The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  21st November. Various disasters. First Nurse is pregnant and will have to leave in two months, so I shall have to find another nurse for poor little Andryusha. Then Grigory the butler has given his notice. Lyovochka went hunting with Ilyusha today and caught 6 hares. Seryozha has a cough and played waltzes on the piano with Tanya all day; he played Beethoven’s Sonata Fantasia too. This evening the children danced quadrilles and various other dances. Andryusha has diarrhoea, and in one day has become frightfully weak. It’s warm outside—the children have brought in some willow branches still in leaf.

  24th November. Tonight I sat feeding Andryusha in the silence, with only the icon-lamp lighting the darkness. The nurse had gone off to hang up the swaddling clothes when I heard Annie shouting from the nursery next door: “Serosha, dare not!* Serosha!” I was terribly alarmed, laid Andryusha in his cradle and hurried into the nursery, to find Annie shouting in her sleep. I tucked up Tanya and Masha, who had kicked off the blankets in their sleep, and went to bed. I was shivering and feverish all night and didn’t sleep a wink. Tanya’s fur coat arrived from Tula today, as well as my hat and my fox jacket. The jacket is too narrow at the back and the sleeves are too short.

  Lyovochka has stayed at home the last two days; on Wednesday he had dinner with the Samarins in Tula. I finished the second version of my biographical essay today, but it’s too long, so once more it won’t do.

  1879

  9th February—Grigory Goldenburg’s assassination of Prince Kropotkin, Governor of Kharkov. 13th March—Leon Mirsky’s unsuccessful attempt to kill the chief of security police, General Drenteln. 2nd April—Alexander Solovyov fires five shots at the Tsar. The new People’s Will party formed in October, dedicated to the assassination of Tsar Alexander II. 18th and 19th November—two more attempts to kill the Tsar.

  Tolstoy abandons work on the Decembrists for a series of articles on religious faith, including ‘What I Believe’ and ‘An Investigation of Dogmatic Theology’. Sofia Tolstoy prepares the fourth edition of Tolstoy’s Complete Works. At the end of the year her biography of him is published in the Russian Library series. 20th December—Mikhail Tolstoy (Misha) born.

  18th December. More than a year has passed. I sit waiting for my confinement, which may start at any moment and is overdue. The thought of this new baby fills me with gloom; my horizons have become so narrow and my world is such a small and dismal place. Everyone here, including the children, is in a tense state, with the approach of the holidays and the suspense about my confinement. It has been terribly cold, more than twenty degrees below zero. Masha has had a sore throat and a fever for the past week. She got up today. Lyovochka has gone to Tula to authorize Bibikov to go to Moscow and deal with the new edition,* and has promised to buy something for the Christmas tree. He is writing a lot about religion. Andryusha is the light of my life and a delight.

  Two days after writing this, at 6 in the morning on 20th December, 1879, Misha* was born.

  1881

  1st March—revolutionaries assassinate Tsar Alexander II. A state of emergency is declared, the power of military tribunals is extended, and administrative officials are granted wide powers. A huge roundup starts, and on 5th April five assassins, one of them a woman, are publicly hanged. The reign of the new Tsar, Alexander III (1881–94), sees the reassertion of absolutism, bureaucracy, orthodoxy and nationalism. Extreme reactionaries are appointed to government. There is a wave of pogroms.

  Tolstoy writes to the new Tsar begging him not to hang the assassins. His popularity protects him from the consequences of his plain speaking, but in official circles feeling against him is growing. June—Tolstoy makes a second pilgrimage to the Optyna Pustyn monastery. He gives up hunting and smoking and criticizes his family’s worldly aspirations. September—the Tolstoys rent a flat in Moscow, and until 1901 they spent their winters in the city, where Sergei attends the university, Tanya attends art school, and Ilya and Lev go to secondary school. Tolstoy becomes increasingly distant from his family, and the discord between husband and wife is at its most intense when he meets Syutaev, a peasant, Christian and socialist, who has a great influence on him. 31st October—Sofia gives birth to Alexei (Alyosha).

  1882

  In the summer, the Tolstoys buy a house in Dolgo-Khamovniki Street in Moscow. August—Ilya Tolstoy seriously ill with typhus. Arguments between the couple intensify and Tolstoy threatens to leave. He starts writing ‘What Must We Do?’ and continues ‘What I Believe’.

  28th February. We have been in Moscow since 15th September 1881.* We are staying in Prince Volkonsky’s house on Denezhny Lane, near Prechistenka. Seryozha goes to the university, and Tanya attends the art school on Myasnitskaya Street, while Ilya and Lyolya go to Polivanov’s secondary school, which is virtually next door to us.* Our life in Moscow would be quite delightful if only it didn’t make Lyovochka so unhappy.* He is too sensitive to survive the city, and his Christian disposition cannot reconcile all this idle luxury with people’s struggling lives here. He went back to Yasnaya with Ilya yesterday to have a break and do some work.

  26th August, Yasnaya Polyana. It was twenty years ago, when I was young and happy, that I started writing the story of my love for Lyovochka in these diaries: there is virtually nothing but love in them in fact. Twenty years later, here I am sitting up all night on my own, reading and mourning its loss. For the first time in my life he has run off to sleep alone in the study. We were quarrelling about such silly things—I accused him of taking no interest in the children and not helping me look after Ilya, who is sick. Today he shouted at the top of his voice that his dearest wish was to leave his family. I shall carry the memory of that heartfelt, heart-rending cry of his to my grave. I pray for death, for without his love I cannot survive; I knew this the moment his love for me died. I cannot prove to him how deeply I love him—as deeply as I loved him 20 years ago—for this love oppresses me and irritates him. He is filled with Christian notions of self-perfection and I envy him…Ilyusha has typhus and is lying in the drawing room with a fever. I have to make sure he is given his quinine at the prescribed intervals, which are very short, so I worry in case I miss a dose. I cannot sleep in the bed my husband has abandoned. Lord help me! I long to take my life, my thoughts are so confused. The clock is striking four.*

  I have decided if he doesn’t come in to see me it must mean he loves another woman. He has not come. I used to know what my duty was—but what now?

  He did come in, but it was the next day before we made up. We both cried, and I realized to my joy that his love for me, which I had mourned all through that terrible night, wasn’t dead. I shall never forget the heavenly cool, clear morning, the silvery dew sparkling in the grass, as I walked through the woods after a sleepless night to the bathhouse. Rarely have I seen such a miracle of natural beauty. I sat for a long time in the icy water, hoping to catch a chill and die. But to no avail. I returned home to feed Alyosha,* who smiled with joy at seeing me.

  10th September. Lyovochka has taken Lyova to Moscow.* Today was the last warm day of summer. I went for a swim.

  1883

  Summer—Alexander III’s coronation in Moscow. All members of the People’s Will behind bars or in exile. Small groups of students and intellectuals form Marxist discussion groups in the cities.

  Spring—large fire in the village of Yasnaya Polyana. 21st May—Tolstoy gives Sofia power of attorney to conduct all matters concerning the property. Hordes of “disciples” start to visit Tolstoy—including Vladimir Grigorevich Chertkov.

  5th March (Moscow). The spring sun always has a bracing effect on me. It’s shining into my little study upstairs, where I sit and look back, in the calm of this first week of Lent, on the events of last winter. I went out into society a bit, enjoying both Tanya’s successes and my own; I felt youthful and gay, and enjoyed everything about this sociable life. Yet no one would believe me if I said that the moments of despair outweighed the happiness—moments when I would say to myself, “It’s not right, I shouldn�
��t be doing this.” But I was unable to stop. I simply couldn’t. It’s clear to me that I am not free to act and live as I want, but am guided by the will of God, or fate—whatever one chooses to call the supreme will that controls even our smallest affairs.

  It was three days ago, 2nd March, that I weaned Alyosha, and I am again suffering the pangs of separation. It comes on me again and again, and there is no way I can be rid of it.

  Our life at home, away from the crowded city, is much easier and happier than it was last year. Lyovochka is calmer and more cheerful; he does sometimes get in a rage and blame me for everything, but it doesn’t last so long now and doesn’t happen so often. He is becoming nicer every day in fact.

  He continues with his religious writings.* They are never-ending because they can never be published; but he must do it, it is God’s will, and they may even serve His great purpose.

  1884

  Tolstoy starts making boots, chopping wood and drawing his own water from the well, and spends more and more time with his disciple Chertkov. Arguments with Sofia become increasingly ugly, and he talks of leaving her to lead an ascetic life. Sofia, pregnant again, is beside herself with shame and misery. 18th June—Alexandra (Sasha) born. Soon afterwards, Sofia gains Tolstoy’s permission to borrow money to bring out new editions of his novels. Tolstoy finishes ‘What I Believe’, and all copies of the first edition are seized by the police at the printer’s.

  1885

  Spring—huge strikes in two textile factories near Moscow. June—law prohibiting night work in textile mills for women and children.

  Sofia converts an empty shed near the Moscow house into a warehouse and publishing office, and assumes responsibility of all the proofreading and publishing of Tolstoy’s works. Chertkov sets up his own publishing house, the Intermediary, to offset Sofia’s by publishing cheap books for the masses. As Chertkov moves into the role of Tolstoy’s executor, secretary and confidant, Tolstoy describes his relationship with his wife as “a struggle to the death”. In December, he again threatens divorce after a terrible argument, then leaves with his daughter Tanya to stay with friends.

  24th March. Holy Easter Sunday, Lyovochka returned yesterday from the Crimea, where he went with Prince Urusov,* who is ill. The Crimea brought back his old memories of Sevastopol and the war, and he spent a lot of time walking in the mountains and gazing at the sea. On the road to Simeiz, he and Urusov passed the place where he had been stationed with his cannon during the war. He had fired it, just once, in that very spot. That was thirty years ago.* He and Urusov were travelling along, and he suddenly jumped out of the carriage and started searching for something. It turned out he had seen a cannonball lying near the road. Could it really be the same one he had fired during the siege of Sevastopol?

  1886

  March—law forbidding peasant households to break up unless approved by a two-thirds majority of the village. 6th June—law tightening up labour contracts, while stiffening up penalties for striking.

  18th January—four-year-old Alexei Tolstoy dies of quinsy. Tolstoy writing ‘Walk in the Light’, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilich’ and a very long essay called ‘On Life and Death’, and finishes ‘What Then Must We Do?’ He also dictates to Sofia his play, The Power of Darkness. Sofia preparing eighth edition of his works (which Chertkov hopes to produce more cheaply). November—Sofia’s mother dies in the Crimea. The Archbishop of Kherson and Odessa denounces Tolstoy as a heretic.

  25th October (Yasnaya Polyana). Everybody in this house—especially Lev Nikolaevich, whom the children follow like a herd of sheep—has foisted on me the role of scourge. Having loaded me with all the responsibilities for the children and their education, the finances, the estate, the housekeeping, indeed the entire material side of life—from which they derive a great deal more benefit than I do—they then come up to me with a cold, calculating, hypocritical expression masked in virtue, and beseech me in ingratiating tones to give a peasant a horse, some money, a bit of flour and heaven knows what else. It is not my job to manage the farm—I have neither time nor aptitude for it. How can I simply give the peasant a horse if I don’t know if it will be needed at the farm at a particular moment? All these tedious requests, when I know so little about the state of affairs here, irritate and confuse me.

  My God, how often I long to abandon it all and take my life. I am so tired of struggling and suffering. The egotism and unconscious malice of the people one loves most is very great indeed! Why do I carry on despite all this? I don’t know; I suppose because I must. I can’t do what my husband wants (so he says), without breaking all the practical and emotional chains that have bound me to my family. Day and night I think only of how to leave this house, leave this life, leave this cruelty, all these excessive demands on me. I have grown to love the dark. The moment it is dark I feel happier, for then I can conjure up the things I used to love, all the ghosts from my past. Last night I caught myself thinking aloud, and was terrified that I might be going mad. Surely if I crave the dark I must crave death too?

  Although the last two months when Lev Nikolaevich was ill* were an agonizing time for me, strangely enough they were also very happy. I nursed him day and night and what I had to do was so natural, so simple. It is really the only thing I can do well—making a personal sacrifice for the man I love. The harder the work, the happier I was. Now that he is on his feet again and almost well, he has given me to understand that he no longer needs me. So on the one hand I have been discarded like a useless object, and on the other, impossible, undefined sacrifices are demanded of me, in my life and in my family, and I am expected to renounce everything, all my property, all my beliefs, the education and well-being of my children—things which not only I, a fairly determined woman, but thousands of others who believe in these precepts, are incapable of doing.*

  It’s a grey and miserable autumn. Andryusha and Misha have been skating on the Lower Pond. Both Tanya and Masha have toothaches. Lev Nikolaevich is starting on a new play, about peasant life.* I pray to God that he may take up this kind of work again. He has rheumatism in his arm. Mme Seuron* is a pleasant, cheerful woman, very good with the children.

  The boys, Seryozha, Ilya and Lyova, live mysterious lives in Moscow and it worries me. They have such strange views about human passions and their own weaknesses: according to them these things are completely natural, and if they do manage to resist them they consider themselves very fine fellows indeed. But why are people bound to have these weaknesses? Naturally one struggles to overcome one’s failings, but this is something that happens once in a lifetime, not every day of one’s life. And it is well worth the struggle too, even though it often destroys one’s life and breaks one’s heart. But it has nothing to do with nasty, commonplace little passions like cards or wine.

  I am reading the lives of the philosophers.* It is terribly interesting, but difficult to read calmly and sensibly. One always searches for the philosophical teachings that approximate to one’s own convictions, and ignores anything incompatible with them. As a result it is difficult to learn anything new. But I try not to be prejudiced.

  26th October. Lyovochka has written the first act of his play and I am going to copy it out. I wonder why I no longer blindly believe in him as a writer.

  Andryusha and Misha are playing with the peasant boys Mitrosha and Ilyukha, which I dislike for some reason—I suppose because it will teach them to dominate and coerce these children, which is immoral.

  I think a lot about the older boys—it grieves me that they have grown so distant. Why do fathers not grieve for their children? Why is it only women whose lives are burdened in this way? Life is so confusing.

  27th October. I have copied the 1st act of Lyovochka’s new play. It is very good. The characters are wonderfully portrayed and the plot is full and interesting; there will be more too. A letter came from Ilya mentioning marriage.* Surely this is just an infatuation, the first awakening of physical feelings for the first woman with whom he has been in close relatio
ns? I do not know whether to welcome this marriage or not—I cannot approve of it quite frankly, but I trust in God. I gave Andryusha and Misha their lessons today without much enthusiasm for success—they are both so dear to me. I have been correcting proofs and am very tired. Meanwhile Masha runs about and does no lessons, the boys harass me and things are in a bad way.

  30th October. Act 2 is now finished. I got up early to start copying it out, and recopied it this evening. It is good, but rather flat—it needs more theatrical effects, and I told Lyovochka so. I gave Andryusha and Misha their lessons, corrected proofs, and the whole day was taken up by work. Just as I was sitting down to dinner the girls asked me for some money, on Lyovochka’s behalf, for some old woman and for Ganya the thief. I wanted to eat my dinner and was annoyed with everyone for being late, and I had no desire to give any money to that Ganya woman. So I lied and said I didn’t have any—although I did in fact have a few rubles left. But later I felt ashamed, and after I had had my soup I went and got the money. I said nothing, just sat and pondered: can one really find it in one’s heart to love everyone and everything, as Lyovochka demands? Even that woman Ganya the thief, who has systematically robbed every person in the village, has a hideous disease and is a thoroughly vile person.

  1887

  February—The Power of Darkness forbidden to be staged in Russia, but produced as a pamphlet. Tolstoy receives hundreds of visitors from all over the world. Sofia takes up photography.