The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  Lyovochka, Tanya, Masha and my niece Vera Kuzminskaya have all gone back to Begichevka.

  Tomorrow is the first day of Lent. I shall fast.

  1893

  The Kingdom of God Is within You is finished in April; banned by the censors, it circulates unofficially nonetheless.

  2nd August. I have just learnt from Chertkov that most of Lev Nikolaevich’s manuscripts are either with him or in St Petersburg—with his friend Trepov of all people.* Our children must be told of this at once.

  Chertkov subsequently removed all of Lev Nikolaevich’s manuscripts and took them with him to Christchurch in England. [This last paragraph was added later.]

  5th November (Moscow). I believe in good and evil spirits. The man I love has been taken over by evil spirits, but he doesn’t know it. His influence is pernicious: his son is being destroyed, his daughters are being destroyed, and so is everyone he comes into contact with. I pray day and night for my children and it is a hard spiritual struggle, and I am thin and physically exhausted, but my spirit will be saved, because my communion with God can never be destroyed so long as I don’t fall under the evil influence of people who are blind and cold, too proud and presumptuous to acknowledge their God-given responsibilities.*

  1894

  Vigorous government action against members of such increasingly popular religious sects as the Stundists, much like the Baptists, and the Dukhobors “spirit-wrestlers”, whose primitive communal brand of Christianity, denouncing hierarchies, sacraments and violence, is considered especially subversive. Hundreds of them are harassed and imprisoned, yet this does little to check the huge growing population of religious dissidents. November—Tsar Alexander III dies. His twenty-six-year-old son Nicholas becomes Tsar.

  Sofia Tolstoy brings out ninth edition of Tolstoy’s Complete Works.

  2nd March. Tanya has left for Paris to stay with Lyova. His health is worse. I am haunted by the thought that he isn’t long for this world. He is too exceptional, too good and too unbalanced. I live from day to day—but it is no life. My health is shattered. Today I coughed up blood—a lot too. Feverish nights, painful chest, sweat. Lev Nikolaevich is depressed too. But his life goes on as usual: he gets up early, cleans his rooms, eats a bowl of oatmeal cooked in water, then goes off to work. Today I found him playing patience. He ate a hearty lunch, then went off and had a sleep. He woke up in an extraordinarily cheerful mood. Looking out at the bright sun and picking a handful of dates from the window sill, he set off for the mushroom market to take a “coup d’œil” at the people selling honey, mushrooms and cranberries.*

  4th August. Doctor Zakharin has told us Lyova is very ill. I always knew it in my heart. How am I to survive the loss of my son, so young, so good and so dearly loved? My heart is breaking with the strain. I must live—for little Vanechka, for Misha, for Sasha, even for Andryusha, who still has a glimmering love and tenderness for me even though so much in him has been destroyed. But it is all so hard. My husband has worn me down over the years with his coldness, and has loaded absolutely everything onto my shoulders: the children, the estate, the house, his books, his business affairs, and then, with selfish, critical indifference, he despises me. And what about his life? He walks and rides, writes a little, does whatever he pleases, never lifts a finger for his family and exploits everything to his own advantage: the services of his daughters, the comforts of life, the flattery of others, my submissiveness, my labours. And fame, his insatiable greed for fame, continually drives him on. You have to be heartless to live such a life. My poor Lyova, how deeply he has suffered for his father’s unkindness. The sight of his sick son spoils his easy sybaritic life—and that annoys him. It’s painful for me to recall Lyova’s dark suffering eyes, the sad reproachful look he gave his father when he blamed him for being ill and wouldn’t believe he was suffering. He has never experienced such pain himself, and when he is ill he is always impatient and demanding.

  23rd November. The whole family is staying in Moscow. Poor sick Lyova is the centre of my life and concerns. I shall never get used to this grief. I think constantly of his sad sick stare and I suffer painfully for him. I see almost nobody and almost never leave the house. We have a new English girl, a Miss Spiers. Lyovochka, Tanya and Misha have gone over to the Pasternaks to hear some music.

  I am preparing Volume 13 for publication* and reading Marcella by Mrs Humphry Ward.* Lyovochka and I have been on friendly terms, although I was angry he was so indifferent to Andryusha’s activities and never gave me any help with him. But it’s my own fault if after 32 years I still hope he will do something for me and the family. I should be grateful for all the good qualities he does have.

  1895

  Revolutionaries form clandestine Marxist discussion groups and take their propaganda into the factories. Autumn—Marxists in the capital unite in the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, led by Lenin. November—Lenin and other revolutionaries arrested, imprisoned and exiled. The Dukhobors in the Caucasus refuse to bear arms and continue to be arrested and persecuted.

  January—Tolstoy attends a meeting organized by landowners. February—Lyova Tolstoy has electrical treatment for his nervous illness. 23rd February—Vanechka dies. March—Tolstoy makes his first will, leaving his unpublished papers to his wife and Chertkov. He resumes work on Resurrection. Summer—Anton Chekhov visits Yasnaya Polyana; the composer Sergei Taneev spends the summer there; Chertkov moves to a nearby estate. July—Sergei Tolstoy marries Maria Rachinskaya. September—Nicholas II authorizes production of The Power of Darkness, at St Petersburg’s Alexandra Theatre (opening shortly afterwards in Moscow’s Skomorokh People’s Theatre).

  1st and 2nd of January (Moscow). I was woken at 4 this morning by a ring at the door. I waited, terrified, and then there was another ring. The servant went to open the door, and who should it be but Khokhlov, one of Lyovochka’s followers, who has gone mad and keeps pursuing Tanya and proposing marriage to her! Poor Tanya can’t go out into the street now, for this dark one, dressed in rags and covered in lice, follows her everywhere. These are the people Lev Nikolaevich has brought into our family circle—and it’s I who have to send them packing.

  How strange that it should be these weak foolish people, who for whatever morbid reason have strayed from the path of normal life and thrown themselves into Lev Nikolaevich’s teachings, then follow the road to certain ruin.

  I am afraid I cannot resist complaining about Lev Nikolaevich whenever I write my diary. But I must complain, for all the things he preaches for the happiness of humanity only complicate life to the point where it becomes harder and harder for me to live.

  His vegetarian diet means preparing two dinners, which means twice the expense and twice the work. His sermons on love and goodness have made him indifferent to his family, and mean the intrusion of all kinds of riff-raff into our family life. And his (purely verbal) renunciation of worldly goods has made him endlessly critical and disapproving of others.

  When it all gets too difficult I fly into a rage and say harsh things which I then regret; but by then it is too late, and that makes me even more miserable.

  I have very tender feelings for my daughter Masha. She is a sweet, gentle good creature and I should so love to help her! I don’t love Tanya quite so much as I used to, as I feel she has been contaminated by the love of the “dark ones”, Popov and Khokhlov. I pity her, she has grown old and withered. I am sorry that her youth is behind her—so full of beauty, happiness and promise. I am sorry she never married. How little my lovely big family has given me. I mean, how little happiness they have had. That is the most painful thing for a mother.

  This morning I read Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea to Sasha and Vanya. “It’s difficult, you won’t understand it,” I said to them. But Vanya said, “It doesn’t matter, Maman. Read it, and you’ll see how clever we get after that and In Search of the Castaways.”*

  3rd January. I got up late. I went to see Masha and Lyova, and sco
lded Misha for not practising his violin and not getting up until midday. Then Lyova went off to the clinic for his electrical treatment. The streets, the courtyards, the garden and the balcony are all covered in snow. 4° below freezing.

  5th January. I didn’t write yesterday as I was reading Fonvizin’s story to Lyova. We found it interesting but rather coarse.

  Then I did the accounts till 3 in the morning and got in a great muddle. I can’t get it right. I spent a lot of the day sitting with Vanya and reading to him. He has been ill all day. Everything terrifies me nowadays, but especially Vanechka’s fragile health. My life is inextricably bound up with his—there is almost something wrong and dangerous about it. He is such a weak, delicate little boy—and so good!

  8th January. Vanechka has been ill for three days with a fever and a bad stomach. It breaks my heart to see him grown so thin and pale. Andryusha, Misha and Sasha went to a children’s party at the Glebovs’ yesterday, while Vanechka sat on my knee all evening, weak and feverish. I hated to make him miss the party. Before this he was ill in bed with influenza, and it’s three weeks since he had any fresh air. I have given up trying to teach the older boys a sense of their responsibilities; the struggle to do so has quite set my heart against them. Oh how painful it is, how painful to see Ilya ruining himself in this stupid vulgar way, and Seryozha with his immoral life, and Lyova ill, and my daughters unmarried, and poor darling Vanechka with hardly a flicker of life in him.

  Busy all day. I paid the laundresses and the others and gave the labourers in the workshop their orders. The servants asked for leave to attend a wedding; some documents arrived from the police station about the theft at Yasnaya Polyana;* then wages, overdue passports, and so on and so on. Then Lyova, Vanechka and I sat together and looked at the pictures in the history books; I told him everything I could remember about the Egyptians, then read him some of Grimms’ fairy stories.

  The episode with the photograph still hasn’t died down.* Posha came and blamed me, and I blamed all the others. They had persuaded Lev Nikolaevich on the sly, without telling us, to have his photograph taken with a group of “dark ones”. The girls were highly indignant, all his friends were horrified, Lyova was grieved and I was furious. Group photographs are taken of schools, picnics, institutions, etc., so I suppose that means that the Tolstoyans are an “institution”! The public would seize on it, and all want to buy pictures of “Tolstoy with his pupils”—that would make them laugh! But I wasn’t going to let them drag Lev Nikolaevich from his pedestal into the mud. So the following morning I went to the photographer and got all the negatives from him before a single print had been made. The photographer, an intelligent, sensitive German called Mey, was very sympathetic and gladly handed over the negatives.

  I have no idea what Lev Nikolaevich thought of this. He has been very affectionate to me, but he’ll blame me “on principle” in his diary, where he never has a sincere or kind word to say nowadays.

  The English governess Miss Spiers is not nice. She is dry and unfriendly and keeps her distance from the children, and is concerned only with learning Russian and having a good time.

  10th January. This evening I went to the bathhouse and took a bath. Then Masha and I drank tea together and talked about the Olsufievs and Tanya. It is pouring with rain, 3° above freezing, and very muddy.

  This evening I smashed the negatives of the photographs of the dark ones. I tried to scratch Lev Nikolaevich’s face out of it with my diamond earring but couldn’t. I went to bed at 3 a.m.

  11th January. Vanya has a rasping cough. I have been sitting with him and reading him Grimms’ fairy stories. I then tried to draw our garden, but was out of practice. I went out and swept the snow from the skating rink, for the exercise. Through the window I could see that Vanya had jumped out of bed and was running about without any clothes on. I went in and shouted at the nurse, and she screamed back at me and Vanya started crying. We all dined at home. It is Misha’s name day; I gave him 10 rubles. This evening they took Ilya’s peasant coachman Abramka to the circus, and were enchanted by his naive enjoyment of it.

  12th January. I got up early and gave Vanya some apomorphine for his cough, which is worse. I opened the ventilation pane in the window—it was 10° below freezing—and had a wash in cold water, but didn’t feel any livelier. I was in very low spirits. I sat with Vanya and read to him, then received guests. Chicherin came, and Lopatin, with whom I had an interesting talk about death. He said among other things that life wouldn’t be so interesting if we were not faced with the eternal mystery of death at the end. Then Petrovskaya and Tsurikova came. Tsurikova dined and spent the night here. She is one of those aristocratic old-fashioned unmarried ladies who tells fortunes with cards, has a huge circle of acquaintances and falls in love at the age of 40.

  This evening Vanechka again had a temperature of 38.3, and I was dreadfully worried. Something has broken in me—I ache inside and cannot control myself. Chicherin was talking about Lyovochka today; there are two men in him, he said, a writer of genius and a mediocre philosopher who impresses people by talking in paradoxes and contradictions. He cited several instances of this. Chicherin loves Lev Nikolaevich, but that is because he has known him for so long. He sees in him the Lev Nikolaevich he knew as a young man, who wrote him a vast number of letters which he treasures.*

  15th January. I spent the whole day frantically trying to entertain Vanechka. Doctor Filatov came this afternoon and didn’t find any complications in his lungs or his throat, and said his spleen wasn’t enlarged. It’s influenza, nothing more. I drove to the Glebovs’ to collect Sasha, who had just had her first dancing lesson there. My brother came this evening with his sad, thin wife. Afterwards I told Masha’s fortune with cards. I told Misha Olsufiev’s too, and it showed death. I was very upset, and afraid for Tanya and Lev Nikolaevich.

  16th and 17th of January. Vanya is just the same. He becomes feverish at noon and this lasts until night. His cough is better, but his cold is the same. I sewed, and spent the whole day sitting with him. My life is empty and cheerless.

  18th January. Today is the anniversary of my little Alyosha’s death. He died nine years ago.

  I got up at 6 a.m., gave Vanya 4 g of quinine, then went back to bed. I got up again at 8.30 and took his temperature—which was 36.7. Then I lay down again and dozed off. I got up late, and my temple was aching. I went out shopping and bought cloth, stockings, bobbins and various other essentials. I also bought the children more pieces for the ariston.* After dinner I accompanied Misha, who played first a Mozart violin sonata then one by Schubert. It’s a pity I sight-read so badly. He was enjoying it enormously and I was sorry to have to tear him away and make him revise his lessons with his tutor. Andryusha has a stomach ache, and his illness makes him lazy and disagreeable.

  Lev Nikolaevich and Tanya have returned from the Olsufievs’. It wasn’t a very joyful reunion after 18 days apart—not as it was in the old days. Tanya had a sharp, censorious manner, and Lyovochka is indifferent to everything. I had a talk with Miss Spiers this morning about her general inadequacy. She is very disagreeable and doesn’t like children. I shall have to get rid of her. There are no good governesses to be had these days. It’s all very depressing.

  19th January. I got up early and sat with Vanya. He did a still-life drawing of some baskets, without any help, and I tried my hand at a watercolour sketch of our garden—with disastrous results.

  Goltsev is with Lyovochka, reading him the Tver address and the petition presented to the new Tsar.* Dunaev is also here. Vanya is still ill. His temperature shoots up at 3.30 every afternoon. It’s fine, 6° below freezing, a moonlit night. So beautiful! But I am depressed and my soul is asleep.

  20th January. Vanya is very ill, with a high temperature. I went to see Doctor Filatov this evening, and he prescribed large doses of quinine. Lyovochka is annoyed that I consulted him, although he evidently has no idea either what to do. He is healthy, draws his own water from the well and writes. This after
noon he read, and has just gone off to see Sergei Nikolaevich. 17° below freezing, with a mist and hoar frost; a fine day and a bright night. My heart is heavy, it’s unbearable!

  26th January. Vanechka has had a high temperature for the past week. It tortures me body and soul to look at him. He is a little better today, and we have been giving him 4 g of quinine twice a day. I left the house for the first time in many days and bought some sheet music, toys, cheese, fresh eggs and so on. I sat with Vanya for a little while, played duets with Lev Nikolaevich after dinner, and chose a piece for Sasha and Nadya Martynova to play at the forthcoming children’s musical evening. Then everyone left but Lyova, who told me about the house he wants to build in the courtyard, and curtly asked me for the money to do so. When I refused, he soon changed his tune and became more friendly. Then Masha and I corrected and transcribed the proofs for Lyovochka’s story ‘Master and Man’. I am angry that he gave it to the Northern Herald to publish. What is one to make of him? If he had published it for nothing in the Intermediary, I would have understood, for then anyone could have bought it and read a story by Tolstoy for just 20 kopecks. But now the public will have to pay 13 rubles to read it. This is why I cannot share my husband’s “ideas”—because they are dishonest and insincere. His whole philosophy is so strained, artificial and unnatural, based as it is on vanity, the insatiable thirst for fame, and the compulsive desire for popularity. No one ever believes me when I say this, and it’s painful for me to recognize it—especially when others don’t see it. But then what does it matter to them!