COUNT LEO NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOY had known my mother from his childhood and was a friend of hers, though he was two and a half years younger. Now and then on his way to Moscow he used to pay a visit to our family. His father, Count Nikolai Ilitch Tolstoy was very friendly with my grandfather, Alexander Mikhailovich Islenev, and they used to visit each other at the village Krasnoye and the hamlet Yasnaya Polyana. In August, 1862, my mother took us girls to see our grandfather at the village of Ivitsi in Odoevski, and on our way we stopped at Yasnaya Polyana which my mother had not seen since she was a child; at the time my mother's greatest friend, Marie Nikolaevna Tolstoy, was staying there, having just returned from Algiers. On our way back Leo Nikolaevich accompanied 12 Sept. 1862. I am in love, as I did not think it was possible to be in love. I am a madman; I'll shoot myself, if it goes on like this. They had an evening party; she is charming in everything.... 13 Sept. 1862. To-morrow as soon as I get up, I shall go and tell everything or shoot myself.... I accepted Leo Nikolaevich and our engagement lasted only one week. On 23 September we were married in the royal church of the Nativity of Our Lady, and immediately afterwards left for Yasnaya Polyana in a new carriage with a team of six horses and a postillion. We were accompanied by After coming to Yasnaya Polyana, we decided to settle down there with Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna Ergolskii. After the first days of our married life had passed, Leo Nikolaevich realized that besides his happiness he needed activity and work. In his diary of December, 1862, he wrote: "I feel the force of the need to write." That force was a great one, creating a great work which made the first years of our married life bright with joy and happiness. Soon after our marriage Leo Nikolaevich finished Polikushka, finally completed The Cossacks and gave it to Katkov's Russkii Vyestnik. He then began to work on the Decembrists whose fate and activity interested him a great deal. When he began to write about that period, he considered it necessary to relate who they were, to describe their origin and previous history, and In 1864 a good deal of it was already written, and Leo Nikolaevich often read aloud to me and to our two cousins, Varya and Lise, the daughters of Marie Nikolaevna Tolstoy, the charming passages as soon as he had written them. In the same year he read a few chapters to friends and to two literary men, Zhemchuzhnikov and Aksakov, in Moscow, and they were in raptures over it. During the first years at Yasnaya Polyana we lived a very retired life. I could not recall anything of importance during that Only at times in the evenings, when we had put the children to bed and sent off the MSS. or corrected proofs to Moscow, as a recreation we would sit down at the piano and till late at night play duets. Leo Nikolaevich was particularly fond of Haydn's and Mozart's symphonies. It was because he felt the beauty of his own creations that Leo Nikolaevich wrote: "The poet takes the best out of his life and puts it into his writings. Hence his writing is beautiful and his life bad." But his life at that time was not bad; it was as good and as pure as his work. How I loved copying War and Peace! I wrote in my diary: "The consciousness of serving a genius and a great man has given me strength for anything." I also wrote in a letter to Leo Nikolaevich: "The copying of War and Peace uplifts me very In November, 1866, Leo Nikolaevich used to go to the Rumyantsev Museum and read up everything about the freemasons. Before leaving Yasnaya Polyana he always left me work to copy. When I had finished it, I sent it off to Moscow, and I wrote to my In copying I was often astonished and could not understand why Leo Nikolaevich corrected or destroyed what seemed so beautiful, and I used to be delighted if he put back what he had struck out. Sometimes proofs which had been finally corrected and sent off, were returned again to Leo Nikolaevich at his request in order to be recorrected and recopied. Or a telegram would be sent to substitute one word for another. My whole soul became so immersed in copying that I began myself to feel when it was not altogether right, for instance, when there were frequent repetitions of the same word, long periods, wrong punctuation, obscurity, etc. I used to point all these things out to Leo Nikolaevich. Sometimes he was glad for my remarks; sometimes he would explain why it ought to remain as it was: he would say that details do not The first thing which I copied out in my clumsy, but legible writing was Polikushka, and for years afterwards that work delighted me. I used to long for the evening when Leo Nikolaevich would bring me something newly written or recorrected. Some passages in War and Peace, and also in his other works, had to be copied over and over again. Others, for instance the description of the uncle's hunting party in War and Peace, were written once and for all and were not corrected. I remember how Leo Nikolaevich called me down to his study and read aloud to me that chapter just after he had written it, and we smiled and were happy together. In copying I sometimes allowed myself to make remarks and to ask him to strike out anything which I thought not sufficiently pure to be read by young people, for instance in the scene of the beautiful Ellen's cynicism, and Leo Nikolaevich granted my request. But often in my life, when copying the poetical and charming passages in my husband's works, I have wept, not only because It used to grieve me much when Leo Nikolaevich suddenly became depressed and disappointed with his work, and wrote to me that he did not like the novel and was miserable. This was particularly the case in 1864, when he broke his arm, and I wrote to him in Moscow: "Why have you lost heart in everything? Everything depresses you; nothing goes right. Why have you lost heart and courage? Haven't you the strength to rouse yourself? Remember how pleased you were with the novel, how well you thought it all out, and suddenly you don't like it. No, no, you must not. Now, come to us, and instead of the Kremlin's walls you will see our Chepyzh, If Leo Nikolaevich stopped working, I used to feel dull and wrote to him: "Prepare, prepare work for me." In Moscow he sold the first part of War and Peace to Katkov for the Russkii Vyestnik, and he handed the MS. over to the secretary, Lyubimov. When Leo Nikolaevich had finished War and Peace, I asked him to publish that beautiful epic in book form, and not to publish it in magazines, and he agreed. Soon afterwards N. N. Strakhov's brilliant review of it came out, and Leo Nikolaevich said that the place which Strakhov gave to War and Peace by his appreciation would remain permanent. Princess Paskevich was the first to translate War and Peace into French for In 1869 the printing of the first edition of War and Peace was completed; it was quickly sold out and a second printed. The writer Shedrin's opinion of War and Peace was strange; he said with contempt that it reminded him of the chatter of nursemaids and old ladies. After finishing his great work, Leo Nikolaevich's need for creative activity did not come to an end. New ideas sprang up in his mind. In working at the period of Peter the Great, despite all his efforts, he was unable to describe the period, particularly its every-day life. I wrote to my sister about it: "All the characters of the time of Peter the Great he now has ready; they are dressed, arranged, sitting in their places, but they don't breathe yet. Perhaps they will begin to live." But these characters did not come to life. The beginning of this work on the time of Peter the Great still remains unpublished. At one time Leo Nikolaevich intended to write the history of Mirovich, but he did not accomplish that either. In order to amuse old Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna Ergolskii, I sent my son Serge, who was her godson, to read aloud to her Pushkin's Tales of Byelkin. She fell asleep while he was reading, and Serge went up to When he had written the first part of Anna Karenina and had given me the second part to be copied, Leo Nikolaevich suddenly stopped working at it and became interested in education. In 1874 he wrote to Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy: "I am again deep in education, as I was fourteen years ago. I am writing a novel, but I cannot tear myself away from the living in order to describe imaginary people." However difficult I might find it to combine The conditions under which Anna Karenina was written were much more difficult than those under which War and Peace was written. Then we had undisturbed happiness, now there died in succession three of our children After Anna Karenina, Leo Nikolaevich, wishing to purify the literature read by simple folk and to introduce more morality and art into it, wrote a series of stories and legends which I admired very much; I sympathized keenly with their idea and object. I remember being present at the university when these legends were read aloud, and I wrote to Leo Nikolaevich at Yasnaya Polyana: "The legends were a tremendous success. They were beautifully read by Professor Storozhenko. The majority of the audience were students. The impression which the stories makes on one is that the style is remarkably severe, concise, not a single unnecessary word, everything true and pointed—a harmonious whole. Much meaning, few words; it gives one satisfaction right up to the end." I mention these works, as I have done those which were created during the happiest years of our life. |