by Cathy Porter
He sits at his work every day, surrounded by books, and toils away until dinner-time. His health is deteriorating, he suffers from headaches, his hair is turning grey and he lost a lot of weight over the winter.
He doesn’t appear to be as happy as I should wish, and has become quiet, meditative and taciturn. We almost never see those cheerful exuberant moods of his, which used to enchant us all so much. I put this down to excessive overwork and exhaustion. How unlike the old days, when he was writing about the hunt and the ball in War and Peace, and looked as joyful and excited as though he himself was joining in the fun. His soul is in a state of calm clarity, but he suffers deeply for all the human misery and poverty he sees around him, for all those in jail, all the hatred, injustice and oppression in the world—and this deeply affects his impressionable soul and undermines his happiness.
Why Anna Karenina Was Called “Anna”, and What Suggested the Idea of Her Suicide
We have a neighbour here, a landowner of about 50, neither rich nor educated, called Alexander Bibikov. He had living with him a distant cousin of his late wife, an unmarried woman of about 35 who looked after the house and children and was his mistress. One day Bibikov hired a new governess for his son and niece, a beautiful German woman, with whom he soon fell in love, and to whom before long he proposed marriage. His former mistress, whose name was Anna Stepanovna, left the house to visit Tula for the day, saying she was going to see her mother, but she returned from there with a bundle of clothes under her arm (containing nothing but a change of clothes and some underwear), to Yasenki, the nearest railway station, and there she jumped on the tracks and threw herself under a goods train. There was a post-mortem, and Lev Nikolaevich attended, and saw her lying there at the Yasenki barracks, her skull smashed in and her naked body frightfully mutilated. It had the most terrible effect on him. Anna Stepanovna was a tall, plump woman with a typically Russian temperament and appearance. She had dark hair and grey eyes, and although she wasn’t beautiful she was very pleasant-looking.*
The Death of Vanechka
A few days before Vanechka’s death he astonished me by giving away all his things. He put little labels on everything, addressed in his own hand: “With love to Masha from Vanya”, or “To Simeon Nikolaevich our cook, from Vanya” and so on. He took all the little framed pictures off the walls of his nursery and took them to his brother Misha’s room; he had always been terribly fond of Misha. Then he asked me for a hammer and nails, and hung up the pictures in his brother’s room. He was so fond of Misha that if they had a quarrel and Misha didn’t make it up with him immediately, he would be desperately unhappy and would weep bitterly. Whether Misha loved him as much I don’t know, but he did call his eldest son after him later.
Shortly before he died, Vanechka was looking out of the window, when he suddenly looked very thoughtful: “Maman, is Alyosha” (Alyosha was my little son who had died) “an angel now?” he asked.
“Why, yes,” I told him. “It’s said that children who die before they are seven turn into angels.”
To which he replied: “Well, I had better die too, before I am seven. It will be my seventh birthday soon, but I may still be an angel yet. And if I don’t, dear, dear Maman, please will you let me fast so I won’t have any sins?”
Those words of his engraved themselves in my mind. On 20th February, my daughter Masha and Nurse took him to the clinic, where they had made an appointment with Professor Filatov. They all looked so cheerful and excited when they got back, and Vanechka told me with great glee that he had been told he might eat whatever he wanted and could go out walking and even driving. After lunch he took a walk with Sasha, and afterwards he ate a hearty dinner. We had all been through such agony while he was ill, and now the whole house cheered up again. Tanya and Masha, who had no children of their own, lavished all their maternal affection on their little brother.
On the evening of the 20th, Sasha and Vanechka asked their sister Masha to read them the children’s version of Dickens’s Great Expectations, which was called The Convict’s Daughter. When it was time to go to bed he came to say goodnight to me. I was touched by the sad weary look in his eyes and asked him about the book Masha had been reading to them.
“Oh, don’t talk about it, Maman, it’s all so sad! You see Estella doesn’t marry Pip in the end!”
We went downstairs to the nursery together, and he yawned, then with tears in his eyes he said sadly: “Oh, Maman, it’s back again, that, that…temperature.”
I took his temperature and it was 38.5°. He said his eyes were aching and I thought it must be an attack of measles. When I realized he was ill again, I burst into tears, and seeing me cry he said: “Don’t cry, Maman, don’t cry. It’s God’s will.”
Not long before this he had asked me to explain the Lord’s Prayer to him, and I explained “Thy Will Be Done” with special feeling. Then he asked me to finish reading a Grimms’ story we hadn’t finished—the one about the crow as far as I recall. Then Misha came into the nursery, and I went off to my bedroom. I later learnt that Vanechka had said to Misha, “I know I am dying now.”
He was very feverish all night, but managed to sleep. Next morning we sent for Doctor Filatov, who said straight away it was scarlet fever. His temperature was 40°, and he had pains in his stomach and violent diarrhoea. (Scarlet fever is often complicated by a distemper of the bowels.)
At 3 in the morning he woke up, looked at me and said: “Forgive me, dear Maman, for keeping you awake.”
“I’ve had my sleep, darling,” I said. “We’re all taking it in turns to sit with you.”
“Whose turn is it next, Tanya’s?”
“No dear, it’s Masha’s.”
“Call Masha then, and go to bed.”
How lovingly my darling little boy sent me away. He hugged me to him tightly and pressed his dry little lips to mine, tenderly kissing me again and again.
“Is anything hurting you?” I asked him.
“No, nothing’s hurting,” he said.
“Just miserable?”
“Yes, just miserable.”
He never regained consciousness properly after that. The next day his temperature went up to 42°. Filatov wrapped him in blankets soaked with mustard water, and laid him in a warm bath—but it was no good, his little head hung helplessly to one side as if he were dead, then his little hands and feet grew cold. He opened his eyes once more, with a look of pure astonishment, then grew still. It was 11 at night on 23rd February.
My husband Lyovochka led me into Tanya’s room and we both sat on the couch together, and I leant my head on his chest and lost consciousness. We were both half-dead with grief.
My daughter Masha and Lyovochka’s sister Maria Nikolaevna the nun were with him during the final moments and were praying for him constantly. I was later told that Nurse, maddened with grief, lay on her bed sobbing. Tanya kept running in and out of the nursery.
When Vanechka had been dressed in his little white shirt and his long, fair curly hair had been brushed, Lyovochka and I plucked up the courage to go back to the nursery. He was lying on the couch. I laid an icon on his little chest, and someone lit a wax candle and put it at his head.
Everyone had loved our Vanechka, and before long news of his death had spread to our friends and relatives. They all sent masses of flowers and wreaths and the nursery soon looked like a garden. No one worried about the risk of infection. Dear kind Sapho Martynova, who had four children of her own, came straight away and wept passionately and grieved with us. And we all seemed to cling together in our love for our poor Vanechka. Maria Nikolaevna stayed with us and gave us religious consolation, and Lev Nikolaevich’s diary records the cry of his heart: “26th February. We have buried Vanechka. It is frightful! No, not frightful, a great spiritual experience. I thank Thee, Father.”
On the third day, 25th February, Vanechka’s funeral service was held. The lid of his little coffin was hammered down, and at twelve o’clock his father, his brothers and Pavel Biry
ukov carried it out of the house and set it on our large four-seated sledge. My husband and I sat facing each other and we slowly moved off, accompanied by our friends.
I later described Vanechka’s death and funeral in a letter to my sister: “And you know Tanya, all through Vanechka’s funeral service I didn’t shed a single tear, just held his cold little head between my hands and tried to warm his little cheeks with my lips. I don’t know now why I didn’t die of quiet. But although I am weeping as I write to you, I shall go on living, and for a long time too I expect, with this sorrow in my heart.”
Lyovochka and I silently bore off our beloved youngest child, our brightest hope, to be buried. And as we approached the Pokrovskoe cemetery, near the village of Nikolaevich, where he was to be buried beside his little brother Alyosha, Lyovochka recalled how he used to drive along that road to our dacha in Pokrovskoe after he had first fallen in love with me. He wept and caressed me and spoke so tenderly, and his love meant so much to me.
The Burial
We found crowds of people at the cemetery, both villagers and people who had travelled there to attend the funeral. It was Sunday, and the schoolchildren were walking around the village admiring all the wreaths and flowers.
The little coffin was again lifted from the sledge by Lev Nikolaevich and our sons. Everyone wept to see the father, so old, bent and bowed with grief. Many of our friends came to the funeral, as well as members of our family—Manya Rachinskaya, Sonya Mamonova, Kolya Obolensky, Sapho Martynova, Vera Severtseva, Vera Tolstaya and many more. They all sobbed loudly.
When they lowered the coffin into the grave I again lost consciousness, as if I too were disappearing into the earth. They told me afterwards that Ilyusha had tried to shield me from the dreadful pit, and someone else held my arms. Lyovochka embraced me and held me to him, and I stood there with him for a long time in a stunned state.
I was brought back to my senses by the happy shouts of the village children. I had asked Nurse to hand out sweets and cakes to them, and they were laughing, dropping gingerbread and eating it off the ground. Then I remembered how Vanechka had loved to celebrate and hand out sweets, and I burst into tears for the first time since his death.
Immediately after the funeral, when everyone had left, Kasatkin the artist arrived and made two sketches of the fresh grave. He offered one to me and the other to Tanya, with a most moving, poetic letter expressing his love for Vanechka, who he described as “transparent”.
We returned, bereft, to our deserted house, and I remember Lev Nikolaevich sitting down on the sofa in the dining room downstairs (where it had been put for our son Lyova, who had also been ill), and bursting into tears, saying: “I always thought that of all my sons Vanechka would carry on my good work on earth after I died.”
And a little later he said almost the same thing: “And I had dreamt of Vanechka carrying on God’s work after me. Well, there’s nothing to be done now.”
The sight of Lyovochka’s suffering was even more painful to me than my own. I wrote to my sister Tanya: “Lyovochka has grown bent and old. He wanders sadly about the house, with his eyes full of tears, as though the last ray of sunshine in his old age had been extinguished. Two days after Vanechka’s death he sat down and sobbed: ‘For the first time in my life I have lost hope.’”
Of all our children Vanechka looked most like him, with the same bright, penetrating eyes, the same earnest, searching mind. Once I was combing his curly hair in front of the mirror and he turned his little face to me and said with a smile: “Maman, I really do look like Papa, don’t I!”
After the Funeral
The first night after Vanechka’s death I jumped out of bed in terror, hallucinating the most fearful smell. It pursued me for a long time afterwards, even though my husband, who was sleeping with me, assured me there was no smell and I had just imagined it. Then I would suddenly hear Vanechka’s dear gentle voice. He and I used to say our prayers together and make the sign of the cross over each other. “Kiss me hard, Maman,” he would say. “Put your head beside mine, and breathe on my chest so I can fall asleep with your warm breath on me.”
There is no love so strong, so pure or so good as the love of a mother and child. With Vanechka’s death the dear little nursery life in our house came to an end. Sasha was inconsolable without her playmate and wandered sadly around on her own. She was wild and unsociable by nature, whereas Vanechka loved people; he loved writing letters and giving presents, he loved organizing treats and celebrations, and how many people loved him!
Even cold Menshikov wrote: “When I saw your little son I was sure he would either die or live to be an even greater genius than his father.”
I had many, many wonderful letters from people who wrote to sympathize or remember Vanechka. N.N. Strakhov wrote to Lev Nikolaevich: “He promised much—maybe he would have inherited not only your name but your fame. What a lovely child—words cannot describe him.”
The writer Zhirkevich wrote to Lev Nikolaevich: “Without knowing either you or Vanechka, a St Petersburg writer is writing a passionate article about this wonderful little creature who offered us all so much hope. Mothers and fathers everywhere share your grief, and my voice is drowned in a chorus of condolences.”
Peshkova-Toliverova, who had published Vanechka’s story in her magazine The Toy,* wrote: “He stands before me now, a pale modest little boy with enquiring eyes.” Our old friend Prince Urusov soothed me with his comforting assurances about the blessed state of Vanechka’s soul in paradise. And he believed this so earnestly, for he was a very religious and Orthodox man, that I found his faith infectious.
Many people prayed for Vanechka and for us two, in churches and homes. Many parents sympathized with us, particularly those who had lost children of their own, such as Countess Alexandra (née Kapnist), who had lost her only little girl, Baroness Mengden whose two grown-up sons had died, and others.
I wrote to my sister: “I try to console myself with the thought that my sufferings are necessary if I am to pass into eternity, purify my soul and be united with God and Vanechka, who was all joy and love. ‘Thy will be done!’ I cry. If this will bring me closer to eternity, so be it. Yet despite these lofty spiritual aspirations, and my sincere and heartfelt desire to submit to God’s will, there’s no consolation for me in this or anything else.”
For some reason Lev Nikolaevich refused to believe in my religious activities. It annoyed him that I kept visiting churches, monasteries and cathedrals. I remember spending nine hours once in the Arkhangelsk Cathedral during Lent, standing up during the services, then sitting on the steps with the pilgrims and old women. There was another educated woman there too, who had just lost her grown-up son, and like me was seeking comfort in prayer in the house of God.
Returning from the Kremlin one day to our house in Moscow in Khamovniki Street, I got soaked in the rain, caught a bad chill and was ill in bed for a long time. Before this Sasha and I had been fasting, and all this was evidently not to Lev Nikolaevich’s liking. He wrote in his diary: “27th March 1895. Sonya is suffering as much as before, and is incapable of rising to a religious level. The reason is that she has put all her spiritual energies into her animal love for her child.”*
Why animal love? I have had many children, but my feelings for Vanechka and my love for him were fundamentally spiritual in nature. We lived in spiritual communion with each other, we always understood each other, and despite the difference in our ages we always spoke on a lofty, abstract plane.
But Lev Nikolaevich was very sweet to me then too.* I remember he once asked me if I would go and visit his sister Mashenka on her name day, 25th March, and we both tried to decide what to give her as a present. I remembered she said she would like an alarm clock to wake her up for church services, so we both went out and bought one, and she was delighted with it, and with our visit.
Another time, I remember he invited me out to the market to buy flowers for Palm Saturday, pretending he wanted to buy some books to take t
o the prison. He thought this would divert me. I bought a lot of artificial white flowers and white lilac which I have kept to this day, which now hangs over the big portrait of Vanechka.
Notes
1862
The whole…accept it: Before Tolstoy’s marriage he gave his fiancée his old diaries to read, as he did not want to conceal anything of his past from her. Reading them made a terrible impression on the eighteen-year-old Sofia Behrs. (See Appendix: ‘L.N. Tolstoy’s Marriage’, pp. 499–516.)
Auntie: Tatyana Ergolskaya, Tolstoy’s aunt and guardian, lived with him at Yasnaya Polyana.
his “people”…live like that: This entry reveals her attitude towards Tolstoy’s “educational activities” with the peasants. In her view, family life should have banished all other interests. Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “All this time I have been busy with nothing but practical matters. But I now find this idleness oppressive. I cannot respect myself. And this makes me dissatisfied with myself and confused in my relations with others. I have decided to finish with my diary, and, I think, with the schools too. I am constantly angry, with my life, and sometimes even with her.” But Tolstoy himself always described this time as a very “happy time in my life”.
In love…how frightful: Evidently she had either been rereading or was recalling Tolstoy’s reference in his diary, on 13th May 1858, to the Yasnaya Polyana peasant woman Axinya Bazykina: “I am in love, as never before!” Tolstoy portrayed her in his stories ‘Idyll’ and ‘Tikhon and Malanya’, and in the long story, ‘Devil’.
1863
Never in my life have I felt so wretched with remorse: She is evidently referring to harsh words spoken by her in a quarrel the day before. Tolstoy refers to it in an entry of 8th January: “This morning it was her dress. She called for me, wanting me to criticize it, which I did—and then there were tears and trite explanations.”
