The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  Moscow: On 23rd December 1862, the Tolstoys went to Moscow. They took rooms in the Hotel Chevriet, on Gazetny Street, and stayed there until 8th February 1863. During their visit to Moscow they paid almost daily visits to the Kremlin to see the Behrs.

  A.: Axinya Bazykina (see note to p. 8).

  I read his diary and it made me happy: She was reading Tolstoy’s diary from 3rd January to 3rd March 1863. On 23rd February he noted: “I love her more and more.”

  V.A.: She was reading his letters to V.V. Arseneva, whom he was planning to marry between 1856 and 1857. In his letters to her he depicted in detail their future family life together and he called himself Khrapovitsky and her Dembitskaya. This love affair was reflected in the story ‘Family Happiness’.

  He seems to think…interests him: At this time Tolstoy was planning to build a distillery with his neighbour, Alexander Bibikov, who owned the estate at Telyatinki. In May 1863 a small distillery started operating, but only existed for eighteen months.

  I want to go out…on the estate: In a letter to her sister of 13th February 1863, she wrote: “We are turning into complete landowners: we buy cattle and poultry, pigs and calves. Come here and I’ll show you. We’re buying bees from the Islenevs. You can eat the honey, I don’t like it.”

  V.V.: The identity of “V.V.” isn’t known.

  the baby: On 28th June 1863, the Tolstoys’ son Sergei was born. “I suffered for a whole day, it was terrible,” she recalled. “Lyovochka was with me all the time and felt very sorry for me; he was so loving, and his eyes shone with tears, and he kept wiping my forehead with a handkerchief dipped in eau de Cologne. There was another hour of agony, and at two in the morning of 28th June I was delivered of my first-born. Lev Nikolaevich sobbed loudly, clasping my head and kissing me.”

  He cannot run…restless: On 18th June 1863, he wrote in his diary: “I am petty and worthless. And I have been so ever since I married the woman I love. I have irrevocably destroyed, in an orgy of farming, the last nine months, which might have been the best but which I have made some of the worst of my life. How frightful and senseless, to link one’s happiness with material things—wife, children, health, riches.”

  why should he be so angry: Because Sofia Tolstoy was ill, a wet nurse was brought into the house, and this aroused his fury.

  And how often…my old self: Recalling this time later, she wrote: “He was very bitter with me, would go out of the house and leave me alone for days on end, without help, and everything made him angry.” Tolstoy himself wrote angrily in his diary that his wife’s character was “deteriorating every day”. It was only two months later that he felt calm and happy again, immersed in work on his new novel. “It has passed and it’s all untrue. I’m happy with her,” he wrote. “There’s no need to choose. The choice was made long ago. Literature means art, teaching and family.”

  Comte: This was what the Behrs family called him before his marriage to Sofia.

  Popov: Nil, Alexandrovich Popov, historian and corresponding member of the Petersburg Academy of Sciences

  So he is off to war: This is the only known reference to his desire to go to war (the war in the Caucasus hadn’t yet ended). He evidently didn’t pursue it.

  Valerian Petrovich: Valerian Tolstoy, the husband of Tolstoy’s sister Maria.

  It’s my youth: See entry in Tolstoy’s diary for 3rd March 1863: “Today she feels bored and cramped. A madman seeks a whirlwind—but this is youth, not madness. And I fear this mood more than anything in the world.”

  Alexandrine: “Alexandrine” was Alexandra Tolstaya, Tolstoy’s cousin once removed. He first became friendly with her in 1853; their affectionate correspondence over forty-seven years is exceptionally interesting because of the variety of its content and the openness with which he expressed his views, his literary plans and his emotional upsets. He himself described this correspondence as his best autobiography. Rereading copies of these letters in the last years of his life, he said: “When I look back on my long, dark life, the memory of Alexandrine is always a ray of brightness.”

  He shouldn’t have sent her that letter: The letter is unknown, but it is plain that he had written very frankly about his family life.

  The History of 1812: Evidently a reference to one of the drafts for the beginning of War and Peace.

  Alyosha Gorshkoi: A peasant and guard on the estate.

  It hurts me to think of Tanya, she’s a thorn in my flesh: A reference to the love affair between her sister Tanya Behrs and Tolstoy’s brother Sergei (Seryozha), which lasted from the summer of 1863 to June 1865.

  Seryozha: Sergei Tolstoy visited Yasnaya Polyana from his estate at Pirogovo; in 1863 he was thirty-seven.

  Masha: When this love affair started, Masha (Maria Shishkina) had already been his common-law wife for fifteen years and they had several children.

  1864

  Grandmother: “Grandmother” was what Tolstoy jokingly called Alexandra Tolstaya, even though she was only eleven years older. Their affection was mutual. In 1857 Tolstoy was sincerely enamoured of her, as evidenced by his diary entries for 11th May and 22nd October 1857: “I am so disposed to fall in love that I am appalled. If only Alexandrine were ten years younger. A splendid nature.” And: “Alexandrine is a delight, a joy and a consolation. I haven’t met one woman to match her.”

  I keep thinking…all day: Her mood was induced by his departure to Nikolskoe-Vyazemskoe, stopping off on the way at Pirogovo to see his brother Sergei.

  my little girl: On 4th October 1864, the Tolstoys’ daughter Tatyana was born.

  It started when he dislocated his arm: On 26th September 1864, Tolstoy fell off his horse while hunting and dislocated his right arm. The Tula doctors set it unsuccessfully, so on 21st November, he went to Moscow for a consultation with some doctors who, on 28th November, carried out another operation.

  1865

  Dunyasha: Evdokia Bannikova (married name Orekhova), a chambermaid at the Tolstoys’ house.

  A.: Axinya Bazykina (see note to p. 8).

  Dyakov: Dmitry Dyakov, a landowner and neighbour.

  the Zefirots: “Zefirots” was the family name for Liza and Varya, the daughters of Tolstoy’s sister Maria, who stayed at Yasnaya Polyana for much of the time between 1864 and 1866.

  His brother’s son is dying: On 15th March 1865 Sergei Tolstoy’s two-year-old son Nikolai died; Tolstoy went to the funeral.

  his novel: The first part of War and Peace, entitled The Year 1805.

  The wedding will be in twenty days or so: The wedding was set for 29th June.

  Seryozha has betrayed Tanya. He behaved like a swine: Sergei Tolstoy abruptly stopped visiting Yasnaya Polyana and explained to Tolstoy in a letter that he couldn’t leave Maria Shishkina and their children: “Throughout these ten miserable days I have been lying, believing I was telling the truth, but when I saw I must finally break with Masha I realized this was impossible.” Tanya wrote to inform her parents: “Don’t be surprised or grieved; I couldn’t have done otherwise and would always have had it on my conscience. All may be for the best.” Tolstoy described this letter as “wonderful” and her behaviour as “noble” and “splendid”.

  What a brute…like that: Tolstoy shared Sofia’s feelings about his brother, and wrote to him: “I cannot convey to you the hell in which you have placed not only Tanya but our entire family, including me.”

  Nurse: Maria Arbuzova.

  1866

  We spent 6 weeks in Moscow and returned here on the 7th: The Tolstoys arrived in Moscow on 21st January 1866. She wanted to “show the children to her parents” and Tolstoy wanted to “revive memories of people and society” (see his letter to “Alexandrine”. At first they lived with the Behrs family, but on 3rd February they moved into a separate apartment in Khludov’s house on Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street (now 7 Pushkin Street), where they stayed until 6th March.

  Lyova and I…P…relations: She evidently means Mitrofan Polivanov, who she met during this visit to Moscow. “My G
od, what a scene Lev Nikolaevich made about my somewhat tactless behaviour towards this person,” she wrote later. “I was simply being rather affected, as I felt awkward with him, and was insanely frightened of Lev Nikolaevich’s jealousy.”

  Petya: Pyotr Andreevich Behrs, Sofia’s younger brother.

  We have a new bailiff here with his wife: “In the summer of 1866,” she recalled, “Lev Nikolaevich hired an impoverished young nobleman and former cadet as his estate-manager. He had a smart, pretty wife, a crop-haired nihilist, who loved to talk and philosophize. I don’t remember their surname, but she was called Maria Ivanovna.”

  the regimental clerk…formality: Tolstoy involved himself in the case of the soldier Vasily Shibunin, who slapped his company commander’s face because of his cruelty and was court-martialled. Tolstoy was a defence witness at the trial, and through Alexandrine he interceded with Tsar Alexander II for Shibunin’s pardon. His petition was not successful, and Shibunin was executed on 9th August 1866.

  Tanya…very poorly…with the Dyakovs: In the winter of 1866–67 Tanya Behrs was gravely ill (consumption was suspected). She eventually went abroad with the Dyakov family in April 1867.

  I shall always remember…special joy: 17th September was Sofia Tolstoy’s name day. As a surprise, Tolstoy had invited a military band from Yasenki, where a regiment was stationed, and organized a dance; the regimental commander Yunosha visited the Tolstoys that day with his officers.

  I now spend most of my time…the first time: Sofia copied out most of the manuscript of War and Peace.

  1867

  I still find the Englishwoman awkward and gloomy: The English governess Hannah Tracey arrived at Yasnaya Polyana on 12th November 1866. The cause of their initial awkwardness, according to a letter Sofia wrote to her husband in Moscow, was their “ignorance of each other’s languages”. Everyone soon grew to love her, however, and her pupil Tanya Tolstaya wrote many years later of the devotion she still felt for her.

  Lyovochka has been writing…in his eyes: In a letter to M. Bashilov dated 8th January 1867, he wrote: “My work is going well and progressing rapidly—so rapidly, in fact, that I have finished three parts in rough (one part—the one for which you are doing the pictures—has been printed, the other two are in manuscript), and have started on the fourth and final one. Unless I am delayed by some unexpected disaster, I expect to be ready with the whole novel by autumn.” The novel was not finished by the autumn of 1867—correcting the original rough version demanded almost three more years of intense labour.

  All day…last year: See first note to p. 33.

  1870

  I have been weaning Lyova for four days now: Lev Lvovich Tolstoy was born on 20th May 1869 in Yasnaya Polyana. In the Tolstoys’ home he was known as Lyova or Lyolya.

  1871

  It’s not a grief…years to come: Tanya had married Alexander Kuzminsky, who had been appointed public prosecutor in Kutaisi in the Caucasus. Sofia took her sister’s departure very hard.

  koumiss: Fermented mare’s milk, believed to have health-giving powers.

  For two months…no good at all: Tolstoy left for Moscow on 9th June 1871, and on 11th June travelled on from there with Sofia’s brother Stepan to the village of Karalyk, near Buzuluk, in the province of Samara. He stayed there for six weeks, drinking koumiss, returning to Yasnaya Polyana on 2nd August.

  1872

  Lyovochka returned from Moscow on 30th March: Tolstoy left for Moscow on 28th March. Moscow life filled him with such “revulsion for all the idle luxury and all the things men and women acquire so dishonestly” that he decided “never to go there again”.

  Mitrofan: Mitrofan Bannikov, the horse-trainer.

  We sat up until almost four a.m. getting the proofs of the ABC: The proofs were sent back to F. Ries’s printing house in Moscow, where at the end of December 1871 the manuscript of the ABC had been sent for printing.

  Varya, and her fiancé, Nagornov: Nikolai Nagornov married Tolstoy’s niece Varya in the summer of 1872.

  Masha: Maria Lvovna Tolstaya, the Tolstoys’ year-old daughter.

  wrote yesterday…with Ries: Tolstoy’s letter to his lawyer in Moscow to get the original of the ABC back from Ries and “stop publication”.

  1873

  Lyovochka has gone to Moscow: Tolstoy went to Moscow for discussions with M.N. Katkov’s printing house about the publication of a third edition of his collected works.

  My darling little Petya: Pyotr Lvovich Tolstoy was born 13th June 1872.

  Fyodor Fyodorovich: Fyodor Fyodorovich Kaufman. Seryozha Tolstoy recalled him as “an ill-educated but decent and kindly man of about thirty-five”.

  the new Englishwoman: The governess Emily Tabor arrived at the Tolstoys’ on 11th February.

  my little Petyushka died of a throat infection: “His throat swelled up and he couldn’t breathe,” Tolstoy wrote to his brother Sergei on 10th November. “It was what they call croup.” This was the first death in the Tolstoy family for eleven years.

  1875

  Auntie: Pelageya Tolstaya, Tolstoy’s aunt.

  My hope…to be: In letters to Afanasy Fet and Nikolai Strakhov, which he wrote on 26th October 1875, Tolstoy explained that the cause of this state was his own ill health, the “ill health of his family” and the fact that he had “thrown myself from one piece of work into another, but accomplished practically nothing”. Later, in his Confession, he wrote: “I began to be afflicted with moments of despair, when life stopped and I no longer knew how I should live or what I should do.” These moods of his are connected to his religious quest at the end of the 1870s.

  1876

  Samara: On 3rd September, Tolstoy and his nephew Nikolai Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana. They arrived at Samara on 7th September, and on the same day Tolstoy travelled by train to Orenburg to buy horses.

  Styopa: Her younger brother Stepan Behrs was staying.

  biography…try to do it, though: On 24th October 1876, Sofia Tolstoy began to write Tolstoy’s biography. This work continued, with interruptions, until the end of 1878.

  the children…after M. Rey’s class: Ilya Tolstoy remembered Jules Rey as a “crude, stupid man”.

  1878

  Lyovochka attended the liturgy: Tolstoy was at that time observing all the church rituals punctiliously.

  Annie: Annie was the governess Anna Phillips.

  Prince Urusov: Leonid Urusov was an old friend of the Tolstoy family; from 1876 to 1885 he was vice-governor of Tula.

  Alexander Grigorevich: Alexander Michurin, the music teacher.

  Vasily Ivanovich: Vasily Ivanovich Alexeev, teacher of the older Tolstoy children from 1877 to 1881.

  Liza: Liza, Alexeev’s ten-year-old adopted daughter.

  The trial…part: This draft of The Decembrists begins with the words: “On 23rd January 1824, at a general meeting of the Department of Religious and Civil Affairs of the State Council, was heard the case of…”

  Bibikov has just returned from Samara: In the autumn of 1871 Tolstoy bought twenty-five acres in the Buzuluka district in the province of Samara. In April 1878 he added to this an adjacent plot of forty acres. Bibikov was manager of Tolstoy’s estate from 1878 to 1884.

  levashniki: “Levashniki”—a special cake made by the Yasnaya Polyana cook, M.N. Rumyantsev.

  Parasha’s: Parasha, or Praskovia Kryukova, was the daughter of the cook Rumyantsev.

  to watch the Tsar travel past: Alexander II was travelling on the Moscow—Kursk line. Because it was feared an attempt would be made on his life there were three separate royal trains, and it wasn’t known in which one the Tsar was travelling.

  et le marmiton: “And the kitchen boy” (French).

  dare not: In English in the original.

  1879

  the new edition: The fourth edition of the works of L.N. Tolstoy in eleven volumes, 1880.

  Misha: Mikhail, her tenth child.

  1882

  We have been in Moscow since 15th September 1881: In September 1881
the Tolstoys moved to Moscow to be with their eldest son, who was starting at the university. They rented an apartment in Volkonsky’s house on Denezhnyi (now Maly Levshinsky) Lane, where they lived during the winter of 1881–82.

  Seryozha…next door to us: Sergei Tolstoy entered the natural sciences department of the university; Tanya Tolstaya was accepted at the School of Art, Sculpture and Architecture. Sixteen-year-old Ilya and thirteen-year-old Lev attended Lev Polivanov’s private high school on Prechistenka (now Kropotkin Street).

  Our life in Moscow…so unhappy: On 5th October 1881, Tolstoy noted in his diary: “The past month has been the most agonizing period of my life. Stench, jewels, luxury, poverty. Depravity. Criminals have gathered here to rob people, then assembled soldiers and judges to guard their orgies while they feast.” Sofia wrote to her sister Tanya about his state of mind: “Lyovochka has sunk into something far worse than depression—it’s a sort of hopeless apathy. He cannot sleep or eat, he often cries—à la lettre—and at times I think I shall go mad.”

  For the first time…is striking four: Tolstoy’s differences with his family became more acute during their visit to Moscow. He described this state in a letter to N.N. Strakhov: “This past winter has been completely fruitless. It appears that people do not in fact need the things I believe in. At times I long to die.” Sofia felt equally lonely, without the spiritual unity she was used to with her husband. “You don’t tell me what is in your heart and what you are thinking, what makes you happy and what makes you sad, what bores you and what pleases you,” she reproached him in a letter of 17th September 1882. To her sister Tanya she wrote that Tolstoy was “very advanced in his views; he leads the crowd and shows people which path they should take”, whereas she “was the crowd, and went with the common flow” she saw the light he carried but could “go no faster” for she was “weighed down by the crowd, by home and habit”.