The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  I am now going to read A. Rubinstein’s Letters on Music. Lev Nikolaevich has a dark one with him called Yartsev. He seems to find him insufferably tedious.

  25th July. Tanya and I bought some Russian lace from an old woman in the village. After supper Lev Nikolaevich read us a foolish play from La Revue blanche. Sonya and the children are leaving tomorrow morning and I am very sorry. They didn’t disturb me a bit, they brought me great joy.

  I was sitting alone on the balcony today, thinking how fortunate I was: Yasnaya Polyana is so beautiful, my life is so peaceful, my husband is devoted to me, I am financially independent—why am I not happy? Is it my fault? I know all the reasons for my spiritual suffering: firstly it grieves me that my children are not as happy as I would wish. And then I am actually very lonely. My husband is not my friend; he has been my passionate lover at times, especially as he grows older, but all my life I have felt lonely with him. He doesn’t go for walks with me, he prefers to ponder in solitude over his writing. He has never taken any interest in my children, for he finds this difficult and dull. To each his fate. Mine was to be the auxiliary to my husband. And that is good; at least I have served a great writer who is worthy of the sacrifice.

  I went to visit a sick boy in the village. I put a compress on his stomach and gave him medicine, and he was so grateful to me for everything.

  26th July. I copied out music all morning, then went for a swim. Very cold and windy. Boulanger, Zinoviev, Nadya Feret and the Englishman Maude* came, a dull, pompous man.

  Sonya and the children left early this morning, and Andryusha drove over to see Bibikov. He keeps promising not to drink, but cannot go two days without seeking out the company of drunken dissolutes like the Bibikovs. Tanya seems a bit calmer, but how thin she is! Sasha went to pick nuts with her governesses. It is colder. There are a huge number of apples and they look lovely; they’re being picked today.

  28th July. I got a letter from Sergei Ivanovich. I had been expecting to hear from him; I had sent him some photographs and knew he would write to thank me, for he is such a courteous man.

  An affectionate letter from Lyova in Sweden; he misses Russia, and worries that his wife may miss her parents. You never get everything you want in life!

  29th July. Maude the Englishman was here all day.

  Fine days again, terribly dry, wonderful moonlit nights. If only all this natural beauty could be put to some use! As it is the days pass in such a mundane fashion…

  30th July. The moon is so lovely, shining through my window! I used to love looking at the moon when I was young, speaking in my heart to the man I loved who was far away, and knowing he was gazing at the same moon and that his eyes too were bewitched by its beauty, so that through it we seemed to be secretly speaking to each other.

  I played the piano for four hours today; music lifts me off the ground and makes all my worries and difficulties easier to bear. Today a telegram came from Danilevskaya in Poltava saying Misha was well and happy and wouldn’t be back before Saturday. This tactless, dishonest self-indulgence of Misha’s drove me to despair. I managed to persuade the director of the Lycée to let him take his exams in the autumn, so while he enjoys himself strolling around Poltava, it’s I who have to endure his disgrace, first with his teacher, then with the director. No, I can no longer bear the burden of bringing up my weak, wretched sons! They torment me! I wept when I received that telegram. Even Lev Nikolaevich, generally so indifferent to everything concerning the children, was indignant. I sent a third telegram to Misha, but almost two weeks have been wasted already!

  The other worry is Sasha. Her work with me has been going very badly and I made her repeat her lesson, and again she failed to learn it, so I didn’t let her go riding with Tanya. I don’t like punishing the children, but all the governesses have given up with Sasha.

  A terribly dry day, African heat. An owl is hooting—an evil, piercing sound. But what a marvellous night, how still it is!

  1st August. Today I was copying Lev Nikolaevich’s On Art, in which he refers to the exaggerated importance of love (the erotic mania) in all works of art. Yet only this morning Sasha said to me, “How cheerful Papa is today—when he’s happy everyone else is too!” If only she knew that her “papa” was always cheerful after enjoying the love he denies!

  The days are still fine and very dry. Dust and poverty everywhere. We went swimming. I posed standing up for Ginzburg. We went for a walk in the moonlight. Goldenweiser played the Chopin ‘Sonata and Funeral March’ beautifully. What a marvellous heartfelt musical epic! It tells the whole story of death—the monotonous funeral knell, the wild notes of agony, the tender poetic memories of the dead one, the wild cries of despair—you follow the whole story. I should hope even Lev Nikolaevich would recognize this as a true work of art. Goldenweiser went on to play some Chopin Preludes, Beethoven’s Sonata Opus 90 and some Tchaikovsky variations. What a delight!

  The Obolenskys came. Tanya has already started making up to the new tutor, so powerfully accustomed is she to flirting. Lev Nikolaevich played lawn tennis energetically for about three hours, then rode to Kozlovka; he had wanted to ride his bicycle, but it’s broken. He also did a lot of writing today, and is youthful and active. What vitality he has! Yesterday he told me sadly that I had aged recently. I don’t expect I shall outlive him, despite our sixteen-year age difference and my healthy, youthful appearance (as everyone keeps telling me).

  2nd August. Misha returned from the Danilevskys’ this morning. I had meant to scold him for delaying, but I didn’t have the heart: he came back so cheerful, so full of his experiences of the journey. How lovely it is to be young; one’s impressions of nature and people—especially nature—are such a novelty. And he needed a break in his life, for he has been painfully worried by sexual temptations.

  I went swimming with Nadya Ivanova today and swam a long way. Then I came back and copied for several hours, and managed to get a lot done. “How well you copy for me and tidy my papers,” Lev Nikolaevich said to me today. Thank you for those few words; one never expects gratitude from him, however hard one works.

  Lev Nikolaevich has some factory worker* visiting him; he keeps saying what an intelligent man he is, but seems to find him very dull and evidently has no idea what to do with him or how to get rid of him. I finished A. Rubinstein’s book on music and told Sasha about it on our walk.

  This evening Misha’s tutor, Sobolev, told us some fascinating things about the gold and platinum mines in the Urals. It is warm and still and there is a moon, although the sky is overcast. Lev Nikolaevich was annoyed today because his bicycle is broken, so he couldn’t ride it to the bathing hut and had to go on horseback instead. There’s still so much of the young man in him!

  3rd August. This morning I sorted out my letters to Lev Nikolaevich and his to me. I must now copy them and hand them over to the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow. I am completely at his service at present, and he is calm and happy. Once again he consumes my life. Does this make me happy? Alas, no. I do my duty towards him, and there’s some happiness in that, but at times I yearn for something different and have other desires.

  4th August. Crowds of people all day. The moment I got up Lev Nikolaevich had a visit from a Frenchman who had been travelling around Europe doing geological research. He is a cultured but uneducated man, a landowner who lives on his estate in the Pyrenees. Then Kasatkin the artist arrived and showed us his huge collection of photographs, paintings and drawings he has brought back from abroad. This was a great pleasure for me. I swam on my own again, and again posed for Ginzburg. Lev Nikolaevich also posed standing up for his statuette. This evening we went for a walk; it was dry and quiet, the sun was setting in a rosy sky, and now the moon is up. Two more guests came for half an hour, doctors from Odessa on their way to a medical conference in Moscow. One was called Schmidt, the other was an army doctor called Lyubomudrov. They were both very unpleasant. Goldenweiser played us a Beethoven sonata and Schumann’s ‘Carnaval’ before retiring
. Lev Nikolaevich complains of feeling weak and chilled. He went swimming and drank a lot of tea; he really shouldn’t swim.

  6th August. I am exhausted, having just copied out a long chapter of On Art for Lev Nikolaevich. Goldenweiser played us the Grieg Piano Concerto beautifully; it is a powerful, original work, and I enjoyed it immensely. Then he played two Chopin Nocturnes, something of Schubert’s and a waltz by Rubenstein.

  My daughter Masha and her husband Kolya are here. Masha is wretched, pale and thin; I would love to be able to help her, poor thing. About Tanya I prefer to say nothing. I am still terrified for her. Misha is very upset by all the gossip at Yasnaya, with everyone hounding everyone to death and out for what they can get. It distresses him terribly—but it’s always like this! It’s better not to think about it.

  8th August. Masha has fallen ill and Doctor Rudnyov has diagnosed typhus. The news fills my heart with grief; I am choking back the tears, terrible familiar tears of fear and alarm, constantly ready to flow. She had been dreaming of Vanechka—maybe he will call her to him and release her from her wretched difficult life, married to that lump of a husband. She lived a good, useful, self-sacrificing life before she married Kolya. God knows what lies in store for her. But I feel so sorry for her, she has been so pitiful ever since she left home. I couldn’t help recalling Sasha Filosofova’s death, also from typhus, and it terrifies me.

  The house is seething with guests. There were 20 people at the table today. Individually they’re all very nice, it’s just a pity there are so many all at once. No walks, no time to oneself, no work, no copying—just this crush of people. I am not doing any real work; something has disappeared irrevocably, something has taken the wrong turning, something has gone wrong.

  Yesterday I accidentally left my diary on the table. Lev Nikolaevich had another read of it and was annoyed by something. Why should he be annoyed? I never loved anybody in the whole world as I love him—and for such a long time too!

  There was a telegram from Lombroso, the learned anthropologist, who has arrived in Moscow for a medical conference and wants to pay Lev Nikolaevich a visit.

  Ginzburg is sculpting Lev Nikolaevich and they read On Art together during sittings. It’s a good thing Lev Nikolaevich attacks the modern decadent movement in his article. This vile, senseless tendency must be put a stop to, and who better to do it than he.

  11th August. I haven’t written anything for three days. They brought poor Masha here from Ovsyannikovo the day before yesterday. She has typhus, and for several days now she has had a fever of 40°. At first we were all very frightened, but we have now become used to the idea of her being ill. Doctor Rudnyov visited and said it was a mild case, but I feel so sorry for her, tossing and turning and unable to sleep at night. Yesterday I sat with her till 3 in the morning, copying out Lev Nikolaevich’s article. I had already done a lot when she suddenly had violent stomach pains. Lev Nikolaevich got up and said he would put on the samovar to make poultices, but he found the oven hot enough to warm up some napkins instead. It always makes me laugh when he embarks on some practical task, he is always so clumsy. He got soot all over the napkins, singed his beard with a candle and was furious with me for trying to put it out with my hands.

  At 3 in the morning Tanya took my place by Masha’s bed. Lombroso arrived this morning, a little old man with weak legs, who looks very decrepit for someone of 62. He speaks bad French, with a lot of mistakes and an appalling accent, and even worse German. He is Italian and very learned; as an anthropologist he has done a lot of work on human criminality. I tried to draw him into a discussion, but he had little of interest to say. He said crime was on the increase everywhere except in England, and that he didn’t trust statistical information about Russia as we don’t have a free press. He also said he had studied women all his life and still couldn’t understand them. French and Italian women—“la femme latine”—are incapable of working, their sole interests in life are clothes and the desire to please. “La femme slave”, however, which includes Russian women, is capable of any kind of work and is far more moral. He then spoke about education; he feels it has almost no influence on innate qualities, and I quite agree.

  Ginzburg left today. He has finished his statuettes of me and Lev Nikolaevich. He was working on the one of Lev Nikolaevich yesterday when three young ladies arrived and begged to have a look at Tolstoy. They were taken into his study and he enquired whether they had any questions to ask him and they said no, they just wanted to see him. So they looked at him and left. A little later some young man arrived with the same thing in mind, but was told Lev Nikolaevich was out. Then just as we were having our tea a man wheeling a bicycle and covered in blood arrived asking for him. He turned out to be a teacher from the Tula gymnasium who had fallen off his bicycle and hurt himself. He was taken into the pavilion, where his wounds were washed and bandaged, and he then stayed for supper.

  13th August. Masha still has a high fever—over 40° all day. Poor girl, I feel so sorry for her and powerless against the implacable course of this terrible illness. I have never before seen such a bad case of typhus. The doctor called again—Lev Nikolaevich rode over to fetch him; he said she was in no danger, but I have a great weight on my heart.

  I have copied out a great deal of Lev Nikolaevich’s manuscript On Art. I spoke to him about it yesterday, and asked him how he expected art to exist without all the specialist “schools” he attacks. But one can never have a discussion with him; he always gets irritable and shouts, and it becomes so unpleasant one loses sight of the subject under discussion, and merely wants him to stop talking as soon as possible.

  14th August. Lyova and Dora have arrived from Sweden, looking cheerful and well. Thank God—they’ll cheer us up too. The doctor came and said Masha was in no danger, which reassured us. I also consulted him about my own health; he said my nervous system was in a bad state but there was nothing organically wrong with me, and prescribed bromide.

  Lev Nikolaevich rode to Baburino at the invitation of some schoolmistress from St Petersburg. I spent a lazy day, for I had an exhausting night sitting up until 4.30 a.m. with Masha, who was very restless and had a fever of 40.7. I went for a swim, pasted up some photographs, read a little of Taine’s Philosophie de l’art and sat with her. Still this terrible drought continues!

  16th August. Life is hard. Masha is still very ill. I felt dazed when I got up today. I had watched over her all night in a state of terror until 5 a.m. She was terribly delirious, and has been so all this morning. At 5 I went to my room but couldn’t sleep. Nothing but trouble on all sides. Tanya had another meeting with Sukhotin in Tula and sat with him in his hotel, then travelled back with him on the train. As far as I can see, she has never for one moment given up the idea of marrying him. Misha didn’t go to Moscow, where his tutor is waiting for him—he’s doing no work and is bound to fail his exams. He just loafs around the village playing his harmonium until 2 in the morning with the peasant lads and that silent, stupid Mitya Dyakov. Andryusha arrived this morning, and will stay for a month and a half. He said he wanted to go to Samara and visit Ilya, which is good. But the hardest thing is my relationship with Lev Nikolaevich. There’s no pleasing him, one can say nothing to him. Boulanger was here yesterday; we talked to him and agreed it would be a good idea to go through On Art with the censors in mind, discard a few passages to which they might object, then publish it simultaneously in the Intermediary and in Volume 15 of the Complete Collected Works. I didn’t want to be the first to suggest this, as I am terrified of the angry way he almost always speaks to me—and to almost everyone else who dares contradict him.

  Boulanger* talked it over with him and told me he had agreed. But he was furious when I mentioned it to him, and said Chertkov had expressly asked that none of his works should be published here before they had appeared in English.* That Chertkov has Lev Nikolaevich completely in his power again, even in England!

  Today we had a talk about Tanya. He said we should keep our thoughts to o
urselves—we might want the wrong thing for her or give her the wrong advice. But I said we shouldn’t lie, and should tell her what we thought, even if we were wrong, and shouldn’t be dishonest merely for fear of being mistaken. I don’t know which of us is right—maybe he is, but it’s not a question of being right, it’s a question of being able to say what one thinks without losing one’s temper.

  Just today, as he was coming out of his study, he went for Misha and said some terribly—though deservedly—harsh words to him and Mitya Dyakov. But what did he achieve by it? How much better if he had had a quiet talk with Misha this morning and firmly told him to go to Moscow, stop shirking and work for his exams. As it was, this rebuke only made his sons angry; they were saying their father never gave them any sympathy or advice and did nothing but scold and shout at them. Only their mother had the right to scold them, they said, for she was the only one who cared for them. I have indeed cared for them—but what good has it done, what have I achieved? Absolutely nothing! Andryusha has failed to do anything so far, and I cannot think what will become of Misha—he has absolutely no strength of character…Oh, how sad it all is, how terribly sad…

  17th August. A nurse has arrived to look after Masha; she is a little better today, and her temperature is down to 38.6°. Lyova and Dora are both lethargic and under the weather. Poor Dora, I feel sorry for her, it’s hard for her in Russia, so far from her family. Another dry, windy day, but much cooler since morning. I walked back from the bathing hut with Tanya and we had a talk about Sukhotin. She says she hasn’t come to any definite decision. Misha left for Moscow yesterday evening, and Andryusha has gone off to some mysterious destination. I have been copying again for Lev Nikolaevich and sitting with Masha, but there’s no satisfaction in merely fulfilling my duties, and I feel melancholy. Then there was distressing news of another fire on Ilya’s estate; the whole of this year’s harvest was burnt, as well as the barn, the farm implements and various other things. Oh, how cruel life is!