The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (81 page)

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”.

Alyosha
: The Tolstoys' ten-month-old son.

Lyovochka has taken Lyova to Moscow
: Tolstoy went to Moscow to supervise building work and repairs on a house he bought in the summer of 1882 in Dolgo-Khamovniki Street (now Lev Tolstoy Street). On 8th October the whole family moved to Moscow, and spent their winters there until 1901.

1883

He continues with his religious writings
: From the end of 1882 to January 1884 Tolstoy worked on a tract entitled ‘What I Believe'. The first edition (in 1884) was seized and banned, and it was only in 1906, after the first Russian revolution, that it was published in Russia.

1885

Lyovochka returned yesterday…Urusov
: Tolstoy and Urusov travelled to the Crimean coast for two weeks.

He had…thirty years ago
: Tolstoy was in Sevastopol during the Crimean War, from 7th November 1854 to the middle of November 1855.

1886

Lev Nikolaevich was ill
: At the beginning of August 1886, Tolstoy hurt his leg while working in the fields and it became infected.

So on the one hand…are incapable of doing
: Sergei Tolstoy wrote, apropos of this entry: “One reason for the discord between Lev Nikolaevich and Sofia Andreevna was the undefined nature of the demands he made on her. L.N. demanded that their life should be simplified but gave no limits for this simplification and rarely gave any concrete advice as to what should be done. Questions as to where and how his family should live, what should be done with the estates, how the children should be educated, and so on, remained unanswered.”

Lev Nikolaevich is starting on a new play, about peasant life
: From October to November 1886 Tolstoy was writing his play
The Power of Darkness
, inspired by a story related to him by N.V. Davydov. The play was first published by the Intermediary publishing house in February 1887.

Mme Seuron
: Anna Seuron was governess to both Tanya and Masha Tolstaya.

the lives of the philosophers
: L. Diogène,
La Vie des plus illustres philosophes de l'antiquité…
Paris, 1841.

A letter came from Ilya mentioning marriage
: Ilya Tolstoy was in love with Sofia Filosofova, who he married in February 1888. Tolstoy regarded this marriage with “joy and fear”.

1887

four students in Petersburg…funeral service
: On 1st March 1887, the police arrested five students for the attempt on Alexander III's life, including Lenin's brother Alexander Ulyanov. They were tried and sentenced to death, and executed on 8th May 1887.

The play is a huge success
: On 3rd February 1887, A.A. Stakhovich wrote to her that he was reading
The Power of Darkness
in St Petersburg and trying to familiarize a large number of influential people with the work in order to exert pressure on the censors. On 27th January he read the play in the presence of Alexander III, who found it a “marvellous piece” and recommended that it be staged at the imperial theatres.

Lyovochka has written a story about the early Christians
: From the end of 1886 until June 1887 Tolstoy was working on and off on a story called ‘Walk in the Light While There Is Light. A Tale of the Ancient Christians'. It was first published in Russia in 1893, in an anthology called
The Pathway. A Literary-Scientific Anthology in Aid of the Society for Helping Needy Migrants
.

an article entitled ‘On Life and Death'
: This was Tolstoy's first title for his tract
On Life
. He continued working on it throughout 1887.

The new cheap edition has come out
: She is referring to the new cheaply published sixth edition of
The Works of L.N. Tolstoy
, vols. 1–12, Moscow, which appeared in 1887.

Seryozha has gone off to Tula…the peasant bank
: Sergei Tolstoy was then a member of the Tula department of the
zemstvo
peasant bank.

vint
: A card game rather like whist.

Chertkov
: Vladimir Grigorevich Chertkov, friend and fellow thinker of Tolstoy's.

As for Chertkov's work…for that
: Sofia Tolstoy is referring to the Intermediary publishing house, founded by Tolstoy, Chertkov and Biryukov in 1884 to publish literary and popular scientific works for a popular audience. Chertkov wrote to Tolstoy on 25th February 1887, with various questions about the publication of his works by the Intermediary.

Feinerman
: Isaak Feinerman, a young teacher and follower of Tolstoy's, who dreamt of establishing a peasant commune.

Lyovochka is writing…University Psychological Society
: On 14th March 1887, at a meeting of the Moscow Psychological Society, Tolstoy gave a paper on ‘The Understanding of Life'—a short résumé of his book
On Life
. In it he criticized prevailing ideas on religion and morality, and formulated his own new world outlook.

vegetarian diet
: Sergei Tolstoy wrote in his memoirs: “He became especially committed to vegetarianism after his acquaintance with the positivist and vegetarian William Fry, who visited him in the autumn of 1885. My sisters Tanya and Masha were also converted at that time to ‘food without killing'. My mother thought vegetarianism was harmful and she was wrong: when my father had liver problems it was of undoubted benefit to him. And it never did my sisters any harm.”

what a sad…communion
: In a letter of 18th–20th February 1887, Chertkov wrote to Tolstoy: “I am inexpressibly grateful to God for granting me the blessing of being at one with my wife. This always makes me mindful of those for whom this spiritual communion with their wives is not possible and who, it would appear, deserve this happiness far, far more than I.”

Ilya has…for drill
: Ilya Tolstoy was serving in the volunteer regiment of the Suma dragoons, stationed in the Khamovniki barracks.

We had a visit…for our play
: At the end of 1886 M.G. Savina, an actress at the Alexandrovsky Theatre, asked Tolstoy's permission to put on a benefit performance of
The Power of Darkness
, and rehearsals started in February. In a letter to Sofia Tolstoy, the director Potekhin wrote that “in order to learn about this type of peasant and the details of their homes and surroundings, and to find the characteristic local costumes for the actors, two specialists were sent off to Yasnaya Polyana.”