indeed, the example of the Tupperware ‘mistake’ (p164) doesn’t even involve him losing any money! Of course, you don’t have to lose money for your investment thesis to be wrong but in a profession where the object is to make money, or perhaps more accurately not to lose it (in real terms!), surely there must be bigger losers for him to share. I found myself thinking, ‘Oh come on! Tell us about how you lost some money for goodness sake! You must have something worse than this”. Even in the example of CarMax, a second hand car dealer, where he rightly points out that businesses that are highly dependent on the credit markets are riskier and lower quality than those that are not he doesn’t mention how money he lost. However, he doesn’t hold back in telling you how he made 5x his money in 5 years in Alaska Milk, which is a funny kind of ‘mistake’, as I mentioned earlier! So, for all the honesty in this book, and there is a lot, he is not immune from talking up his winners and being a bit less direct about his losers. This is a shame. I once read about a firm where they put up a plaque for every total loss they suffer and I thought that was an excellent idea. I kind of expected the same kind of thing from Spier. Maybe he has never had any bad losers, but I find that an unlikely explanation!


Spier makes an interesting critique of the limitations of elite education, which I found to be interesting and to resonate with my own experience. He also poses an interesting question about why so many privileged and highly educated people go into such venal jobs like he did and ultimately end up doing damage in society. He writes, “why did so many highly educated people from elite business schools and privileged backgrounds contribute to and exacerbate the financial crisis of 2008-2009? Did our education fail us? Or did we fail our education? These questions haven’t been answered adequately by the prestigious universities that groomed all these high powered creators of economic mayhem” (p21-22). These are fascinating questions and ones that he might be expected to offer some answers to, but he does no such thing. He makes some very astute comments on the shortcomings of this type of education as it relates to his personal life and experience but doesn’t go on to analyse or criticise the culture of these institutions in any meaningful way. This is perhaps fair enough insofar as it is a book about his development and education as a value investor. What is a little more striking is the fact that he goes on to trumpet his support for “my Oxford college, Harvard Business School, and the Weizmann Institute”, which are exactly the sort of high octane, privileged institutions he criticises for “measuring people by an external scorecard” (p26) and seems to, at least partly, find culpable for producing irresponsible and self-serving alumni. So what on earth is he doing supporting them and blowing his own trumpet about doing so? It didn’t really spoil my enjoyment of the book but I felt like he should explain why he does this or say something positive about their existence rather than, broadly, identifying them as part of the problem and then saying he’s endorsing them. It’s contradictory. Perhaps he does it because it is good for networking. This is a pretty uncharitable interpretation but he doesn’t offer any alternative explanation and in the context of his criticisms it is weird that these are the institutions he chooses to support.


There are other sections of the book where I saw Spier as a bit self-serving and self-congratulatory. To be sure, I think he goes about investment in an honest and straightforward way, putting his money alongside his clients and genuinely considering their best interests rather than his own fees. I’m sure he could have made a lot more money as an asset gatherer if he wanted to so it’s unfair to say he is totally motivated by money. What he is doing is much better than most of the industry and also a hell of a lot better than the kind of stuff he was doing at D.H.Blair, which he paints as fundamentally dishonest. That having been said, fund management is essentially about helping people with money get more money and while this can be a worthwhile cause in the case of pension funds and charities it is also possible to make positive arguments about why investment banking is worthwhile and societally valuable. I don’t think much of these arguments but there are exceptions to every rule! However, sometimes his evangelical enthusiasm for value investing is a bit sanctimonious. At the end of the day, he is a highly privileged man, who got his seed capital from his millionaire father (which he is at least honest about) and drives a Porsche! Not exactly Mother Teresa, although he talks about his journey using the same kind of salvation narrative as a religious convert who’s found God. He clearly could have taken a far more venal, and damaging, career path and I, for one, have respect for prudent and honest fund management as I think it is a necessary and societally valuable job. On the other hand, I think it’s easy to see there are more valuable jobs and I couldn’t shake the feeling that all he is really doing is making rich people richer. In the same vein, his sycophancy for Warren Buffet and, to a lesser extent, Mohnish Prabai can be a bit vomit inducing. Some sections read like he is writing them a love letter. During his charity lunch with Buffet he quotes him as saying, “I’m never wrong”, which is a categorically incorrect and outrageous thing for any investor to say, even in jest. But Speir ratifies this by writing, “in his case, this might be true, or almost true”. Yuck!


Another, similar, aspect of the book that made me feel a bit uneasy was Speir’s obsession with ‘restoring’ his family’s wealth. This is a highly sensitive topic and one I am completely unqualified to comment on having never had anything like this happen in my own family’s history. As Spier tells it, his great-grandparents were wealthy German industrialists who had everything taken from them by the hateful and destructive Nazi regime. It is, to my mind, preeminently understandable that this would produce feelings of outrage and a desire to restore what once belonged to one’s family. His grandfather escaped to Israel and was a chicken farmer before his father had a successful career as a businessman in the chemical industry. However, when Speirs says, “the story of my family and money has been one of restoration...I feel a tremendous sense of responsibility when it comes to my family’s finances (most of which are invested in my fund), not least because I’m attempting to repair what was shattered more than 70 years ago and to provide enduring security in an insecure world” (p191) I can’t help feeling a bit uneasy. Let me repeat that I find these sentiments wholly understandable in the context of the horrendous family history but why must his family be SO wealthy and is that, ultimately, really any more secure than being moderately wealthy? It all struck me as a bit greedy and money obsessed. He boasts about buying a house in upstate NY for cash, something most people can never dream about doing but still feels he needs to make more and more money? The Aquamarine fund has c. $200m in assets if the results of a Google search are accurate. Who knows how much of this is his family's money but the impression is that his thirst for wealth will never be sated. Equally, he seems to be a total control freak. He writes about how his father bought some Lehman bonds and lost all the money he’d invested. Although his father still had substantial holdings in Spier’s Aquamarine fund so it was hardly a life or death situation. He writes about how he, ‘let loose an angry tirade’ and felt, ‘I’d failed, and I was hurt that my father inadvertently disempowered me by neglecting to inform me before he bought the bonds’ because ‘a big part of my identity is...as the protector and builder of wealth for my family and friends’ (p88). I almost choked on my tea! How could he be so egotistical and uncharitable to his father who had given him the money to start his fund in the first place!? It’s as if he feel he should be in charge of everything and is the only one who can make good decisions. Not knowing everything about the situation, I’d feel pretty miffed as a father to have the embarrassment of a financial mistake, which everyone makes even if they don’t admit it, compounded by a bollocking from the son who I had raised and given the seed capital to start his fund. The phrase, ‘monster ingratitude’ from King Lear springs to mind! What have his Dad’s personal finances got to do with him anyway? Notwithstanding his seeming belief that all the assets in his entirely family should be controlled by him. When his father tries to defend himself by saying that the bonds were rated triple A by Moody’s, a business Spier invested in, he says he replied, “I like Moody’s business, not their ratings. They always lag the market” (p88). This seems, to me, to be at odds with his claim that he only invests in businesses that don’t ‘prey on people’s weaknesses’ and present a ‘win-win proposition...for the consumer and society at large’ (p165). The ethics of investment is an almost infinitely complex area; but these are pretty big claims. I was left wondering what was ‘win-win’ about a business purporting to sell certainty, preying on a weakness almost all investors exhibit, when what it was actually doing, according to one of their investors, was nothing of the sort? If he knows their ratings are garbage, as he claims to, how can he hold this out as an ethical investment with a straight face?


I should be clear, I don’t make these criticisms to judge what’s right and what’s wrong as I am woefully ill equipped to do so. As Tolstoy writes in War and Peace, “what’s right and what’s good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by us.” I’m simply writing my impressions having read this book. It’s highly enjoyable and very valuable from a fund management perspective and very honest too and most of the criticisms in the last three paragraphs don’t detract from this. On the whole a good and refreshingly honest read.

Charlotte Bronte - Villette

I started reading this as it’s recommended in Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room Of One’s Own.  In my brief acquaintance with Woolf’s work, I find her style of prose in fiction to be too busy and a bit haphazard. Charlotte Bronte’s is much worse!  I would describe it as grandiloquent, verbose and florid.  Bronte will never use one word where she can use sixteen; or even sixty!  Equally, a point is never made once if it can be made five or ten times in succession using evermore high-falutin metaphors and analogies. Reams of text are dedicated to the most trifling matters and the overall effect of this fussy, busy and loquacious style is boredom; often to the point of confusion.  I was almost lulled to sleep by the neverending reiterations of the same point and seemingly endless, meandering descriptions of the most mundane scenes.  The combination of extremely over elaborate prose and highly ponderous narrative development is especially displeasing.

Things start out well enough with a nice scene of domesticity at the Bretton’s house where Lucy Snowe, our ‘heroine’ is staying with her godmother.  Polly, the tiny, precocious infant who arrives there is engaging and the scenes between her and Graham Bretton, the son of Mrs Bretton, are quite well presented.  Lucy, who is the victim of some unexplained misfortune that has left her with no family, moves on quickly.  Her new position is helping an invalided woman who dies quite soon after her appointment.  From there, she moves to France and chances upon a position teaching at a school.  At this point, the book really started to deteriorate for me.  Not only does the narrative cease to have a relatively brisk pace; the developments that do take place are thoroughly inane.  It’s as if someone has challenged Bronte to write the remainder of the story only involving characters she has already introduced.  This is a really shitty and facile narrative device but Bronte never seems to tire of it; even though I found it exasperating as a reader.  For example, there is is a young English doctor who helps Lucy with her case at the port in France.  This doctor not only turns out to visit regularly at the school where she gets a job but also to be the very same Graham Bretton that she stayed with at the books inception.  How the two could not recognise each other is inconceivable.  It’s also unimaginable to me that a godmother of an orphan could be close enough to have her to stay at her house for a prolonged period but never write to her subsequently to find out how she is.  Given that Mrs Bretton seems to like Lucy a lot and is highly attentive to her, both before and after the inexplicable break in communication, why would she let it happen in the first place?  Worse still, the eventual reacquaintance is made when Lucy passes out from exhaustion on the street and is found by none other than Graham Bretton who takes her to the Bretton’s new house in Villette, France where they have moved.  Of course, she also falls in love with him, abortively, before Graham is reunited with Polly via the chance circumstance of a fire a theatre where both happen to be watching a play.  I won’t go on to detail the numerous other incidents in the plot where the reader’s credulity is stretched to breaking point. Suffice to say Bronte either has an intense belief in serendipity or thinks all her readership are credulous halfwits.  None of it is even remotely believable and the majority of it is asinine!

Lucy starts off as a resourceful and plucky woman.  She is forced into self-sufficiency but seems to be making an excellent fist of it.  I hoped it was going to be a proto-feminist novel with Lucy as a capable, feisty superwoman.  Sadly, she is soon going weak at the knees for letters from Graham Bretton, indulging in pathetic sycophancy towards anyone that could be considered of higher society and giving untold attention to the most frivolous and inconsequential matters.  The fete held at the school in honour of Madame Beck, the proprietress, is an excellent example of how boring both the book and Lucy have become.  The only thing that seems to happen is that there is a play and one of the actresses is taken ill so Lucy has to step in.  She acts alongside another pupil, Ginevra, who is 1) Lucy’s cabin mate on the boat to France 2) a pupil at the school 3) a sometime rival for Graham’s affection 4) Polly’s cousin and 5) a ward of Polly’s father.  This gives only a brief glimpse of the soap opera style plot that one has to contend with in attempting to read this book.  Suffice to say, the play acts as a metaphor for the two ladies’ competing affections for Graham and everything is sentimentalised to a feverous pitch.  The two women are said to “transfigure the script” but don’t change any of the words.  Everything is conveyed with glances, flushes, quickening heartbeats; all of which struck me as meaningless nonsense.  Lucy’s character never recovers from this demise and nor does the book.  Sadly, the reader is subjected to an almost identical scene at a society ball where nothing really happens except for two or three glances and about 50 pages of ponderous, florid prose reinterpreting these looks and reiterating these interpretations until I was almost asleep.

Lucy is not a believable character at all.  Not only does she change from being adventurous and full of life to being a dullard.  She also falls in love with Graham but then doesn’t really care when he passes her over for Polly, which is totally unrealistic.  She does nothing about her love for Graham, doesn’t care when he loses interest, doesn’t pursue anyone else and eventually ends up with M. Paul from the school who she spends most of the book criticising and seems to have no interest in until the very end.  It is as if Bronte were just making it up as she went along.  The plot is boring and ridiculously uninventive and Lucy’s character is confused and unbelievable.  

To compound my extreme annoyance with this book, Bronte sometimes writes in French when reporting speech from the French characters, but not all the time.  I suppose it doesn’t matter a great deal as everything is always repeated several times so I doubt I missed much.  However, I do feel like the present publisher should have at least footnoted the, not inconsiderable, amount of foreign speech in this book.  Bronte also likes to use quotation marks for what should ordinarily be first person speech but delivers in the third person, past tense.  This is the first time I have ever seen this and, “he found it incomprehensible, he could not understand the purpose of this device; he wondered why it wasn’t just written in the first person, present tense like normal speech or written in the third person, past tense without the quotation marks, for goodness sake?!”  I found it contrived and it added nothing to what was already a deeply frustrating book stylistically.

I won’t write anymore about this book except to say that it has very few merits and that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.   

Anthony Trollope - The Warden

I remember reading in Trollope’s autobiography that his aim in writing fiction was to take a section of the earth and lift it up, as if under a glass case, and show it to the reader complete with all its buildings, occupants and the workings of its society. He’s successful in this endeavour in The Warden and creates a highly complex and delicate world for the reader’s delectation; full of rich, multifaceted characters. More than this though, he also seems to tilt the clod of earth he has elevated from the ground this way and that so it catches the light at different angles and makes us see the same situation in very different ways. Trollope always seems to write his arguments eloquently and positively, regardless of which character they favour, and sometimes it is hard to tell if he is mocking them via sarcasm or genuinely enthral to them. The general tone struck me as distinctly Wykehamical; by which I mean witty and intelligent but tending towards criticism and mockery. My conclusion is that most of it is probably pretty snarky in tone and some of it very obviously so. A prime example being the fantastically sarcastic Chapter 14 about Tom Towers and the powers of the press. It reminded me of “Eminent Victorians” by Strachey as it is saccharin and fawning in its praise but very obviously directed to the opposite end. Other subjects are treated more ambiguously as I’ll try to show later on when I write about the book’s main characters. Another interesting aspect of the narrator’s comments on the press are their prescience regarding current (c.2017) political developments. The following comments are remarkably applicable to the rise of Donald Trump and the blurring of lines between entertainment and politics given they were published in 1855:

Away with majorities in the House of Commons, with verdicts from judicial bench given after much delay, with doubtful laws, and the fallible attempts of humanity! Does not the Jupiter, coming forth daily with fifty thousand impressions full of unerring decision on every mortal subject, set all matters sufficiently at rest? Is not Tom Towers here, able to guide us and willing? p164

I suspect the book was originally a serialisation as most of the chapters are the same length and, in the cases where they aren’t, they are almost exactly half the length of the majority so two of them could be put together to form one installment. Key facts and details of the narrative are also reported with frequency but I couldn’t find any evidence to support my theory during my, admittedly brief, google searches!

The role of narrator is interesting but a little troublesome for me. He often speaks in the first person and talks of his hopes and fears for the characters as if they exist independently of him, which is probably Trollope’s aim. But who is he if he is not the omniscient author? He knows far too much that he couldn’t possibly as an external third party and offers no indication that’s what he is. Nonetheless, he claims there are things beyond his ken. Such as the private interview between Eleanor and Bold where he happily relates everything that passes between them, which no one but those two could possibly know, but goes on to say, “WHETHER OR NO the ill-natured prediction made by certain ladies in the beginning of the last chapter, was or was not carried out to the letter, I am not in a position to state”! It is a slightly uneasy and unsatisfactory mixture. Perhaps Trollope never intended the reader to assess the narrator in such detail but I feel this underestimates his intelligence and attention to detail, which is abundantly clear in other parts.

Another disagreeable aspect of the narrative started to grate around the fourth or fifth chapter. The entire debate about the hospital, and the attendant Warden’s stipend, turns on the contents of the founder’s will. I began to feel that the reader could make up their own mind about the rights and wrongs of the situation if only that document could be provided in the original or, at the very least, accurately summarised! Alas, this never comes to pass and we are limited to Haphazard’s interpretation. This ambiguity has obvious benefits for the plot and development of the characters but is a bit frustrating and feels somewhat obfuscatory. Against this, in the hands of lawyers all documents become open to interpretation and endless unnatural mental contortions. Equally, the book does relate how the founder’s will made provision for wool carders, who no longer exist, so there is a definite sense in which his original will cannot be followed to the letter!

Trollope uses dialogue quite sparingly and the effect is pleasing. When people speak it is usually short or, if it is more lengthy, enjoyable and well said. Long exchanges of short phrases, which are rarely accomplished successfully in my view, are often avoided by dispensing with direct quotations for one of the participants, for example “he assented” or “he could not agree with this and told him as much”. It’s a good device and I feel like, in general, I agree with the view of Vladimir Nabokov I read in his interview with Playboy that novels with an excess of dialogue rarely benefit from it.

Money is a central theme in this book; as Trollope indicates it was in his own life in his autobiography, even including a list of the profits he made from each book at the end. The Warden, Harding, is in receipt of £800 a year for the position that requires him to do nothing. He also receives £80 for precentorship in the Cathedral and lives rent free in a handsome house attached to the hospital with a beautiful garden. Using the date of publication as a start date and a simple inflation calculator £800 is reckoned to be £100k in 2017 money. The house is reckoned to be worth £80 a year, or £10k today, which would be ludicrously low for a big house in Winchester, where it’s supposed the story is set. This could indicate the systemic understatement of inflation or be a result of understatement of its value by the church in order to reduce the apparent lavishness of the Warden’s benefits. Regardless of the detail, it seems that the prospect of a reduction in Harding’s income to £150-160 (£20k) isn’t quite as dramatic as some of the other characters make out. Especially given the wealth of his friend the Bishop and the fact his daughter is married to the Bishop’s son, Grantly, the Archdeacon. What is more striking is the fact that governesses and tutors are said to live on £30-50 (£4-6k), which seems very low even if it does probably include room and board. I also had the impression that Harding is something of a spendthrift because he states he has been in the position for 12 years but also says he has no savings; meaning he’s seemingly spent his way through £1.2m in just over a decade excluding accommodation! The expensive publication of his book of church music gives further supporting evidence to this thesis.

As I have started to talk about Harding in relation to money, I’ll turn to his character first. The early chapters portray him as a kindly soul living a cushy life in harmony with the old bedesmen under his care and his unmarried daughter Eleanor. However, around Chapter 5 I began to see that he pursues a quiet and easy life to the point of being unprincipled. Against this, Trollope may be encouraging us to see him as broadly “innocently accepting what was innocently offered” as the situation is described in Chapter 7. However, when the debate about his right to the stipend develops this interpretation becomes less and less defensible.

First, if he is so kindly, and a man of the cloth nay less, shouldn’t he be looking into the equity of his huge ‘salary’ that requires no actual work from him? Secondly, if Bold is able to work out that there is a huge excess of income being produced by the estate shouldn’t Harding be able to work this out too? Again, as a member of the clergy I feel like Harding should be more aware of these potentially sensitive moral issues than a layman like Bold. Indeed, Harding’s decision to increase the bedesmen’s allowance could be taken to indicate that he knows the arrangements are grossly unfair so I wondered why he didn’t go further to redress this as it would have placed him above criticism. There could be arguments against this, like the fact that the church was a much larger and more active institution in society in the 19th century and consequently performed functions and contained individuals who were more interested in a salary than following the vocation to live as Jesus did. Certainly none of the ecclesiastical characters in this book live a life remotely like that of Jesus’! I think this is a weak argument and don’t place much stock in it. Far more persuasive to me are the arguments of self-interest, love for his daughter and desire to give her the best he can. The power of inertia also ordinarily persuades most people that the status quo is best. While these factors by no means excuse the behaviour of Harding, they are probably decisive for the weak and conservative character he’s portrayed as being.

In Chapters 10 and 11, Harding is show in a rather different light and I found myself won over by some of the arguments and presentations of his character. For example, he is shown to be a doting father and also accepts that what he has done is wrong. He isn’t proud, doesn’t try to blame anyone else for his mistakes and accepts his sinfulness and humanity. Of course, he is only human; I began to think. This more favourable disposition was increased and developed in Chapter 11 where his role is promoted as concerned with looking after the bedesmen, which I suppose he does do to an extent; albeit at great cost. As for the management of the estate and the hospital, this is presented as the job of the Church represented by the Bishop. My inclination towards him reaches its zenith when he decides to resign from the position he feels has become untenable but then declines quite sharply after that. Once he has taken his decision to resign he resolves to go to London and speak to Haphazard, which seems inexplicable to me. Why does he need to tell the lawyer he wants to resign? Why not tell the Bishop directly? He gives his own reason as hoping to persuade Haphazard to stop representing him, which seems fallacious and improbable given that he’s not paying the bill! He also asks Haphazard in Chapter 17 if he feels Hiram’s will entitles him to the salary but this also seems duplicitous as he has already said that he feels he is not. As such, we can only see his trip to London as a pusillanimous clutching at straws. Furthermore, the manner of his departure to London and his conduct there depict him as cowardly and spineless. He essentially runs away from the archdeacon and implicitly instructs his daughter to deliver news of this tardily, which is duplicitous and gutless. When in London, he dare not stay in his hotel until he has had his, in my view, entirely pointless interview with Haphazard and takes to hiding in St Paul’s. The whole episode is highly undignified and gives me the impression that he is not only craven but also stupid. The idea that he is stupid is powerfully reinforced by the note he writes to the Bishop in Chapter 19 when he resigns, which I will concede does at least offer some evidence that his body contains a spine! Here he attempts to argue that while he cannot continue in the job because he feels it unjust that he would not think anything less of his successor; which is, at best, contradictory! If the position is unfairly remunerated and untenable for him; surely the same must apply to any other person occupying it. In sum, his performance is a study in weakness and cowardice distinguished only by the fact that he does in fact resign. He goes on to partially negate this via his failure to extend his own moral awakening to a general principle or an attempt to correct the injustice he has eventually recognised. Just as I was thoroughly at my wits ends with his dismal behaviour, Trollope contrives to restore him to some form of respectability. It is clear that he has resigned more from a hatred of negative attention and conflict than from any higher minded principle like the love of truth or justice but he is, at least, prepared to admit this and doesn’t try to dress it up saying:

I cannot boast of my conscience, when it required the violence of a public newspaper to awaken it; but, now that it is awake, I must obey it. p213

He also bears his change in circumstances well and, as is the case throughout the book, is hard not to like in his treatment and interaction with his daughter, which is tender and warm. As to Trollope’s own view of Harding, it is somewhat elusive although I am inclined to see it as positive. Yes, he is weak and cowardly and this causes him to do dishonest and stupid things. Yet he is also a doting father, a good friend and seeks to do the right thing by the people he interacts with; even if they attack him like Bold. This is well demonstrated when he rebukes Eleanor for hating Bold after the revelation that he intends to try and take her father’s stipend away from him. Most people would not be able to see past their own self-interest in this way. The synopsis of society’s reaction to Harding’s difficulties may give us some insight into Trollope’s views:

“Opinion was much divided as to the propriety of Mr Harding’s conduct. The mercantile part of the community, the mayor and corporation, and council, also most of the ladies, were loud in his praise. Nothing could be more noble, nothing more generous, nothing more upright. But the gentry were of a different way of thinking – especially the lawyers and the clergymen. They said such conduct was very weak and undignified; that Mr Harding evinced a lamentable want of esprit de corps, as well as courage; and that such an abdication must do much harm, and could do but little good.” p242

I can hardly agree with those who think, “nothing could be more noble” and see more merit in the argument of those members of the clergy who criticise his want of “esprit de corps” although I could hardly condone this from a moral perspective. Nonetheless, I do think Harding did right to recognise and take responsibility for his errors and, furthermore, to criticise himself for needing the goading of a newspaper article to do so. I feel if he both resigned and also worked with the Bishop and the Archdeacon to find a more appropriate application for the excess funds then this would have represented an improvement on how he behaved. Against this, Harding is only human and, coming towards the end of his life, his desire for peace and quiet is understandable.

All told, I found him a believable and multifaceted character complete with some admirable features and some regrettable fobiles. Trollope adds some wonderful touches to his character too, like his constant fiddling on an imaginary cello. This is both funny and believable and did a lot to animate his character for me. His fevered playing, and Haphazard’s consequent confusion, during the late night interview with the lawyer in London is an unforgettable and hilarious scene.

The presentation of the character of Bold starts out positively. He seems to be in the right regarding the distribution of the excess income from Hiram’s will and I was positively disposed to his active, reforming character. He seems to want to do good both in his work as a physician and through the projects of social reform he undertakes in the absence of a busy work practice. My first inkling that his actions don’t produce an unalloyed good in terms of outcomes came during the discussions of the bedesmen regarding their decision to sign the petition claiming their right to the income or not. Here it seems that the bedesmen’s hopes of receiving the excess have been unfairly raised. As Bunce eloquently puts it, “a hundred a year? Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a year be to be given, it’s the likes of you that will get it?”. While this could be laid at the door of Finney, the lawyer who’s hired to represent them in the suit against the Warden, I don’t think Bold can possibly be fully exculpated as he’s paying for the project. I also questioned Bold’s motives, wondering whether he really cares about the bedesmen or simply wants the fame and praise that will come to him from an act of reform successfully undertaken. In the end, I couldn’t find much evidence to support this except to note that everyone acts out of self interest at some level; which is hardly a novel or insightful observation.

So, while Trollope doesn’t seem to offer any outright criticism of Bold during the early chapters of the book we do see him as increasingly human as the story continues. He is initially resolute in his stance concerning his love for Eleanor. He recognises that she will not appreciate an unprovoked attack on her father and will probably take against him but resolves not to alter his course. He reasons that if Eleanor is the kind of woman that he thinks she is then she won’t be so partisan in her interpretation of the situation. However, Eleanor does react very badly and, while she has reservations privately, she rejects him when they meet. By Chapter 11, we see Bold agree to abandon the suit at Eleanor’s urging, which makes me see him as considerably less worthy and principled than I had done initially. As the narrator rightly observes, “how weakly he had managed his business! He had already done the harm, and then stayed his hand when the good which he had in view was to be commenced.” (p182). To be sure, Bold is in love with Eleanor and this represents a strong, perhaps irresistible, counter-incentive. Against this, Bold was also in love with Eleanor when he undertook the project so should have foreseen this or never commenced it. Life, especially emotional life, is rarely so straightforward as this type of theorising makes it out to be. Often I think I can do something only to find myself incapable in the face of strong emotions to the contrary. Nevertheless, as a reader, it made me think less of Bold to see him vacillate on an issue he’d seemed so unswervingly dedicated to. Chapter 12 continues this decline in my opinion of Bold when he goes to Grantly’s house to tell him of his decision to abandon the suit. Grantly wrongly presumes that this is because Bold has heard about Haphazard’s opinion and realises there is only a slim chance of winning. Grantly then goes on to tell Bold he must pay the cost of procuring Haphazard’s opinion and Bold is apoplectic with rage. I couldn’t understand why is he so angry if he loves Eleanor and is firm in his intentions? Yes, Grantly is rude and this constitutes considerable provocation but I had thought that Bold had resolved to relegate the hospital affair below his love of Eleanor? Bold’s mindset is confused and a bit hot headed. I found Grantly’s criticism contains some truth even though he’s wrong about Bold’s motivations:

‘Having exposed a gentleman who was one of your father’s warmest friends, to all the ignominy and insolence which the press could heap upon his name; having somewhat ostentatiously declared that it was your duty as a man of high public virtue to protect those poor old fools whom you have hum-bugged there at the hospital, you now find that the game costs more than it’s worth, and so you make up your mind to have done with it.’ p147

Here I feel I hear Trollope, or the narrator’s, criticism of Bold’s action. Bold is indeed a little bold in his presumption to know what’s best and to think it his duty to precipitate it. Furthermore, I saw him as weak, indecisive and selfish when he disregards his father’s close relationship with Harding in the name of justice; only to renounce this principle when he wants Eleanor to love him. He wants to portray himself as virtuous but, when his resolve is tested, he acts out of self-interest in exactly the same way as Grantly. However, unlike Grantly, he cannot claim to be steadfast in adherence to his moral code. For the first few chapters, I thought that Bold would be the hero of the story and Eleanor the heroine. In the end he looks more like a sanctimonious busybody; intoxicated by the thought of his own virtue but unable to follow it through in the face of personal heartache.

The character of Dr. Grantly is the starkest example of what I take to be Trollope’s unusual conclusions in this book. Initially, he’s painted as a repugnant, pugnacious ecclesiastical rottweiler far too concerned with worldly matters for a member of the clergy. I imagined he would be the butt of much criticism. He is indeed cast as highly unlikeable almost all the way through the book. Chapter 8 sees him gamble at the Warden’s party, live a lavish home life, pretend to work in his study and duplicitously couch self-interest and partisanship as defence of the church. This last accusation could be challenged as it is possible to see the church’s interest as synonymous with that of its membership. Personally, I reject this argument as I find it irreconcilable with scripture but I concede the Bible is subject to many interpretations! Even much later on, in Chapter 18, I still see him in an unattractive light as he tries to bully Harding into adopting his point of view by adducing Eleanor’s prospective ruin if he resigns. This especially grated with me given that Grantly is filthy rich and married to Eleanor’s sister; so could easily avert the anticipated ruin himself. In the end, it is revealed that these are empty threats and that Grantly and his father have no intention of making Harding pay lawyer’s fees or letting him and his daughter go to ruin. At this point, Trollope entirely reverses the judgement of Grantly I had been expecting for the whole book:

"We fear that he is represented in these pages as being worse than he is; but we have had to do with his foibles, and not with his virtues. We have seen only the weak side of the man, and have lacked the opportunity of bringing him forward on his strong ground. That he is a man somewhat too fond of his own way, and not sufficiently scrupulous in his manner of achieving it, his best friends cannot deny. That he is bigoted in favour, not so much of his doctrines as of his cloth, is also true: and it is true that the possession of a large income is a desire that sits near his heart. Nevertheless, the archdeacon is a gentleman and a man of conscience; he spends his money liberally, and does the work he has to do with the best of his ability; he improves the tone of society of those among whom he lives. His aspirations are of a healthy, if not of the highest, kind. Though never an austere man, he upholds propriety of conduct both by example and precept. He is generous to the poor, and hospitable to the rich; in matters of religion he is sincere, and yet no Pharisee; he is in earnest, and yet no fanatic. On the whole, the Archdeacon of Barchester is a man doing more good than harm – a man to be furthered and supported, though perhaps also to be controlled; and it is a matter of regret to us that the course of our narrative has required that we should see more of his weakness than his strength." p240

This verdict, coming on the side of conservatism and tradition even if they seem grossly unjust was, to me, highly unanticipated and surprising! For this reason, while I can’t really agree with the general sentiment against reform, I do think that the book is much more interesting than if things had proceeded as I initially expected.

This endorsement of conservatism and criticism of reform is continued throughout the book’s conclusion. I suppose I would like to feel like just reform would always work out for the best but have to admit this isn’t always true in life. George Orwell says the book opines that, “a time-honoured abuse...is frequently less bad than its remedy”. This is unpleasant and out-of-keeping with the romantic, moralising tone of many novels; but that doesn’t make it untrue. I thought Bold would be the hero of the piece and Grantly the villain but Trollope unequivocally prefers Grantly. After Harding is forced into resignation by the baying press the hospital falls into disrepair and no new bedesmen are choose to replace those that die. In this way, Trollope rams home the fact that more harm has come from idealistic notions of reform than from maintenance of a seemingly inequitable status quo. The bedesmen who sign the petition are portrayed as greedy; grasping for cash even as they lie dying in better conditions than they ever could have imagined. Bunce and Harding are praised as goodly. Trollope mocks the conception of reform as something good in and of itself as naive and ignorant. This section, where the narrator talks about the wonderfully named Scottish pamphlet writer Dr Pessimist Anticant, is a good example:

’Tis a pity that he should not have recognised the fact, that in this world no good is unalloyed, and that there is but little evil that has not in it some seed of what is goodly. p175

This reminded me of two short passages from War and Peace by Tolstoy, both in Chapter 11 of Part 2 and both spoken by Prince Andrei. They’re on different pages but are part of the same discussion so I have put them together:

“It is not given to man to know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will err and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong...But what’s right and what’s good must be judged by one who knows all, but not by us.” p410-411

I find this sentiment to contain profound truth; even though this truth is more theoretical than practical. We’re all so enthrall to our own supposed understanding of the world and intoxicated by the idea of our free will it’s hard, if not impossible, to really live like this. In this sense, I liked the end of The Warden even though it’s hard not to feel like there would be better applications for the money from Hiram’s will than a massive salary for the Warden! Things are not always as they seem to human understanding and anyone who has made any hard or complex decisions must acknowledge this. I also felt the book was very strong on the power of self interest and love. Harding and Bunce are given high praise for overcoming these inclinations in their own ways; albeit not in a facile, unalloyed way. Bold and Grantly both succumb to self-interest but I think Trollope prefers Grantly because he sticks to his principles while Bold cannot maintain his in the face of self-interest. Indeed, Bold can be accused of not knowing what he wants and acting in a confused and weak manner as I hope I’ve demonstrated earlier. I also liked this book as, in keeping with Trollope’s criticism of facile models of good and bad, there don’t really seem to be any heroes or heroines; the characters are human. The closest is, to my mind, Bunce and he probably only seems so because he is a minor character. I loved his speech to his fellow bedesmen as they sign the petition and, even though I have quoted it briefly already, I’ll reproduce it in its entirety here:

“‘I tell him now that he’s done a foolish and a wrong thing: he’s turned his back upon one who is his best friend; and is playing the game of others, who care nothing for him, whether he be poor or rich, well or ill, alive or dead. A hundred a year? Are the lot of you soft enough to think that if a hundred a year be to be given, it’s the likes of you that will get it?’ – and he pointed to Billy Gazy, Spriggs, and Crumple. ‘Did any of us ever do anything worth half the money? Was it to make gentlemen of us we were brought in here, when all the world turned against us, and we couldn’t longer earn our daily bread? A’n’t you all as rich in your ways as he in his?’ – and the orator pointed to the side on which the warden lived. ‘A’n’t you getting all you hoped for, ay, and more than you hoped for? Wouldn’t each of you have given the dearest limb of his body to secure that which now makes you so unthankful?’” p48

In the books final passages, Bold and Eleanor are married, Bold and Grantly become tentative friends and the Bishop and Harding while away the twilight of their lives in contended companionship. What had seemed so all important and irreconcilable becomes irrelevant and forgotten. Life makes its inexorable march onwards leaving everything to eventually disintegrate into inevitable irrelevance. I liked a lot of the sentiments expressed in this book and thought it was, in the main, well written. The excellent plot, the characters and their unusual, realistic portrayal made it all the more enjoyable for me and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

Leo Tolstoy - A Confession

This confession is deeply personal and immediately made me want to know more about Tolstoy’s biography.  Some information is provided but given that the whole book is scarcely 100 pages it’s not rich in detail.  The pages are dense with intense ideas and reflections on how Tolstoy’s answers to questions concerning the meaning of his life evolved over time.  I empathize with much of what he writes but, in certain places, felt I couldn’t gain the same perspective or felt like Tolstoy goes much further than I would be happy to.  Like the novels I have read, there are some very moving passages and hugely perceptive sections on the internal, emotional life we all lead and hide to a greater or lesser extent.

I’ll start with what biographical information there is.  Tolstoy was born in 1828 and wrote this book aged 51 in 1879.  He lived a privileged childhood and  graduated to a career in the army, which he pursued until 26 (c. 1854) where he lived a dissolute and rapacious life.  He writes passionately about how the educated, privileged section of society professes to adhere to spiritual and religious codes but really, “our genuine, sincere concern was over how to gain as much money and fame as possible” (p10).  This seems to ring entirely true to me today with many rich people, myself included, publicly declaring themselves to be appalled at the inequality that exists in society while privately amassing as much money, status and security as possible.  Tolstoy also writes about the perverse effects this social milieux had on his approach to life, “every time I tried to display  my innermost desires - a wish to be morally good - I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to the base desires I was praised and encouraged.  Ambition, lust for power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, revenge, were all respected qualities.  As I yielded to these passions I became like my elders and felt that they were pleased with me” (p6).  Eventually, disgusted with the lifestyle and what he sees as the religious duplicity of his class, Tolstoy rejects traditional Russian Orthodoxy and enthusiastically adopts a form of rationalism or empiricism.  He writes eloquently of this era of his life, “these people became repugnant to me, and I became repugnant to myself, and realized that the religion was a fraud...Now when I think about this period and about my state of mind and that of those around me (and incidentally there are thousands of them nowadays), I feel sad, terrible, ridiculous; it arouses in me precisely the same feelings as one might experience in a madhouse” (p9).

He started to write as his new career and went to Europe to learn more and try to make up for his feeling that he was trying to teach something he didn’t know himself.  He returns after six years (c.1860/1?) and started to involve himself in the education of peasant in schools following the liberation of the serfs in Russia in 1861.  He worked like this, managing the schools and publishing a journal, until he became exhausted and left to the steppes of Bashkir to ‘live a primitive life’.  He marries on his return (1862) and enters a period of his life focussed on his family and attempting to provide for them in the best possible way for 15 years (perhaps until c.1877?).  During this period he considered the writer's task unimportant and pursued writing only as a means of attaining material goals for his family.  He says he didn’t concern himself with questions about the meaning of his life and life in general.  He lived this life until ‘five years ago’ (c. 1874?) when he started to experience moments of ‘bewilderment’ when his thoughts would leave the material plans he had for himself and his family and ask him, “But why?”, “to what end?” and “for what purpose?  I empathised a lot with the feelings of emptiness and futility that arise from the conflict of living a finite life in an infinite universe.  Tolstoy writes, “what is the meaning of my life? It has none.  Or: what will come of my life? Nothing.  Or: why does everything there is exist, and why do I exist?  Because it does.” (p35).  He can’t shake his existential malaise and comes to see life as evil,  “‘Life is that which it should not be: evil.  The transition into nothingness is the only thing sacred in life,’ says Schopenhauer.  ‘Everything in the world, both folly and wisdom, richness and poverty, happiness and grief, all is vanity and emptiness.  A man dies and nothing remains.  This is absurd,’ says Solomon.” (p42-3).

He goes on to describe a process of searching human knowledge for answers to these questions that have caused him to see life as an evil.  He categorises human knowledge into two branches, the empirical and the speculative.  He finds fault with pure empiricism and doubts its ability to provide any meaningful answers to his questions:

“But the only answer this branch of knowledge provided to my question concerning the meaning of life was this: you are that which you call your life; you are a temporary, incidental accumulation of particles.  The mutual interaction and alteration of these particles produces in you something you refer to as your life.  This accumulation can only survive for a limited length of time; when the interaction of these particles ceases, that which you call your life will cease, bringing an end to all your questions.  You are a randomly united lump of something.  This lump decomposes and the fermentation is called your life.  The lump will disintegrate and the fermentation will end, together with all your questions.  This is the answer given by the exact side of knowledge, and if it adheres strictly to its principles, it cannot answer otherwise” P35

He’s also dissatisfied with explanations invoking  progress or evolution, writing:

““It became apparent to me that to say that in the infinity of time and space everything is developing, becoming more perfect, complex and differentiated, is really to say nothing at all.  They are all words without a meaning, for in the infinite there is no simple or complex, no before or after, and no better or worse” P28

Nor can he find any comfort in explanations from the speculative realm:

“[to] the other side of knowledge, the speculative realm...the universe is something infinite and incomprehensible.  Man’s life is an inscrutable part of this inscrutable whole...The mistake is identical:  development and perfection can have no purpose or direction in infinity, and as far as my question is concerned, no answer” P36

So Tolstoy finds himself lost; having rejected religion and attempted to live a rational life.  Haunted by his irrational fear of death and the meaningless of finite human life.  He includes this quite long, rather mystic allegory about the human condition.  I found it memorable, perhaps because of the exotic details like the steppe, the dragon and the well:

“It is only possible to go on living while you are intoxicated with life; once the sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere trick, and a stupid trick!  That is exactly what it is:  there is nothing either witty or amusing, it is only cruel and stupid.  There is an Eastern fable about a traveller who is take unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal.  In order to escape the beast the traveller hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him.  The poor fellow does not dare climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon.  So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side.   Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks round and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way around the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it.   Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon.   The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish.  But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them.   In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the Dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse - day and night - gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.” P21

Feeling like he has exhausted human knowledge in his search for answers, Tolstoy begins to look at the other people around him and wonders how they find ways to forget about their predicament in the well or, at least, continue hanging on and sucking the honey.  He identifies four main approaches:

1. “ignorance...the majority of the people of this kind are either women, or very young, or very stupid and have not yet understood the problem of life that presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon and Buddha.” P44
2. “Epicureanism…” P45
3. Suicide - “The third method of escape is through strength and energy.  It consists of realizing that life is evil and senseless, and destroying it” P46
4. “The fourth road of escape is that of weakness.  It consists of clinging to a life that is evil and futile, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it” P47

As well as displaying a healthy disrespect for women,  Tolstoy shows a strength of belief in death as preferable to life that I find hard to understand.  He puts himself in the category of the weak but seems to think he would like to be in the suicide category, which I can partially understand if one really can’t deal with life’s seeming meaninglessness.  However, given that life can be enjoyable even if it is ultimately futile (the honey in the allegory), why is it preferable to destroy it?  Because of the certainty that action brings?  It seems to me that there is no possible, certain way of telling if death will be preferable to life so the safe bet would be to go on living.  Of course, I am speaking as someone who has yet to find life’s meaninglessness, which I think I do appreciate, overwhelming.  Perhaps I am too young at the moment.  Or very stupid.  Or a woman.  Tolstoy writes, “for if I know of something better and it is within my reach, then why not yield to it?  I myself belong to this category.” but how can we be sure that what is in reach is better?  More certain and less subject to injustice, perhaps, but how can ‘better’ be judged in such an abject absence of information!?  I suppose my response would be that my life and everything in the world may or may not be meaningless but there is simply no way of knowing and that it’s unnecessary to place so much importance on meaning and significance.  Especially to the extent where you’d rather kill yourself than go on living.  But perhaps I am yet to feel the full force of futility!

Tolstoy finds his answers in faith, which may seem unusual given his earlier rejection of religion.  Again, Tolstoy proceeds with incredible force of belief in his convictions but I lack his convictions.  His mastery of feeling and emotion would seem to dictate that these play a central role in spiritual reflections.  And sometimes there is no denying the feeling of a presence of God, or love, or oneness in the universe.  Equally, there are often opposite feelings of comparable strength.  Tolstoy seems to feel the importance of religious doctrines and institutions in a way I am simply incapable of doing at the moment.  In fact, most of my feelings tend in the other direction as I am naturally wary of authority and instruction.  As with the preference for death over life, perhaps I am still too young or too stupid or have yet to apprehend the problem in its totality.  Tolstoy starts out by realising that, of all the branches of human enquiry, faith alone is really concerned with answering the questions he is asking, which seems to me to be broadly true:

“Faith remained as irrational to me as before, but I could not fail to recognise that it alone provides mankind with the answers to the question of life, and consequently with the possibility of life...Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers are given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death.” P57

But he moves pretty quickly on to claiming that a far more extensive religious infrastructure is required to sustain life, which I just don’t follow or feel in the same way.  For example:

“The concepts of an infinite God, the sanctity of the soul, the relationship[s between God and the affairs of man, of moral good and evil, are all concepts that have been worked out in history, through the life of a humanity that is hidden to us.  Without the existence of these concepts there would be neither life nor myself, and yet I, rejecting all the efforts of humanity, wanted to do it all over again, alone, in my own way...I began to realise that the most profound wisdom of man is preserved in the answers given by faith, and that I did not have the right to negate them on grounds of reason and, above all, that it is these answers alone that can reply to the question of life” P61

Part of me respects the humility and reverence for history but another part of me revolts at the non-existent justification for this extreme doctrine.  He seems to be saying that if it happened throughout history then it must be right and a necessary precondition for life!  I’m sure humans have executed each other in one way or another for the whole of human history; but it is this very act that disgusts Tolstoy and causes him to write the most moving part of the whole book!  It is true most religions don’t advocate killing but some do in certain circumstances, including Christianity.  It seems inconsistent and ill-reasoned.  In some ways, this is what we should expect and this is what Tolstoy is explicitly telling the reader to expect as he returns to faith after attempting, unsuccessfully, to live by reason alone.  However, I still find too many things I find unsatisfactory are adopted too quickly with too little justification.  Perhaps I am just wanting “to do it all over again, alone, in my own way”!  Tolstoy’s new position can be summarised as, “Where there is life there is faith” (P58).  One of the main things that seems to have lead him in this direction is his interaction with the labouring or peasant classes and his disgust with religion as practiced by his own class.

Tolstoy comes to believe fervently that the life he was leading, and religion as practiced by most other members of his class, were corrupting his mind and his soul:

“I realised that I had been blinded from the truth not so much through my mistaken thoughts as through my life itself, which had been spent in satisfying desire and in exclusive conditions of epicureanism .  I realised that my question as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite correct.  The only mistake was that I had extended an answer that related only to myself to life as a whole.  I had asked myself what my life was and had received the answer that it is an evil and meaningless.  And this was quite true, for my life of indulgent pursuits was meaningless and evil, but that answer applied only to my life and not to human life in general.  I understood a truism that I subsequently found in the gospels: that people often prefer darkness to light because their deeds are evil.  For he who acts maliciously hates light and avoids it so as not to throw light on his deeds.  I understood that in order to understand life it is first of all necessary that life is not evil and meaningless, and then one may use reason in order to elucidate it.  I realised why I had for so long been treading so close to such an obvious truth without seeing it, and that in order to think and speak about human life and not about the lives of a few parasites.  The truth has always been the truth, just as 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not admitted it, because in acknowledging that 2 x 2 = 4 I would have had to admit that I was a bad man.  And it was more important and necessary for me to feel that I was good than to admit that 2 x 2 = 4.  I came to love good people and to loathe myself, and I acknowledged the truth.  And then it all became clear to me” P67

This is a moving passage and I think it contains a good deal of truth about how important our actions and surroundings are in creating reality.  We try to judge ourselves based on what is around us and Tolstoy’s extreme change in mindset when he changes his environs is alluring.  However, there are aspects of it I disagree with.  First is the delineation by class.  I found it too dogmatic and also hard to understand.  I can accept that the majority of the rich are in some way evil because they are so greedy and fearful.  But can the majority of peasants be thought to be so wonderful?  This kind of Slavophilic deification of the peasantry is similar to Dostoevsky and a doesn’t really appeal to me.  I have found humanity to be more homogenous with all manner of person found in all manner of classes. Another problem I have with it is seeming rejection of work in the educated classes.  There are plenty of educated people in society doing good, worthwhile, meaningful jobs and Tolstoy seems to discount this just because it isn’t agricultural labour.  It’s all a bit Chinese Cultural Revolution for my tastes!  What about doctors, academic, social workers and administrators?  Characters like Levain, Prince Nikolai and Tolstoy's own life spring to mind too.  Why should a labourer be placed above them?  Should anyone be placed above each other in a truly Christian assessment of humanity?  As usual, these sort of religious assertions tend to produce more questions than they answer.  Here is Tolstoy on the blessedness of hard labour:

“In contrast to what I saw happening in my own circle , where the whole of life is spent in idleness, amusement and dissatisfaction with life, I saw that these people who laboured hard throughout their entire lives were less dissatisfied with life than the rich. In contrast to the people of our class who resist and curse the privations and sufferings of their lot, these people accept sickness and grief without question or protest, and with a calm and firm conviction that this is how it must be, that it cannot be otherwise and that it is all for the good” P65

There is doubtless some truth in what he says but it is simply too general and takes too much joy in other, poorer people’s stoicism for my tastes.  I’m sure the blessed poor would rather be rich and evil and not have to suffer like they do and so it feels a bit voyeuristic, and even materially false, to exalt their luck at having a poor life.  Even though it may be entirely true!  Criticisms of the hypocrisy of privileged class ring far truer to me perhaps because it is something I have seen at close quarters.  Perhaps because I feel like the rich have all the resources and should be able to do something better with them.  Although I think it is simply the fact that rich people say they care about other people but act like they don’t which is the gratuitous thing!  Anyway, Tolstoy is excellent on this and wrties scathingly and bitingly about it:

“But believers of our class lived, just as I did, in excess, striving to maintain and increase it and fearing deprivation, suffering and death.  Like myself and all non-believers, they lived only to satisfy their desires and they lived badly just as, if not worse than, non-believers.  

No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith.  Only actions showing me that they had an understanding of life that did not make them afraid, as I was, of poverty, sickness and death might have convinced me...I realised that the belief these men had was not the faith I was seeking and that their faith is not really faith but only one of the epicurean consolations of life.” P63-4

Tolstoy believes that interaction with the working class and ‘loving good people’ shook him out his malaise and returned him to faith:

“The thing that saved me was that I managed to tear myself away from my exclusive existence and see the true life of the simple working people, and realise that this alone is genuine life” P71

While I am sceptical about the sanctity of agricultural labour and the merits of Russian Orthodox Church, I can definitely recognise the benefits of doing something you have faith in and loving people better than yourself.  So, as with lots of this book, I found myself disagreeing with Tolstoy’s ultimate conclusions while agreeing with lots of the sentiments and ideas he express.  Some of them are very beautifully expressed too!

Tolstoy’s return to organised religion is all a bit much for me to stomach and I know I have written about this already so I won’t go into detail about what is a huge, and hugely complex, topic in its own right.  That’s the nature of this book, it is short and deceptively simple but it drags you into all these infinite questions because of the chosen subject.  Tolstoy is definitely aware of the problems himself and even sketches some of them in the latter pages: “As I turned my attention to all that is done by people who profess Christianity, I was horrified” (P92) and “And assuming that truth lies in union by love, I was struck by the fact that theology was destroying the thing it should be advancing” (P88).  But he goes on to present us with this extraordinary passage that seems to claim it’s explicable and normal for competing religions, which both or all claim to be the true keepers of a faith based on love, to kill each other!!

“Then I understood it all.  While I am seeking faith, the force of life, they are seeking the best way of fulfilling, in the eyes of men, certain human obligations.  And in fulfilling these human affairs they perform them in a human fashion.  However much they might speak about their compassion for their lost brethren, or of their prayers for those who stand before the throne of the Almighty, it has always been necessary to use force in carrying out human duties.  Just as it has always been applied, so it is now, and always will be.  If two religions each consider that they hold the truth and the other a lie, then in order to convert their brother to the truth they will each preach their own doctrines.  And if a false doctrine is taught to the inexperienced sons of the Church which holds no truth, then that Church will have no choice other than to burn the books and banish the person who is leading his sons into temptation.  What can be done with a sectarian who, in the eyes of the Orthodox Church, is ablaze with the fire of false doctrine, and who is misleading the sons of the Church in the most important matter of life, in faith?  What can be done with him other than chop off his head or imprison him?” P91

I can’t say I really understood this or subscribe to what it is saying.  It seems that the answer is broadly, ‘humans always kill each other so why expect anything different in religion?’.  This strikes me as depressing and seems to negate the special status and power that religion is claiming for itself.  As I mentioned earlier, religion and its explanations always seem to lead down a rabbit hole that opens up into an endless warren where more questions are asked than answers given.  Or the answers end up being delivered in a kind of double think, a bit like the passage above, and it is unclear if you’ve learned anything at all!

Tolstoy describes his own experience in terms of a boat trip across a river of almost Biblical proportions!  It is certainly a description of a religious experience of some sort, to me, if only one experienced with hindsight.  As such, I think it explains Tolstoy’s confession well.  It’s not a reasoned account of his return to religion and never could be.  It’s more a story about his mystical journey back to religion:

“Something like this happened to me: without remembering when I had been put into it, I found myself in a boat that had set off from some unknown shore.  The direction to the opposite shore was shown to me, oars were put into my inexperienced hands, and I was left alone.  I rowed as best I could and moved forwards, but the further I rowed towards the centre of the stream, the faster the current became that was carrying me directly away from my object, and I kept meeting more oarsmen like myself, who were being carried away by the current.  There were lone oarsmen who continued to row; there were some who had discarded their oars; there were large rowing boats and enormous ships full of people, some struggling with the current, others abandoning themselves to it.  And as I looked at the flow of those drifting downstream, I found that the more I rowed, the more I forgot the directions that had been given to me.  In the very middle of the current, amid the crowd of boats and ships being pulled downstream, I lost my directions and abandoned my oars.  From all directions people were being carried downstream by sail and oar, shouting for joy and assuring me and themselves that there could be no other direction.  And I believed them and flowed with them.  And I was carried a long way, so far that I could hear the noise of the rapids which were bound to shatter me, and I caught sight of the boats that were already being smashed against them.  Then I came to my senses.  For a long time I could not understand what had happened to me.  I saw nothing ahead of me except the destruction towards which I was rushing, but which I feared, and I could see no salvation anywhere, and I did not know what to do.  But looking behind me I saw countless boats that could not stop but were defiantly pushing against the current, and I remembered the oars and the direction of the shore, and I began to struggle back against the current, towards the shore.

The shore was God, the direction was tradition, and the oars were the freedom given to me to row towards the shore and unite with God.  In this way the force of life rose up within me and I started to live once again” P76-7

As a cynic and general nitpicker, I would be interested to see how fully Tolstoy abandoned the life of privilege and renounced his worldly goods from a biographical perspective.  He certainly talks a good game in this book but perhaps the reality was somewhat different, as it often is when it comes to material comfort!  I suspect that Tolstoy probably did renounce it but I still want to find out!

My favourite part of the book, alongside the indictment of his class and their religious sophistry, was this section:

“Thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the precariousness of my superstition in progress.  When I saw the heads being separated from the bodies and heard them thump, one after the next, into the box I understood, and not just with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence and progress could justify this crime.  I realized that even if every single person since the day of creation had, according to whatever theory, found this necessary I knew that it was unnecessary and wrong, and therefore that judgements on what is good and necessary must not be based on what other people say and do, or on progress, but on the instincts of my own soul.  Another instance in which I felt that the superstition of progress was inadequate in regard to life was the death of my brother.  He was an intelligent, kind-hearted, serious man who became ill when he was young, suffered for over a year and died in torment without having understood why he had lived, and still less why he was dying.  No theories could provide the answers to these questions, either for him or for me, during his slow and torturous death.”  P12-13

It reminded me a lot of my favourite section from Anna Karenina when Levain is discussing the concept of ‘living for God’ with his serf or servant in his trap.  This is where Tolstoy is really excellent.  Describing the visceral, all consuming feelings that give us certainty in life and seem to guide us far more powerfully than reason or thoughts.  Often, they are difficult to interpret and analyse after the event and we are left feeling confused.  In some ways, Tolstoy seems to have felt his way back to religion, and had to do so in order to continue living, and this book is in part an expression of that journey.