The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  July—Tanya Behrs marries Alexander Kuzminsky, a young magistrate. December—first three volumes of War and Peace published.

  12th January. I am in a terrible state of agitation, as though something was coming to an end. There are indeed many things that must soon come to an end, and that terrifies me. The children have been continuously ill, and I still find the Englishwoman awkward and gloomy.* I don’t warm to her. They say one becomes very anxious when one is about to die. Well, I feel extremely anxious and keep rushing about and have so much to do. Lyovochka has been writing all winter, irritable and excited, often with tears in his eyes.* I feel this novel of his will be superb. All the parts he has read to me have moved me to tears too; whether this is because as his wife I feel so much for him, or because it really is very good I cannot say for certain—although I think the second. His family generally gets nothing but his fatigues de travail; with me he is often impatient and bad-tempered, and I am beginning to feel very lonely.

  15th March. At ten o’clock last night, when I was already asleep, a fire broke out in the greenhouses and everything was burnt to ashes. Lyova woke me up and I stood and watched the blaze from the window. He dragged the gardener’s children and their possessions from the building, while I ran to the village to fetch some peasants. But there was nothing they could do: everything was burnt, all those plants Grandfather had so lovingly cultivated all those years ago, which had given pleasure to three generations; the little that is left is probably frozen and charred too. I wasn’t so upset about it last night, but today I had to struggle to control my feelings, otherwise I would have been in floods of tears. What a blow. I feel desperately sorry for Lyovochka; he looks so crushed, and every little tribulation of his weighs heavily upon me. He had lavished so much love on those plants, and everything he planted was just beginning to flourish. But nothing can bring them back now, only time will ease the pain.

  16th September. Tomorrow is my name day. All day I have been unable to stop thinking of 17th September last year.* God knows I don’t need parties or music or dancing—all I need is for him to want me and love giving me pleasure as he used to; if only he knew how much I appreciated his kindness to me last year—I shall remember it as long as I live. Then I felt so sure of myself, so happy and strong and beautiful. Now I feel equally sure I am worthless, weak and ugly.

  This morning we had a friendly discussion about the estate and agreed about everything and were such good friends, just as though we were one again, yet we seldom talk to each other about anything these days. I think of nothing but my children and my own trivial preoccupations. Seryozha came up to me just now and said, “What’s that you’re writing in your little book?” And I told him he could read it when he grew up. What will he make of it? Will he think badly of me? Will the children stop loving me too? It’s because I am so demanding that I can never make people love me.

  1868

  Universities of St Petersburg and Moscow in ferment. September—first issue of Mikhail Bakunin’s periodical, the People’s Cause, published in exile in Switzerland.

  Tolstoy immersed in the last part of War and Peace. Sofia assumes most of the responsibility for the household and estate. Autumn—entire Tolstoy family travels to Moscow, where Sofia’s father is dying.

  31st July. It makes me laugh to read my diary. What a lot of contradictions—as though I were the unhappiest of women! But who could be happier? Could any marriage be more happy and harmonious than ours? When I am alone in my room I sometimes laugh for joy and cross myself and pray to God for many, many more years of happiness. I always write my diary when we quarrel. There are still days when we quarrel, but this is because of various subtle emotional reasons, and we wouldn’t quarrel if we didn’t love each other. I have been married for six years now, but I love him more and more. He often says it isn’t really love, but we have grown so used to each other we cannot be separated. But I still love him with the same poetic, fevered, jealous love, and his composure occasionally irritates me.

  He has gone off hunting with my brother Petya. It’s hard for him to write in the summer. Afterwards they’ll go to Nikolskoe. I am unwell and have stayed indoors almost all day. The children go out for long walks and come back only to eat their meals on the veranda. Ilya is a perfect darling. Tanya’s husband Kuzminsky is neither flesh nor fowl.

  1869

  20th May—Sofia Tolstoy gives birth to her third son, Lev (Lyova, Lyolya). Tolstoy finishes War and Peace. 4th December—the entire novel is published.

  1870

  First strikes in St Petersburg, followed by similar disturbances elsewhere. Numerous people arrested and imprisoned.

  Tolstoy starts work on a novel about Peter the Great, writes a series of readers for peasants and learns Greek. Sofia writes a short story called ‘Sparrows’, and Russian and French grammars for her children.

  5th June. I have been weaning Lyova for four days now.* I am almost sadder with him than I was with the others. I blessed him, and cried and prayed for him. It’s very hard, this first separation from one’s baby. I think I must be pregnant again. With each new child one sacrifices a little more of one’s life and accepts an even heavier burden of anxieties and illnesses.

  1871

  12th February—premature birth of the Tolstoys’ second daughter, Maria (Masha). Sofia nearly dies of puerperal fever. Shortly after the birth, Tolstoy leaves for a health cure in Samara, 500 miles east of Moscow, and buys a 67,000-acre estate near Buzuluk.

  18th August. I saw my sister Tanya and her children off to the Caucasus yesterday evening. My soul is empty and sad at the prospect of losing my dearest friend. We have never been parted before. I feel as if part of my soul had been torn out, and nothing can comfort me. There is no one else in the whole world who could make me smile, comfort me when I am sad, and lift my spirits when I feel low. I look at nature and at my life stretching ahead of me, dismal and desolate, for everything seems dead without her. I cannot find words to express what I feel. Something has died in me. It’s not a grief one can forget through tears, it will make my heart ache for years to come.* I worry constantly about Lyovochka’s health. For two months he has been on a koumiss* diet, which has done him no good at all.*

  1872

  Marx’s Capital (first published 1867) appears in Russian, its first foreign translation.

  Tolstoy, disillusioned with fiction, opens a school for peasant children in the house and writes his peasant ABC. He is increasingly haunted by fears of death. Spring—he abandons his peasant school and turns to teaching his own children. 13th June—Sofia gives birth to her fourth son, Pyotr (Petya).

  It has been a happy winter; our souls have been in harmony again, and Lyovochka’s health hasn’t been bad.

  1st April. Lyovochka returned from Moscow on 30th March.* The children have brought yellow and purple flowers in from the garden.

  I fasted, returned from Tula by train, then took the carriage. There’s snow only in the gullies and it’s terribly muddy, but warm and sunny. Lyovochka hunted woodsnipe this evening; he shot one and Mitrofan* sent us another.

  3rd April. Still warm. He shot two woodsnipe. We sat up until almost four a.m. getting the proofs of the ABC* ready to send off.

  6th April. A bright windy morning followed by thunder and a violent hailstorm. Lyovochka has had a chill for the past three nights and is still unwell.

  8th April. There was a terrific thunderstorm in the night, followed by a downpour of rain. Lyovochka still has a chill in his back and feels unwell but is in good spirits, and says he has enough work to last him a lifetime. Everything is green. The leaves are bursting out, the lungwort is in flower, and the grass is already tall.

  19th April. Lyovochka looked at the stars all night until dawn.

  20th April. Drove out with his niece Varya and the children to pick violets. Everything is very fresh. I feel slightly feverish. Lyovochka is well.

  21st April. I drove out to pick morels with Varya, and her fiancé Nagornov* and th
e children. We got a whole basketful. It is still cool. Lyovochka, Varya and Nagornov went off to shoot snipe. The sun set like a blazing ball of fire. It is a warm, still evening, 11° above zero. The lime tree is almost in leaf, and all the other trees apart from the oak have opened up. This morning Lyovochka brought in a huge bunch of flowers and branches he had picked from various trees.

  27th–28th April. Lyovochka left for Moscow last night. Masha* is very sick.

  30th April. Unbearable heat, thunderstorms night and day.

  13th May. Lyovochka brought in a bunch of sweet briar covered in flowers.

  15th May. We had a swim, made coffee, then picked mushrooms for our basket. Very hot.

  18th May. Hannah has gone to Tula to buy toys for the children. We went out to pick mushrooms and were caught in a shower—we got chilled through. Lyovochka is very upset that they haven’t yet seen the proofs, and wrote yesterday to Moscow telling them to return the original which is with Ries.* There are huge pods on the acacias. Dry, windy and cold.

  20th May. Terrible heat. Lyovochka and Ilyusha went to Tula in the train and I took the other children swimming. The sweet briar has lost its blossom. Yesterday they sold the hay from the orchard.

  1873

  Summer—young revolutionaries flock “to the people”, travelling to the villages dressed as artisans and peasants to teach literacy classes, give medical help and spread socialist ideas. Hundreds arrested.

  Spring—Tolstoy gives up work on his Peter the Great novel and starts work on Anna Karenina. A bull on the estate gores a peasant to death. Shortly afterwards, the whole family travels south to Samara to stay on their new estate. November—publication of the third edition of the Complete Works of L.N. Tolstoy, in eight volumes. 9th November—Petya dies of croup. Tolstoy haunted by fears of death.

  13th February. Lyovochka has gone to Moscow* and all day I have been sitting alone here staring into space, a prey to sickening anxieties. I sometimes search my heart and ask myself what I really want. And to my horror, the answer is that I want gaiety, smart clothes and chatter. I want people to admire me and say how pretty I am, and I want him to see and hear them too; I long for him occasionally to emerge from his rapt inner existence that demands so much of him; I wish he could briefly lead a normal life with me, like a normal person. But then my heart cries out against the Devil’s temptations of Eve, and I think even worse of myself. I hate people to tell me I am beautiful. I never believed them, and now it would be too late anyway—what would be the point? My darling little Petya* loves his old mother as much as he would love a great beauty. And Lyovochka could get used to the plainest wife, so long as she was docile and quiet and lived the sort of life that suited him. I want to turn my character inside out and demolish everything that is mean and false in me. I am having my hair curled today, and have been happily imagining how nice it will look, even though nobody will see me and it’s quite unnecessary. I adore ribbons, I would like a new leather belt—and now I have written this I feel like crying…

  The children are waiting upstairs for their music lesson, and here I am in the study writing all this stupid nonsense.

  We went skating today. The boys kept bumping into their tutor Fyodor Fyodorovich* and I had trouble pacifying him and trying to comfort them. I don’t take to the new Englishwoman* who arrived here the other morning; she is too lethargic and commune for my liking. But it’s too early to tell.

  11th November. On 9th November at nine in the morning, my little Petyushka died of a throat infection.* He died peacefully, after two days’ illness. He was born on 13th June, 1872, and I had fed him for fourteen and a half months, and he lived just another three afterwards. What a bright, happy little boy—I loved my darling too much and now there is nothing. He was buried yesterday. I cannot reconcile the two Petyas, the living and the dead; they are both precious to me, but what does the living Petya, so bright and affectionate, have in common with the dead one, so cold and still and serious? He loved me very much—I wonder if it hurt him too to leave me.

  1874

  Revolutionaries of the Land and Liberty organization continue to go “to the people”. By the end of the year some 800 are rounded up and arrested, and Land and Liberty is virtually wiped out.

  22nd April—Sofia gives birth to a son, Nikolai. 20th June—Tolstoy’s Aunt Tatyana dies after living for fifty years at Yasnaya Polyana. Her companion, Natalya Petrovna, becomes deranged and is moved to an old people’s home. Tolstoy’s Aunt Pelageya moves in. Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis deepens and his religious doubts multiply.

  17th February. When I think of the future I see a blank. I am haunted by the premonition that as soon as the grass grows over Petya’s grave they will have to plough it up for me.

  1875

  Two large strikes in Odessa. Peasants near Kiev start to redistribute the land amongst themselves and dispatch one of their number to St Petersburg to petition the Tsar.

  January—chapters 1–14 of Anna Karenina appear in the Russian Herald. 2nd February—ten-month-old Nikolai dies in agony of meningitis. 1st November—Sofia gives birth to a baby girl, Varvara, who dies immediately afterwards. December—Aunt Pelageya dies after a fall. Tolstoy prone to ever more severe doubts and depressions.

  12th October. This isolated country life is becoming intolerable. Dismal apathy, indifference to everything, day after day, month after month, year after year—nothing changes. I wake up in the morning and lie there wondering who will get me up, who is waiting for me. The cook is bound to come in, then Nurse, complaining that the servants are grumbling about the food and there’s no sugar, which means we must send for more. So then I get up, my shoulder aching, and sit silently darning holes, and then it’s time for the children’s grammar and piano lessons, which I do with pleasure, although with the sad realization that I’m not doing it as well as I should. Then in the evening more darning, with Auntie* and Lyovochka playing endless horrible games of patience together. I get some brief pleasure from reading, but how many good books are there? On days like today I feel I’m living in a dream. But no, this is life, not a dream. Surely it can’t go on much longer. My hope is that God will light the spark of life in Lyovochka and he will be the person he used to be.*

  1876

  Troops put down the rebellious peasants. December—Land and Liberty organizes its first demonstration in St Petersburg.

  Summer—Tolstoy visits Samara again to buy horses for a stud farm he plans to start. October—Sofia starts work on a biography of Tolstoy, on which she works until 1878. He resolves his religious doubts by strict observance of the religious rituals.

  15th September. We live in such isolation, and here I am again with my silent friend, my diary. I intend to write it every day without fail from now on. Lyovochka went off to Samara,* and from there to Orenburg, a town he had always wanted to visit. I got a telegram from him there. I miss him and worry even more. I try to tell myself I am pleased he is enjoying himself, but it isn’t true. I am hurt that he has torn himself away from me when we were getting on so well and were such good friends, and has sentenced me to two anxious weeks without him.

  I have decided to make the best of it and am throwing myself into the children’s lessons. But goodness, how impatient I am! I keep losing my temper and shouting at them—today I became annoyed beyond endurance by Ilya’s laziness and the spelling mistakes in Seryozha’s essay on the Volga, and I burst into tears as the lesson was ending. The children were dismayed, but Seryozha was sorry for me and I found that very touching; afterwards he kept following me around and was so quiet and attentive. Tanya and I aren’t getting on. How sad to have this endless battle with one’s children.

  17th September. My name day. One more day has passed without Lyovochka or so much as a word from him. This morning I got up feeling lazy and unwell, plagued by minor worries. The children went off with my brother Styopa* to fly their kite and ran back red-faced and excited to beg me to watch. But I didn’t go, for I had ordered all Lyovochka’s pa
pers to be fetched from the gun closet and was immersed in the world of his novels and diaries. I was very excited and experienced a wealth of impressions. But I realized I could never write that biography of him as I intended, for I could never be impartial; I avidly search his diaries for any reference to love, and am so tormented by jealousy that I can no longer see anything clearly. I shall try to do it, though.*

  18th September. I had a telegram from him in Syzran today saying he will be home the day after tomorrow in the morning. I suddenly felt more cheerful, and the house was all happiness and light; the children’s lessons went well and they were adorable. But I have a pain in my chest—I wonder if I’m going to be ill. It reduced me to tears today and I feared for our peaceful life together. Talking and explaining things to the children during lessons was agony. I keep catching my breath. They were in a bad mood when they came upstairs after M. Rey’s class.* Apparently they had misbehaved and had been given “twos” for bad conduct. I told Seryozha that as he had been naughty he couldn’t go hunting. I hoped this punishment would teach him a lesson, but he just lost his temper and shouted, “Au contraire!” which I found very hurtful. But later, when he was saying goodnight, he asked if I was still angry with him, and I was very pleased and forgave him.