The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (33 page)

We received an anonymous letter:

It was sealed in wax with the initials E.S., and a royal crown. The postmark was Pavlograd, 20th December.

I am so worried about this letter I can think of nothing else. I thought of informing the governor of Ekaterinoslav province and the local police chief, so they could take appropriate measures against these dangerous people and order a police search if they wanted to. But Lev Nikolaevich is totally unperturbed, and says we mustn't notify anyone and it is in God's hands.*

 

26th December
. I saw Tanya and Sasha off to Grinevka and Nikolskoe this morning, and Seryozha left yesterday evening. We rushed about packing boxes: I filled one with Christmas presents for my grandchildren, one with gifts and fruit for Dora, and one with some silver and a fur coat for Masha. All these will travel with Tanya; I also packed a basket with food and fruit for them to eat on their journey. Lev Nikolaevich and I are all on our own now; there's nothing to do, and it's nice and quiet. He is much better; he had a temperature of 36.9 this morning, and this afternoon it went up to 37.5. This evening
he asked for some soup and a baked apple, and was in much better spirits. I am haunted by the letter.

I spent the whole day playing the piano. This wordless musical conversation with Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Rubinstein and so on gives me enormous pleasure, even though I play so poorly.

1st—3rd March—founding of Marxist Social Democratic Labour Party
.

Tolstoy finishes What Is Art? The complete work appears, mutilated by the censor, in the fourteenth edition of his works and also in an Intermediary edition. Sofia writes a romantic short story, ‘Song Without Words'. Tolstoy works in the villages to alleviate the famine and appeals for funds. He helps the Dukhobors raise money to emigrate and supports the Molokans. December—Sergei Tolstoy accompanies a shipload of two thousand Dukhobors to Canada
.

 

1st January (Moscow)
. Lev Nikolaevich, Andryusha, Misha, Mitya Dyakov, the Danilevsky boys and I all saw in the New Year together. We drank Don champagne, and Lev Nikolaevich drank tea with almond milk.

This morning I played the piano and kept an eye on Misha to make sure he studied. Then I went to visit my old aunt Vera Shidlovskaya and chatted with her and my cousins. Lev Nikolaevich and I had dinner on our own. He is not yet fully recovered, and ate just a bowl of mushroom soup with rice, some semolina with almond milk and coffee. He is lethargic and bored, for he is not used to being ill and debilitated. How hard it will be for him when he finally loses his strength and grows even weaker! He has such an appetite for life! Yet he'll soon be 70—in August this year, i.e. in 6 months. He has been reading alone in his study upstairs and writing a few letters; today he walked over to visit Rusanov, who is ill—and simply worships him. Lying on the sofa in his study is Tanya's black poodle, a gift from Countess Zubova. He took it out for a walk today.

Our Masha is arriving tomorrow for a consultation with the doctor. Tanya and Sasha are still in the country; they'll probably go to Yasnaya Polyana tomorrow to visit Lyova and Dora. I should like to go to Yasnaya too. How I love it, and what a lot of good experiences I have had there!

 

3rd January
. Stasov,* Ginzburg the sculptor, a young painter and Vereshchagin (a bad writer) were here yesterday morning. Stasov took advantage of his 74 years to fling his arms round me and kiss me,
repeating “Oh, how pink and slender you are!” I was so embarrassed—I couldn't get away from him. We then went upstairs to the drawing room and discussed Lev Nikolaevich's article
On Art
. Stasov said he thought L.N. had got it all back to front. He didn't have to tell me that—he certainly hit the nail on the head!

L.N. and I had a nasty argument because I was complaining that the public should have to take out a two-year subscription to the
Journal of Philosophy and Psychology
to read his essay, which is in the November—December and February—March issues, when if I had brought it out in the
Complete Collected Works
, I would have sold it for 50 kopecks and everyone could have read it. L.N. then shouted in front of everyone: “I shan't give it to you! I'm giving it to everyone! Everyone has criticized me ever since I started giving things away for nothing!”

But he never gives me anything. He sent ‘Master and Man' to the
Northern Herald
behind my back. He also returned the Preface on the sly, and has been at pains not to let me have his essay either. God be with him! He's quite right, they're
his
works,
his
inalienable property—but he oughtn't to shout at me like that.

Masha arrived yesterday with Kolya. She is completely taken up with her husband, we hardly exist as far as she's concerned—and she means very little to us too. I was pleased to see her; I am sorry she is so thin, but I'm happy she is living for love, for that is a great joy! For a long time I too lived for this simple love, without judging or criticizing. I regret that I am now more experienced and have lost so many illusions. I would have preferred to remain blind and besotted to the end of my days. What I tried to accept as love from my husband was nothing but sensuality, now degenerating into sullen severity, now flaring up into jealousy, demands—and occasionally tenderness.

 

6th January
. I drove to Patriarch Ponds today and went skating for a long time with the Maklakovs and Natasha Kolokoltseva. Then it started to rain and thaw. Skating is such a bracing, healthy activity. This evening I did some reading, sat with Sasha, then listened to an unknown young man named Pol from Kiev, playing us some of his works on the piano—very well too. L.N. is gloomy because he is still unable to work. He went skating too—at some institution for young waifs and strays.

He is reading all he can find about the Caucasus at present—Caucasian life, Caucasian scenery, everything.*

 

8th January
. The artist Repin dined with us yesterday and kept asking Lev Nikolaevich to suggest a theme for his next painting. He said he wanted to devote his last efforts in life to a good work of art, something really worth working on. Lev Nikolaevich hasn't suggested anything to him yet but is thinking about it. He himself can do no work. The weather is frightful: there's a terrible wind, and floods everywhere—even more than during a Moscow spring. It's 3° and dark.

 

13th January
. Yesterday was Tanya's name day, and we bustled around all morning organizing a
party
. First Tanya invited some guests, then I invited some. One has a
duty
to one's society friends. I was sorting through some cardboard this morning, with my hair awry and my morning cap on, when Sergei Ivanovich and his pupil Yusha Pomerantsev suddenly came into the room. I hadn't heard a thing, and was so agitated I blushed crimson and couldn't say a word. I had given express orders that no one should be admitted, but for some reason they had been let in. They sat there for almost an hour, talking about
Sadko
and Rimsky-Korsakov among other things. When Sergei Ivanovich left I felt deeply depressed—to pacify L.N. I should hate this man, or at least treat him as a stranger. But that is impossible.

 

16th January
. Tanya is leaving for St Petersburg. I mentioned that I should like to attend some of Wagner's operas there, but this provoked Lev Nikolaevich into such an angry flood of criticisms and biting references to my insane love of music, my stupidity, my ineptitude, etc., etc., that he has completely killed my desire to go.

I spent the day checking the accounts with the accountant, and diligently set all my publishing, family and household affairs in order, and I am now exhausted and my head is aching. Late this evening Lev Nikolaevich and I walked Marusya Maklakova home, and Dunaev and my brother Styopa came.

Seryozha and Ilyusha arrived. A painful discussion with Lev Nikolaevich this evening. He is becoming more and more suspicious, jealous and despotic. He resents every independent move I make, every innocent pleasure, every hour I spend at the piano.

Marusya Maklakova and our Tanya were looking through photographs of various men today, discussing which of them they would marry. When they came to Lev Nikolaevich's portrait they both cried, “No, no! Not for anything!” Yes, it is difficult to live under any sort of despotism, but jealous despotism is frightful!

 

17th January
. L.N. has been nagging me all day, begging to be “released” to go back to the country; he wasn't necessary to me here, he said, life in Moscow was murder for him—on and on in the same vein. The word “released” is absolutely meaningless—as though I could “hold” him here! I wanted him to come to Moscow because it is quite natural for me to want to live with my husband, and it's a pleasure too, for I am used to loving and caring for him. I have done all I could to spare him from his tormenting jealousy, but I still haven't earned his trust. If he went to the country he would torment himself even more; if we all went, what would happen to Misha and Sasha? What about their studies? I have been racking my brains…Lev Nikolaevich's apathy and indifference to his children's education is always painful to me, and I blame him bitterly for it. How many fathers not only educate their own children, but also support them with their own labour, as my father did? But L.N. considers that even to
live
with his family would be murder.

 

20th January
. Yesterday morning Sasha was collecting money for the young son of our footman Ivan, who has just left. This little boy, Lyonya, was badly burnt by some scalding water from the samovar, and is now in hospital.

An extraordinary thing happened the day before yesterday. My sons had gone to the theatre—Seryozha to see
Sadko
at the Solodovnikov—and I had a sudden overwhelming fear that the theatre would burn down. I told Lev Nikolaevich of my premonition, and sure enough, that night after the audience had left, it burnt down and the roof collapsed.

Today I took Sasha to buy her some shoes and a corset. Then I swept the snow off the skating rink in the garden; Lev Nikolaevich joined me and we both swept together, then he took a turn on his skates while I went indoors and practised the piano for an hour and a half.

 

22nd January
. I played the piano all morning. I feel intensely anxious. Biryukov is leaving Bauska for England.* Wiener, Prince Khilkov's former mistress, also left for England yesterday and he too has been deported.

 

26th January
. I have been ill these past few days. It started as neuralgia on the right side of my head, and was followed by a high fever and a sore throat. Young Doctor Usov came; he feared at first that it might be diphtheria, but when he examined me it proved not to be. These
young doctors are quite extraordinary. Malyutin refused to take any money for treating Sasha, and now Usov too refuses to be paid. I have sent him a signed copy of L.N.'s works instead. As Tanya is still in St Petersburg, L.N. sweetly offered to paint my throat, which he did very cautiously and clumsily. My illness has frightened him, and he has suddenly started to look older and sadder. How strangely we love each other! He is happy when I sit quietly at home, bored and inert, copying or reading. The moment I become more lively, tackle something new or make new friends, he becomes anxious, then angry, and starts treating me harshly. Yet it is sometimes very hard for me to stifle my natural spontaneity!

I was lying in bed yesterday when three more Molokans from Samara came to see L.N. again, begging for letters of introduction to take to St Petersburg.* They are going there to plead once more for their children who were taken away from them by the government and sent to monasteries. Those poor children, and their poor mothers! What a barbaric way to convert people to Orthodoxy! It won't convert them at all, quite the opposite.

Yesterday and today I was lying in bed reading the proofs of
Childhood
, which always touches me deeply. My back aches, I feel weak and am afflicted by a constant gnawing depression.

L.N. just came in and said: “I've come to keep you company for a bit.” Then he showed me the two seven-pound weights he bought today for his gymnastics exercises. He is very lethargic at present and keeps saying: “I feel as though I were 70.” But in 6 months, that is in August, he
will
be 70. He went skating today and swept the snow. But he cannot do any mental work, and that mortifies him beyond words.

 

28th January
. I got up with great difficulty, still feeling very unwell. My body aches, I feel sick and have a headache. But I managed to do a lot of work on the proofs and on the children's affairs; yesterday and today I have been copying accounts from the general housekeeping book into three separate ledgers—for Andryusha, Misha and Lyova. Dear M.E. Leontyeva came to see me and we had a frank and intimate discussion about the serious matters of life.

Sergei Ivanovich sent his dear old nurse, Pelageya Vasilevna, to ask after my health.

Lev Nikolaevich had a visit from a lady named Kogan, and they discussed lofty matters concerning human purpose and happiness and the paths to its attainment.

 

29th January
. Tanya has returned from St Petersburg. She went to get her paintings published and had a very pleasant time there. She visited Pobedonostsev, Chief Procurator of the Synod, to discuss the case of the Samara Molokans who were robbed of their children. He told her the local bishop had exceeded his authority, adding that he would write to the governor of Samara about it and “hoped the matter would soon be settled”. What cunning! He pretended not to know that Tanya was Lev Nikolaevich's daughter, and when she was on her way downstairs he asked her, “Are you the daughter of Lev Nikolaevich?” When she said “Yes”, he said: “Ah, so you are the renowned Tatyana Lvovna!” To which Tanya replied: “Well, I certainly didn't know I was renowned!”

My brother Styopa has come again with his sick, deaf, sad wife. He and Seryozha have concluded their negotiations over the property they are buying in the Minsk province. The question is, is it worth it? Our friend Misha Stakhovich had dinner with us. Lev Nikolaevich corrected the proofs of
What Is Art?
all day. It is now evening; he has taken the poodle for a walk and is eating porridge and drinking tea.

A blizzard all day. Between three and five degrees of frost.

 

30th January
. Today Sergei Ivanovich came to see me—he has an undoubted power and influence over me, I must confess. We were alone together for only a short while as my brother Styopa and my son Seryozha came in, but when he left my nerves felt soothed, and I felt a calm joy I haven't experienced for a long time. Was this wrong of me? We talked only of music, of his compositions and of the musical range of the alto, soprano and tenor voices. Then we spoke of the way one assuages one's conscience by dealing severely with one's own actions; and how hard it is when someone close to us dies to accept the wrongs we did them. He enquired with such sympathy and affection about my recent illness, my children, and what I had been doing recently—and there was so much simple, calm kindness in it that it made me extraordinarily happy. What a pity it is that Lev Nikolaevich is too jealous to tolerate our friendship, or allow himself and our family to be friends with this marvellous, idealistic man.