A socialist Revolutionary terrorist shoots dead Minister of Education. Students demonstrate to applaud the deed. More students drafted into the army. Tolstoy writes open protest letter to the Tsar.
22nd February—Tolstoy excommunicated, excommunication order appearing on all church doors in Russia. Sofia Tolstoy writes to the Synod and the Metropolitans to protest. Tolstoy is revered and reviled. He works on his pacifist ‘Notes for Soldiers’ (published the following year in England). Sofia starts work on her autobiography, My Life. June—Tolstoy seriously ill with malaria. September—Tolstoy family goes to Crimea for him to convalesce. He is mobbed along the way.
6th January. The old year ended and the new year started with a great tragedy. On 25th December, Christmas Day, I heard of Levushka’s death. He passed away the previous day, at nine in the evening. Despite being ill I packed immediately and set off for Yasnaya, accompanied by Ilya. I arrived that evening and Dora threw herself into my arms, sobbing hysterically, while Lyova stood there looking thin and distraught, blaming himself, his wife and everyone else for his son’s death. He blamed them for letting him catch cold, for letting him go out in a thin coat, for neglecting his poor health and delicate constitution; and these accusations were harder to bear than anything else. But their grief was unspeakable! All the emotional agony I had endured with Vanechka’s death surfaced from the depths of my soul, and I was suffering both for myself and for my children, the young parents. I was unable to help them; Westerlund, Dora’s father, arrived and managed to relieve Lyova’s conscience a little. Dear Maria Schmidt was there with them all the time, and Andryusha arrived for the funeral. And then once again it was the open pit, the little waxen face surrounded by hyacinths and lilies, the harshness of death and the frantic grief of the mourners.
Then news came that Tanya had given birth to a dead baby girl. I was stunned. No sooner had I attended Levushka’s funeral than I had to set off again that evening to see Tanya; Andryusha came with me. It tore my heart to see her so ill and grief-stricken, her husband away and her hopes of being a mother cruelly dashed. She bore it so bravely, playing with her stepchildren, reading, knitting and chatting as if nothing had happened. But I could see the grief and despair in her eyes. Her stepchildren, especially Natasha, are very sweet to her, but she said to me: “Looking at my dead baby gave me a hint of the maternal instinct, and I was horrified by its power.”
I returned to Moscow on 3rd January. Sasha, L.N. and the servants gave me a very warm welcome. We have announced Misha’s wedding to Lina Glebova. She is madly in love with him. I went to the Glebovs’ today for the blessing, which moved me to tears. Lina is radiantly happy.
8th January. I spent the day doing essential tasks. I went to the bank, ordered an enlarged portrait of Levushka, went to the bathhouse and did some shopping, and took my dress to the cleaners for Misha’s wedding. L.N. is ill—first it was a chill, now it’s a bad stomach. He is feeling wretched. He doesn’t want to die—the idea clearly terrifies and depresses him.
10th January. I went to the Rumyantsev Museum, and took out his unpublished comedy The Nihilist, or The Infected Family, which I think I shall read at my charity concert. I looked through a few things with An. Al. Goryainova this evening, but there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting to read all the way through. We decided on Friday that we would all read something aloud.
19th January. Very worried about Lev Nikolaevich’s health. He has been taking quinine for three days and seems to be feeling better, but his legs ache in the evening. His mind has simply dried up, and this depresses him. These family griefs have taken their toll. Then all the arrangements for Misha’s wedding. He and Lina spend the whole time swooning over each other unpleasantly.
28th January. We spent the week preparing for Misha’s wedding, paying visits, going shopping, making clothes, sewing little bags of sweets and so on.
Today we heard from poor Masha; her baby has just died inside her, and she is in bed in a state of collapse, grieving inconsolably, like Tanya, for her lost hopes. I want to cry all the time. I feel terribly, terribly sad for my two little girls, starved by their father’s vegetarian principles. He couldn’t have known, of course, that they would be too undernourished to feed the children in their wombs. But he has always gone against my wishes and my maternal instinct, which is never mistaken if a mother loves her children.
31st January. Misha and Lina Glebova were married today. It was a splendid society wedding. The Grand Duke Sergei came from St Petersburg for the day, the Chudovsky choristers sang, there were a mass of flowers and fine clothes, some beautiful prayers for the newly-weds and a lot of vanity and glitter. What an unemotional way to introduce these two young creatures, so in love with each other, to their new life together.
Nothing amuses me any more. I feel sorry for my darling young Misha embarking so irrevocably on this new life. Still, he has a wife who is worthy of him, thank God, and who loves him.
We left the church for the Glebovs’, where the Grand Duke was very affable to me, and—I am ashamed to admit this—flattered my vanity, as did people’s comments as we were leaving the church: “That’s the mother of the bridegroom, she’s still a very beautiful woman, isn’t she”, and so on.
L.N. stayed at home for the wedding, but came out at four to say goodbye to Misha and Lina. This evening he entertained some sectarians from Dubovka and various “dark ones”, and they read aloud that article by Novikov the peasant about the suffering people.
12th February. Bad news today from my daughter Masha, who has given birth to her dead baby boy. Poor, suffering creature!
Tanya and I visited Yasnaya together. My darling, kind Tanya was determined to visit Lyova and Dora after their grief. They are a little more cheerful now, and they love and care for each other. Maria Schmidt was also in Yasnaya, and Olga, who is feeling very lonely at present. Aren’t we all!
I have been feeling acutely so today. The children are always so eager to judge me—Tanya was criticizing me for the untidiness at home, Misha berated me when he and Lina were leaving for foreign parts for worrying about them on their travels. And they simply don’t see anything! How can one keep things tidy when there are people constantly coming to stay, dragging yet more guests after them—crowds of people milling around from morning to night? And I do all the work for everyone on my own. I take care of business on my own, without any help from my husband or sons. I do a man’s work: I run the estate, supervise the children’s education and deal with them and the servants—all on my own. My eyesight is failing, my soul is weary, yet there are these endless demands on me…
We had a musical evening here on the 9th. Sergei Ivanovich played his Oresteia, Muromtseva sang Clytemnestra’s aria with a choir of her pupils, and Melgunova and Khrennikova sang too. Everyone enjoyed the evening immensely, but L.N. tried to cast it in a negative and ridiculous light, and as usual my children were infected by his hostility to me and my guests.
Long after all the respectable people had left and he had put on his dressing gown and gone to bed, some students, one or two young ladies and Muromtseva stayed on in the drawing room. They had all had a great deal to drink at supper, and broke into rowdy Russian folk songs, gypsy songs and factory ballads, whooping, dancing and going wild…I went downstairs and who should I see there but L.N., sitting in the corner and urging them on. He sat up with them for a long time.
15th February. I have just seen Tanya off to Rome with her family. It’s a long time since I’ve cried when parting with my children, for I seem to be forever meeting them or seeing them off somewhere. But today with the bright sunset lighting up our garden and Lev Nikolaevich’s sad, grey, balding head as he sat by the window seeing her off with such mournful eyes that she came back twice to kiss him and say goodbye—it broke my heart, and I am weeping now as I write. We evidently need suffering to make us better people. Even the small grief of today’s parting had the effect of ridding my heart of spite and anger, especially with my family, and I wished them all well and wanted them all to be good and happy. I feel terribly sorry for L.N. at present. Something is tormenting him, I don’t know if it’s the fear of death, or that he’s unwell, or some secret worry. But I don’t remember ever seeing him like this, constantly dissatisfied and depressed by something.
16th February. Sasha has a sore throat. Doctor Ilin called and said she had a fever and swollen tonsils, but nothing serious. I went with Sem. Nik. the cook to the mushroom market and bought mushrooms for myself, Tanya and the Stakhoviches, then bought some Russian furniture. Crowds of people, folk handicrafts and a lot of peasant atmosphere. They were ringing the bell for vespers when I drove home. Then I changed my dress and went out again on foot with L.N.; he went to buy 500 grams of quinine for the Dukhobors, and I went to church. I listened to the prayers and prayed fervently to myself; I love being alone in a crowd of strangers and leaving behind all cares and earthly concerns. From the church I went on to the orphanage, where the children all surrounded me, welcoming and kissing me. I stayed there a long time finding out how they were doing and what they needed.
It was almost 2 a.m. and we had just gone to bed, when there was a sudden desperate ringing at the doorbell. Some woman, a widow called Berg, who had been in a lunatic asylum for 13 years, wanted to see Lev Nikolaevich. I didn’t let her in, but she talked to me at the door for a whole hour, in a terribly agitated state, recalling, among other things, how my Vanechka had picked some little blue flowers in the garden of the lunatic asylum seven years ago and asked if he could keep them. A pathetic, neurotic Polish woman. We got to bed very late, but on calm, friendly terms. At 6 in the morning I painted Sasha’s throat.
18th February. I went to bed late yesterday, burdened by oppressive memories of a discussion between Lev Nikolaevich and Bulygin about religion. They were saying that a priest in a brocade cassock gives you bad red wine to drink and people call this “religion”. Lev Nikolaevich was jeering and raging against the Church in the coarsest possible tones, and Bulygin said he thought the Church was the Devil’s work on a massive scale.
These remarks made me angry and sad, and I loudly protested that true religion saw neither the priest’s brocade cassock, nor Lev Nikolaevich’s flannel shirt, nor the monk’s habit. Such things simply do not matter.
6th March. On 24th February it was announced in all the newspapers that Lev Nikolaevich has been excommunicated.* This incensed public opinion and bewildered and dismayed the common people. For three days Lev Nikolaevich was given ovations, brought baskets of fresh flowers and sent telegrams, letters and salutations, and expressions of sympathy and indignation with the Synod and the Metropolitans are still pouring in. That same day I myself wrote and circulated a letter to Procurator Pobedonostsev and the Metropolitans. I am attaching it here.*
This stupid excommunication coincided with the upheavals in the university. For the past three days the students and the population of Moscow were in turmoil. The students had risen up because students in Kiev had been drafted into the army for rioting. But what was unprecedented about these disorders was that whereas people had previously been against the students, now everyone’s sympathies are with them, and the cab-drivers, shopkeepers and workers are saying the students are on the side of truth and the poor.*
That same Sunday, 24th February, L.N. was walking to Lubyanka Square with Dunaev, and met a crowd of several thousand people. One of them saw L.N. and said: “Look, there he is, the Devil incarnate!” At this a lot of people turned round, recognized him and began shouting, “Hurrah L.N.! Greetings L.N.! Hail to the great man! Hurrah!”
The crowd grew bigger, the shouts grew louder, the cab-drivers fled…
At last some technical students managed to find a cab and put Dunaev and Lev Nikolaevich inside, and a mounted gendarme, seeing people grab the horse’s reins and hold its bridle, stepped in and dispersed the crowd.
For several days now there has been a festive spirit in our house, with an endless stream of visitors from morning to night…
26th March. It’s a great pity I haven’t kept an accurate account of the various events and conversations that have taken place. What interested me most were all the letters, especially those from abroad, sympathizing with my letter to Pobedonostsev and the Metropolitans. None of Lev Nikolaevich’s manuscripts have reached such wide or speedy distribution as this letter of mine, and it has been translated into all the foreign languages.* I was delighted, but it did not make me conceited, thank God! I dashed it off spontaneously, passionately. It was God’s will, not mine, that I should do it.
Lev Nikolaevich has written a letter ‘To the Tsar and His Assistants’.* What will come of it! I wouldn’t want us to be exiled from Russia in our old age.
Another event was my concert in aid of the orphanage. Some very pleasant people took part, and this lent it an exceptionally elegant, respectable tone. The young ladies selling programmes all wore white dresses, and there were baskets of fresh flowers on the tables. Mikhail Stakhovich did a fine rendering of an excerpt from L.N.’s ‘Who is Right?’, and I wasn’t disgraced before all these people whose opinion I esteem. We didn’t make much for the orphanage, only 1,307 rubles.*
An unpleasant scene with Sasha on Palm Sunday. I called her to go to vespers with me and she refused, saying she had lost her faith. I told her if she wanted to follow her father’s path she must go the whole way like him: he was extremely Orthodox for many years—long after he got married too—then he renounced the Church in the name of pure Christianity, and also renounced all earthly blessings. Sasha, like so many of my children, was of course simply jumping at the easy way out—in this case not going to church. I burst into tears and she went to ask her father for advice, and he told her: “Of course you must go—you mustn’t distress your mother.”
So she came to the orphanage church with me and attended vespers, and now she will fast with me.
27th March. The other day I received Metropolitan Antony’s reply to my letter, perfectly correct but completely soulless.* I wrote mine in the heat of the moment, it has gone round the entire world and has infected people with its sincerity.
These public events have exhausted me and I have turned to introspection; but my inner life is tense and joyless too.
30th March. Things have gone from bad to worse with Sasha. She wouldn’t fast with me: first she pleaded a sore leg, then she refused outright. Yet another worsening in our relations.
I received the Eucharist today. I have found it very difficult to fast; there are such vast contradictions between what is genuine—the Church’s true foundations—and all these rituals, the wild shrieks of the deacon and so on, that it is hard to persevere and one sometimes feels like giving up altogether. This is what disgusts young people so much.
I was standing in the church today and the invisible choir was singing so beautifully, and I thought: the simple people go to church as we go to a good symphony concert. At home there is poverty, darkness and endless, backbreaking toil. They come to church and there is light, singing, beauty…There is art and music here, and a spiritual justification for all this entertainment too, since religion is approved of, and considered good and necessary. How could one live without it?
I fasted without much conviction, but went about it in a serious, sensible way, and was glad to exert myself physically and spiritually—getting up early and standing for a long time in church, praying and reflecting on my spiritual life.
18th May. We have been in Yasnaya Polyana for ten days. We travelled with Pavel Boulanger in a well-appointed private carriage, and L.N. had a very comfortable journey. I warmed him up some pre-cooked porridge, boiled him an egg and made coffee, then he ate some asparagus and went to sleep. We were seen off in Moscow by Uncle Kostya, Dunaev, Fyodor Maslov and his sister Varvara, as well as some young people we had never met before—technical students I think—who shouted “Hurrah!” and took pictures of Lev Nikolaevich. It was very moving.
6th June. I went to Moscow and did my business there, and lived alone with the maid in my big empty house. I visited Vanechka’s and Alyosha’s graves and went to see my living grandson, Seryozha’s little boy. He’s a splendid child, serene and straightforward. I saw Misha and Lina, who always make an excellent impression, and I also saw Sergei Ivanovich. There has been a cooling in our relations recently, and I have neither the energy nor the inclination to maintain our former friendship. Besides, he really isn’t the sort of person one can be friends with. Like all gifted people he is always seeking new experiences and he looks for other people to provide them, while giving almost nothing of himself.
I returned to Yasnaya Polyana, and it was hot, stuffy, lazy weather. L.N. is taking salt baths and drinking Kronenquelle. He is fairly cheerful after a winter of illnesses.
14th June. What a lovely summer! Through my window I can see the moon in the clear sky. It is still and silent, and the air is caressing and delightfully warm. I have been spending almost all my time outside with nature; I go swimming and in the evenings I water the flowers and go for walks. My beloved Tanya is staying with her husband, with whom I am becoming reconciled since she loves him. He has a sweet nature but is terribly selfish, which makes me fear for her.
Pasternak the artist has been here and has drawn me, Lev Nikolaevich and Tanya in a variety of poses and angles. He is planning to do a genre painting of our family for the Luxembourg.
Lyova, Dora and little Pavlik have left for Sweden. It was terribly painful to part with them. They lead such irreproachable Christian lives, with the finest ideals and intentions. They have nothing to hide, one could look into the depths of their souls and find nothing but purity and goodness. At 5 in the morning poor little Dora ran to Levushka’s grave to say goodbye to her darling baby; I suffered so much for her and wanted to sob.
20th June. I went to Moscow to negotiate the sale of Sasha’s land; another frightful waste of time and energy. It was hot, I spent two nights on the train, talked to the barrister, did some shopping and so on.
When I returned exhausted next morning, they hadn’t sent any horses, so I had to walk back from Kozlovka. I was in a thoroughly bad temper, the heat was insufferable and the house was crowded with good-for-nothings—Alyosha Dyakov, Goldenweiser, some sculptor, the Sukhotins. Tanya is the only one I care about.
3rd July. Something frightful is drawing near, and it is death.
Lev Nikolaevich fell ill on the night of 27th–28th June. He felt wretched, couldn’t sleep and had difficulty breathing. Sasha and I planned to visit my son Seryozha on the 28th, but I wasn’t sure I could leave him. In the end we did go, at 8 that morning. He slept well that night, but the following day he set off for a walk and could hardly manage to get home. The pain in his chest grew worse, but they put a hot blanket on it and that eased it. He again had a fever on the evening of the 29th when I returned. No one had looked after him properly while I was away! It broke my heart to see him. It must be his heart, I told him. The following morning Doctor Dreyer from Tula discovered he had a high fever and a dangerously high pulse of 150 per minute. He prescribed 10 grains of quinine a day, and caffeine and strophanthus for the heart. But when his temperature fell to 35.9° his pulse was still 150.
We wired Doctor Dubensky in Kaluga (chief doctor at the local hospital and a good friend of ours) who said it was the pulse of the death agony. After several doses of quinine the fever passed, and for two days running his temperature has been normal, 36.2°. But he has just had another two sleepless nights, with a slight chill, a fever and profuse sweating, and he is now feeling exhausted, and what is more serious, his heart has been weakened.
The children have all arrived—apart from Lyova, who is in Sweden, and Tanya. Ilya’s children are here too. Yesterday he invited his three grandsons and Annochka his granddaughter into his room, gave them all chocolates out of a box, made four-year-old Ilyusha tell him about the time he almost drowned in a rainwater tub, and asked Annochka about her hoarseness. Then he said: “Off you go now, I’ll call you again when I’m next feeling bored.” And when they had gone out he kept saying: “What marvellous children.”
Yesterday morning I was putting a hot compress on his stomach and he gazed at me intently and began to weep, saying: “Thank you Sonya. You mustn’t imagine I’m not grateful or don’t love you…” His voice broke with emotion and I kissed his dear familiar hands, telling him what pleasure it gave me to look after him, and how guilty I felt when I couldn’t make him happy. Then we both wept and embraced. For such a long time my soul has yearned for this—a deep and serious recognition of our closeness over the thirty-nine years we have lived together…
Today he said to me: “I am now at a crossroads. I would just as soon go forwards (to death) as backwards (to life). If this passes now, it will just be a respite.” Then he reflected a little and added: “But there’s still so much I want to tell people!”
Yesterday he was anxiously enquiring about some peasant victims of a recent fire in a faraway village, to whom he had asked me to give 35 rubles. He wanted to know if any of them had come to the house, and asked us to tell him if they came asking him for anything.
He had a terrible night last night, 2nd–3rd July; I was with him from two to seven in the morning. He didn’t sleep a wink, and his stomach was aching. Later his chest started hurting, so I massaged it with spirit of camphor and made a cotton-wool compress, which eased the pain. Then he started having pains in his legs and they grew cold, so I massaged them with spirit of camphor and wrapped them in a warm blanket. He began to feel a little better, and I was happy to relieve his suffering. But then he began to feel very low and miserable, so I took his temperature. It was up again—from 36.2° to 37.3°—and he remained feverish for about three hours. Then he went to sleep, and I went off to bed as I was dropping with exhaustion.
I was sitting in his room today reading the Gospels, in which he has marked the passages he considers especially important, and he said to me: “Look how the words accumulate. In the first Gospel it says Christ was simply christened. In the second it has been expanded to: ‘And he saw the skies open,’ and the third makes the further addition: ‘He heard the words, “Sit down and eat, my son,”’ and so on.”
Now my Lyovochka is sleeping. He is still alive, I can see him, hear him, look after him…What will happen next? My God, what unendurable grief, what horror to live without him, without his love, his encouragement, his intelligence, his enthusiasm for the finest things in life.
14th July. Tanya came with her husband, Doctor Shchurovsky arrived from Moscow, and a lot of our friends visited. Telegrams, letters, a great crush of children, grandchildren and acquaintances, one anxiety after another…Eventually I fell ill too. I had a high fever all night, my heartbeat was weak, my pulse was 52, and I had to stay in bed for two days, unable to move.
He is now very thin and weak, but has a good appetite, is sleeping well and is out of pain; he works every morning on his article about the labour question.
Thank God, thank God, for yet another reprieve! I wonder how much longer we will live together! His sunken face, his white hair and beard and his emaciated body and the persistent ache in my heart become unbearable, and I feel as though my life were at an end and I had lost all my interests and energy.
Yes, a phase of my life has just come to an end. A line has been drawn between that period when life went on, and now, when life has simply stopped.
I kept thinking: “Salt baths will help, he’ll get better, he’ll live another ten years; Ems water will repair his digestion, and the warmth of summer and lots of rest will restore his strength…”
But now suddenly it is the end. No health, no strength, nothing to restore, nothing to repair—there’s so little left of Lyovochka now, too little to repair. And what a giant he used to be!
22nd July. Lev Nikolaevich is on the mend. He is taking long walks through the forest, and eating and sleeping well. Thank God!
We received letters from well-wishers in Tula yesterday evening. He burst out laughing and said: “Well, next time I start dying I shall have to do so in earnest, I mustn’t joke about it any more. I’d be ashamed to make people go through all that again, with everyone gathering round, the journalists arriving, the letters and telegrams—and all for nothing!”
We had a delightful letter from Queen Elizabeth of Romania today. She has sent L.N. a brochure she has written, and writes how happy she will be if “la main du maître” lies for a moment on her little book.*
A hot, dry, dusty day. The oats are being harvested. Bright, sunny days, moonlit nights; it’s so beautiful, one longs to make better use of this lovely summer.
30th July. It’s hot again today and there’s a smell of burning, as if there was smoke in the air. It’s impossible to see anything, and the sun has turned into a tiny red ball.
I lead a dreary life, sitting all day by my sick husband’s door and knitting caps for the orphanage. All the life and energy in me has died.
I received a letter from Countess Panina offering us her dacha in Gaspra, in the Crimea, and we are planning to go, although I don’t want to leave before September.
3rd August. Lev Nikolaevich’s latest illness has robbed him of even more of his strength, although he is a little better today. Terrible heat, very dry again, I swim every day. We were visited this morning by the Myasoedovo villagers who were burnt out in the fire, and we gave them all 7 rubles in the courtyard. There have been so many fires this summer, and there are so many people to be helped!
Then another visitor we didn’t know, called Falz-Fein, who has just lost his young wife and has been left with three young children, desperate and ill with grief. L.N. took him out for a walk and talked to him.
26th August. We’re leaving for the Crimea on 5th September. I went to Moscow on business and shall go again before we leave, probably on the 1st. Cold, windy, damp and vile.
Housekeeping, bills, taxes, packing, endless practical tasks…No walks, no music, nothing but boredom and low spirits. It seems we will be staying in the Crimea for the winter, and this makes me terribly sad! Well, whatever God ordains. A line has been drawn and a new phase in our life is starting. Just as long as Lev Nikolaevich is alive and well.
2nd December (Gaspra, the Crimea). We have been living here since 9th September for the sake of Lev Nikolaevich’s health, and he is making a slow recovery. He was 73 in August, and has aged and grown very much weaker this year.
I haven’t been writing my diary; it has taken me such a long time to get used to the new living conditions and emotional deprivations I have to endure here. But I am now used to it, helped by the knowledge that I am fulfilling my stern duty and my wifely obligations.
Last night I wrote letters to our four absent sons (Andryusha has just arrived), and was then kept awake all night by tormenting memories of my children’s early years, my passionate, anxious relationship with them, the unwitting mistakes I made in their education and my relationship with them now they are grown-up. Then my thoughts turned to my dead children. I saw with agonizing clarity first Alyosha, then Vanechka, at various moments of their lives. I had a vivid vision of Vanechka, thin and ill in bed, when after his prayers, which he invariably said in my presence, he would curl up into a cosy little ball and go off to sleep. I remember how it broke my heart to see his little back and feel his tiny bones under my hand.
And as for the spiritual and physical solitude I endured last night! Things have happened exactly as I imagined. Now that physical infirmity has forced Lev Nikolaevich to abandon amorous relations with his wife (this wasn’t so long ago), instead of that peaceful, affectionate friendship I have longed for in vain all my life, there remains nothing but emptiness.
Morning and evening he greets me and leaves me with a cold and formal kiss. He loses his temper and tends to regard the world about him with utter indifference.
I think more and more of death, imagining with a calm joy the place where my infants have gone.
3rd December. A hot day. I went to Yalta and sent a letter to Seryozha authorizing him to buy 150 acres of land in Telyatinki to add to the Yasnaya property. Oh, this endless unbearable business, which is all so unnecessary to me! I wandered round the town on my own and went to Chukurlar, where I met a consumptive young man begging for a living. Everything here is dreary and chaotic. And there’s more to come. Ilya and Andryusha have just arrived and, to my great displeasure, were playing cards with Sasha, Natasha Obolenskaya, Klassen the German bailiff and my daughter-in-law Olga. I sat sewing silently on my own, then studied some Italian.
4th December. Another hot day, brighter and lovelier than yesterday. The sun is as hot as summer. What a strange changeable climate here, and one’s moods are equally changeable. Lev Nikolaevich, Sukhotin and his son and tutor, Natasha Obolenskaya and I walked to Orianda. The walk tired us a little but the “Horizontal path” was very lovely. We drove home with Sonyusha and Olga, and the sea and sunset were magical.
7th December. I have just said goodbye to Andryusha and my good-natured, childish Ilya. Lev Nikolaevich will accompany them to Yalta and spend the night there with Masha, which he has wanted to do for a long time. Either the arsenic or simply the good weather has had an excellent effect on him, and he is feeling much more fit and energetic. And this bustling activity shows how glad he is to be better. Yesterday he was on his feet from morning to night, and that evening he walked to the hospital, marvelling at the view in the moonlight. Today he got ready to leave for Yalta.
I wanted to help him pack so he wouldn’t exert himself, but he snapped at me so peevishly I almost burst into tears, and went off without saying a word.
I incline more and more to the view that every kind of sectarianism, including my husband’s teachings, tends to dry people’s hearts and make them proud. Two women I know well, his sister, Mashenka the nun, and his cousin Alexandra, have both become better, nobler people without leaving the Church.
My poor Tanya gave birth to another dead baby, a boy, on 12th November. She is even more devoted to her frivolous selfish husband. There is nothing left of her now, she has been completely absorbed by him; he allows himself to be loved, and loves her very little himself. Well, thank God if that is to her liking! We women are able to live for love alone, even when it’s not reciprocated. And even then one can live a full and active life!
Various pieces of news from Moscow and Yasnaya. Our affairs are being neglected, our friends are forgetting us; I am tantalized by all the wonderful recitals and symphony concerts, but it’s no use, I just have to sit here and mope.
8th December. Lev Nikolaevich didn’t return from Yalta today.
9th December. It’s just as I thought—Lev Nikolaevich has been taken ill in Yalta and his heart is irregular. I have just spoken to him on the telephone; he sounded quite cheerful, and said it was his stomach again; the long ride to Simeiz and back irritated his intestines. It must be the hundredth time he has done this. Just before he left he wolfed down some treats we had got for little Andryusha’s sixth birthday—some dumplings and grapes, a pear and some chocolate. And now look what happens. The moment he gets better he undoes everything with his immoderate appetite and activity. He takes fright, is treated, gets better, then ruins everything again…And so it goes on, in a vicious circle.
I went to church. The girls sang beautifully and I am in a happy, calm state of mind. Unlike other people I’m not bothered by foolishness like “with ranks of angels bearing spears” and “at the right hand of the Father” and so on. Above and beyond all this is the Church—the place that reminds us of God, where millions of people have brought their noble religious sentiments and their faith, the place where we bring all our griefs and joys, at every moment in our fickle lives.
13th December. Lyovochka’s niece Liza Obolenskaya and I took him back to Gaspra with us today.
At first, after drinking some coffee with milk, he was very lively, and this evening he played two games of chess with Sukhotin; then he felt weak and took to his bed. We had been urging him to go to bed all along as the doctor had ordered, but he wouldn’t listen.
The Sukhotins have had some bad news. Their Seryozha has fallen ill with typhus at Naval School, and they have been informed by telegram that his condition is serious. Tanya is wretched and has been weeping. She takes such a childish view of her fate; she thinks someone is forever out to hurt her.
We heard to our great joy today that a son, Ivan, had been born to Misha and Lina on the 10th. May my Vanechka inhabit this little boy’s soul and pray for him to grow up to be a happy, healthy child.
14th December. Lev Nikolaevich moved downstairs yesterday so as not to have to climb the stairs. His room next to mine is empty, and there is something ominous and poignant about the silence upstairs. I no longer have to put the washbasin down quietly on the marble table and tiptoe around and refrain from moving chairs.
Liza Obolenskaya is sleeping downstairs next to his room at present, and he gratefully accepts her help and is glad not to have to bother me.
15th December. Lyovochka has recovered now and we have all cheered up. He had dinner with us and walked as far as the gates of the estate.
He had a call from Doctor Altschuler, who is treating him here, a pleasant, clever Jew, not at all like most Jews, whom Lev Nikolaevich trusts and likes. He was given his thirtieth arsenic injection today, and took five grains of quinine.
We have a Slovak Doctor Makovitsky* here, whom we have already met, accompanied by some Georgian called Popov, who is apparently a Tolstoyan.
23rd December. Lev Nikolaevich is fully recovered. He went for a long walk today, and looked in on Maxim Gorky*—or rather Alexei Peshkov; I dislike it when people write under assumed names. Lev Nikolaevich, Olga, Boulanger and I all came home in the carriage. It is fine, windy and warm—6°. He brought a large mauve-pink wild flower into the house and it has blossomed again. The almond tree is also trying to come into blossom, and the snowdrops are in flower. So beautiful! I am beginning to love the Crimea. My depression has lifted, thank God, mainly because he is better now.
24th December. This evening he played vint with his children and Klassen (the bailiff). They all shouted and got very worked up over a grand slam no trumps—I find this excitement over card games incomprehensible, shouting a lot of nonsense as if they’ve all lost their reason.
25th December. We had a festive Christmas. Lev Nikolaevich is better—his fever has passed and his arms aren’t hurting him.
26th December. We spent the evening at Klassen’s—German conversation, strange people and sweet food—not at all to my liking.
29th December. The Tartars had a festival today. They were seeing a Mullah off to Mecca for three months and had prepared a dinner for him, and the streets of Koreiz and Gaspra were crowded with cheerful people of all nationalities in their best clothes. The Turks danced in a circle, looking very picturesque. I tried to take a photograph of them, but they were moving too fast and it came out badly. Lev Nikolaevich walked off on his own to Ai-Todor. He was gentle and kind today, and we are getting on well together—what a joy!
30th December. A very mixed lot of people came to see Lev Nikolaevich—three revolutionary workers filled with hatred for the rich and dissatisfaction with the present social arrangements, then six sectarians who have lapsed from the Church, three of whom are true Christians, in that they lead a moral life and love their neighbour. The other three were originally Molokans and are still sympathetic to their beliefs.
There was also an old man, better off and more intelligent than the rest, who apparently wants to go to the Caucasus and found a monastery by the sea based on new principles. He wants all the brothers to be highly educated, so that this monastery could be a sort of centre of learning and civilization. The monks would work the land and support themselves through their own labour. A difficult venture, but a worthy one.
This evening we went to the public library, where a dance had been organized. The music was provided by three travelling Czech musicians and a young man with a big harmonium, and chambermaids, and craftsmen’s wives and daughters all danced waltzes, polkas and pas de quatre with men from various social classes. Two Tartars did some Tartar dances, two Georgians did a lezginka with a dagger, and a lot of people—including Volkov the zemstvo doctor, a highly capable and energetic man—danced the trepak, squatting and leaping Russian-style. We all went to watch, even Lev Nikolaevich.
31st December. The last day of a difficult year! Will the new one be better?
Lev Nikolaevich walked over to see M. Gorky and returned with Goldenweiser, who is staying with us.
I have copied out the first chapter of ‘On Religion’, and so far I don’t like it. I don’t at all like the way he compares people’s faith in religion to an outworn appendix.
I went with Sasha to Koreiz to buy wine, oranges and refreshments for the servants’ New Year party. We are having a party too, although I don’t much like these semi-celebrations. People just sit around and eat, then at midnight something is suddenly supposed to happen.