The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  I found Olga alone in Taptykovo, as Andryusha was out on a wolfhunt. She sits there alone with her little daughter all day, like a bird in a cage. I feel so sorry for her. I spent the night there and left for Moscow the following day. Still 24 degrees of frost.

  23rd December. More terrible days. It turns out Lyova’s son Levushka has tuberculosis of the brain and is dying. One more sweet creature to whom my soul has grown attached is leaving this life. This child, with his delicate moral constitution, wasn’t made for this world, just like my Vanechka.

  Lev Nikolaevich is constantly besieged by people. Yesterday seventeen Americans, fifteen women and two men, came to look at the famous Tolstoy. I didn’t see them, I had no wish to.

  1901

  A socialist Revolutionary terrorist shoots dead Minister of Education. Students demonstrate to applaud the deed. More students drafted into the army. Tolstoy writes open protest letter to the Tsar.

  22nd February—Tolstoy excommunicated, excommunication order appearing on all church doors in Russia. Sofia Tolstoy writes to the Synod and the Metropolitans to protest. Tolstoy is revered and reviled. He works on his pacifist ‘Notes for Soldiers’ (published the following year in England). Sofia starts work on her autobiography, My Life. June—Tolstoy seriously ill with malaria. September—Tolstoy family goes to Crimea for him to convalesce. He is mobbed along the way.

  6th January. The old year ended and the new year started with a great tragedy. On 25th December, Christmas Day, I heard of Levushka’s death. He passed away the previous day, at nine in the evening. Despite being ill I packed immediately and set off for Yasnaya, accompanied by Ilya. I arrived that evening and Dora threw herself into my arms, sobbing hysterically, while Lyova stood there looking thin and distraught, blaming himself, his wife and everyone else for his son’s death. He blamed them for letting him catch cold, for letting him go out in a thin coat, for neglecting his poor health and delicate constitution; and these accusations were harder to bear than anything else. But their grief was unspeakable! All the emotional agony I had endured with Vanechka’s death surfaced from the depths of my soul, and I was suffering both for myself and for my children, the young parents. I was unable to help them; Westerlund, Dora’s father, arrived and managed to relieve Lyova’s conscience a little. Dear Maria Schmidt was there with them all the time, and Andryusha arrived for the funeral. And then once again it was the open pit, the little waxen face surrounded by hyacinths and lilies, the harshness of death and the frantic grief of the mourners.

  Then news came that Tanya had given birth to a dead baby girl. I was stunned. No sooner had I attended Levushka’s funeral than I had to set off again that evening to see Tanya; Andryusha came with me. It tore my heart to see her so ill and grief-stricken, her husband away and her hopes of being a mother cruelly dashed. She bore it so bravely, playing with her stepchildren, reading, knitting and chatting as if nothing had happened. But I could see the grief and despair in her eyes. Her stepchildren, especially Natasha, are very sweet to her, but she said to me: “Looking at my dead baby gave me a hint of the maternal instinct, and I was horrified by its power.”

  I returned to Moscow on 3rd January. Sasha, L.N. and the servants gave me a very warm welcome. We have announced Misha’s wedding to Lina Glebova. She is madly in love with him. I went to the Glebovs’ today for the blessing, which moved me to tears. Lina is radiantly happy.

  8th January. I spent the day doing essential tasks. I went to the bank, ordered an enlarged portrait of Levushka, went to the bathhouse and did some shopping, and took my dress to the cleaners for Misha’s wedding. L.N. is ill—first it was a chill, now it’s a bad stomach. He is feeling wretched. He doesn’t want to die—the idea clearly terrifies and depresses him.

  10th January. I went to the Rumyantsev Museum, and took out his unpublished comedy The Nihilist, or The Infected Family, which I think I shall read at my charity concert. I looked through a few things with An. Al. Goryainova this evening, but there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting to read all the way through. We decided on Friday that we would all read something aloud.

  19th January. Very worried about Lev Nikolaevich’s health. He has been taking quinine for three days and seems to be feeling better, but his legs ache in the evening. His mind has simply dried up, and this depresses him. These family griefs have taken their toll. Then all the arrangements for Misha’s wedding. He and Lina spend the whole time swooning over each other unpleasantly.

  28th January. We spent the week preparing for Misha’s wedding, paying visits, going shopping, making clothes, sewing little bags of sweets and so on.

  Today we heard from poor Masha; her baby has just died inside her, and she is in bed in a state of collapse, grieving inconsolably, like Tanya, for her lost hopes. I want to cry all the time. I feel terribly, terribly sad for my two little girls, starved by their father’s vegetarian principles. He couldn’t have known, of course, that they would be too undernourished to feed the children in their wombs. But he has always gone against my wishes and my maternal instinct, which is never mistaken if a mother loves her children.

  31st January. Misha and Lina Glebova were married today. It was a splendid society wedding. The Grand Duke Sergei came from St Petersburg for the day, the Chudovsky choristers sang, there were a mass of flowers and fine clothes, some beautiful prayers for the newly-weds and a lot of vanity and glitter. What an unemotional way to introduce these two young creatures, so in love with each other, to their new life together.

  Nothing amuses me any more. I feel sorry for my darling young Misha embarking so irrevocably on this new life. Still, he has a wife who is worthy of him, thank God, and who loves him.

  We left the church for the Glebovs’, where the Grand Duke was very affable to me, and—I am ashamed to admit this—flattered my vanity, as did people’s comments as we were leaving the church: “That’s the mother of the bridegroom, she’s still a very beautiful woman, isn’t she”, and so on.

  L.N. stayed at home for the wedding, but came out at four to say goodbye to Misha and Lina. This evening he entertained some sectarians from Dubovka and various “dark ones”, and they read aloud that article by Novikov the peasant about the suffering people.

  12th February. Bad news today from my daughter Masha, who has given birth to her dead baby boy. Poor, suffering creature!

  Tanya and I visited Yasnaya together. My darling, kind Tanya was determined to visit Lyova and Dora after their grief. They are a little more cheerful now, and they love and care for each other. Maria Schmidt was also in Yasnaya, and Olga, who is feeling very lonely at present. Aren’t we all!

  I have been feeling acutely so today. The children are always so eager to judge me—Tanya was criticizing me for the untidiness at home, Misha berated me when he and Lina were leaving for foreign parts for worrying about them on their travels. And they simply don’t see anything! How can one keep things tidy when there are people constantly coming to stay, dragging yet more guests after them—crowds of people milling around from morning to night? And I do all the work for everyone on my own. I take care of business on my own, without any help from my husband or sons. I do a man’s work: I run the estate, supervise the children’s education and deal with them and the servants—all on my own. My eyesight is failing, my soul is weary, yet there are these endless demands on me…

  We had a musical evening here on the 9th. Sergei Ivanovich played his Oresteia, Muromtseva sang Clytemnestra’s aria with a choir of her pupils, and Melgunova and Khrennikova sang too. Everyone enjoyed the evening immensely, but L.N. tried to cast it in a negative and ridiculous light, and as usual my children were infected by his hostility to me and my guests.

  Long after all the respectable people had left and he had put on his dressing gown and gone to bed, some students, one or two young ladies and Muromtseva stayed on in the drawing room. They had all had a great deal to drink at supper, and broke into rowdy Russian folk songs, gypsy songs and factory ballads, whooping, dancing and goin
g wild…I went downstairs and who should I see there but L.N., sitting in the corner and urging them on. He sat up with them for a long time.

  15th February. I have just seen Tanya off to Rome with her family. It’s a long time since I’ve cried when parting with my children, for I seem to be forever meeting them or seeing them off somewhere. But today with the bright sunset lighting up our garden and Lev Nikolaevich’s sad, grey, balding head as he sat by the window seeing her off with such mournful eyes that she came back twice to kiss him and say goodbye—it broke my heart, and I am weeping now as I write. We evidently need suffering to make us better people. Even the small grief of today’s parting had the effect of ridding my heart of spite and anger, especially with my family, and I wished them all well and wanted them all to be good and happy. I feel terribly sorry for L.N. at present. Something is tormenting him, I don’t know if it’s the fear of death, or that he’s unwell, or some secret worry. But I don’t remember ever seeing him like this, constantly dissatisfied and depressed by something.

  16th February. Sasha has a sore throat. Doctor Ilin called and said she had a fever and swollen tonsils, but nothing serious. I went with Sem. Nik. the cook to the mushroom market and bought mushrooms for myself, Tanya and the Stakhoviches, then bought some Russian furniture. Crowds of people, folk handicrafts and a lot of peasant atmosphere. They were ringing the bell for vespers when I drove home. Then I changed my dress and went out again on foot with L.N.; he went to buy 500 grams of quinine for the Dukhobors, and I went to church. I listened to the prayers and prayed fervently to myself; I love being alone in a crowd of strangers and leaving behind all cares and earthly concerns. From the church I went on to the orphanage, where the children all surrounded me, welcoming and kissing me. I stayed there a long time finding out how they were doing and what they needed.

  It was almost 2 a.m. and we had just gone to bed, when there was a sudden desperate ringing at the doorbell. Some woman, a widow called Berg, who had been in a lunatic asylum for 13 years, wanted to see Lev Nikolaevich. I didn’t let her in, but she talked to me at the door for a whole hour, in a terribly agitated state, recalling, among other things, how my Vanechka had picked some little blue flowers in the garden of the lunatic asylum seven years ago and asked if he could keep them. A pathetic, neurotic Polish woman. We got to bed very late, but on calm, friendly terms. At 6 in the morning I painted Sasha’s throat.

  18th February. I went to bed late yesterday, burdened by oppressive memories of a discussion between Lev Nikolaevich and Bulygin about religion. They were saying that a priest in a brocade cassock gives you bad red wine to drink and people call this “religion”. Lev Nikolaevich was jeering and raging against the Church in the coarsest possible tones, and Bulygin said he thought the Church was the Devil’s work on a massive scale.

  These remarks made me angry and sad, and I loudly protested that true religion saw neither the priest’s brocade cassock, nor Lev Nikolaevich’s flannel shirt, nor the monk’s habit. Such things simply do not matter.

  6th March. On 24th February it was announced in all the newspapers that Lev Nikolaevich has been excommunicated.* This incensed public opinion and bewildered and dismayed the common people. For three days Lev Nikolaevich was given ovations, brought baskets of fresh flowers and sent telegrams, letters and salutations, and expressions of sympathy and indignation with the Synod and the Metropolitans are still pouring in. That same day I myself wrote and circulated a letter to Procurator Pobedonostsev and the Metropolitans. I am attaching it here.*

  This stupid excommunication coincided with the upheavals in the university. For the past three days the students and the population of Moscow were in turmoil. The students had risen up because students in Kiev had been drafted into the army for rioting. But what was unprecedented about these disorders was that whereas people had previously been against the students, now everyone’s sympathies are with them, and the cab-drivers, shopkeepers and workers are saying the students are on the side of truth and the poor.*

  That same Sunday, 24th February, L.N. was walking to Lubyanka Square with Dunaev, and met a crowd of several thousand people. One of them saw L.N. and said: “Look, there he is, the Devil incarnate!” At this a lot of people turned round, recognized him and began shouting, “Hurrah L.N.! Greetings L.N.! Hail to the great man! Hurrah!”

  The crowd grew bigger, the shouts grew louder, the cab-drivers fled…

  At last some technical students managed to find a cab and put Dunaev and Lev Nikolaevich inside, and a mounted gendarme, seeing people grab the horse’s reins and hold its bridle, stepped in and dispersed the crowd.

  For several days now there has been a festive spirit in our house, with an endless stream of visitors from morning to night…

  26th March. It’s a great pity I haven’t kept an accurate account of the various events and conversations that have taken place. What interested me most were all the letters, especially those from abroad, sympathizing with my letter to Pobedonostsev and the Metropolitans. None of Lev Nikolaevich’s manuscripts have reached such wide or speedy distribution as this letter of mine, and it has been translated into all the foreign languages.* I was delighted, but it did not make me conceited, thank God! I dashed it off spontaneously, passionately. It was God’s will, not mine, that I should do it.

  Lev Nikolaevich has written a letter ‘To the Tsar and His Assistants’.* What will come of it! I wouldn’t want us to be exiled from Russia in our old age.

  Another event was my concert in aid of the orphanage. Some very pleasant people took part, and this lent it an exceptionally elegant, respectable tone. The young ladies selling programmes all wore white dresses, and there were baskets of fresh flowers on the tables. Mikhail Stakhovich did a fine rendering of an excerpt from L.N.’s ‘Who is Right?’, and I wasn’t disgraced before all these people whose opinion I esteem. We didn’t make much for the orphanage, only 1,307 rubles.*

  An unpleasant scene with Sasha on Palm Sunday. I called her to go to vespers with me and she refused, saying she had lost her faith. I told her if she wanted to follow her father’s path she must go the whole way like him: he was extremely Orthodox for many years—long after he got married too—then he renounced the Church in the name of pure Christianity, and also renounced all earthly blessings. Sasha, like so many of my children, was of course simply jumping at the easy way out—in this case not going to church. I burst into tears and she went to ask her father for advice, and he told her: “Of course you must go—you mustn’t distress your mother.”

  So she came to the orphanage church with me and attended vespers, and now she will fast with me.

  27th March. The other day I received Metropolitan Antony’s reply to my letter, perfectly correct but completely soulless.* I wrote mine in the heat of the moment, it has gone round the entire world and has infected people with its sincerity.

  These public events have exhausted me and I have turned to introspection; but my inner life is tense and joyless too.

  30th March. Things have gone from bad to worse with Sasha. She wouldn’t fast with me: first she pleaded a sore leg, then she refused outright. Yet another worsening in our relations.

  I received the Eucharist today. I have found it very difficult to fast; there are such vast contradictions between what is genuine—the Church’s true foundations—and all these rituals, the wild shrieks of the deacon and so on, that it is hard to persevere and one sometimes feels like giving up altogether. This is what disgusts young people so much.

  I was standing in the church today and the invisible choir was singing so beautifully, and I thought: the simple people go to church as we go to a good symphony concert. At home there is poverty, darkness and endless, backbreaking toil. They come to church and there is light, singing, beauty…There is art and music here, and a spiritual justification for all this entertainment too, since religion is approved of, and considered good and necessary. How could one live without it?

  I fasted without much conviction, but went a
bout it in a serious, sensible way, and was glad to exert myself physically and spiritually—getting up early and standing for a long time in church, praying and reflecting on my spiritual life.

  18th May. We have been in Yasnaya Polyana for ten days. We travelled with Pavel Boulanger in a well-appointed private carriage, and L.N. had a very comfortable journey. I warmed him up some pre-cooked porridge, boiled him an egg and made coffee, then he ate some asparagus and went to sleep. We were seen off in Moscow by Uncle Kostya, Dunaev, Fyodor Maslov and his sister Varvara, as well as some young people we had never met before—technical students I think—who shouted “Hurrah!” and took pictures of Lev Nikolaevich. It was very moving.

  6th June. I went to Moscow and did my business there, and lived alone with the maid in my big empty house. I visited Vanechka’s and Alyosha’s graves and went to see my living grandson, Seryozha’s little boy. He’s a splendid child, serene and straightforward. I saw Misha and Lina, who always make an excellent impression, and I also saw Sergei Ivanovich. There has been a cooling in our relations recently, and I have neither the energy nor the inclination to maintain our former friendship. Besides, he really isn’t the sort of person one can be friends with. Like all gifted people he is always seeking new experiences and he looks for other people to provide them, while giving almost nothing of himself.

  I returned to Yasnaya Polyana, and it was hot, stuffy, lazy weather. L.N. is taking salt baths and drinking Kronenquelle. He is fairly cheerful after a winter of illnesses.

  14th June. What a lovely summer! Through my window I can see the moon in the clear sky. It is still and silent, and the air is caressing and delightfully warm. I have been spending almost all my time outside with nature; I go swimming and in the evenings I water the flowers and go for walks. My beloved Tanya is staying with her husband, with whom I am becoming reconciled since she loves him. He has a sweet nature but is terribly selfish, which makes me fear for her.