The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  22nd March. I was busy all day measuring and sewing new clothes for the children. Lyovochka and I played duets after dinner; later on, instead of playing patience he wound some balls of cotton for me, which he found highly entertaining. I wrote a letter to Ilya’s wife Sonya. I am ill and tired.

  23rd March. I felt spring in the air for the first time today. Although it’s still freezing there was a bright sunset, the birds sang and the trunks of the young birch trees at Chepyzh looked particularly beautiful and spring-like. After dinner I took Andryusha and Sasha out and we cleared the snow from the stone terrace in front of the house. Lyovochka rode to Tula.

  Still no news from St Petersburg. I am sick with uncertainty.

  27th March. On the 25th I went to Tula with Misha and Andryusha and we visited the Wanderers’ art exhibition.* I love looking at paintings, but there were few good ones, apart from some lovely landscapes by Volkov and Shishkin. Afterwards we visited the pastry-cook’s, the educational suppliers and the Raevskys.

  Next morning I got up early and went to town to attend to my business. As I was walking down Kievskaya Street who should I meet but Ilyusha. I was very surprised to see him and asked if he would come with me to inspect a barouche that was for sale. It was a long, tedious business. Afterwards I visited the senior notary to collect the mortgage documents, then went home with Ilya. He had come to find out about the auction of the estate and to ask me for 35,000 rubles, which I refused him. It caused a nasty scene, but it didn’t last long. I had gone to Tanya’s room to sit with the children after dinner, when he suddenly shouted: “Well I shan’t give you that koumiss mare then!” I lost my temper. “I shan’t ask you for it anyway—I’ll ask the bailiff!” At that he too lost his temper. “But I’m the bailiff here!” he says. “Well, I’m the estate manager,” say I. I don’t know whether it was because I was tired or if he had driven me to exasperation with his talk of money and property, but I became furious with him. “You’ve got to the point where you even grudge your father a koumiss mare—I can’t think why you came! You can go to the devil—you torment me!” And I slammed the door and went out. I felt so sick and ashamed, and so angry with my son—it was quite horrible.

  Then for the first time we had a serious discussion about it all and agreed things couldn’t go on like this, and that we would have to divide up the property among all of us. I am delighted by the idea, but agree only on condition that the children draw lots; I don’t expect Ilya will accept this, as he wants to hold on to Nikolskoe and Grinevka, but I won’t deprive my defenceless little ones. It’s really only Ilya who is being so difficult. He is terribly selfish and greedy, maybe because he already has a family of his own. The other children are all very sensitive and will agree to anything. Lyovochka has always had a special fondness for Ilya and will never see his faults, and this time too he was agreeing to all his demands. I am afraid there’ll be no end of unpleasantness. Fortunately, though, Grinevka is in my name, and if the others won’t agree to draw lots I shall refuse to hand over Grinevka and Ovsyannikovo. I simply won’t allow my little ones to be slighted. Lyovochka finds all these discussions a great trial, but they are ten times worse for me, as it is I who have to defend the younger children against the older ones. Then Tanya always takes Ilya’s side, which distresses me. Tomorrow I am going to St Petersburg. I am dreading it, for I know I shall not succeed. The very thought terrifies me. It’s warmer now, although windy. Today it was 7° above freezing.

  22nd April. I haven’t written in my diary for almost a month. It has been a particularly interesting and eventful month, but it’s always the same: I had so little free time, my nerves were strained and I had to write so many letters home that I didn’t manage to write my diary.

  Today is the second day of Easter, and the second warm, summery day of the year. In just two days all the bushes and trees have changed from brown to a soft green, and for the first time this morning I heard a nightingale singing at the top of its voice. Yesterday evening it was just tuning up.

  I got back from St Petersburg early on Palm Sunday. I wasn’t well, and for the first days of Holy Week I rested in bed in the peace of our family circle, and gave the children a few lessons. Then we resumed our discussions about dividing the property, with the children, especially Ilya, all grabbing for the biggest bits. This is how we eventually decided to divide it: Ilya will have Grinevka and part of Nikolskoe, Seryozha will have another part of Nikolskoe, and either Tanya or Masha will have the third and largest part, with responsibility for paying off its debts. Lyova will have the house in Moscow and the Bobrov estate in Samara; either Tanya or Masha will have Ovsyannikovo and 40,000 rubles, and Andryusha, Misha and Sasha will each have 4,000 acres in Samara. Vanechka and I will have Yasnaya Polyana. At first I insisted we draw lots for everything, but Lev Nikolaevich and the children protested so I had to agree with them. The Samara land is good for the children since it will gain in value, and there is nothing to steal, chop down or damage there and it is all run by the same hands. Vanechka and I were given Yasnaya because his father must not be moved, and where Lev Nikolaevich is I must be, and Vanechka too.*

  Over Holy Week I made Andryusha and Misha fast, although I couldn’t do so myself. They were calm and natural about it, like the common people. We had a service performed here on Saturday, at the request of the servants. Lyovochka was out. When I asked him that morning if he would find it unpleasant if we held a service in the drawing room, he said, “Not a bit.”

  Yesterday after breakfast I ordered the new carriage to be brought round and gathered up the children. Then we all drove off down the road to pick morels at Zaseka. I was with Vanechka and Sasha all the time. Although I saw almost no morels because I’m so short-sighted, I love the forest, the wild profusion of nature in spring and the silence in the depths of the trees, and I enjoyed myself enormously. Lyova and Andryusha went fishing but didn’t even get so much as a bite, and Lyova broke his rod. Today and yesterday the children were playing pas de géant in the meadow in front of the house, and romping in front of the byre.

  Yesterday evening our boys played games with the village children. It’s strange the way these lads of 11 and 13 already treat the peasant girls as girls, no longer friends. How sad and hateful it is!

  Quite apart from all this, the children are growing up without any religious training. Children need forms, as do the common people, to express and contain their relationship with God. This is what the Church is for. And only those with the most lofty and abstract of faiths can separate themselves from it, for without it we feel nothing but the most hopeless emptiness.

  Now I shall try to recollect and faithfully record my visit to St Petersburg in connection with the banned Volume 13 of the Complete Collected Works, and the audience I had with the Tsar on 13th April 1891.

  My Visit to St Petersburg

  I left Yasnaya Polyana on the night of 28th–29th March, and arrived in Moscow the following morning. I sat and talked to Lyova for a while, then went to the State Bank to convert my 5 per cent bonds to 4 per cent ones. By 4 that afternoon I was at Nikolaev Station. I found myself a comfortable second-class compartment which I shared with one other lady, a landowner from Mogilyov, whose husband was marshal of the local nobility. We had a very pleasant journey together. When I arrived at my sister’s house they were just getting up. My brother-in-law Sasha was away on a tour of inspection in the Baltic provinces, Tanya was getting dressed, and the children were receiving the Eucharist. Tanya and I were overjoyed to see each other, and she put me in her bedroom. We sat down at once and wrote a note to Misha Stakhovich. When he arrived he told me he had already written asking me to attend an audience with the Tsar, since Elena Grigorevna Sheremeteva (née Stroganova), the Tsar’s cousin and daughter of Maria Nikolaevna (Lichtenburgskaya), had managed to persuade him to receive me. The reason she gave for my petition to see him was that I wanted to be personally responsible for censoring Lev Nikolaevich’s works. Stakhovich showed me a letter to the Tsar he h
ad sketched out. I didn’t like it, but took it all the same. The morning after my arrival I called on Nikolai Strakhov* in his apartment, which is filled with his marvellous library. He was surprised and delighted to see me, and we sat down to discuss my letter and my forthcoming discussion with the Tsar. He didn’t like Stakhovich’s letter any more than I did and drafted another, which was delivered to me at 5 that evening. I didn’t like this one any better, so I decided to write a third version myself, based on the other two. My brother Vyacheslav arrived and made the final corrections, and it was this version we sent, on 31st March:

  Your Imperial Majesty,

  I make so bold as to enquire very humbly about the audience Your Majesty has so graciously granted me in order that I may bring to Your Majesty’s notice my personal petition on behalf of my husband, Count L.N. Tolstoy. Your Majesty’s gracious attention gives me the opportunity to specify the conditions under which my husband would be able to return to his former artistic and literary endeavours, and to point out that some of the very grave accusations made against his work have been unfounded, and have stolen the last ounce of spiritual strength from a Russian writer who is already losing his health, but who might possibly still bring some glory to his country with his writings.

  Your Imperial Majesty’s faithful subject,

  Countess Sofia Tolstoy

  31st March, 1891

  As I wasn’t sure how to send this letter, Tanya made enquiries on the telephone to a good friend of hers called Skalkovsky, who occupies a senior position in the Post Office, and the following morning Skalkovsky sent his messenger round with a note assuring me that my letter would be delivered to the Tsar that evening at his palace in Gatchina. The letter arrived there on 1st April. On the same day Grand Duchess Olga Fyodorovna, who was in Kharkov on her way to the Crimea, died of pleurisy and a heart attack. Her death, together with the marriage of her son Mikhail Mikhailovich to Countess Merenberg without permission from the Tsar or his parents, was the talk of St Petersburg. People could think of nothing else. Tradition and etiquette demanded a complete cessation of activity at the court for nine days, and the entire royal family went into full mourning. We stood at the window of the Kuzminskys’ apartment and watched as the Grand Duchess’s coffin was borne along the Nevsky Prospect on its way from the station to the Peter and Paul fortress. The Tsar and Mikhail Mikhailovich went straight to the graveside. The priests and soldiers were inseparable (there was a particularly large number of the latter) and, when they stopped in front of the Church of the Annunciation to read the litany and the prayer, they beat the drum, and played a strange sort of whistling music. I have never heard anything like it, it reminded me of a pagan ceremony.

  As I wanted to find out how best to address the Tsar and plead with him for Volume 13, I decided to visit Feoktistov, on the censorship committee, to find out why it had been suppressed. My sister accompanied me there. We went in, and when we had greeted Feoktistov (whom I had first met in Moscow as a young man, just after he deceived his mother and eloped with his beautiful wife), I asked him why the whole of Volume 13 had been banned. He responded in a cold mechanical fashion by opening a book and reading from it in a monotonous voice: “The book On Life is banned by the Church censors on the orders of the Holy Synod. The article ‘What Then Must We Do?’ is banned by the Police Department, and The Kreutzer Sonata is banned on the orders of the Tsar.” I then pointed out indignantly that I had already had several chapters from On Life published in the Week, and there were no complaints from the censors then. And it was they themselves who had passed some chapters of ‘What Then Must We Do?’, which were published in Volume 12. That left only The Kreutzer Sonata, and I was hoping to obtain the Tsar’s permission to publish it.

  Feoktistov was very embarrassed to discover that On Life and ‘What Then Must We Do?’ had already been published in abridged forms. He called for his secretary, ordered him to look into the matter and promised me a reply in two days’ time. I then complained about the careless and contemptuous way in which a great writer like Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy had been treated by the censors. They obviously didn’t even bother to read the contents page, and had brought both the author and me a great deal of trouble and grief. Feoktistov realized he had done something stupid, and on 3rd April he brought me Volume 13 in person and told me it had been passed for publication.

  Meanwhile the New Times newspaper published the repertoire of the plays being performed that season at the imperial theatres, and these included The Fruits of Enlightenment by L.N. Tolstoy. Knowing that the play had been banned from imperial theatres, I visited the Theatre Committee to find out what was happening. It turned out to be true. I asked them if they had been in communication with the author about it, or asked him what his wishes were, and they said they hadn’t. I was furious, and told the official there that this was a tactless, discourteous way to treat an author. I also asked him among other things if he would kindly negotiate with me in future, not with the author. The following day I had a visit from the producer, who handed me a piece of paper listing various conditions. There were a vast number of obligations I was to take on: I was to guarantee that his plays wouldn’t be performed at private theatres, indemnify them with a fine of 2,000 rubles if one was, and so on and so forth. I was outraged by these conditions, and next morning I set off again to the Theatre Committee and told the official I wasn’t prepared to accept any of their terms—they could stop the production, nothing would make me sign. He told me I should say this to the director, so I ordered them to announce me to the director, Vsevolozhsky. He refused to see me. “Well, this is a peculiar state of affairs—one can see the Tsar, but the director, whose job it is to receive people, refuses to see me.” He was disconcerted by my high-and-mighty manner and went off to announce me. “You boors,” I kept saying to myself. “One has to shout at people like you.”

  Vsevolozhsky received me in a somewhat overfamiliar manner and introduced me to his assistant, a person named Pogozhev. “So you don’t want to give us your plays, eh Countess?” he said. “I merely don’t want to take on a lot of obligations I can’t fulfil,” I replied. “But all that’s just a formality!” he said. “It may be a formality for you,” I said. “But for me it’s a matter of principle and I shall sign nothing.” At that point Pogozhev intervened: “If you don’t sign these conditions you’ll receive only 5 per cent of the gross takings instead of 10 per cent.” At that I turned on him in a fury: “I don’t live on Merchants’ Row and am not accustomed to haggling with shopkeepers, so kindly leave aside all questions of money since they do not interest me, or, more importantly, the Count. And I shall not give you that play.” I then turned to Vsevolozhsky and said: “What is this? How is it that a person of our circle like you doesn’t understand that one can’t treat Lev Nikolaevich like a vaudeville writer? We must all take his wishes into account, especially I, as his wife and a respectable woman, and that is why I can’t sign your conditions or undertake that his plays will never be performed on a private stage. It’s Lev Nikolaevich’s greatest joy that he hasn’t made a single kopeck out of the play, and this undertaking would deprive people of the right to perform it at charity benefits…” I became so heated that Vsevolozhsky eventually suggested deleting several of the conditions. But I wouldn’t agree to that either, so he proposed that I write an unofficial letter instead, giving the Imperial Theatre the right to perform the play against 10 per cent of the gross takings. This I did.

  My son Seryozha suggested that this money be donated to the Empress Maria’s Charitable Institutions. I should have been delighted to do this, but I had to think of my 9 children who need the money so badly—where else would I find it for them?

  I profited from my free time in the capital to visit two art exhibitions, the Wanderers’ and the Academy.* I don’t know if I was in a bad mood or just tired, but neither of them impressed me. Afterwards I went shopping with Tanya, sewed my dress and sat with her family and their guests. The rest of the time I stayed at h
ome. They tried to tempt me to go to the theatre and see Duse, the celebrated Italian actress, but my nerves were shattered, and besides I couldn’t afford it. All the time I was there I never slept more than five hours a night.

  Eventually, on Friday the 12th, I could wait no longer for my audience with the Tsar. Holy Week was approaching, I was feeling homesick, and my nervous condition was growing worse: I decided to return home on Sunday.

  At eleven that night I had just gone to bed when a note arrived from Zosya informing me that the Tsar had sent me an invitation, through Sheremeteva, to see him at 11.30 the following morning at the Anichkov Palace.

  Early that morning I checked that I had paid all my bills, asked Tanya to settle the rest for me, got dressed and sat waiting for the time when I had to leave. I had on a black mourning dress I had made myself, a veil and a black-lace hat. At a quarter to eleven I set off. My heart was pounding as we approached the Anichkov Palace. I was saluted at the gates, then at the porch, and I bowed back. I entered the antechamber and asked the doorkeeper whether the Tsar had instructed him to receive Countess Tolstoy. No, he said. He then asked someone else, and got the same reply. My heart sank. Then they summoned the Tsar’s footman. A handsome young man appeared, wearing a crimson-and-gold uniform and a huge three-cornered hat. “Do you have instructions from the Tsar to receive Countess Tolstoy?” I asked him. “I should think so, Your Excellency!” he said. “The Tsar has just returned from church and has been asking about you.” (The Tsar had apparently been at the christening of Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fyodorovna, who has just converted to Orthodoxy.) The footman then ran up a steep stairway covered in an ugly bright-green carpet, and I followed him up. I hadn’t realized how fast I was running, and when he left me with a deep bow at the reception room, my heart was pounding so wildly I thought I should die. I was in a terrible state. The first thought that came into my head was that this business wasn’t worth dying for. I imagined the footman coming back to summon me to the Tsar and finding my lifeless body. I should be unable to say a word, at any rate. My heart was beating so violently it was literally impossible for me to breathe, speak or cry out. I sat down and longed to ask for a glass of water, but couldn’t. Then I remembered that the thing to do when a horse has been driven too hard is to lead it about quietly for a while until it recovers. So I got up from the sofa and took a few paces around the room. That didn’t make it any better though, so I discreetly loosened my stays and sat down again, massaging my chest and thinking of the children. How would they take the news of my death, I wondered. Fortunately the Tsar hadn’t been informed of my arrival and had received someone else before me. So I had time to rest and get my breath back, and had fully recovered by the time the footman returned and said: “His Majesty begs Her Excellency the Countess Tolstoy to enter.” I followed him to the Tsar’s study and he bowed and left. The Tsar came to the door to meet me and shook my hand, and I curtseyed slightly.