Our Trip to Ivitsy and Yasnaya Polyana
At the beginning of August 1862, when I was seventeen, Maman told me and my two sisters, to our great joy, that she had decided to drive us three little girls and our brother Volodya to the estate of her father and our grandfather, Alexander Islenev, in an Annensky coach (named after its owner and still in use at the time).
Our grandfather (who appears in Lev Nikolaevich’s Childhood as “Papa”) lived in the Odoevsky district on his estate at Ivitsy, which was all that remained of his large fortune.
The three daughters of his second marriage were young girls at that time, and I was very friendly with the second one.
His estate was some 20 miles from Yasnaya Polyana, where Lev Nikolaevich’s sister Maria had been living ever since she returned from Algeria,* and as my mother and she had been close childhood friends and were naturally anxious to see each other again, my mother, who hadn’t visited Yasnaya Polyana since she was a child, decided we would call in there on our way. We were in ecstasies at the news, and my younger sister Tanya and I were especially pleased, like all young people eager for change and movement. We cheerfully prepared for the journey. Smart new dresses were made, we packed our bags and waited impatiently to leave.
I don’t remember anything about the day we left, and my memories of the journey itself are very vague—just the stopping places, the changing of the horses, the rushed meals and the exhaustion from all the unaccustomed travelling. We went to Tula to visit my mother’s sister Nadezhda Karnovich, who was married to the Tula Marshal of the Nobility, and we took a look round Tula, which struck me as a very dull, dirty place. But we were determined not to miss anything, and to pay attention to everything on our trip.
After dinner we drove on to Yasnaya Polyana. It was already evening by then, but the weather was magnificent. The highway through Zaseka* was very picturesque, and this wild expanse of nature was a new experience for us city girls.
Maria Nikolaevna and Lev Nikolaevich gave us a noisy and joyful welcome, and their aunt Tatyana Ergolskaya greeted us affably in polite French, while old Natalya Petrovna, her companion, silently stroked my shoulder and winked in a most beguiling way at my sister Tanya, who was then just 15.
They gave us a large vaulted room downstairs,* modestly and even poorly furnished. All round the room there were sofas that were painted white, with hard cushions at the backs and hard seats covered in blue-and-white striped ticking. There was a chaise longue too, similarly made by the local joiner. Set into the vaulted ceiling were iron rings from which gammons, saddles and so on used to hang in the days when the house belonged to Lev Nikolaevich’s grandfather, Prince Volkonsky; it was now used as a storeroom.
The days were growing shorter, for it was already the beginning of August. After we had run round the garden, Natalya Petrovna took us to the raspberry bushes. This was the first time we had eaten raspberries straight from the bush, rather than from the little baskets that were brought to our dacha when we were making jam. There weren’t many berries left, but I loved the beauty of the red fruit against the green leaves, and enjoyed their fresh taste.
The Night and the Chair
When it began to grow dark, Maman sent me down to unpack the bags and make up the beds. Aunt’s maid Dunyasha* and I were getting the beds ready when Lev Nikolaevich suddenly walked in. Dunyasha told him she had made up three beds on the sofas but didn’t know where to put a fourth one.
“What about the chair?” said Lev Nikolaevich, moving out a big armchair and pushing a broad square stool against it.
“I’ll sleep on the chair,” I said.
“Well, I’ll make up your bed for you,” said Lev Nikolaevich clumsily unfolding a sheet. I felt embarrassed, but there was also something lovely and intimate about making up the beds together.
When it was all ready we went upstairs and found Tanya curled up fast asleep on a little sofa in Aunt’s room. Volodya had been put to bed too. Maman was chatting away to Maria Nikolaevna and Aunt about the old days. Liza stared at us inquisitively. I vividly remember every moment of that evening.
In the dining room, with its large French windows, Alexei Stepanovich,* the little cross-eyed butler, was laying the table for supper with the help of the stately, rather beautiful Dunyasha (daughter of old Nikolai,* who appeared in Childhood). In the middle of one wall was a door opening into a little sitting room with an antique rosewood clavichord, and the sitting room had French windows leading out to a little balcony, which had the most lovely view. It has given me pleasure all my life, and I love it to this day.
I took a chair and went out to the balcony alone to admire the view. I shall never forget the mood I was in—although I would never be able to describe it. I don’t know if it was the effect of nature, real, untamed nature and wide spaces, or a premonition of what would happen a month and a half later when I entered this house as its mistress. Perhaps it was simply a farewell to my girlhood freedom, perhaps it was all these things, I don’t know. But there was something so significant about my mood that evening, and I felt such happiness and an extraordinary sense of boundlessness. The others were all going in to supper and Lev Nikolaevich came out to call me.
“No thank you, I don’t want anything,” I said. “It’s so lovely out here.”
In the dining room I could hear Tanya showing off, joking and being naughty—everyone spoilt her and she was quite used to it. Lev Nikolaevich went back to the dining room, but returned to the balcony to see me without finishing his supper. I don’t remember exactly what we talked about, I just remember him saying: “How simple and serene you are”, which pleased me very much.
I had a good sleep in the long chair which Lev Nikolaevich had made up for me. I tossed about a bit at first, for the arms at the side made it rather narrow and uncomfortable, but my heart was singing with joy as I remembered him arranging my bed for me, and I fell asleep with a new feeling of joy in my young soul.
The Picnic at Yasnaya Polyana
I felt full of joy too when I woke next morning. I longed to run everywhere, look at everything, chatter to everyone. How light and airy it was at Yasnaya! Lev Nikolaevich was determined we should enjoy ourselves, and Maria Nikolaevna helped to ensure we did. They harnessed the “katki”—a long carriage more like a wagonette—and put Baraban the chestnut in the shafts and Strelka in the traces. Then the bay Belogubka was saddled up with an old-fashioned lady’s saddle, a magnificent grey was brought out for Lev Nikolaevich, and we all got ready for our picnic.
More guests arrived—Gromova, the wife of a Tula architect, and Sonechka Bergholz, niece of Yulia Auerbach, the headmistress of Tula high school for girls. Maria Nikolaevna was overjoyed to have her two best friends there—my mother and Gromova—and was in a playful, cheerful mood, laughing, telling jokes and keeping us all amused. Lev Nikolaevich suggested I ride Belogubka, which I was very keen to do.
“But I can’t, I don’t have a riding habit,” I said, looking at my yellow dress with its black velvet buttons and belt.
“It doesn’t matter,” smiled Lev Nikolaevich. “There are no dachas here, and no one but the forests to see you.” And he helped me mount Belogubka.
I was the happiest person in the world as I galloped beside him down the road to Zaseka, our first stopping place. In those days it was all unbroken forest. Later I would drive to those places again and again, yet they never seemed quite the same. Then everything seemed magically beautiful, as it never is in everyday life, only in certain moods of spiritual elation. We rode to a little clearing where there was a haystack. Over the years we would have many picnics in that clearing in Zaseka with Tanya’s children and mine, but on that day it was a different clearing, and I saw it with different eyes.
Maria Nikolaevna invited us all to scramble on the haystack and roll down, and it was a cheerful, noisy afternoon.
The following morning we drove off to the village of Krasnoe, which used to belong to my grandfather Islenev.* My grandmother was buried there, and Maman was very keen to visit the place where she was born and had grown up, and to kneel at her mother’s grave at the church. They didn’t want us to leave Yasnaya, and Maman had to give her solemn word of honour that we would call in on our way back, even if only for a day.
Krasnoe Village
Maria Nikolaevna had lent us a carriage for the journey to Krasnoe, and we hired horses. We didn’t spend long there.
I remember the church and the tombstone with its inscription: “Princess Sofia Petrovna Kozlovskaya, born Countess Zavadovskaya.” I vividly pictured my grandmother’s life: what misery she must have endured with her first husband Kozlovsky, a drunkard, to whom she was married against her will, then with her unlawful second husband, Alexander Islenev, my grandfather, living in this country place, bearing an endless annual succession of children,* and worrying constantly that in the grip of his gambling mania he would lose his entire fortune and be forced to leave the estate—which is exactly what happened to him at the end of his life. The old priest and Fetis the deacon both remembered Sofia Petrovna warmly and spoke of her with great affection. “I committed the sin of marrying them in secret,” the old priest told us.
Fetis the deacon, we were told, had died and was in his coffin, and had suddenly come back to life just as they were burying him, and jumped out of his grave and walked home. To this day I can see Fetis’s withered little figure, his sparse hair plaited into a grey pigtail at the back of his head. I had never seen a deacon with a pigtail in Moscow, but nothing surprised me any longer. Everything seemed fantastic, full of beauty and magic.
Ivitsy
When the horses had been fed, we left Krasnoe in the same carriage and drove to my grandfather’s estate at Ivitsy. We were given a solemn and joyous reception. Grandfather moved rapidly—he seemed to slide across the floor in his soft ankle boots. He kept teasing us, and calling us “the young ladies of Moscow”, and he had a habit of pinching our cheeks with his middle and forefinger and winking when he said something funny, then screwing up his humorous little eyes. I can still see his powerful figure, the little black skullcap on his bald head, his large aquiline nose and ruddy clean-shaven face.
Sofia Alexandrovna, his second wife, astounded us by smoking a long pipe, her lower lip sagging; all that remained of her former beauty were her sparkling, expressive black eyes.
Their second daughter, the lovely Olga, cool and imperturbable, took us upstairs to the room they had prepared for us. My bed was behind a cupboard, with just a plain wooden chair instead of a table.
Our arrival created much excitement. A lot of people came over to look at us, and picnics, dances and drives were organized for us.
The day after we arrived in Ivitsy, Lev Nikolaevich suddenly turned up on his grey horse. He had covered 20 miles and was in high spirits. My grandfather, who loved Lev Nikolaevich and the whole Tolstoy family—for he had been friends with his father, Count Nikolai Ilich—was delighted to see him and greeted him warmly.
There were a large number of visitors that day, and the young folk had organized a dance that evening after the day’s drive. Some officers and local young landowners came, and a lot of ladies and young girls. They were all perfect strangers and we found them a little odd, but what did we care? We had great fun, that was all that mattered. Various people took turns to play dance tunes on the piano.
“How smart you look! I wish Aunt had seen you in that dress,” said Lev Nikolaevich smiling, looking at my white-and-mauve dress with the lilac ribbons fluttering from the shoulders. (This was the current fashion, known as “suivez-moi”.)
“But why aren’t you dancing?” I asked him.
“Oh, I’m too old for that,” he said.
Some ladies and old men had been playing cards at two tables, and these were left open after all the visitors had left. The candles were burning down but we didn’t go to bed, and Lev Nikolaevich kept us up with his lively talk. Then Maman said it was time for us to go to bed and firmly ordered us upstairs. We dared not disobey. But just as I was going out of the door, Lev Nikolaevich called to me:
“Wait a moment, Sofia Andreevna!”
“What is it?”
“Will you read what I’m going to write?”
“Very well.”
“I’m only going to write the initials—you must guess the words.”
“How can I do that—it’s impossible! Oh well, go on!”
He brushed the games scores off the card table, took a piece of chalk and began writing. We were both very serious and excited. I followed his big red hand, and could feel all my powers of concentration and feeling focus on that bit of chalk and the hand that held it. We said nothing.
What the Chalk Wrote
“Y.y.&.n.f.h.t.v.r.m.o.m.a.&.i.f.h.”
“Your youth and need for happiness too vividly remind me of my age and incapacity for happiness,” I read out.
My heart was pounding, my temples were throbbing, my face was flushed—I was beyond all sense of time and reality; at that moment I felt capable of anything, of understanding everything, imagining the unimaginable.
“Well, let’s go on,” said Lev Nikolaevich and began to write once more:
“Y.f.h.t.w.i.a.m.&.y.s.L.Y.&.y.s.T.m.p.m.”
“Your family has the wrong idea about me and your sister Liza. You and your sister Tanechka must protect me.” I read the initials rapidly, without a second’s hesitation.
Lev Nikolaevich wasn’t even surprised; it all seemed quite natural somehow. Our elation was such that we soared high above the world and nothing could possibly surprise us.
Then we heard Maman crossly summoning me to bed. We hurriedly said goodnight, extinguished the candles and went out. Behind my cupboard upstairs I lit the stump of a candle, sat down on the floor, put my notebook on the wooden chair and began to write my diary. I wrote down the words to which Lev Nikolaevich had given me the initials, and grew vaguely aware that something of great significance had occurred between us—something we were now unable to stop. But for various reasons I curbed my thoughts and dreams, as though I was locking up everything that had taken place that evening, keeping back things that weren’t yet ready to see the light.
When we left Ivitsy we called in at Yasnaya Polyana for the day. But we didn’t have such fun this time. Maria Nikolaevna was leaving with us for Moscow, and from there she was going abroad, where she had left her children, and Aunt Tatyana, who adored her, was sad and silent. Maman seemed worried about something too, and Tanya and little Volodya were tired of travelling and longed to get home.
The Journey in the Annensky Coach
We ordered the Annensky coach from Tula, with its two seats at the back, rather like those of a covered cab, and four seats inside. We older girls were sorry to be leaving Yasnaya. We said goodbye to Aunt and her companion Natalya Petrovna, and looked for Lev Nikolaevich to say goodbye to him.
“I’m coming with you,” he said cheerfully. “How could I stay in Yasnaya now? It will be so dull and miserable.”
I didn’t ask myself why I felt so happy, why everything was suddenly shining with joy. I ran off to announce the news to my mother and sisters, and it was decided that Lev Nikolaevich would travel the whole way on one of the outside seats at the back, and my sister Liza and I would take turns on the other; she would sit outside until the first stop, then I would take her place, and so on to Moscow.
We drove and drove…Towards evening I remember I began to get terribly sleepy. I was cold and wrapped myself up, blissfully happy to be sitting next to this old family friend whom I had loved all my life, the beloved author of Childhood, who was being so nice to me and whom I now liked even better. He told me wonderful long stories about the Caucasus, of his life there, the beautiful mountains, the wild scenery and his exploits. I loved listening to his steady voice, full of tender emotion and somewhat hoarse, as though coming from somewhere far away. I would nod off to sleep for a moment and wake to the sound of the same voice telling me his lovely poetic Caucasian tales. I felt ashamed of being sleepy, but I was still so young, and although I regretted missing some of his stories I couldn’t help dozing off sometimes. We travelled all night. Everyone in the coach was asleep, although occasionally Maman and Maria Nikolaevna would talk together or little Volodya would squeak in his sleep.
At last we were approaching Moscow. At the final staging post it was again my turn to take my place on the back seat with Lev Nikolaevich. When we stopped, Liza came up to me and begged me to let her sit outside.
“Sonya, would you mind letting me sit outside? It’s so stuffy in the coach!” she said.
We came out of the station and everyone took their seats. I climbed inside.
“Sofia Andreevna!” cried Lev Nikolaevich. “It’s your turn to sit at the back!”
“I know, but I’m cold,” I said evasively. And the carriage door slammed shut behind me.
Lev Nikolaevich stood and pondered for a moment, then climbed onto the box.
The next day Maria Nikolaevna went abroad and we left Moscow for our dacha in Pokrovskoe, where my father and brothers were waiting for us.
The Last Days of Girlhood and the Story
My entire life was different now. The surroundings were the same, the people were the same, I was the same—superficially. But I seemed to have lost all sense of who I was—I was still in the grip of those feelings that overwhelmed me at Yasnaya Polyana. My personal “I” was consumed in a limitless sense of space—free, all-powerful and unchecked. Those last days of my girlhood were extraordinarily intense, lit by a dazzling brightness and a sudden awakening of the soul. I have had this same sense of spiritual elation on two other occasions in my life, and it was these rare and extraordinary awakenings of the soul that have done more than anything else to convince me that it has an independent life of its own—that it is immortal, and it is when the body dies and it is liberated that it finds its freedom.
Having driven with us from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow, Lev Nikolaevich rented rooms in the house of a German shoemaker and moved in there. At that time he was very involved with his school work* and with a magazine called Yasnaya Polyana, an educational publication intended for use in peasant schools. It lasted only one year.
Lev Nikolaevich visited us nearly every day in Pokrovskoe. Sometimes he would be driven back by my father, who often went to Moscow in connection with his work as a doctor. I remember Lev Nikolaevich once telling us he had visited the Petrovsky Park and called in at the royal palace, where he handed the aide-de-camp on duty a letter to Tsar Alexander II complaining about the insult he had suffered from the police, who had made a completely unwarranted search of Yasnaya Polyana.*
Lev Nikolaevich and I had long walks and talks together, and he once asked me if I kept a diary. I told him I had kept one for a long time, ever since I was eleven, and that last summer when I was sixteen I had also written a long story.
“Let me read your diaries,” Lev Nikolaevich said.
“No, I couldn’t do that.”
“Well, let me see your story then.”
So I gave him the story. The following morning I asked him if he had read it. He replied casually that he had glanced through it. But later I read in his diary the following entry: “She gave me her story to read. What a powerful sense of truth and simplicity!”* He also told me later that he hadn’t slept all night, and had been disturbed by my verdict on the main character, Prince Dublitsky, in whom he had recognized himself, and of whom I had written: “The Prince was extraordinarily unattractive in appearance, and was always changing his opinions.”
I remember we were once feeling very happy and playful, and I kept repeating: “When I am Tsarina I’ll do such and such,” or “When I am Tsarina I’ll order such and such.” Beneath the balcony stood my father’s cabriolet, from which the grey horse had been unharnessed. I hopped inside and shouted, “When I am Tsarina I’ll drive around in a cabriolet like this!” Lev Nikolaevich immediately stepped into the horse’s place, seized the shafts and pulled me along at a brisk trot. “And I’m going to take my Tsarina for a drive!” he said.
“Do stop, please! It’s much too heavy for you!” I cried, but I was loving it, and delighted to see how strong he was as he pulled me around.
What heavenly moonlit evenings and nights there were that year! I can still see the little glade at Pokrovskoe bathed in moonlight and the moon reflected in the nearby pond. There was something steely, fresh and bracing about those August nights…“Mad nights!” Lev Nikolaevich would say as we all sat on the balcony or strolled about the garden. There were no romantic scenes or confessions. We had known each other for so long. Our friendship was so simple and easy. And I was not in a hurry to end my free, serene, uncomplicated girlhood. Everything was wonderfully simple, I had no ambitions, no desires for the future.
Lev Nikolaevich kept coming to visit us. Sometimes when he stayed late my parents would make him spend the night with us. Once at the beginning of September we went to see him off, and when it was time to say goodbye my sister Liza asked me to invite him to her name-day party on 5th September. “Why does it have to be the 5th?” he said, and I didn’t dare tell him, as I had been told not to mention the name day.
But Lev Nikolaevich promised to come, and to our great joy he kept his word. Things were always so jolly and interesting when he was there.
At first I didn’t think his visits had anything to do with me. But gradually I began to realize that my feelings for him were growing serious. I remember I once ran upstairs in a state of great agitation to our bedroom, with its French window overlooking the pond and beyond it the church and all the things I had known and loved all my life (for I was born at Pokrovskoe). And as I stood at the window, my heart pounding, my sister Tanya came in and saw how agitated I was.
“What is it, Sonya?” she asked solicitously.
“Je crains d’aimer le comte,”* I said abruptly.
“Really?” Tanya was astonished, for she had had no suspicion of my feelings. She was even a little sad too, for she knew my character. For me “aimer” never meant playing with feelings. Both then and later it was something closer to suffering.
In Moscow
In September our whole family moved back to our apartment in Moscow in the Kremlin. As usual Moscow at first felt cramped, dull and stuffy to me after our country dacha, and this had a depressing effect on me. Before we left Pokrovskoe we always used to say goodbye to our favourite places and pay a brief visit to as many of them as possible. But that autumn I was really saying goodbye for the last time to Pokrovskoe, and to my girlhood as well.
In Moscow Lev Nikolaevich started his almost daily visits again. One evening I tiptoed into my mother’s bedroom and slipped round the screen to her bed. Whenever we came home from a party or theatre, Maman would always cheerfully ask us, “Well, dear, what happened?” And I would give her a detailed account of everything or act out what I had seen at the theatre. But this time we were both rather glum.
“What is it, Sonya?” Maman asked.
“Well you see, Maman, everyone thinks Lev Nikolaevich will marry someone else, not me, but I’m sure it’s me he loves,” I said shyly.
For some reason Maman was furious and scolded me roundly.
“She’s always thinking people are in love with her!” she raged. “Be off with you and stop thinking a lot of nonsense!”
My mother’s response to my candid confession hurt me deeply, and I never mentioned Lev Nikolaevich again. My father was angry too that Lev Nikolaevich should visit us so often without proposing to his eldest daughter, as Russian tradition demanded, and he was cold to him and unkind to me. The atmosphere in our house became strained and awkward, especially for me.
On 14th September, Lev Nikolaevich said he had something very important to tell me, but couldn’t manage to say it. It wasn’t hard to guess what it was. He spoke to me that evening. I was playing the piano in the drawing room while he leant against the stove crying, “Go on playing! Go on playing!” the moment I stopped. The music prevented others from hearing what he said, and my hands trembled with excitement and my fingers stumbled over the keys as I played for practically the tenth time the same waltz, ‘Il Bacio’, which I had learnt by heart to accompany Tanya’s singing.
Lev Nikolaevich didn’t actually propose then, and I don’t remember exactly what he said. The gist of it though was that he loved me and wanted to marry me. It was all hints and allusions. But in his diary he wrote:
12th September 1862. I love her as I never thought it possible to love anyone. I’m mad, I’ll shoot myself if it goes on much longer. They had a party. She is enchanting…
13th September. The minute I get up tomorrow I’ll go there and tell her everything. Otherwise I’ll shoot myself. It’s almost 4 a.m. I’ve written her a letter and will give it to her tomorrow, i.e. today, the 14th. My God, I’m terrified of dying! Help me!
Another day passed, and on Saturday, 16th September, my brother Sasha and his cadet friends arrived. We had tea in the dining room and fed the hungry cadets, and Lev Nikolaevich spent the whole day with us. Then, choosing a moment when no one’s eyes were on us, he called me into my mother’s room, which was empty at the time, and said: “I wanted to say something to you, but haven’t been able to, so here is a letter I’ve been carrying around in my pocket for several days now. Please read it, and I’ll wait here for your answer.”
The Proposal
I seized the letter and tore downstairs to the bedroom I shared with my two sisters. This is what the letter said:
Sofia Andreevna, I can bear it no longer. Every day for the past three weeks I’ve been saying to myself: “Today I’ll tell her everything”, yet I always leave with the same feelings of sadness, fear and joy in my heart. And every night, as now, I relive what has happened and torture myself—why didn’t I speak to you? And if I had, what would I have said? I am taking this letter with me in case it’s again impossible for me to speak to you, or my courage fails me. Your family has the wrong idea about me—they imagine I am in love with your sister Liza. They are wrong. I cannot get your story out of my head, because when I read it I clearly realized that, like Prince Dublitsky, I have no business to be dreaming of happiness, that you need an exceptional, poetic kind of love. I am not jealous and shall not be jealous of the man you fall in love with. I thought I could love all of you, like children. At Ivitsy I wrote: “Your presence reminds me too vividly of my old age.” But then as now I was lying to myself. Then I might still have been able to tear myself away and return to the monastery of solitary labour and interesting work. But now I can do nothing, for I feel I have created havoc in your household and forfeited the simple straightforward feelings of friendship you once felt for me as a good and honest man. I cannot leave and I dare not stay. You are an honest person. With your hand on your heart and without hurrying (for God’s sake don’t hurry!) tell me what to do. There’s no joy without sorrow. I would have laughed myself sick a month ago if I’d been told one could suffer as I have been suffering, gladly, this past month. Tell me, as an honest person, do you want to be my wife? If you can say yes with your whole heart, boldly, then say yes. Otherwise, if you have the faintest shadow of doubt in your heart, it’s best to say no. For God’s sake think about it carefully. I am terrified of hearing a “no”, but am prepared for it and shall have the strength to endure it. What terrifies me much more is the idea that I shall not be loved as much as I love you!
I didn’t read the letter all the way through, I merely skimmed through it to the words: “Do you want to be my wife?” I was on my way upstairs to say yes to Lev Nikolaevich when I ran into my sister Liza in the doorway, who asked me: “Well, what happened?”
“Le comte m’a fait la proposition,”* I answered hurriedly. Then my mother came in and realized at once what had happened. Taking me firmly by the shoulders she turned me towards the door and said: “Go to him and give him your answer.”
I flew up the stairs on wings, tore past the dining room and drawing room and rushed into my mother’s bedroom. Lev Nikolaevich stood in the corner, leaning against the wall, waiting for me. I went to him and he seized both my hands.
“Well, what is the answer?” he asked.
“Yes—of course,” I replied.
Within a few moments everyone in the house knew what had happened and was coming in to congratulate us.
My Name Day and Engagement
The next day, 17th September, was my name day. All our Moscow friends and relatives came to congratulate us and were told of our engagement. When the old university professor who came to teach my sisters and me French heard that I and not Liza was going to marry Lev Nikolaevich, he said naively: “C’est dommage que cela ne fût Mlle Lise; elle a si bien étudié.”*
But little Katya Obolenskaya threw her arms around me and said: “I’m so glad you’re going to marry such a splendid man and writer.”
My betrothal lasted only a week, from the 16th to the 23rd September. During this time I was taken round the shops, where I unenthusiastically tried on dresses, underwear and hats. Lev Nikolaevich visited every day, and one day he brought me his diaries. I remember how shattered I was by these diaries, which out of an excess of honesty he made me read before our wedding. It was very wrong of him to do this; I wept when I saw what his past had been.
The week passed like a bad dream. For many people my wedding was a sad event, and Lev Nikolaevich was in a terrible hurry to get it over. Maman said I would have to have at least some essential garments made before the wedding, if not the whole trousseau.
“She’s got enough clothes,” said Lev Nikolaevich. “She looks very smart too.”
She managed to get one or two things hastily made for me, including the dress for my wedding, which was set for 23rd September at 7 in the evening, at the Palace Church in the Kremlin. At our house everyone was rushing about getting ready, and Lev Nikolaevich had a mass of things to see to. He bought a magnificent dormeuse,* ordered photographs to be taken of everyone in my family and presented me with a diamond brooch. He also had his own photograph taken, which I had begged him to have fitted into a golden bracelet my father had given me. But I didn’t get a great deal of pleasure from the dresses or presents—I wasn’t interested, I was too wrapped up in my love for Lev Nikolaevich and the fear of losing him. These fears have never left me; they have remained in my heart throughout my life, although thank God we have kept our love for each other intact throughout 48 years of marriage.
When we discussed our future together, Lev Nikolaevich said I should choose where I would like to live after the wedding. We could stay on with my parents in Moscow for a bit, we could go abroad or we could go straight to Yasnaya Polyana. I said I wanted to go to Yasnaya Polyana, and start a proper family life at home straight away. And I could see that he liked this very much.
The Wedding
It was 23rd September at last, the day of the wedding. I didn’t see Lev Nikolaevich all day, but he dropped in for a moment. We sat down together on our valises and he started tormenting me, questioning me and doubting my love for him. The thought occurred to me that he wanted to run away, and might have had sudden doubts about the marriage.* I started to cry, and at that moment my mother came in and pounced on him: “Well, you’ve chosen a fine time to make her cry,” she said. “Today is her wedding day, it’s hard enough for her as it is and she’s got a long journey ahead of her, and look at her crying her eyes out.” Lev Nikolaevich looked very penitent, and went off to dine with the Perfilevs, his wedding sponsors, who would bless him and take him to the church. He had asked Timiryazev to be his best man, as his brother Sergei had gone to Yasnaya Polyana to get things ready and would be meeting us there.
From Lev Nikolaevich’s side of the family was his aunt Pelageya Yushkova. She was to drive to the church with me and my little brother Volodya, who carried the icon.
Just before seven that evening, my sisters and friends began to dress me. I begged them not to call the hairdresser, as I wanted to do my own hair, and the girls pinned on the flowers and the long tulle veil. The dress was also tulle, and in the current fashion—very open at the neck and shoulders. It was so thin, light and airy, it seemed to envelop me like a cloud. My thin, childish unformed arms and shoulders looked pitifully bony. I was soon ready, and we now had to wait for the best man to come and tell us the bridegroom was in the church. An hour or more passed, and no one came. It flashed through my mind that he had run away—he had been so odd that morning. But then who should appear but cross-eyed little Alexei Stepanovich, his valet, who rushed in looking very agitated and asked us to open the suitcase immediately and get out a clean shirt. In all the preparations for the wedding and the journey they had apparently forgotten to leave one out! Someone had been sent to buy one, but it was Sunday and all the shops were closed. Another age elapsed while they took the shirt back to the bridegroom and he put it on and went to the church. Then began the farewells, the tears and the sobs, and I felt distraught.
“How will we manage without our little Countess!” my old nurse kept saying over and over again. (She always called me that, probably in memory of my grandmother, Countess Sofia Zavadovskaya, after whom I had been named.)
“I’ll die of grief without you,” my sister Tanya said.
My little brother Petya just gazed at me despairingly with his sad black eyes. Maman avoided me and bustled about preparing the wedding supper. Everyone was plunged in gloom by the impending separation.
Father wasn’t well. I went to say goodbye to him in his study, and he seemed deeply moved. They prepared bread and salt, Maman took down the icon of St Sofia the martyr, and with her brother, my uncle Mikhail, standing beside her, she blessed me with it.
We all drove in solemn silence to the Palace Church of the Virgin Birth, which was just a moment away from our apartment in the Kremlin. I was sobbing all the way. The winter garden and the church were magnificently lit up. Lev Nikolaevich met me in the garden, took me by the hand and walked me to the doors of the church, where we were met by the priest. He took both our hands in his and led us to the altar. The palace choir was singing, two priests conducted the service, and everything was very solemn and splendid. All the guests were assembled, and there were a great many strangers, palace employees mostly. They all remarked on my extreme youth and tear-stained eyes.
Lev Nikolaevich has described our wedding beautifully in his account of Levin and Kitty’s wedding in his novel Anna Karenina. Not only did he paint a brilliantly imaginative picture of the ceremony, he also described the whole psychological process taking place in Levin’s heart. As for me, I had already had so much excitement over the past few days that I experienced absolutely nothing as I stood at the altar. I just felt as though something obvious and inevitable was happening, as though it couldn’t be otherwise, and there was no point in questioning it.
My best men were my brother Sasha and his friend P.,* a former Guards officer with him.
The ceremony ended, everyone congratulated us, and Lev Nikolaevich and I drove home together, just the two of us. He was being very affectionate to me and seemed happy…At home in the Kremlin they had prepared the usual wedding feast—champagne, fruit, sweets and so on. There were a few guests—just close friends and relatives.
Then I had to change into my travelling dress. Our old chambermaid Varvara, who my father’s friend the waggish Doctor Anke had named the “Oyster”, was coming with me, and bustled about with Lev Nikolaevich’s valet finishing the packing.
The Departure and Send-off
The postilion brought round six mail horses, which were harnessed to the brand new dormeuse Lev Nikolaevich had bought, gleaming black trunks were buckled and strapped to the top of the carriage, and Lev Nikolaevich was impatient to be off.
I had an agonizing lump in my throat and was choking with sadness. For the first time I suddenly realized I was actually leaving my family and everyone I had loved in my life for ever. But I struggled to control my tears. Then the farewells started. It was frightful! I broke down and sobbed when I said goodbye to my sick father. When I kissed Liza goodbye I stared into her eyes and she too was in tears. Tanya howled like a child, and so did Petya, who had drunk too much champagne in order to dull the sadness and had to be taken to bed. I then went downstairs and made the sign of the cross over my two-year-old little brother Vyacheslav, who was sound asleep, and said goodbye to my nurse, Vera Ivanovna, who sobbed and hugged me, kissing my face and shoulders, then kissing me all over. Stepanida Trifonovna, a reserved old lady who had lived with us for over thirty-five years, politely wished me much happiness.
These were the last moments. I had deliberately kept the final farewell with my mother to the very end, and just before getting into the carriage, I flung myself into her arms and we both sobbed. Those tears of parting expressed our mutual gratitude for all the love and kindness we had given each other, forgiveness for the pain we had unwittingly caused, my sorrow at parting with my beloved mother, and her motherly wish that I should be happy.
At last I managed to tear myself away from her and took my seat in the carriage without looking back. I shall never forget the piercing cry she uttered then; it seemed to have been torn from her heart.
The autumn rain was pouring down, and the puddles reflected the dull glow of the street lights and carriage lamps, which had just been lit. The horses were stamping impatiently and the ones in front with the postilion were straining to be off. Lev Nikolaevich slammed the carriage door shut, his valet Alexei Stepanovich jumped onto the back seat, and old Varvara the “Oyster” got up beside him. The horse’s hooves splashed through the puddles, and we were off. I sat crouched in the corner, wretched and exhausted, and wept uncontrollably. Lev Nikolaevich seemed puzzled and dismayed. He had never had a real family and had grown up without a father or mother, and as a man he couldn’t understand what I was feeling. He said he could see I didn’t love him if it hurt me so much to leave my family. What he didn’t realize then was that if I was capable of such passionate love for my family, I would later transfer this love to him and our children. Which is exactly what happened.
We left the city and it became dark and frightening. I had never travelled anywhere in autumn or winter before, and found the darkness and lack of street lights terribly dispiriting. We barely spoke a word until we reached the first stop, Birulevo I think it was. I remember Lev Nikolaevich was particularly gentle and considerate to me. When we arrived at Birulevo, a young couple, titled, in a brand-new dormeuse driven by six horses, we were given the royal suite. The rooms were large, bare and cheerless, with red damask upholstery. They brought in the samovar and made tea. I huddled in a corner on the sofa and sat there silently, as if condemned to death.
“Come now, you must be mistress and pour the tea,” said Lev Nikolaevich.
I obeyed and we had tea, and I felt terribly bashful and nervous. I simply couldn’t bring myself to change to the “thou” form, as he had done, and avoided calling him anything at all; I addressed him by the formal “you” for a long time afterwards too.
Our Arrival at Yasnaya Polyana
The journey from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana took just under twenty-four hours, and we reached our home the following evening, to my great joy. It felt so strange—I was at home, and home was now Yasnaya Polyana.
The first person I saw as I went up the steps of the house where I would spend the next half-century of my life was Aunt Tatyana, holding up the icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and Sergei Nikolaevich, my brother-in-law, standing beside her with the bread and salt. I bowed to their feet, made the sign of the cross and kissed first the icon, then Aunt Tatyana. Lev Nikolaevich did likewise. That day was the start of my life in Yasnaya Polyana, where I lived almost uninterruptedly for the first eighteen years of my marriage.
Lev Nikolaevich wrote in his diary: “25th September 1862. Unbelievable happiness! Is it possible that this will last all our lives?”
Various Notes for Future Reference, and Remarks Made by L.N. Tolstoy on His Writing
20th November 1873. L.N. has been describing to me the way he got some of the ideas for his novel Anna Karenina:
“I was sitting downstairs in my study, examining the white silk embroidery on the sleeve of my dressing gown, and I thought how beautiful it was. And then I wondered how it occurred to people to invent all these designs and decorations and embroideries, and I realized there was a whole world of fashion and ideas and hard work that make up women’s lives, and women are so fascinated by all this. And it naturally led my thoughts about the novel to Anna, and suddenly this piece of embroidery on my sleeve suggested a whole chapter to me. Anna is cut off from all the joys of this side of a woman’s life, for she is alone, other women spurn her and she has no one to talk to about all the ordinary, everyday things that interest them.”
21st November 1876. He came up to me and said: “This bit of writing is so tedious!”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, you see, I’ve said Vronsky and Anna were staying in the same hotel room, but that’s not possible. In St Petersburg, at least, they’d have had to take rooms on different floors. So as you see, this means all the scenes and conversations will have to take place in two separate places, and all the various visitors will have to see them separately. So it will all have to be altered.”
3rd March 1877. Yesterday L.N. went to his table, pointed at his notebook of writing and said: “Oh, how I long to finish this novel (Anna Karenina) and start something new. My ideas are quite clear now. If a work is to be really good there must be one fundamental idea in it that one loves. So in Anna Karenina, I love the idea of the family; in War and Peace I loved the idea of the people, because of the 1812 war; and now I see very clearly that in my next book I shall love the idea of the Russian people’s powers of expansion.” These powers are demonstrated for Lev Nikolaevich by the constant migration of Russians to the new lands of South-east Siberia, Southern Russia, the Belaya River region, Tashkent and so on.
One hears a great deal about theses migrants at present. Last summer when we were staying in Samara, the two of us drove out to a Cossack settlement ten miles from the farm where we were staying, and on the way we passed a whole string of carts with several families and numerous children and old men, all looking very cheerful. We stopped and asked them where they were going. “We are travelling from Voronezh to the new lands,” they said. “Our people went out to the Amur region some time back, and now they have written telling us to join them there.”
Lev Nikolaevich was fascinated by this. And just the other day at the railway station he heard of a hundred or more Tambov peasants leaving to settle in Siberia on their own initiative. They crossed the steppe and finally reached the Irtysh River. There they were told that the land belonged to the Kirghiz people, and they couldn’t settle there, so they went on a little further.
This is the idea for his next book, as I understand it anyway, and around this main idea he is gathering new facts and characters, many of which are still quite unclear, even to him.
25th August [1877]. L.N. has gone to Moscow to find a Russian tutor for the children.* His religious faith is becoming firmer with every day that passes. He says his prayers every day now as he did when he was a child, and on every holy day he goes to matins, where all the peasants crowd round him and question him about the war.* On Wednesdays and Fridays he fasts, speaks constantly of the spirit of humility and won’t let anyone speak ill of others, stopping them half-jokingly if they do. On 26th July he visited the Optina Pustyn Monastery and was much impressed by the monks’ wisdom, culture and way of life.*
Yesterday he said: “My mental valve has been unblocked, but I have a terrible headache.” He is very upset about all our reserves in the war with Turkey and the situation at home, and he spent all yesterday morning writing about it. That evening he told me he realized the best way to express his ideas would be in a letter to the Tsar.* By all means let him write it, but it’s a risky way to express himself and he mustn’t send it.
26th December [1877]. At three in the morning on 6th December, our son Andrei was born. This seemed to release L.N.’s mind from its mental shackles, and a week ago he started writing some new religious, philosophical work in a large bound volume. I haven’t read it yet, but today he was saying to my brother Styopa: “The purpose of the work I’m writing is to demonstrate the absolute necessity for religion.”*
I like the argument he puts forward in favour of Christianity and against all the socialists and communists, who believe that social laws are higher than Christian laws, so I am going to record it. It goes like this:
“If it hadn’t been for the teachings of Christianity, which over the centuries have taken root in us and laid the basis of our entire social life, there would have been no laws of morality and honour, no desire for equality, goodness and a fair distribution of the earth’s blessings, which is what people live for.”
31st January 1881. Feeling that his knowledge of the Russian language was far from perfect, L.N. decided this summer to set himself the task of studying the language of the people. He had long talks with the pilgrims, holy wanderers and others he met on the highway, and jotted down in his notebook all the popular words, proverbs and ideas he was hearing for the first time. This had some unexpected results.
Until about 1877, his religious feelings were vague, or rather indifferent. He was never an outright unbeliever, but nor was he a very committed believer. This caused him terrible anxieties (he actually wrote a religious confession at the beginning of his new work).
But from this close contact with the people, he became deeply impressed by their lucid, unshakeable faith, and terrified by his lack of it, and he resolved wholeheartedly to follow the same path. He started going to church, keeping the fasts, saying his prayers and observing all the laws of the Church. This continued for some time.
But soon he came to see that the source of all this goodness, patience and love that he had witnessed in the people was not the Church and its teachings; as he himself said, having seen the rays he followed them to the light, and discovered that this was Christianity itself, through the Gospels. He persistently denies any other influence. I shall quote his own words on this: “Christianity lives unconsciously but securely in the spirit and traditions of the people.” That is what he says.
Little by little, L.N. saw to his horror what a discrepancy there was between Christianity and the Church. He saw that the Church, hand in hand with the government, had conspired against Christianity. The Church thanks God for the men killed in battle and prays for military victories, yet in the Old Testament it says: “Thou shalt not kill”, and in the Gospels: “Love thy neighbour as thyself.” The Church demands an oath of allegiance, yet Christ tells us not to take the Lord’s name in vain. The Church has given people a lot of rites and rituals which are supposed to assure their salvation, but have been an obstacle to Christianity; its true teachings about God’s kingdom on earth have been obscured, because people have been forced to believe that they will be saved by baptism, communion, fasting and the like.
This is L.N.’s current preoccupation. He has begun to study, translate and interpret the Gospels.* He has been working on this for two years now, and it seems to be only half-finished. But his soul is now happy, he says. He has seen the light (in his words), and this light has illuminated his whole view of the world. His attitude to people has changed too; according to him, whereas before he had just a small circle of intimates, people like him, he now has millions of men as his brothers. Before, his wealth and his estate were his own—now if a poor man asks him for something he must have it.
He sits at his work every day, surrounded by books, and toils away until dinner-time. His health is deteriorating, he suffers from headaches, his hair is turning grey and he lost a lot of weight over the winter.
He doesn’t appear to be as happy as I should wish, and has become quiet, meditative and taciturn. We almost never see those cheerful exuberant moods of his, which used to enchant us all so much. I put this down to excessive overwork and exhaustion. How unlike the old days, when he was writing about the hunt and the ball in War and Peace, and looked as joyful and excited as though he himself was joining in the fun. His soul is in a state of calm clarity, but he suffers deeply for all the human misery and poverty he sees around him, for all those in jail, all the hatred, injustice and oppression in the world—and this deeply affects his impressionable soul and undermines his happiness.
Why Anna Karenina Was Called “Anna”, and What Suggested the Idea of Her Suicide
We have a neighbour here, a landowner of about 50, neither rich nor educated, called Alexander Bibikov. He had living with him a distant cousin of his late wife, an unmarried woman of about 35 who looked after the house and children and was his mistress. One day Bibikov hired a new governess for his son and niece, a beautiful German woman, with whom he soon fell in love, and to whom before long he proposed marriage. His former mistress, whose name was Anna Stepanovna, left the house to visit Tula for the day, saying she was going to see her mother, but she returned from there with a bundle of clothes under her arm (containing nothing but a change of clothes and some underwear), to Yasenki, the nearest railway station, and there she jumped on the tracks and threw herself under a goods train. There was a post-mortem, and Lev Nikolaevich attended, and saw her lying there at the Yasenki barracks, her skull smashed in and her naked body frightfully mutilated. It had the most terrible effect on him. Anna Stepanovna was a tall, plump woman with a typically Russian temperament and appearance. She had dark hair and grey eyes, and although she wasn’t beautiful she was very pleasant-looking.*
A few days before Vanechka’s death he astonished me by giving away all his things. He put little labels on everything, addressed in his own hand: “With love to Masha from Vanya”, or “To Simeon Nikolaevich our cook, from Vanya” and so on. He took all the little framed pictures off the walls of his nursery and took them to his brother Misha’s room; he had always been terribly fond of Misha. Then he asked me for a hammer and nails, and hung up the pictures in his brother’s room. He was so fond of Misha that if they had a quarrel and Misha didn’t make it up with him immediately, he would be desperately unhappy and would weep bitterly. Whether Misha loved him as much I don’t know, but he did call his eldest son after him later.
Shortly before he died, Vanechka was looking out of the window, when he suddenly looked very thoughtful: “Maman, is Alyosha” (Alyosha was my little son who had died) “an angel now?” he asked.
“Why, yes,” I told him. “It’s said that children who die before they are seven turn into angels.”
To which he replied: “Well, I had better die too, before I am seven. It will be my seventh birthday soon, but I may still be an angel yet. And if I don’t, dear, dear Maman, please will you let me fast so I won’t have any sins?”
Those words of his engraved themselves in my mind. On 20th February, my daughter Masha and Nurse took him to the clinic, where they had made an appointment with Professor Filatov. They all looked so cheerful and excited when they got back, and Vanechka told me with great glee that he had been told he might eat whatever he wanted and could go out walking and even driving. After lunch he took a walk with Sasha, and afterwards he ate a hearty dinner. We had all been through such agony while he was ill, and now the whole house cheered up again. Tanya and Masha, who had no children of their own, lavished all their maternal affection on their little brother.
On the evening of the 20th, Sasha and Vanechka asked their sister Masha to read them the children’s version of Dickens’s Great Expectations, which was called The Convict’s Daughter. When it was time to go to bed he came to say goodnight to me. I was touched by the sad weary look in his eyes and asked him about the book Masha had been reading to them.
“Oh, don’t talk about it, Maman, it’s all so sad! You see Estella doesn’t marry Pip in the end!”
We went downstairs to the nursery together, and he yawned, then with tears in his eyes he said sadly: “Oh, Maman, it’s back again, that, that…temperature.”
I took his temperature and it was 38.5°. He said his eyes were aching and I thought it must be an attack of measles. When I realized he was ill again, I burst into tears, and seeing me cry he said: “Don’t cry, Maman, don’t cry. It’s God’s will.”
Not long before this he had asked me to explain the Lord’s Prayer to him, and I explained “Thy Will Be Done” with special feeling. Then he asked me to finish reading a Grimms’ story we hadn’t finished—the one about the crow as far as I recall. Then Misha came into the nursery, and I went off to my bedroom. I later learnt that Vanechka had said to Misha, “I know I am dying now.”
He was very feverish all night, but managed to sleep. Next morning we sent for Doctor Filatov, who said straight away it was scarlet fever. His temperature was 40°, and he had pains in his stomach and violent diarrhoea. (Scarlet fever is often complicated by a distemper of the bowels.)
At 3 in the morning he woke up, looked at me and said: “Forgive me, dear Maman, for keeping you awake.”
“I’ve had my sleep, darling,” I said. “We’re all taking it in turns to sit with you.”
“Whose turn is it next, Tanya’s?”
“No dear, it’s Masha’s.”
“Call Masha then, and go to bed.”
How lovingly my darling little boy sent me away. He hugged me to him tightly and pressed his dry little lips to mine, tenderly kissing me again and again.
“Is anything hurting you?” I asked him.
“No, nothing’s hurting,” he said.
“Just miserable?”
“Yes, just miserable.”
He never regained consciousness properly after that. The next day his temperature went up to 42°. Filatov wrapped him in blankets soaked with mustard water, and laid him in a warm bath—but it was no good, his little head hung helplessly to one side as if he were dead, then his little hands and feet grew cold. He opened his eyes once more, with a look of pure astonishment, then grew still. It was 11 at night on 23rd February.
My husband Lyovochka led me into Tanya’s room and we both sat on the couch together, and I leant my head on his chest and lost consciousness. We were both half-dead with grief.
My daughter Masha and Lyovochka’s sister Maria Nikolaevna the nun were with him during the final moments and were praying for him constantly. I was later told that Nurse, maddened with grief, lay on her bed sobbing. Tanya kept running in and out of the nursery.
When Vanechka had been dressed in his little white shirt and his long, fair curly hair had been brushed, Lyovochka and I plucked up the courage to go back to the nursery. He was lying on the couch. I laid an icon on his little chest, and someone lit a wax candle and put it at his head.
Everyone had loved our Vanechka, and before long news of his death had spread to our friends and relatives. They all sent masses of flowers and wreaths and the nursery soon looked like a garden. No one worried about the risk of infection. Dear kind Sapho Martynova, who had four children of her own, came straight away and wept passionately and grieved with us. And we all seemed to cling together in our love for our poor Vanechka. Maria Nikolaevna stayed with us and gave us religious consolation, and Lev Nikolaevich’s diary records the cry of his heart: “26th February. We have buried Vanechka. It is frightful! No, not frightful, a great spiritual experience. I thank Thee, Father.”
On the third day, 25th February, Vanechka’s funeral service was held. The lid of his little coffin was hammered down, and at twelve o’clock his father, his brothers and Pavel Biryukov carried it out of the house and set it on our large four-seated sledge. My husband and I sat facing each other and we slowly moved off, accompanied by our friends.
I later described Vanechka’s death and funeral in a letter to my sister: “And you know Tanya, all through Vanechka’s funeral service I didn’t shed a single tear, just held his cold little head between my hands and tried to warm his little cheeks with my lips. I don’t know now why I didn’t die of quiet. But although I am weeping as I write to you, I shall go on living, and for a long time too I expect, with this sorrow in my heart.”
Lyovochka and I silently bore off our beloved youngest child, our brightest hope, to be buried. And as we approached the Pokrovskoe cemetery, near the village of Nikolaevich, where he was to be buried beside his little brother Alyosha, Lyovochka recalled how he used to drive along that road to our dacha in Pokrovskoe after he had first fallen in love with me. He wept and caressed me and spoke so tenderly, and his love meant so much to me.
The Burial
We found crowds of people at the cemetery, both villagers and people who had travelled there to attend the funeral. It was Sunday, and the schoolchildren were walking around the village admiring all the wreaths and flowers.
The little coffin was again lifted from the sledge by Lev Nikolaevich and our sons. Everyone wept to see the father, so old, bent and bowed with grief. Many of our friends came to the funeral, as well as members of our family—Manya Rachinskaya, Sonya Mamonova, Kolya Obolensky, Sapho Martynova, Vera Severtseva, Vera Tolstaya and many more. They all sobbed loudly.
When they lowered the coffin into the grave I again lost consciousness, as if I too were disappearing into the earth. They told me afterwards that Ilyusha had tried to shield me from the dreadful pit, and someone else held my arms. Lyovochka embraced me and held me to him, and I stood there with him for a long time in a stunned state.
I was brought back to my senses by the happy shouts of the village children. I had asked Nurse to hand out sweets and cakes to them, and they were laughing, dropping gingerbread and eating it off the ground. Then I remembered how Vanechka had loved to celebrate and hand out sweets, and I burst into tears for the first time since his death.
Immediately after the funeral, when everyone had left, Kasatkin the artist arrived and made two sketches of the fresh grave. He offered one to me and the other to Tanya, with a most moving, poetic letter expressing his love for Vanechka, who he described as “transparent”.
We returned, bereft, to our deserted house, and I remember Lev Nikolaevich sitting down on the sofa in the dining room downstairs (where it had been put for our son Lyova, who had also been ill), and bursting into tears, saying: “I always thought that of all my sons Vanechka would carry on my good work on earth after I died.”
And a little later he said almost the same thing: “And I had dreamt of Vanechka carrying on God’s work after me. Well, there’s nothing to be done now.”
The sight of Lyovochka’s suffering was even more painful to me than my own. I wrote to my sister Tanya: “Lyovochka has grown bent and old. He wanders sadly about the house, with his eyes full of tears, as though the last ray of sunshine in his old age had been extinguished. Two days after Vanechka’s death he sat down and sobbed: ‘For the first time in my life I have lost hope.’”
Of all our children Vanechka looked most like him, with the same bright, penetrating eyes, the same earnest, searching mind. Once I was combing his curly hair in front of the mirror and he turned his little face to me and said with a smile: “Maman, I really do look like Papa, don’t I!”
After the Funeral
The first night after Vanechka’s death I jumped out of bed in terror, hallucinating the most fearful smell. It pursued me for a long time afterwards, even though my husband, who was sleeping with me, assured me there was no smell and I had just imagined it. Then I would suddenly hear Vanechka’s dear gentle voice. He and I used to say our prayers together and make the sign of the cross over each other. “Kiss me hard, Maman,” he would say. “Put your head beside mine, and breathe on my chest so I can fall asleep with your warm breath on me.”
There is no love so strong, so pure or so good as the love of a mother and child. With Vanechka’s death the dear little nursery life in our house came to an end. Sasha was inconsolable without her playmate and wandered sadly around on her own. She was wild and unsociable by nature, whereas Vanechka loved people; he loved writing letters and giving presents, he loved organizing treats and celebrations, and how many people loved him!
Even cold Menshikov wrote: “When I saw your little son I was sure he would either die or live to be an even greater genius than his father.”
I had many, many wonderful letters from people who wrote to sympathize or remember Vanechka. N.N. Strakhov wrote to Lev Nikolaevich: “He promised much—maybe he would have inherited not only your name but your fame. What a lovely child—words cannot describe him.”
The writer Zhirkevich wrote to Lev Nikolaevich: “Without knowing either you or Vanechka, a St Petersburg writer is writing a passionate article about this wonderful little creature who offered us all so much hope. Mothers and fathers everywhere share your grief, and my voice is drowned in a chorus of condolences.”
Peshkova-Toliverova, who had published Vanechka’s story in her magazine The Toy,* wrote: “He stands before me now, a pale modest little boy with enquiring eyes.” Our old friend Prince Urusov soothed me with his comforting assurances about the blessed state of Vanechka’s soul in paradise. And he believed this so earnestly, for he was a very religious and Orthodox man, that I found his faith infectious.
Many people prayed for Vanechka and for us two, in churches and homes. Many parents sympathized with us, particularly those who had lost children of their own, such as Countess Alexandra (née Kapnist), who had lost her only little girl, Baroness Mengden whose two grown-up sons had died, and others.
I wrote to my sister: “I try to console myself with the thought that my sufferings are necessary if I am to pass into eternity, purify my soul and be united with God and Vanechka, who was all joy and love. ‘Thy will be done!’ I cry. If this will bring me closer to eternity, so be it. Yet despite these lofty spiritual aspirations, and my sincere and heartfelt desire to submit to God’s will, there’s no consolation for me in this or anything else.”
For some reason Lev Nikolaevich refused to believe in my religious activities. It annoyed him that I kept visiting churches, monasteries and cathedrals. I remember spending nine hours once in the Arkhangelsk Cathedral during Lent, standing up during the services, then sitting on the steps with the pilgrims and old women. There was another educated woman there too, who had just lost her grown-up son, and like me was seeking comfort in prayer in the house of God.
Returning from the Kremlin one day to our house in Moscow in Khamovniki Street, I got soaked in the rain, caught a bad chill and was ill in bed for a long time. Before this Sasha and I had been fasting, and all this was evidently not to Lev Nikolaevich’s liking. He wrote in his diary: “27th March 1895. Sonya is suffering as much as before, and is incapable of rising to a religious level. The reason is that she has put all her spiritual energies into her animal love for her child.”*
Why animal love? I have had many children, but my feelings for Vanechka and my love for him were fundamentally spiritual in nature. We lived in spiritual communion with each other, we always understood each other, and despite the difference in our ages we always spoke on a lofty, abstract plane.
But Lev Nikolaevich was very sweet to me then too.* I remember he once asked me if I would go and visit his sister Mashenka on her name day, 25th March, and we both tried to decide what to give her as a present. I remembered she said she would like an alarm clock to wake her up for church services, so we both went out and bought one, and she was delighted with it, and with our visit.
Another time, I remember he invited me out to the market to buy flowers for Palm Saturday, pretending he wanted to buy some books to take to the prison. He thought this would divert me. I bought a lot of artificial white flowers and white lilac which I have kept to this day, which now hangs over the big portrait of Vanechka.