Tolstoy (8 page)

Tolstoy cherished his memories of his father cracking jokes at the dinner table, and of being allowed to come and sit beside him on the fabled leather sofa in his study while he smoked his pipe. There was one occasion when Nikolay Ilyich was particularly impressed with the pathos with which his youngest son Lev read aloud Pushkin's poem 'To the Sea', which he had learned by heart.
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The poem was written in 1824, when Pushkin was taking leave of the south after his period of exile, and by the time the young Tolstoy came to recite its lines a decade later, the fateful duel which killed the young poet in 1837 was only a few years away. The ocean was probably the one element which would never hold any attraction for Tolstoy. He lived in the heartland of Russia for nearly all his long life, far from any salt water, so may not later have identified with the sentiments in Pushkin's last stanza, in which the poet speaks of carrying into the 'woods and silent wildernesses' of Russia the sea's cliffs and coves, and the sound of its waves. But as if to compensate, Tolstoy was moved to shed an ocean of salty tears over his lifetime by music or stories of suffering. The emotional sensitivity his father noticed in him as a young boy rendered him very susceptible to crying: it was not for nothing that one of his nicknames as a child was Lyova—Ryova — 'Lyova the howler'.

As a small boy, Tolstoy liked to see his father elegantly dressed in frock-coat and close-fitting breeches in preparation for trips into town, but his most vivid memories of his father were connected with hunting. Nikolay Tolstoy loved hunting — both riding to hounds and shooting — and he had a particular affection for two servants, the brothers Petrusha and Matyusha, who usually accompanied him. Like many of his class, Nikolay Tolstoy considered hunting second only to warfare as an arena for showing courage and bravado, and so Tolstoy and his brothers were thus trained to hunt from a young age.
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Nikolay Ilyich thought it important for his sons to start learning to be real men as early as possible and they were each given ponies. In old age Tolstoy cherished memories of walking with his father through the long grass of the meadows with his beloved borzoi puppies running circles round them.
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Tolstoy himself would become a passionate huntsman (the hunting scenes in
War and Peace
are amongst the most lovingly written in the novel), and it took him a long time in later life to relinquish an activity which clearly contravened the moral and religious principles he embraced after his spiritual crisis. Tolstoy never abandoned horseriding, however, and his love of horses can be seen both in the exquisite detail of his description of Vronsky's horse Frou-Frou in
Anna Karenina,
and in 'Kholstomer' ('Strider'), the remarkable story he began in the 1860s and later revised, which is told from a horse's point of view.

Tolstoy's most vivid memories of his father may have been connected with hunting, but his fondest ones were of seeing him sitting next to his grandmother on the sofa, and helping her lay out the cards for patience while she occasionally took snuff from her gold snuffbox. His aunts would be in armchairs nearby, one of them reading aloud, while in another armchair his father's favourite borzoi Milka would be curled up asleep, or gazing at everyone with her beautiful black eyes (she appears in
War and Peace
as herself). In his memoirs, Tolstoy recollects a particular evening when his father stopped whichever aunt was reading aloud and pointed to the mirror on the wall. Tikhon the manservant could be seen stealing furtively on tiptoes into his study and stealing tobacco from his leather pouch. Tolstoy's father found this very amusing.
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Nikolay Ilyich had a busy life, and he worked hard to restore the family fortunes. He certainly proved to have greater business acumen than his hapless father, and he left his children a legacy that amounted to far more than his late wife's dowry. In 1832 he owned 793 male and 800 female serfs, including 219 'souls' at Yasnaya Polyana and the surrounding villages. He was particularly pleased to be able to re-acquire Nikolskoye-Vyazemskoye, one of his mother's estates that had previously been mortgaged. Tolstoy later inherited it when his brother Nikolay died. In 1837 Tolstoy's father was also able to buy Pirogovo, a large estate not far from Yasnaya Polyana, which came with 472 serfs, and was later inherited by Tolstoy's brother Sergey and his sister Maria.

When he was at home at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's father had his hands full with managing the estate, which he continued to run on the patriarchal lines established by Prince Volkonsky. Now that his family was so numerous, Nikolay Ilyich's most pressing task was to finish building the main family residence. A couple of thousand roubles thus went on building a second, rather more modestly appointed storey in oak over the elegant ground floor. At its centre were rooms with parquet flooring and high ceilings, while the side rooms had a mezzanine floor, which gave the house the appearance of having three storeys. When everything was complete, there was finally enough room for Nikolay Ilyich and his five children, his mother, the two aunts and his sister's ward Pashenka, the children's tutor Fyodor Ivanovich, and the last permanent additions to the household: Evdokiya (Dunechka) Temyasheva, the illegitimate, freckled daughter of a neighbouring landowner and his serf mistress, and her tall, elderly nanny Evpraksiya. Dunechka was five years old when she arrived at Yasnaya Polyana in 1833 (the same age as Tolstoy), and she was brought up with the rest of the family as part of the complex property dealings over the Pirogovo estate. Tolstoy later described Dunechka as a nice, straightforward, not very bright girl who was a big cry-baby, but she got on very well with the rest of the family.
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In his early childhood, Tolstoy was never alone. Among the grown-ups living at Yasnaya Polyana, his grandmother and the two aunts were important figures in his early life. Tolstoy's
babushka
Pelageya Nikolayevna had lived a life of luxury and was not inclined to give it up, despite the family's straitened circumstances. After being spoiled first by her father, then her husband and finally her son, she became rather tyrannical and capricious in her old age. Since everyone in the household went out of their way to please her in deference to her senior position, she made the most of being able to torment her maid, Agafya Mikhailovna, who put up with it as she was proud to be called a 'lady-in-waiting'. Agafya Mikhailovna remained a beloved member of Tolstoy's household when his own children were growing up, and he notes with amusement in his memoirs that his grandmother's ways must have rubbed off on her, as she later became just as demanding and capricious herself.

Tolstoy remembered his grandmother well. She had never particularly warmed to Maria Nikolayevna, whom she considered unworthy of the son she idolised, but she was very fond of their children, and found them very amusing. Tolstoy retained only a few memories of his grandmother dating from his earliest childhood, but they were vivid ones. First of all he remembered the enormous soap bubbles she produced when washing in the morning. He and his siblings found them so captivating they were sometimes brought into their grandmother's room just to watch her perform her ablutions. A picture of her white blouse, white skirt, elderly white arms and white shining face imprinted itself forever in Tolstoy's memory. He himself also acquired the nickname of 'Levka the bubble' as he was so rotund as a little boy.

Tolstoy also remembered a magical excursion on a hot day, when the family went into the woods to collect hazelnuts. His grandmother was transported in a yellow cabriolet pulled not by horses, but by his father's servants Petrusha and Matyusha, who bent down the branches for her so she could gather the nuts.
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That yellow carriage with the tall springs was also later used for summer outings to the little wooden house with shutters built by Sergey Volkonsky in Grumant, where there was a picturesque view of the River Voronka winding its way through the meadows to one side, and forests on the other. Nearby was a grove with a spring, which was the source of the fresh water used by the Tolstoy family; great quantities of it would be taken over to Yasnaya Polyana every day. There was also a deep pond full of tench, bream, carp, perch and sterlet, where the boys and their tutor could fish.
Babushka
Pelageya Nikolayevna, who had no great desire to be entertained by Matryona the cattlewoman in her shabby dress, did not join the children on these trips. But the children loved their afternoons with Matryona, her daughter and the peasant children, when they would be treated to chunks of black bread, and milk that had come straight from the cows. They liked being surrounded by cattle and hens, and the assortment of village dogs which congregated round Bertha, their tutor's setter.
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Tolstoy's strongest memories of his grandmother were connected with the treat of spending the night in her bedroom with Lev Stepanych, her blind storyteller. In pre-emancipation Russia it was quite common for serfs to become professional storytellers, who could be bought and sold at will by the nobility like pieces of furniture. Lev Stepanych had been purchased for Pelageya Nikolayevna by her late husband, and so he was brought along to Yasnaya Polyana along with the rest of her retinue. He was totally blind, so he had developed an exceptional memory, and was able to recall any story that had been read to him a couple of times word for word.

Tolstoy recalled that Lev Stepanych lived somewhere in the main house, but only appeared in the evening, when he would go upstairs to his grandmother's bedroom in preparation for the evening's storytelling. He would sit in his long blue frock-coat with puffy sleeves on a low windowsill there, and some supper would be brought to him while he waited for Pelageya Nikolayevna to retire. Since he was blind, she undressed in front of him without qualms, and then she and whichever grandchild was with her would climb into bed to get comfortable for that night's story. Tolstoy vividly recalled the moment when the candle was extinguished in his grandmother's bedroom, leaving the flickering light of the small lamp burning beneath the icons in the corner. He would see the dim profile of his grandmother tucked up in bed on a mound of pillows, again a vision all in white, this time with a nightcap on her head. At her command, Lev Stepanych's quiet, steady voice would then launch into a captivating tale — Tolstoy particularly remembered him telling one of Scheherazade's stories from
The Arabian Nights.
The story went over the young Lev's head, but he was transfixed by the sight of the shadow of his grandmother's profile quivering on the wall.
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Tolstoy's aunt Aline could not have been more different from her mother Pelageya Nikolayevna, who continued to behave like the grande dame she had once been well into her dotage. Refined and graceful, with dreamy blue eyes and a fair complexion, Aline was fond of reading and she played the harp.
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She scored a great success in Petersburg high society when she came out, and at the age of nineteen, in 1814, she was married off to Karl von Osten-Sacken, son of the Saxon ambassador to Russia, in what was thought to be a brilliant match. The young couple repaired to the family's Baltic estate, but within a year of the wedding Aline's husband was showing signs of serious mental illness. Tolstoy tells a gripping story in his memoirs of one incident when the deranged Count von Osten-Sacken shot at his pregnant wife at point-blank range before being permanently committed to an asylum.

Aline recovered (many years later she showed her nephew the scar left by the bullet), but the traumatic experience marked her. She moved back to St Petersburg, but gave birth to a still-born baby. Fearing the effect this would have on her, her family arranged to have her own child replaced with the newly born daughter of a servant they knew about, who was the wife of a court chef. This was Pashenka — Pelageya Ivanovna Nastasina, whom Aunt Aline brought up as her own child. Tolstoy reproduces this story in Part Two of
Anna Karenina:
Kitty makes friends at the German spa with a Russian girl Varenka, whose background is remarkably similar. Pashenka was about ten years older than Tolstoy, and sickly (she later died of tuberculosis). Neither Tolstoy, who described her as 'pale, quiet and meek', nor his siblings seem to have felt she was really their cousin, but she appears in the list he compiled in his memoirs of people he particularly loved in his childhood.

Aline was thirty-three when Tolstoy was born, and by this time she had become exceptionally pious. If it came naturally to Tolstoy later in his life to want to devote his money and energy to helping others, it may have been partly because he grew up with an aunt who practised the Christian principles she preached. She not only spent her time praying, observing the fasts, reading the lives of saints and visiting monasteries, but, like Princess Maria in
War and Peace,
sought out the company of monks, nuns, religious wanderers, beggars and holy fools. Some of these people came on visits to Yasnaya Polyana, but others virtually lived on the estate, including Marya Gerasimovna, a holy fool. She had spent her youth wandering through Russia in men's clothes under the guise of 'Ivan the Fool', a familiar character from Russian fairy tales. When Tolstoy's mother was about to give birth for the fifth time, she had asked Marya Gerasimovna to pray that she would finally have a girl. After his sister Masha was born, Marya Gerasimovna became her godmother, and a familiar figure in the Tolstoy household. The touching, naive faith of their gardener Akim led the Tolstoys to see him as almost another holy fool who lived at Yasnaya Polyana. The children would come across him praying in the main room of the summer house which stood between the two orangeries. Akim talked aloud to God, his 'healer', as if he was standing right there in front of him.
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