The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (76 page)

L.N. Tolstoy's Marriage

Our Trip to Ivitsy and Yasnaya Polyana

At the beginning of August 1862, when I was seventeen, Maman told me and my two sisters, to our great joy, that she had decided to drive us three little girls and our brother Volodya to the estate of her father and our grandfather, Alexander Islenev, in an Annensky coach (named after its owner and still in use at the time).

Our grandfather (who appears in Lev Nikolaevich's
Childhood
as “Papa”) lived in the Odoevsky district on his estate at Ivitsy, which was all that remained of his large fortune.

The three daughters of his second marriage were young girls at that time, and I was very friendly with the second one.

His estate was some 20 miles from Yasnaya Polyana, where Lev Nikolaevich's sister Maria had been living ever since she returned from Algeria,* and as my mother and she had been close childhood friends and were naturally anxious to see each other again, my mother, who hadn't visited Yasnaya Polyana since she was a child, decided we would call in there on our way. We were in ecstasies at the news, and my younger sister Tanya and I were especially pleased, like all young people eager for change and movement. We cheerfully prepared for the journey. Smart new dresses were made, we packed our bags and waited impatiently to leave.

I don't remember anything about the day we left, and my memories of the journey itself are very vague—just the stopping places, the changing of the horses, the rushed meals and the exhaustion from all the unaccustomed travelling. We went to Tula to visit my mother's sister Nadezhda Karnovich, who was married to the Tula Marshal of the Nobility, and we took a look round Tula, which struck me as a very dull, dirty place. But we were determined not to
miss anything
, and to pay attention to everything on our trip.

After dinner we drove on to Yasnaya Polyana. It was already evening by then, but the weather was magnificent. The highway through Zaseka* was very picturesque, and this wild expanse of nature was a new experience for us city girls.

Maria Nikolaevna and Lev Nikolaevich gave us a noisy and joyful welcome, and their aunt Tatyana Ergolskaya greeted us affably in polite French, while old Natalya Petrovna, her companion, silently stroked my shoulder and winked in a most beguiling way at my sister Tanya, who was then just 15.

They gave us a large vaulted room downstairs,* modestly and even poorly furnished. All round the room there were sofas that were painted white, with hard cushions at the backs and hard seats covered in blue-and-white striped ticking. There was a chaise longue too, similarly made by the local joiner. Set into the vaulted ceiling were iron rings from which gammons, saddles and so on used to hang in the days when the house belonged to Lev Nikolaevich's grandfather, Prince Volkonsky; it was now used as a storeroom.

The days were growing shorter, for it was already the beginning of August. After we had run round the garden, Natalya Petrovna took us to the raspberry bushes. This was the first time we had eaten raspberries straight from the bush, rather than from the little baskets that were brought to our dacha when we were making jam. There weren't many berries left, but I loved the beauty of the red fruit against the green leaves, and enjoyed their fresh taste.

The Night and the Chair

When it began to grow dark, Maman sent me down to unpack the bags and make up the beds. Aunt's maid Dunyasha* and I were getting the beds ready when Lev Nikolaevich suddenly walked in. Dunyasha told him she had made up three beds on the sofas but didn't know where to put a fourth one.

“What about the chair?” said Lev Nikolaevich, moving out a big armchair and pushing a broad square stool against it.

“I'll sleep on the chair,” I said.

“Well, I'll make up your bed for you,” said Lev Nikolaevich clumsily unfolding a sheet. I felt embarrassed, but there was also something lovely and intimate about making up the beds together.

When it was all ready we went upstairs and found Tanya curled up fast asleep on a little sofa in Aunt's room. Volodya had been put to bed too. Maman was chatting away to Maria Nikolaevna and Aunt about the old days. Liza stared at us inquisitively. I vividly remember every moment of that evening.

In the dining room, with its large French windows, Alexei Stepanovich,* the little cross-eyed butler, was laying the table for
supper with the help of the stately, rather beautiful Dunyasha (daughter of old Nikolai,* who appeared in
Childhood
). In the middle of one wall was a door opening into a little sitting room with an antique rosewood clavichord, and the sitting room had French windows leading out to a little balcony, which had the most lovely view. It has given me pleasure all my life, and I love it to this day.

I took a chair and went out to the balcony alone to admire the view. I shall never forget the mood I was in—although I would never be able to describe it. I don't know if it was the effect of nature, real, untamed nature and wide spaces, or a premonition of what would happen a month and a half later when I entered this house as its mistress. Perhaps it was simply a farewell to my girlhood freedom, perhaps it was all these things, I don't know. But there was something so significant about my mood that evening, and I felt such happiness and an extraordinary sense of boundlessness. The others were all going in to supper and Lev Nikolaevich came out to call me.

“No thank you, I don't want anything,” I said. “It's so lovely out here.”

In the dining room I could hear Tanya showing off, joking and being naughty—everyone spoilt her and she was quite used to it. Lev Nikolaevich went back to the dining room, but returned to the balcony to see me without finishing his supper. I don't remember exactly what we talked about, I just remember him saying: “How simple and serene you are”, which pleased me very much.

I had a good sleep in the long chair which Lev Nikolaevich had made up for me. I tossed about a bit at first, for the arms at the side made it rather narrow and uncomfortable, but my heart was singing with joy as I remembered him arranging my bed for me, and I fell asleep with a new feeling of joy in my young soul.

The Picnic at Yasnaya Polyana

I felt full of joy too when I woke next morning. I longed to run everywhere, look at everything, chatter to everyone. How light and airy it was at Yasnaya! Lev Nikolaevich was determined we should enjoy ourselves, and Maria Nikolaevna helped to ensure we did. They harnessed the “
katki
”—a long carriage more like a wagonette—and put Baraban the chestnut in the shafts and Strelka in the traces. Then the bay Belogubka was saddled up with an
old-fashioned lady's saddle, a magnificent grey was brought out for Lev Nikolaevich, and we all got ready for our picnic.

More guests arrived—Gromova, the wife of a Tula architect, and Sonechka Bergholz, niece of Yulia Auerbach, the headmistress of Tula high school for girls. Maria Nikolaevna was overjoyed to have her two best friends there—my mother and Gromova—and was in a playful, cheerful mood, laughing, telling jokes and keeping us all amused. Lev Nikolaevich suggested I ride Belogubka, which I was very keen to do.

“But I can't, I don't have a riding habit,” I said, looking at my yellow dress with its black velvet buttons and belt.

“It doesn't matter,” smiled Lev Nikolaevich. “There are no dachas here, and no one but the forests to see you.” And he helped me mount Belogubka.

I was the happiest person in the world as I galloped beside him down the road to Zaseka, our first stopping place. In those days it was all unbroken forest. Later I would drive to those places again and again, yet they never seemed quite the same. Then everything seemed magically beautiful, as it never is in everyday life, only in certain moods of spiritual elation. We rode to a little clearing where there was a haystack. Over the years we would have many picnics in that clearing in Zaseka with Tanya's children and mine, but on that day it was a different clearing, and I saw it with different eyes.

Maria Nikolaevna invited us all to scramble on the haystack and roll down, and it was a cheerful, noisy afternoon.

The following morning we drove off to the village of Krasnoe, which used to belong to my grandfather Islenev.* My grandmother was buried there, and Maman was very keen to visit the place where she was born and had grown up, and to kneel at her mother's grave at the church. They didn't want us to leave Yasnaya, and Maman had to give her solemn word of honour that we would call in on our way back, even if only for a day.

Krasnoe Village

Maria Nikolaevna had lent us a carriage for the journey to Krasnoe, and we hired horses. We didn't spend long there.

I remember the church and the tombstone with its inscription: “Princess Sofia Petrovna Kozlovskaya, born Countess Zavadovskaya.” I vividly pictured my grandmother's life: what misery
she must have endured with her first husband Kozlovsky, a drunkard, to whom she was married against her will, then with her unlawful second husband, Alexander Islenev, my grandfather, living in this country place, bearing an endless annual succession of children,* and worrying constantly that in the grip of his gambling mania he would lose his entire fortune and be forced to leave the estate—which is exactly what happened to him at the end of his life. The old priest and Fetis the deacon both remembered Sofia Petrovna warmly and spoke of her with great affection. “I committed the sin of marrying them in secret,” the old priest told us.

Fetis the deacon, we were told, had died and was in his coffin, and had suddenly come back to life just as they were burying him, and jumped out of his grave and walked home. To this day I can see Fetis's withered little figure, his sparse hair plaited into a grey pigtail at the back of his head. I had never seen a deacon with a pigtail in Moscow, but nothing surprised me any longer. Everything seemed fantastic, full of beauty and magic.

Ivitsy

When the horses had been fed, we left Krasnoe in the same carriage and drove to my grandfather's estate at Ivitsy. We were given a solemn and joyous reception. Grandfather moved rapidly—he seemed to slide across the floor in his soft ankle boots. He kept teasing us, and calling us “the young ladies of Moscow”, and he had a habit of pinching our cheeks with his middle and forefinger and winking when he said something funny, then screwing up his humorous little eyes. I can still see his powerful figure, the little black skullcap on his bald head, his large aquiline nose and ruddy clean-shaven face.

Sofia Alexandrovna, his second wife, astounded us by smoking a long pipe, her lower lip sagging; all that remained of her former beauty were her sparkling, expressive black eyes.

Their second daughter, the lovely Olga, cool and imperturbable, took us upstairs to the room they had prepared for us. My bed was behind a cupboard, with just a plain wooden chair instead of a table.

Our arrival created much excitement. A lot of people came over to look at us, and picnics, dances and drives were organized for us.

The day after we arrived in Ivitsy, Lev Nikolaevich suddenly turned up on his grey horse. He had covered 20 miles and was in high spirits. My grandfather, who loved Lev Nikolaevich and the whole Tolstoy
family—for he had been friends with his father, Count Nikolai Ilich—was delighted to see him and greeted him warmly.

There were a large number of visitors that day, and the young folk had organized a dance that evening after the day's drive. Some officers and local young landowners came, and a lot of ladies and young girls. They were all perfect strangers and we found them a little odd, but what did we care? We had great fun, that was all that mattered. Various people took turns to play dance tunes on the piano.

“How smart you look! I wish Aunt had seen you in that dress,” said Lev Nikolaevich smiling, looking at my white-and-mauve dress with the lilac ribbons fluttering from the shoulders. (This was the current fashion, known as “
suivez-moi
”.)

“But why aren't you dancing?” I asked him.

“Oh, I'm too old for that,” he said.

Some ladies and old men had been playing cards at two tables, and these were left open after all the visitors had left. The candles were burning down but we didn't go to bed, and Lev Nikolaevich kept us up with his lively talk. Then Maman said it was time for us to go to bed and firmly ordered us upstairs. We dared not disobey. But just as I was going out of the door, Lev Nikolaevich called to me:

“Wait a moment, Sofia Andreevna!”

“What is it?”

“Will you read what I'm going to write?”

“Very well.”

“I'm only going to write the initials—you must guess the words.”

“How can I do that—it's impossible! Oh well, go on!”

He brushed the games scores off the card table, took a piece of chalk and began writing. We were both very serious and excited. I followed his big red hand, and could feel all my powers of concentration and feeling focus on that bit of chalk and the hand that held it. We said nothing.

What the Chalk Wrote

“Y.y.&.n.f.h.t.v.r.m.o.m.a.&.i.f.h.”

“Your youth and need for happiness too vividly remind me of my age and incapacity for happiness,” I read out.

My heart was pounding, my temples were throbbing, my face was flushed—I was beyond all sense of time and reality; at that moment I felt capable of anything, of understanding everything, imagining the unimaginable.

“Well, let's go on,” said Lev Nikolaevich and began to write once more:

“Y.f.h.t.w.i.a.m.&.y.s.L.Y.&.y.s.T.m.p.m.”

“Your family has the wrong idea about me and your sister Liza. You and your sister Tanechka must protect me.” I read the initials rapidly, without a second's hesitation.

Lev Nikolaevich wasn't even surprised; it all seemed quite natural somehow. Our elation was such that we soared high above the world and nothing could possibly surprise us.