The Jubilee editors narrowed down their guess for the next letter, this one from Tolstoy in Moscow to Sofia in Yasnaya Polyana, to either January or February. Let’s say it’s February. He wrote her from the Nagornovs’ about his day and how he hadn’t slept. He had gone to the printer’s for galleys and had sat with Varya Nagornova while doing corrections of that installment and then he went to eat at the D’yakovs’. Then he met with Katkov, with whom he didn’t—he seemed to be confessing—speak about the money. Finally, in closing, he mentioned seeing the tailor Ayet to order a special coat.XVII
What is there to say about Tolstoy’s tailor, Philippe Ayet? Why would anyone care about him?
I don’t know why, but I do care, and this little shopping trip sheds light on both Sofia and Tolstoy. Sofia noted: “Ayet was the best French tailor in Moscow. L.N. at home in the country wore blouses, big gray flannels, or coarse unwhitened linen, which I myself sewed. When L.N. went to the city, he wore very elegant clothes from the best tailors. I’ve preserved ever since [in 1919] a frock-coat from Ayet and a blackbear coat and many other clothes.”XVIII
Sofia saved his clothes! Lest we imagine Tolstoy always in homemade peasant-blouses and boots, she reminds us that he had a long period of appreciating fine clothes.
Of the four surviving photographs of Tolstoy during his Anna Karenina years two show him one day in 1876 (either now in midwinter or late in the fall) posing in a fine coat, which I’m guessing is the one Ayet made for him:
Tolstoy in 1876XIX
* * *
On February 21 Aleksei P. Bobrinsky and the Tula governor Sergei P. Ushakov came to Yasnaya Polyana to talk religion with Tolstoy. On the same day, he wrote his brother Sergei:
[…] The longer you live, the less free time. Or you get sick, or family duties, or writing, which I started up, but I’m afraid that I can’t succeed in finishing this year, despite that it often disgusts me.XX
What is it exactly about Anna Karenina that disgusts him, though? The characters? The characters who, he would say later, seemed more real to him than actual people? Was it the burden of writing a compelling novel for those same sorts of people that he was disgustedly writing about? It’s a “gloomy” time:
I myself this winter am healthier than before and better than the others. Whooping cough even now leaves its traces as Seryozha, Lelya, and Sonya cough. Sonya is very weakened in health and I am beginning to be seriously afraid for her. […] A week ago she was in Moscow. […] and there the doctors found her unwell. I told nobody about this but I involuntarily tell you that I am afraid. In general this winter for me has been morally very heavy; and the death of Auntie left me terribly heavy memories that I can’t write in a letter. Time to die—this is not true; but it’s true that there’s nothing more left in life than to die. This is what I ceaselessly feel. […]
He had used the phrase “time to die” twice in 1875 to Sergei, and his creation Levin has used it, too.XXI In the coming summer he would use the phrase “we’ll soon die” in his correspondence to Strakhov.XXII In Confession, he has no hesitation about recounting his unnerving attraction to suicide; in his letters, however, to sensitive and loving correspondents, it seems that “time to die” was the closest he could come to suggesting his thoughts of suicide.
He told Sergei that he had the money, that however much of the debt Sergei needed now, he would get now, but “If you’re not coming to us this month, in March I’ll bring you all the money. But now, come or write, but write everything in detail, about yourself and your family. […] Write everything that comes in your head, and I will already completely understand it.”XXIII
The connection between the brothers, wherein they understand by the slightest utterance what the other is feeling, is similar to that between Konstantin Levin and his dying brother Nikolay in a scene that Tolstoy had only recently written into the novel:
He felt that if they had both not kept up appearances, but had spoken, as it is called, from the heart—that is to say, had said only just what they were thinking and feeling—they would simply have looked into each other’s faces, and Konstantin could only have said, “You’re dying, you’re dying,” and Nikolay could only have answered, “I know I’m dying, but I’m afraid, I’m afraid, I’m afraid!” And they could have said nothing more, if they had said only what was in their hearts. But life like that was impossible, and so Konstantin tried to do what he had been trying to do all his life, and never could learn to do, though, as far as he could observe, many people knew so well how to do it, and without it there was no living at all. He tried to say what he was not thinking, but he felt continually that it had a ring of falsehood, that his brother detected him in it, and was exasperated at it.XXIV
There’s no use lying to a brother.
To return for a moment to Tolstoy’s letter to Sergei: “Rey’s good for us but his sister is bad. Sonya can’t stand her and I’m afraid it’s going to wreck things with the brother.”XXV
In My Life, Sofia writes: “During my illness {Jules Rey’s sister} Mademoiselle Rey arrived {from Switzerland}. She was fair-haired, short of stature, round-shouldered, dressed in a black lutestring apron, and looked more like a servant than a governess. Her voice was smooth-tongued, her words were flattering, and her mannerisms were catlike. I did not take to her right from the start.”XXVI A dozen pages later, Sofia called her “repulsive.”XXVII According to the Jubilee editors, who date a Sofia letter on this topic as January–February: “Mademoiselle Rey lived with her brother at Yasnaya Polyana from November 1875 to September 1876.”XXVIII The Tolstoys were worrying about firing her; that is, if they fired her, would her brother leave, too? (They did, but he didn’t.) As a replacement-in-waiting they hired Annie Phillips, a nineteen-year-old English woman.XXIX Oh, would that we could discover that Miss Phillips wrote detailed letters to England about her new home! While we’re wishing, would that she were practically a Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope heroine who went to Russia for her financially desperate family, and in trepidation and curiosity noticed everything and wrote it all down. How bewildering would the Tolstoy family have been to a Victorian girl? What would she have said of this couple? Would she have explained to her parents that the father of the family seemed to be a famous literary man? (There is a novel-in-waiting or a Netflix series here: Annie Phillips: Governess to the Tolstoy Family.)
Would Tolstoy have looked her over and wondered if his rakish Stiva would have made a play for her? Did Sofia make sure Miss Phillips was not beautiful? In this year’s April installment of the novel, Anna makes a mistake in Italy by hiring a beautiful local woman to mind her baby Annie:
“Here she is,” she added, looking out of the window at the handsome Italian nurse, who was carrying the child out into the garden, and immediately glancing unnoticed at Vronsky. The handsome nurse, from whom Vronsky was painting a head for his picture, was the one hidden grief in Anna’s life. He painted with her as his model, admired her beauty and medievalism, and Anna dared not confess to herself that she was afraid of becoming jealous of this nurse, and was for that reason particularly gracious and condescending both to her and her little son.XXX
I’ll bet Sofia didn’t ever make that mistake. But wait… A note by the Jubilee editors about the next letter to Sofia, of unknown date (January or February), says Jules Rey was fired in January 1878 for “carrying on an amour with Annie.” Rey was about thirty by that time. Sofia wrote that Rey “had become a hopeless inebriate.”XXXI Sofia recalled that Annie Phillips was “a very dear young Englishwoman […] who eventually got involved in a romantic relationship with the Monsieur Rey, although nothing ever came of it.”XXXII Sofia remembered a skating incident in 1876, where her son Lev fell through the ice, and that Annie was “flirting” at the time with Rey and didn’t notice, though fortunately the gardener Semen did and rescued the boy.XXXIII (Annie never wrote a novel or memoir of her Tolstoy time, but she did meet “an English railway technician in Tula” and married him in 1880. The next new Englishwoman
the Tolstoys hired, Lizzie Ford, was a “silly, doll-like and unhelpful person.”XXXIV)
On this busy February 21, visiting with friends and writing letters, Tolstoy thanked Prince S. S. Urussov for a letter regarding Tolstoy’s “religious doubts,” which doubts Tolstoy didn’t want to write about now, as they were not as doubtful as usual. He appreciated that Urussov hadn’t tried to “prove” why Tolstoy should believe.XXXV
* * *
The February issue of the Russian Herald was published on February 29.
Finally!
We cancel any appointments for the afternoon and evening and sit and read Part 4, Chapters 1–15 (those 15 will be 17 chapters in the book)…
The Karenins are living together in St. Petersburg with a compromise that Anna not see Vronsky at the house. Anna’s two men encounter each other one evening, Vronsky arriving when Karenin is leaving the house. Because of a nightmare, Anna predicts to Vronsky that she will soon die in childbirth. Karenin sees a lawyer about the legal procedures of a divorce. Karenin, on his way to investigate a provincial governmental matter, goes to Moscow, where Oblonsky pulls him into the dinner party that he is hosting. It is at this party that Levin and Kitty re-meet and seal their love. Dolly learns from Karenin that he means to divorce Anna. She tries to dissuade him from this. Levin, now engaged to be married, is ecstatic and has a sleepless but revelatory night. He meets with Kitty’s parents. Then Levin has Kitty read his diaries, which are apparently full of unimaginably shameful details of his sexual life; this knowledge distresses her, but his conscience is cleared. Tolstoy jumps us back to Karenin; he receives Anna’s telegram announcing her impending death; he takes the train to Petersburg and hopes that she is in fact going to die. She seems to be dying as a result of an infection during childbirth; she begs his forgiveness and insists he forgive the shamed, pitiful Vronsky: Karenin does so.
I used to think that Sofia’s misery the past November and the miserable death of the infant daughter, Vara (Varvara), had given Tolstoy the idea of presenting Anna’s false premonition of death in childbirth, but Sofia’s fear and agonizing illness dated from at least five years before, and Tolstoy, we have seen, had planned in early outlines of the novel for Anna to have a premature premonition of dying in childbirth.
While such a premonition makes sense with Dolly, an experienced mother who does in the course of the novel lose a baby, it has never seemed to me to fit Anna, that is, the Anna we know, in contrast to Tolstoy’s original conception of her.
An impressive group that includes Dostoevsky, Fet, and Strakhov thought that the scene of forgiveness at her prematurely foreseen death was great. Fet compared it to an operatic trio. Strakhov thought that it was “so good and strong.” Why did Dostoevsky admire the scene? He had grown bored, he wrote, with Levin, but then…
[…] the scene of the heroine’s death (later she recovers) explained to me the essential part of the author’s design. In the very center of that petty and insolent life there appeared a great and eternal living truth, at once illuminating everything. These petty, insignificant and deceitful beings suddenly became genuine and truthful people, worthy of being called men, solely because of a natural law, the law of human death. Their shell vanished, and truth alone appeared. The last ones developed into the first, while the first ones (Vronsky) all of a sudden became the last, losing their halo in humiliation; but having been humbled, they became infinitely better, worthier, more truthful than when they were the first and the eminent. Hatred and deceit began to speak in terms of forgiveness and love.… these people began to resemble genuine human beings! There proved to be no guilty ones; they all accused themselves.XXXVI
Who am I to argue with Dostoevsky? I’ll just offer up my own two kopecks: For me, a worshiper at the temple of Anna Karenina, Chapter 17 of Part 4 is the most artificial scene in the novel. It seems to me that Tolstoy is cobbling together with plastic beads and Elmer’s glue a tableau that he saw on a stage. Or take out my artistic evaluation of it. Let’s say instead that this scene is where I don’t like or recognize the Anna that he has conjured up for us.
We’ll backtrack over the scene. Karenin has returned home:
With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in the train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch drove through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him, not thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen, porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping for. He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it thoroughly. Its meaning ran: “If it’s a trick, then calm contempt and departure. If truth, do what is proper.”XXXVII
I feel as reluctant to enter this scene as Karenin is. I anticipate the melodrama. Karenin asks a servant after Anna; he hears that she’s alive and has given birth. Vronsky’s coat is hanging on the hatstand.
Is my distaste the result of Anna and Vronsky being melodramatic?
At the table, sitting sideways in a low chair, was Vronsky, his face hidden in his hands, weeping. He jumped up at the doctor’s voice, took his hands from his face, and saw Alexey Alexandrovitch. Seeing the husband, he was so overwhelmed that he sat down again, drawing his head down to his shoulders, as if he wanted to disappear; but he made an effort over himself, got up, and said:
“She is dying. The doctors say there is no hope. I am entirely in your power, only let me be here… though I am at your disposal. I…”
Alexey Alexandrovitch, seeing Vronsky’s tears, felt a rush of that nervous emotion always produced in him by the sight of other people’s suffering, and turning away his face, he moved hurriedly to the door, without hearing the rest of his words. From the bedroom came the sound of Anna’s voice saying something. Her voice was lively, eager, with exceedingly distinct intonations. Alexey Alexandrovitch went into the bedroom, and went up to the bed. She was lying turned with her face toward him. Her cheeks were flushed crimson, her eyes glittered, her little white hands thrust out from the sleeves of her dressing gown were playing with the quilt, twisting it about. It seemed as though she were not only well and blooming, but in the happiest frame of mind. She was talking rapidly, musically, and with exceptionally correct articulation and expressive intonation. [It seems to me that Tolstoy is stage-managing: whispering unconvincing directions and words to an actress playing Anna.]
“For Alexey—I am speaking of Alexey Alexandrovitch (what a strange and awful thing that both are Alexey, isn’t it?)—Alexey would not refuse me. I should forget, he would forgive.… But why doesn’t he come? He’s so good he doesn’t know himself how good he is. Ah, my God, what agony! Give me some water, quick! Oh, that will be bad for her, my little girl! Oh, very well then, give her to a nurse. Yes, I agree, it’s better in fact. He’ll be coming; it will hurt him to see her. Give her to the nurse.”
“Anna Arkadyevna, he has come. Here he is!” said the midwife, trying to attract her attention to Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“Oh, what nonsense!” Anna went on, not seeing her husband. “No, give her to me; give me my little one! He has not come yet. You say he won’t forgive me, because you don’t know him. No one knows him. I’m the only one, and it was hard for me even. His eyes I ought to know—Seryozha has just the same eyes—and I can’t bear to see them because of it. Has Seryozha had his dinner? I know everyone will forget him. He would not forget. Seryozha must be moved into the corner room, and Mariette must be asked to sleep with him.”
All of a sudden she shrank back, was silent; and in terror, as though expecting a blow, as though to defend herself, she raised her hands
to her face. She had seen her husband.
“No, no!” she began. “I am not afraid of him; I am afraid of death. Alexey, come here. I am in a hurry, because I’ve no time, I’ve not long left to live; the fever will begin directly and I shall understand nothing more. Now I understand, I understand it all, I see it all!”
Alexey Alexandrovitch’s wrinkled face wore an expression of agony; he took her by the hand and tried to say something, but he could not utter it; his lower lip quivered, but he still went on struggling with his emotion, and only now and then glanced at her. And each time he glanced at her, he saw her eyes gazing at him with such passionate and triumphant tenderness as he had never seen in them.
“Wait a minute, you don’t know… stay a little, stay!…” She stopped, as though collecting her ideas. “Yes,” she began; “yes, yes, yes. This is what I wanted to say. Don’t be surprised at me. I’m still the same.… But there is another woman in me, I’m afraid of her: she loved that man, and I tried to hate you, and could not forget about her that used to be. I’m not that woman. Now I’m my real self, all myself. I’m dying now, I know I shall die, ask him. Even now I feel—see here, the weights on my feet, on my hands, on my fingers. My fingers—see how huge they are! But this will soon all be over.… Only one thing I want: forgive me, forgive me quite. I’m terrible, but my nurse used to tell me; the holy martyr—what was her name? She was worse. And I’ll go to Rome; there’s a wilderness, and there I shall be no trouble to any one, only I’ll take Seryozha and the little one.… No, you can’t forgive me! I know, it can’t be forgiven! No, no, go away, you’re too good!” She held his hand in one burning hand, while she pushed him away with the other.XXXVIII
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