The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy

by Cathy Porter

  I am reading an interesting book called Le Réveil de l’âme. I also read Anatole France’s La Bûche and La Fille de Clémentine. Being ill didn’t bore me at all; I enjoyed the solitude, being able to concentrate on my thoughts, and the absence of material anxieties.

  22nd August. My 54th birthday. Tanya, Masha and Sasha all gave me presents; Tanya and Sasha gave things they had made themselves, which was nice, but Masha bought me a little table, which I didn’t like, for I know she has no money and it’s a pity to waste it on things I don’t need. But I suppose it was a kind thought. She is always ill, first her headaches, then her stomach, then something else…She thinks too much about her health—it’s simply neurasthenia.

  24th August. Windy, raining and cold. We all stayed indoors talking. Everyone is interested in this latest statement from the Tsar in favour of universal peace and disarmament. L.N. actually had a letter from the World in America, asking his opinion of it. So far it was only words, he said, first of all one had to abolish taxes, military service, and much more besides. I think many generations will need to be educated to hate war if it is to be eradicated.

  Some Munich professor came to visit, a stocky red-faced German. Sulerzhitsky came here after seeing the Dukhobors, and is going on to England for more information. Meanwhile the Dukhobors, 7,000 of them, are living on the coast in Batumi in Georgia, waiting for a decision as to where they should go. And from whom? Why, from Chertkov* of course. It’s an appalling, disgraceful situation.

  26th, 27th August. I spent the whole day shopping in Tula with my sister-in-law Maria Nikolaevna, buying provisions, straw mattresses, crockery and so on for our guests.

  More Dukhobors came; they are still waiting for something to happen, and hope for a favourable response to their petition from the Tsar, and help from Lev Nikolaevich. This is quite ridiculous, since help from one necessarily excludes help and sympathy from the other.

  How the day of 28th August 1898 was spent. Today Lev Nikolaevich is 70 years old. I went in to greet him this morning while he was still in bed, and he looked so pleased, as though this was his own special day. All the family were here, with their wives and children. Altogether we had about forty people for dinner. P.V. Preobrazhensky started to drink Lev Nikolaevich’s health in white wine, and made a clumsy toast which everyone deliberately ignored. One can hardly drink L.N.’s health, since he preaches total abstinence. Then someone proposed a toast to me, and in a unanimous, noisy show of affection they all raised their glasses to me, which agitated me so much that my heart started to pound. It was a very cheerful dinner, and was a completely family affair, which was just what we had wanted. L.N. was writing Resurrection all morning, and was very pleased with his day’s work. “You know,” he said when I went in to see him, “he doesn’t marry her after all. I finished it today, or rather I decided that, and I know it’s right!” And I said: “But of course he doesn’t marry her! I always told you if he did it would just be hypocrisy.”*

  We received about a hundred telegrams from an enormous variety of people. This afternoon the sun came out and we took all the children, grandchildren and guests for a walk. Muromtseva sang at length, and was unpleasantly over-excited. Then Goldenweiser played the piano, very badly. More guests arrived for supper, but it remained just a simple, good-natured family party.

  The day finished with singing—choruses and solo songs. We were all very tired, and the food and sleeping arrangements required a great deal of work…

  29th August. The servants have been drinking and quarrelling. It is raining. Misha left for Moscow to resit an exam.

  30th August. I received a clever, charming letter from Sergei Ivanovich this morning and showed it to Lev Nikolaevich, who thought the same. He writes that one doesn’t have to be a follower of L.N. to be stirred by his works, for his ideas imperceptibly enter one’s mind and remain there. Then, just an hour after I got his letter, Sergei Ivanovich himself arrived. This evening after a short nap, he played a game of chess with Lev Nikolaevich, then sat down at the piano. And how marvellously he played! Such depth, such intelligence, such seriousness and experience—it would be impossible to play better. Both L.N. and Mashenka were in ecstasies—and so of course was I. He played Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 30, a Chopin Mazurka and Barcarolle, Rubinstein’s ‘Près d’un ruisseau’ and an aria by Arensky. Lev Nikolaevich said his performance was superb, no one could match Sergei Ivanovich’s playing, he said. The following morning, the 31st, I fell ill with a fever. I looked at the thermometer and saw I had a temperature of 38.4. Sergei Ivanovich left that morning and I took to my bed. Lev Nikolaevich was touchingly anxious about me. My dear, sweet old man! Who else could ever love me or need me as much as he does? I was moved to tears as I thought of him, and lay in bed praying that God would prolong his precious life.

  I was ill all day, so couldn’t go to Moscow as I had intended, to visit Misha and do business.

  1st September. I am better. It’s a lovely warm day and there are masses of bright fragrant flowers in the garden…I am full of the joys of life again, and I love people and nature and the sun. I was deeply touched by the love everyone lavished on me, and rejoice in my recovery.

  I went out with my camera and dashed about taking photographs of the park, my grandchildren, L.N. and his sister, the forest, the path to the swimming pool and the charming Yasnaya countryside…

  This evening I quickly packed my things, made a note of all the errands I had to do and left for Moscow, carrying the bunches of flowers Sasha had given me. L.N. and Sasha took me to Kozlovka in the carriage. I was tired, tearful and overwrought; I bade Lyovochka a tender farewell, then Nurse and I got into the train. That night who should come into our compartment but Seryozha; he had gone back to Yasnaya to talk to his father, and is now leaving for England to discuss the Dukhobors’ emigration. It seems from our correspondence that their plans are no further advanced, and we don’t know how seriously Chertkov is dealing with it; there’s so little money besides.

  2nd September (Moscow). I arrived in Moscow this morning with Nurse. It was raining, the house was dark and gloomy and my soul was oppressed…I unpacked, hired a cab and went out shopping, and oh dear, I was so jolted and shaken! But by this afternoon the lights were on, the house was filled with flowers, I had cleaned and tidied everything and hired a piano. Misha came; he has passed the exam he was resitting, and is now going up to the 7th form, but I am sure he is keeping something from me. Things became more lively later on. My brother Sasha, Uncle Kostya, young Yusha Pomerantsev and Sergei Ivanovich came and we had a merry evening.

  Sergei Ivanovich astonished me by something he said. He told me when I was at the Maslovs’ this summer I had deeply offended him by laughing at his ugly white cycling socks, saying they made him look like a clown.

  3rd September. More shopping and business…Seryozha was here and has now left for England…It keeps raining. No guests. Misha and I both went to the bathhouse.

  4th September. I spent the day in my dressing gown going over the bills with the accountant, checking the sales of books and entering figures into ledgers; I didn’t even take a walk. But Uncle Kostya came to dinner and prevented me from finishing, which was a nuisance, as it means I probably won’t be able to leave for Yasnaya tomorrow and shall have to pay more calls instead.

  I read my future in the cards today, and drew death on the king of clubs. I was terrified, and longed suddenly to be with Lyovochka, to make him happy, not to waste one moment of my life away from him. Yet when Sergei Ivanovich left, the thought that I wouldn’t be seeing him again for some time made me wretched. And torn between these two conflicting emotions, I longed to run off somewhere and take my life. I stood alone in my room in a state of torment…Oh, if only one could see into a person’s soul at such moments and understand what takes place there…But gradually suffering passed into prayer. I prayed long and earnestly, summoning up all my best thoughts, and began to feel better.

  6th Se
ptember. This morning I corrected one or two mistakes made yesterday in my calculations with the accountant, and left by the fast train. Home was friendly, peaceful and familiar, and I was glad to be back. I force myself to pray constantly, and rely on God to help me in my weakness.

  A lot of Obolenskys are here—Liza and her three children.

  12th September. Chaos at home. The footman has fallen in love with Sasha the dressmaker and is going to marry her. My maid Verochka, a mere baby of eighteen, is going to marry the bailiff on the 18th, and the cook has been taken to hospital. Ilya and Nurse are in Moscow. There has never been anything like it. Meanwhile a never-ending stream of guests keep arriving and staying. Today Maslov and Dunaev came.

  This morning L.N. read us Resurrection, the novel he is currently working on. I had heard it before—he said he had reworked it, but it’s still exactly the same. He read it to us three years ago, the summer after Vanechka’s death. And then as now I was struck by the beauty of the incidental details and episodes, and the hypocrisy of the plot—Nekhlyudov’s relationship with the prostitute in jail and the author’s own attitude to her. It’s just sentimentality, toying with strained, unnatural feelings that don’t exist.

  13th September. Rain all day and guests—an Englishman, a Mr Wright, I believe, and a stupid old maid called Ivanova who believes in spiritualism. These guests are a terrible burden imposed on our family, and especially on me. Only one thing interests me about them, the fact that they have been staying in England with Chertkov and the rest of the exiled Russian community. They found them in a bad way, and told us they couldn’t stay there any longer, because of the emotional tensions between them and the general hardships of their life. L.N. has been at pains to keep this from me, but I always sensed it…

  We went for a walk in the rain, which pours dismally without ceasing. I was about to play the piano, when I was startled by a frightful noise at the window; it was Lev Nikolaevich, summoning me to come and hear him read the end of his story. I was sorry to have to abandon the piano and the beautiful Bach aria I have been studying and learning to appreciate, but went all the same.

  Music has a strange effect on me; even when I play myself it suddenly makes everything clear, fills me with peaceful joy and enables me to see all life’s worries in a new light, calmly and lucidly.

  Not at all the effect Resurrection has on me. Everything in it is disturbing and worrying, everything induces discord…It torments me that an old man of seventy should describe with such extraordinary gusto, like a gourmet relishing a delicious piece of food, the scenes of adultery between the chambermaid and the officer. I know he is describing here his own liaison with his sister’s chambermaid in Pirogovo, he told me about it himself in great detail. I have since seen that Gasha, now an old woman of about seventy, for he has pointed her out to me, to my deep despair and disgust. It torments me too that Nekhlyudov the hero should be described in terms of his transformation from a state of degradation to a state of grace, and I see Lev Nikolaevich himself in this, and it’s the way he sees himself too. He describes all these moral transformations very well in his books, but never actually achieves them in his life. While he is telling everyone about these beautiful feelings of his, he is moved to tears by his own words, yet he goes on as he always has, with his fondness for sweet foods, his bicycle, horse-riding and physical love…

  All in all, as I thought the first time, this novel contains some brilliant descriptions and details, and a deeply, bitterly hypocritical state of affairs between hero and heroine.

  It put me in such a distressed frame of mind that I suddenly decided I would leave for Moscow, that I couldn’t possible love this work of my husband’s, that we had less and less in common…He noticed my mood, and accused me of never liking the things he liked and was working on. I replied that I loved his artistic work, that I had been in ecstasies over Father Sergei, was fascinated by Hadji Murat, highly valued ‘Master and Man’ and cried every time I read Childhood—but was repelled by Resurrection.

  “Yes but you don’t like me working with the Dukhobors either,” he said reproachfully.

  “I simply can find no pity in my heart for people who refuse military service, force the poorest peasants to enter the army in their place, and then demand millions of rubles to allow them to leave Russia,” I replied.

  I helped the starving in 1891, 1892 and this year too—I felt for them, worked for them and gave them money. No, if one is going to give money to anyone it should be to our own peasants who are dying of hunger, not to those arrogant revolutionary Dukhobors.

  Meanwhile his children and grandchildren have to eat black bread!

  15th September. Yesterday I felt so sad that L.N. and I had been on bad terms the day before, and he had listened so meekly to my criticisms of his story and the way it was being sold, that a sudden compassionate impulse made me go down to him in his study and tell him how sorry I was for the sharp things I said, and how much I longed for us to be reunited as friends. We both wept, and felt that despite all the things that separated us externally, we had nonetheless been bound together these past thirty-six years by love, and that was more precious than anything.

  17th September (Moscow). I arrived in Moscow yesterday evening.

  I went out first thing to buy provisions, then paid some calls, and this evening some young lads came round to see Misha, while I entertained Natasha Dehn, Miss Welsh, Goldenweiser, Dunaev and his wife, the Maklakovs, Uncle Kostya and Sergei Ivanovich. According to Yusha Pomerantsev, he had practised for three hours today to play for me this evening. He played Schumann’s Davidsbündlertänze, but the boys were sitting beside him playing cards and their shouting irritated him.

  19th September. I went to three banks today, paid in Ilya’s money and closed the account I had opened three years ago in Vanechka’s name. The little darling won’t need money now! Oh, when shall I pass into that blessed state!

  A letter from Mashenka, who says Lyovochka was sad on my name day. This was because he knew Sergei Ivanovich would be playing for me and was jealous again. But what could be more pure and innocent than the aesthetic pleasure of listening to marvellous music?

  22nd September. Ilya and Andryusha arrived to prepare me to receive Chertkov’s sister-in-law Olga Dieterichs, to whom Andryusha has just proposed.

  I hired a new governess for Sasha today, an elderly lady, the mother of three daughters. I have been busy with practical matters, and played the piano for three hours.

  I made a great mistake and personally delivered some books to Sergei Ivanovich. I very much regret this now, but I have been quite beside myself recently, lying awake until four in the morning, haunted by the stench of corpses, the misery of loneliness and the vanity of life, and desperately searching for something to grasp hold of, something to save me from this depression.

  23rd September. My wedding anniversary. Today I have been married to Lev Nikolaevich for thirty-six years—and we are apart.

  28th September (Yasnaya Polyana). I have come home. I turned off the highway at Yasenki in the dark and drove towards the church. It was a dismal journey in the dark through melting snow along the bad road, and I was weighed down with worries about Misha, whom I had left in a despondent state. But then what a treat to get back to the bright house at Yasnaya, filled with my dear ones who love me. I went straight to Lyovochka’s study, and we fell into each other’s arms as we used to when we were young, and kissed over and over again. His eyes shone with joy and love—it’s a long time since I have seen him so happy.

  3rd October. L.N. is buried in his work; he keeps putting more finishing touches to Resurrection, and has sent several chapters abroad to be translated. Today he was talking to a wandering man who was thrown into jail for four months after a strike, and was deported. L.N. was mesmerized by his stories.

  5th October. We have had news of Tanya. She has apparently refused Sukhotin, and they were both crying; Nurse writes that Misha told her she was pining and weeping.

 
Misha has arrived very depressed; he has been carousing in Moscow, and has returned to his family in the country to come to his senses. We had an interesting French couple here called M. and Mme de Gercy. They are extreme socialists and atheists, and have instigated several strikes in Paris. They are both passionate people, very fond of each other and very French, with their lively, temperamental natures and their capacity to live entirely for some cause, something beyond themselves.

  6th October. This morning I had a talk with Misha about his recent disorderly life and he said how remorseful he felt and how much he longed to do better and be more disciplined. What I found so touching was that he had come to be with his family and seek salvation in nature—and he seems to have found it too.

  Pasternak the artist came; L.N. invited him here as he wants him to do some illustrations for Resurrection for a French journal—called Illustration, I believe. What a lively, clever, educated man this Pasternak* is.

  17th October (Moscow). Sasha and I have been in Moscow since Sunday evening, the 11th. She is studying hard and behaving well at present. Long may this continue. It’s very hard having to keep an eye on Misha all the time, it’s a constant strain and worry that he’ll do something wrong, yet I feel he relies on me to worry about him. My life is constantly busy, selling the oats according to the plan, tidying the house, then publishing business and work. I am also copying Lev Nikolaevich’s diaries, which is one more torment for my soul.