The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (80 page)

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 Biryukov 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 to 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.

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.”

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 God, 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.