The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy (87 page)

Chertkov has now persuaded Lev N…public property
: It is possible she had read a long letter from Chertkov of 11th August, to which he affixed an excerpt from his diary of 4th December 1908. In this he sets out in detail the story of the drafting of Tolstoy's will, and refers to the mercenary intentions of his family, who, he claimed, would appropriate the rights to his literary inheritance.

the bread…mouths
: She had found Tolstoy's ‘Diary for Myself Alone', which he had tried to conceal from her, in which she learnt about the existence of this secret will.

Lev Nik. wrote in his diary…to me
: Entry for 30th July in ‘Diary for Myself Alone'.

When I timidly opened the door…hatred
: Tolstoy noted in his diary on that day: “On my desk was a letter from Sofia Andreevna, filled with accusations. When she came in I asked her to leave me in peace. She went out. I had difficulty breathing and my pulse was over 90.”

Novikov
: Mikhail Novikov described his meeting with Tolstoy in an article entitled ‘My Last Meeting', published in the journals
Unity and the Voice of Tolstoy
and
True Freedom
. Tolstoy told Novikov about his intention to “leave” Yasnaya Polyana. “I want to die in peace, I want to be with God,” he told him; “here they're all wondering what I am worth. I shall leave, I shall certainly leave.” On 24th October Tolstoy wrote Novikov a letter with a request: “Do you think you could find me a hut in your village, no matter how small, just so long as it's warm and secluded?” Novikov delayed in replying, and spent days and nights pondering how best to dissuade him from leaving Yasnaya Polyana. His letter was eventually brought to Tolstoy at Astapovo when he was dying.

some of our villagers…revolutionary
: “Perevoznikov came too, and Tito's son, a revolutionary,” noted Tolstoy. “Tito's son” was M.Y. Polin, who had just left prison for participating in the revolutionary movement. Perevoznikov, a metal-worker and member of a workers' circle, lived with Chertkov.

In his letter to me…like the peasants
: In his farewell letter to his wife, he wrote: “I cannot go on living in the luxury which has always surrounded me here, and am doing what most old men of my age do: leaving this worldly life in order to spend my last days in solitude and silence. Please understand this, I beg you, and do not come to fetch me, even if you discover where I am.”

I jumped…alas
: According to Bulgakov, Chertkov's mother told Goldenweiser on 29th October: “Sofia Andreevna has been in a state of great agitation. She has attempted to kill herself by various methods.”

They didn't let me in to see Lev Nik
: The only members of Tolstoy's family who were with him were his daughters Tanya and Sasha and his son Sergei. The ‘Medical findings on the illness and death of L.N. Tolstoy', dated 9th November and signed by Makovitsky, Nikitin and Berkenheim, gave the following explanation for this: “It was decided at a family council, in accordance with the doctors' proposal, that no other members of his family should be allowed in to see L.N., as there was good reason to believe he would grow extremely agitated at the appearance of any new faces, and this might have dire consequences for his life, which was hanging on a thread.”

Daily Diary

1907

her splendid article about the fire…moved
: Tanya's letter to the newspapers of 5th August 1907 about the fire on her estate, and the peasants' attitude to it. Edited by Tolstoy and with a preface by him, it was published in
Voice of Moscow
, no. 188, 14th August 1907. “Tanya's article touches me,” wrote Tolstoy after receiving a copy.

1909

a 30-year-old Romanian…The Kreutzer Sonata
: A. Marukhin. Tolstoy's comment on him in his diary was: “an exceedingly interesting man”.

some cinematographers from Paris
: Representatives of the French cinematographic firm Pathé received permission to visit Tolstoy and film him. But on 2nd September a telegram was sent on Tolstoy's instructions asking them not to come. They came nonetheless, and filmed his departure from Shchekino station.

1910

officer…scurrilous verses about Lev Nikolaevich
: A retired colonel called Trotsky-Sanyutovich wrote some verses accusing Tolstoy of apostasy towards the Orthodox Church and the government. After talking to Tolstoy he became ashamed of his verses and decided to burn them.

Two real Japanese men
: Harala Tatsuki, director of a high school in Tokyo, and Mitsutaki Hodze, an official at the Ministry of Communications.

I sat down to play the piano…listened happily
: According to Bulgakov's memoirs:

Painful discussion…for me
: Sergei Tolstoy explains this entry thus: “L.N. didn't ‘drive' Sofia Andreevna anywhere, he merely said to her, when she complained about the difficulty of running Yasnaya Polyana, that she didn't need to live there and could live anywhere, even in Odoev, a town in Tula province.”

the Circassian guard has brought Prokofy in…with him
: Ahmet the Circassian, who guarded the forest and meadows of Yasnaya Polyana, caught the peasant Prokofy Vlasov stealing wood and brought him into the office to be charged; Vlasov was a former student of Tolstoy's, from his first peasant school in Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy referred to this episode in his diary: “It has become insufferable here. I have considered leaving.”

L. Nik. had gone to Belev…to see his sister Maria Nikolaevna
: Tolstoy set off from Yasnaya Polyana, accompanied by Doctor Makovitsky, his daughter Sasha and Varvara Mikhailovna, to Shchekino station, and from there took a train to Shamordino to see his sister Maria.

Lev Nik. did visit his sister in Shamordino…where
: They left Shamordino early on the morning of 31st October. On arriving at the station of Kozelsk, they boarded a train and travelled south.

Rastorguev, and a young lady fresh from medical school
: Doctor Rastegaev (she has misspelt the name) was accompanied by a medical student called Skorobogatova.

Lev Nik. wired for Chertkov in person
: At Tolstoy's request Sasha sent Chertkov a telegram on 1st November: “Got out yesterday at Astapovo. High fever. Lost consciousness. This morning temperature normal. Chills. Impossible to leave. Expressed desire to see you. Frolova.” Wanting to keep his whereabouts a secret, Tolstoy and Sasha used pseudonyms in their correspondence. Tolstoy was “Nikolaev” and Sasha “Frolova”.

At 6 o'clock in the morning Lev Nikol. died…Cruel people
: Her daughter Tanya recalled: “Mother went to him, sat at the head of the bed, leant over him and started whispering tender words to him, saying farewell and begging him to forgive her for the wrong she had done him. His only reply was a number of deep sighs.”

I wrote to…Taneev
: Sofia Tolstoy wrote to Taneev: “At the end I caused L.N. a lot of distress and grief with my nervous illness and my dislike of Chertkov, who he didn't see on my account, and this is now the chief cause of my unhappiness. I live alone here in this great house, with the same servants and the same furniture as before. Everyone has left apart from Doctor Makovitsky, and he too will soon leave.”

1911

my sons Ilya…America to sell Yasnaya Polyana
: Sofia and her youngest son, Vanechka, had been allotted the Yasnaya Polyana property. After Vanechka's death in 1895, the property was left to her and her sons. Immediately after Tolstoy's death the question arose as to the future of Yasnaya Polyana, since his heirs hadn't the means to maintain it. There was a scheme to redeem the property with money collected in “civilized countries”, with a view to turning it into an international cultural monument, and selling the rest of the land to Americans for $1.5 million. Sofia's brother-in-law Mikhail Kuzminsky arrived in New York on 1st January, and conducted negotiations with various foreign industrialists. After interviews with Kuzminsky were published in the papers
Stock Exchange Gazette
and
Odessa Leaflet
, it became clear that this plan to sell Russia's national property to foreigners aroused deep indignation, and this was expressed in speeches, articles and letters. At the end of April there was an interview with Tolstoy's sons (Sergei Tolstoy wasn't party to this and refused his share of the inheritance), in which they announced: “We did indeed hold negotiations with American millionaires, but these concerned only the sale of the land, not the property. Our common desire was to sell everything to the nation.” Ilya Tolstoy didn't go to America.

The newspapers and lawyers have stood up for my rights
: She is referring to a series of articles sympathetic to her point of view which appeared in several papers.

pages from Lev Nik.'s notebooks…period
: The plan for the novel was familiar to her. But this was evidently her first acquaintance with the texts of the rough versions. “At our recent meeting,” wrote A. Ksyunin after visiting Yasnaya Polyana, “Sofia Andreevna told me she had just found some pages written in pencil relating to Tolstoy's planned epic about Peter the Great. L.N. didn't write this work, as he said ‘I couldn't recreate the everyday life of the period.'”

my letter to Koni
: Her letter of 4th December 1910 about Tolstoy's flight was published, translated into French, under the title ‘Tolstoy's Last Days',
Le Figaro
, 11th February 1923.

Volumes 16, 19 and 20…have been seized
: Vols. 16, 19 and 20 were seized after the censors sent a report to the Moscow Committee on Press Affairs about the instigation of criminal proceedings against the publishers for including “criminal works” in them.

Lyova's letters from America
: L.L. Tolstoy wrote about the problems of organizing an exhibition of his sculptures there.

the Palace of Justice has decided to destroy…edition
: It was announced in the press that the Moscow Palace of Justice had decreed that vols 16, 19 and 20 of the 12th edition should be destroyed because of the articles ‘To the Working People', ‘The Slavery of Our Time', ‘A Great Sin', ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill', ‘Change Your Mind', ‘I Cannot Keep Silent', ‘The Law of Violence and the Law of Love', ‘To the Tsar and His Assistants' and
others, as they were found to contain “blasphemy”, “inciting the people to adopt a hostile attitude to the government and an insolent disrespect for the higher authorities”.

I went to the Palace of Justice…the new edition
: On this day she wrote to her daughter Tanya: “I visited the Censorship Committee at the Palace of Justice. I demanded, insisted and complained, and was eventually told that at 5 p.m. tomorrow I would be given a list of the banned articles with permission to reprint them; otherwise they would have destroyed 3 volumes.”

Visited the censorship inspector…three volumes
: Sofia Tolstoy received permission to republish the last three volumes of the
Collected Works
. “After consideration of S.A. Tolstoy's petition, the Committee For Press Affairs agreed that the articles banned from L.N. Tolstoy's famous three volumes be cut from the published volumes. In the execution of this decree there took place yesterday, 28th April, in S.A. Tolstoy's warehouse, in the presence of representatives of the Censorship Committee, the police and one of the directors of the Kushneryov works, the removal of the seals from the confiscated books. These books will be taken to the printing works where the removal of the forbidden articles will proceed. The printing works are obliged to keep all the cut pages. After the cutting has been completed, officials from the Censorship Committee will take the exact number of cut pages, and the entire mass will either be shredded in the office of the printing works' director, or burnt under the observation of Censorship Committee officials in the stoves of the Kushneryov company.”

The Empress has refused me an audience
: Sofia wrote on 3rd May to her sister Tanya: “The Empress has refused me an audience. It is said she hasn't forgotten what was said about me long ago: that I deceived Alexander III by promising not to publish
The Kreutzer Sonata
separately, then bringing it out in a separate edition. In fact it was brought out by some underground publishers.”

give the Tsar my letter
: In her letter to the Tsar, dated 10th May, Sofia Tolstoy suggested that Yasnaya Polyana should be bought by the government. “It is our most passionate wish to leave his cradle and grave in the protection of the state,” she wrote. “I consider it my last duty to his memory to keep the material and spiritual wealth of the Russian state in its own hands, and to preserve it untouched.” She referred also in her letter to the situation with the Tolstoy manuscripts, and explained that it was her desire to “see that everything he wrote stays in Russia and for Russia”, to “be kept permanently, free of charge, in some state or scientific safe in Russia”.

talked to Guchkov about the sale of the Moscow house
: The purpose of her meeting with N.I. Guchkov, mayor of Moscow, was to propose that the Khamovniki Street house be sold to the town.

an old French book called De l'Amour
: Probably Pascal's
Discours sur les passions de l'amour
.