The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  It was a joy to get back to Yasnaya, but our joy was short-lived. That evening Masha began to have pains, and soon afterwards she gave birth to a dead baby boy.

  30th June. Lev Nikolaevich had a temperature of 37.8 this evening and we were very anxious about him. I sat with Masha all morning. It is cold and raining. The saffron milk caps* are out.

  3rd July. Lev Nikolaevich walked to the side wing to see Masha, and this afternoon he played Haydn’s second symphony as a duet with Vasya Maklakov. Sasha brought in some saffron milk caps.

  4th July. Lev Nikolaevich is well; he went to the side wing and back. This afternoon he had a long talk with Doctor Nikitin about psychiatrists, whom he was criticizing.

  23rd July. The time is passing terribly fast. On 5th July I went to see Ilyusha at Mansurovo, his estate in the province of Kaluga, and spent a delightful two days with him, Sonya and my grandchildren. We went for walks and drives through the lovely woods and countryside, and had long heart-to-heart talks.

  On 7th July, I went to Begichevka to see Misha and my lovable little grandson Vanechka. Lina is a sensitive, serious, loving woman. Misha is young and arrogant, but this will pass. On the night of the 8th I returned to Yasnaya with Misha. Lev Nikolaevich is well but weak. Sasha had a nervous attack on the 10th.

  On 11th July, Sasha and I went to Taptykovo to visit Olga on her name day. We had a pleasant day, and returned home late that night after a heavy downpour of rain.

  My son-in-law Mikhail Sukhotin is gravely ill with suppurative inflammation of the lung. I felt so anxious and so sad for poor Tanya, and on the evening of 16th July I set off for Kochety. The atmosphere there was cold and depressing. Mikhail Sergeevich looked thin and wretched, and Tanya, who had been sitting up with him every night, was tense and exhausted. I spent four days there and returned on the morning of the 21st.

  It is still cool, and yesterday it poured with rain. The rye still hasn’t been sheaved and the oats aren’t cut. It is afternoon now, and only 10 degrees. Before it rained yesterday I took a drive round Yasnaya Polyana and the plantations. How wonderfully beautiful it all is!

  26th July. A full and happy day. Ilya’s family came with Annochka and the grandsons, and we took a walk with Zosya Stakhovich and Sasha. This evening Goldenweiser played beautifully, a Schumann sonata and a Chopin Ballade. Then we talked about poets and Lev Nikolaevich recalled Baratynsky’s poem ‘On Death’. We straight away got out the book and Zosya read us this lovely poem.

  On the 22nd another son was born to Lyova and Dora; we had a telegram from them today.

  Lev Nikolaevich is well. He played vint all evening and enjoyed the music. In the mornings he writes his novel Hadji Murat,* to my great delight.

  27th July. Music continues to have its usual healing effect on me. This evening Goldenweiser played, excellently, the Chopin sonata with the funeral march. L.N. was sitting near me and the room was filled with my nearest and dearest—Ilyusha, Andryusha, Sonya, Olga, Annochka, Zosya Stakhovich and Maria Schmidt. And moved by the music, I felt a quiet joy creep into my heart and fill it with gratitude to God for bringing us all together once more, happy and loving, and for allowing Lev Nikolaevich to be with us still, alive and comparatively well…And I felt ashamed of my weaknesses and resentments and all the evil that spoils this good life of mine…

  9th August. What a long time it is since I wrote my diary! The past month has been filled with anxieties about Sukhotin’s health; he is now worse again. My poor darling Tanya. She loves him too much, and is finding it very hard; nursing him is difficult enough as it is. I went to Moscow on the 2nd and was busy checking accounts, attending to business and ordering the new edition. Sergei Ivanovich is immersed in work on a musical textbook* that he wants to finish before leaving for Moscow. I asked him to play something, but he refused, and was stern, unapproachable and even rather unpleasant. There is something sad and serious about him nowadays; he has aged and changed, and this makes me unhappy. I was glad to get home. Lina came yesterday with little Vanechka, and this morning Misha arrived. His whole family is utterly charming in every respect. Lina’s mother came yesterday with her sister Lyuba. My nephew Sasha is here, and Annochka and Maude, and Liza Obolenskaya arrived. A lot of commotion, but most enjoyable.

  Lev Nikolaevich played a game of vint and asked for something to eat. He is still writing his story Hadji Murat, and today his work evidently went badly, as he played patience for a long time—a sure sign he can’t work something out. The priests keep sending me religious books which curse him.* Neither he nor they are right; all extremes lack the wisdom and goodness of inner tranquillity.

  A grey day, but no wind. A bright sunset and a moonlit night.

  11th August. Misha’s family left yesterday, and Olga arrived with Sonyushka. What a sweet, affectionate, clever little girl she is! I love her so much. Liza Obolenskaya left, and Stasov arrived, and also Ginzburg, who has sculpted a bas-relief of Sasha which is very bad and not at all like her. I have now learnt how to do this myself, and would very much like to attempt a medallion of L.N. and me.

  We all went to pick saffron milk caps yesterday; I left the others and had a lovely time wandering through the forest on my own. The old fire in my heart is extinguished, and I am obviously growing old.

  Lev Nikolaevich has been very lively and talkative. He told us when he was in Sevastopol he had asked to be assigned a post, and they sent him and the artillery to the fourth bastion. But he was removed from there on the Tsar’s orders, after Nicholas I sent Gorchakov a message saying: “Remove Tolstoy from the fourth bastion and spare his life, for he is worth something.”

  Rain all day. The oats are still in the field. 13 degrees.

  28th August. Lev Nikolaevich’s 74th birthday. We went out to meet him on his way back from his walk. Four of our sons have come; Lyova is in Sweden, and my poor darling Tanya couldn’t be here as her husband is still ill. We celebrated my great husband’s birthday in the most banal fashion: dinner for twenty-four illassorted people, with champagne and fruit, and a game of vint afterwards, just like any other day. Lev Nikolaevich simply cannot wait for evening, when he can sit down to a hand of vint. And they have now dragged Sasha into their games, which greatly distresses me.

  He is working hard on Hadji Murat.

  2nd September. On 31st August two doctors arrived from Moscow for a consultation—capable, lively Shchurovksy and P. Usov, a dear cautious man who has treated L.N. before. They both decided it would be best to spend the winter here in Yasnaya, which is far more to my liking than having to travel here, there and everywhere. I personally find it much easier in Moscow; there are people I love there, and a lot of music and serious innocent entertainments—exhibitions, concerts, lectures, interesting friends, social life and so on. But I realize Lev Nikolaevich finds Moscow insufferable, with all the visitors and noise, so I shall gladly live in my dear Yasnaya and visit Moscow only when I am exhausted here.

  Meanwhile life is very eventful, time speeds past, I am kept busy all day long, and there isn’t any music or a chance to rest. All these guests can be very tiresome at times. I have started to sculpt a medallion of L.N.’s and my profiles. I’m in despair that I won’t be able to finish, but I do so want to; I occasionally sit up all night, as late as 5 a.m., straining my eyes.

  10th October. I haven’t written for so long—time has flown. On 18th September I saw my Tanya and her family off to Montreux in Switzerland. My heart ached to see her, wretched, pale and thin, bustling about on the Smolensk station with all the luggage and her sick husband. But we have just had good news from her, thank God.

  I spent my name day in Moscow. I invited a lot of guests, who came to say goodbye to the Sukhotins, and Sergei Ivanovich, whom I had run into on the street. He was solemn and austere; something in him has changed, he has become even more impenetrable than before.

  At 11 o’clock on 11th September we had a fire in the attic and four beams were burnt. By a sheer stroke of luck I had gone up to inspect the attic
and noticed the fire. If I hadn’t, the whole house would have burnt down and the ceiling might have collapsed on top of Lev Nikolaevich, who was asleep in the room directly below. I was led there by the hand of God, and I thank Him for it.

  Lev Nikolaevich’s health is good; he went horse-riding, worked on Hadji Murat and has started on a proclamation to the clergy.* Yesterday he said: “How hard it is. One must expose evil, yet I don’t want to write unkind things as I don’t want to arouse bad feelings.”

  But our peaceful life here and our good relations with our daughter Masha and her shadow—her husband Kolya—have now been disrupted. It is a long story.

  When the family divided up the property, at Lev Nikolaevich’s insistence, our daughter Masha, who had already reached the age of consent, refused to partake of her parents’ inheritance. As I didn’t believe her at the time, I took her share in my name and wrote my will, leaving this capital to her. But I didn’t die, and then Masha married Obolensky and took her share, as she had to support both herself and him.

  But as she had no rights in the future, she decided without telling me to copy out of her father’s diary for 1895 a whole series of his wishes after his death. Among other things, he had written that it made him unhappy that his works should be sold, and that he would prefer his family not to sell them after his death. When L.N. was dangerously ill last July, Masha asked her father, without telling anyone, to sign this passage she had copied from his diary, and the poor man did so.

  It was exceedingly unpleasant for me when quite by chance I found out about it. To make L.N.’s works common property would be senseless and wicked, in my opinion. By making his works public property we only line the pockets of rich publishing companies like Marx, Zetlin and so on. I told L.N. that if he died before me I would not carry out his wishes and would not renounce the copyright on his works; if I thought that was the right and proper thing to do, I would give him the pleasure of renouncing it during his lifetime, but there was no point in doing so after his death.

  As I didn’t know the exact contents of this document, I asked Lev Nikolaevich to give it to me, after he had taken it from Masha.

  He readily agreed, and handed it over to me. Then Masha flew into a rage. Yesterday her husband was shouting God knows what nonsense, saying they had planned to make the document “public property” after Lev Nikolaevich’s death, so as many people as possible would know that he hadn’t wanted to sell his works, but his wife had made him do so.

  So the upshot of this whole episode is that Masha and Kolya Obolensky will now be leaving Yasnaya.

  23rd October. Masha and I have made peace; she has stayed on in the side wing at Yasnaya, and I am very glad.

  An unbearably muddy, cold, damp autumn. It snowed today.

  Lev Nikolaevich has finished Hadji Murat and we read it today; the strictly epic character of the story has been very well sustained and there is much artistic merit in it, but it doesn’t move me. We have only read half of it though, and will finish it tomorrow.

  4th November. It is very frosty; the little girls are skating. The sun is bright, the sky is blue, and as I came up the avenue to the house I had a sudden vivid memory of the distant past, walking up this same avenue from the skating rink carrying a baby on one arm, shielding him from the wind and closing his little mouth, while the other dragged a child in a sledge, and behind us and before us were happy, laughing red-cheeked children, and life was so full and I loved them so passionately…And Lev Nikolaevich came out to meet us, looking healthy and cheerful, having spent such a long time writing that it was too late for him to go skating…

  Where are they now, those little children whom we reared with such love? And where is that giant—my strong, cheerful Lyovochka? And where am I, as I was in those days? If only I could live a little better and not store up so much guilt towards people, especially my family.

  8th November. Yesterday the sun shone, we were all in high spirits and I went skating with the little girls—Sasha, Natasha Obolenskaya and their young pupils. We all had a fine time on the ice. Today we had a discussion about divorce. I said divorce was sometimes necessary, and cited the case of L.A. Golitsyna, whose husband abandoned her three weeks after the wedding for a dancing girl, and whom he told quite cynically he had only married in order to have her as his mistress, otherwise he would never have managed to get her.

  Lev Nikolaevich replied that marriage was merely the Church’s seal of approval on adultery. I retorted that this was only the case with bad people. He then snapped back in the most unpleasant way that it was so for everyone. “What about in reality?” I said. To which he replied, “The moment I took a woman for the first time and went with her, that was marriage.”

  And I had a sudden painful insight into our marriage as Lev Nikolaevich saw it. This naked, unadorned, uncommitted sexual coupling of a man and a woman—that is what he calls marriage, and after that coupling it doesn’t matter to him who he has gone with. And when he started saying one should only get married once, to the first woman one fell with, I grew extremely angry.

  It is snowing, and there seems to be a path in the snow. I looked through the proofs of The Cossacks. What a well-written story, what brilliance, what talent. A man of genius is always so much better in his works than in his life!

  25th November. I feel more and more lonely here in the company of those members of my family I still have with me. Today I returned from Moscow to find that Dr Elpatevsky had just arrived from the Crimea, and this evening L.N. read him a legend he has just written, about devils.*

  This work is imbued with the most truly negative, malicious, diabolical spirit, and sets out to mock everything on earth, starting with the Church. The supposedly Christian feelings that L.N. puts into these discussions among the devils are presented with such coarse cynicism it made me sick with rage to hear him read it: I became feverish, and felt like weeping and shouting and stretching out my hands to ward off the devils.

  I told him in no uncertain terms how angry it made me. Would it not be more fitting for an old man of seventy-five, whom the whole world respects, to do like the Apostle John, who when he was too weak and debilitated to speak simply said, “Children, love each other!” Neither Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, Plato nor Epicurus had any need to attach ears and devils’ tails to the truths they wanted to proclaim. But then maybe contemporary man, whom L.N. is so clever at pleasing, needs this sort of thing.

  And my children too—Sasha, who is too young to know better, and Masha, who is a complete stranger to me—both imitated their father’s laugh with their own hellish laughter after he had finished reading his devilish legend, and I felt like sobbing. Did he have to survive death to do work like this!

  7th December. My soul is again filled with despair and the terror of losing my beloved husband! Help me, Lord…Lev Nikolaevich has a fever—39 this morning—his pulse is weak, his strength is failing…The only doctor who has seen him cannot understand what is wrong.

  We have summoned Dreyer from Tula and Shchurovsky from Moscow, and are expecting them today. We have wired our sons too, but none of them has arrived yet.

  While there is still hope and I still have the strength, I shall write down everything that has happened.

  When Lev Nikolaevich was having lunch I came in and sat with him. He ate porridge and semolina with milk, and asked for some curd pancakes from our lunch, which he ate with the semolina. I remarked that these pancakes were a little heavy for him while he was drinking Karlsbad—which he has been taking for four weeks now—but he wouldn’t listen.

  After lunch he set off for a walk on his own, and asked to be driven to the highway. I assumed he would take his usual walk along the main road, but without saying a word he set out for Kozlovka, turned off into Zaseka—3 miles in all—then put on a frozen fur coat over his sheepskin jacket and drove home, flushed and exhausted, in a cold north wind and 15 degrees of frost.

  The following morning, 5th December, about midday, he felt chilled and wrap
ped himself in his dressing gown, but remained at his desk with his papers all morning and ate nothing. He went to bed in the afternoon and his temperature went up to 38.8. That night he started having bad stomach pains; I stayed with him all night and kept his stomach warm. That evening he had a temperature of 39.4, but then Masha suddenly ran in, beside herself, and said, “His temperature is 40.9!” We all looked at the thermometer, and sure enough it was—although I am still not sure there wasn’t something wrong with the mercury. We were all distraught; we sponged him down with alcohol and water, and when we took his temperature it was 39.3 again.

  I am going in to Lyovochka again—oh, these groans, how I suffer for him…Forgive me, my darling, God bless you!

  8th December. His temperature has gone down now and the fever has passed in a profuse sweat. But his heart is still weak. The doctors have diagnosed influenza and now fear these bacteria may lead to pneumonia.

  We had a visit this morning from those two dear selfless doctors, always so bright and kind—warm-hearted Usov and cheerful Shchurovsky. Doctor Chekan from Tula stayed the night here and our own Doctor Nikitin has been kind, sensible and diligent.

  Seryozha, Andryusha and his wife and Liza Obolenskaya arrived yesterday, and Ilya arrived today.

  I looked after Lev Nikolaevich until five this morning, when Seryozha took my place. The doctors also took turns—first Nikitin, then Chekan.

  12th December. It is now six in the morning of 12th December. I have spent another night sitting beside Lyovochka’s bed and can see him slipping away.

  A cheerless life looms ahead.

  Long sleepless nights, with a heart full of anguish, a terror of life and a dread of living without Lyovochka.