Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Chapter 2

The Ancestors of Leo Tolstoy on His Mother's Side
The Princes Volkonsky trace their descent from Rurik. Since the days of Prince Volkonsky (Tolstoy's grandfather) the genealogical tree of the princes Volkonsky, painted in oil colors, has been preserved at Yasnaya Polyana. In this the founder of the line, St. Michael, Prince of Chernigov, is represented as holding in his hand a tree whose branches exhibit an enumeration of his descendants.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century Prince Ivan Turyevich, in the thirteenth generation from Rurik, had received the Volkonsky property, situated on the Volkona; this river flows through the present province of Kaluga and to some extent through Tula. Hence the family was known as that of the Princes Volkonsky.

His son, Feodor Ivanovich, was killed in the battle of Mamai in 1380.

Among other ancestors of Tolstoy we may mention his great-grandfather, Prince Sergey Feodorovich Volkonsky, who is the hero of the following legend:

"The prince took part in the Seven Years' War as Major-General. During the campaign his wife dreamed that a voice commanded her to have a small icon painted, showing on one side the source of life and on the other Nikolay the Thaumaturgist, and to send it to her husband. She selected a wooden plate, on which she ordered that the icon should be painted, and this she sent to Prince Sergey by the hands of Field-Marshal Apraksin.  The same day Sergey received by the courier an order to go out in search of the enemy; and having appealed for God's help, he put on the sacred image.  In a cavalry attack a bullet struck him on the breast, but it knocked against the icon and did not hurt him, and in this way the icon saved his life.  It was treasured in later years by his younger son, Nikolay Sergeyevich.  Prince Sergey Feodorovich died March 10, 1784."

Tolstoy was no doubt acquainted with this legend, and made use of it in War and Peace to illustrate the character of the devout princess Marie Volkonskaya, as it is made to appear in an incident represented as occurring before Prince Andrey's departure for the war. The reader will remember that the princess persuaded her brother to wear the image, handing it to Prince Andrey with the words: "You may think what you like, but do this for my sake. Please do it! The father of my father, our grandfather, wore it during all his wars...."

We see here artistic truth interwoven with historical, and if the latter gives the former an air of truthfulness, so it receives from it in return that touch of human nature which makes all the characters of War and Peace so lifelike and so irresistibly soul-stirring.

The younger son of Sergey Feodorovich, Nikolay Sergeyevich, was Tolstoy's grandfather on his mother's side. What we learn about him from the genealogy is as follows:

"Nikolay Sergeyevich, an infantry general, youngest son of Sergey Feodorovich and Princess Marie Dmitriyevna, nee Chaadayeva, was born March 30, 1753. In 1780 he was in the suite of the Empress Catharine II when she was in Mogilev, and was present at her first interview with the Emperor Joseph II.   In 1786 he accompanied the Empress to Taurida.  On the occasion of the wedding of the hereditary prince, afterward King Frederick William III, he was appointed special envoy to Berlin.  He died on February 3, 1821, on his estate, where he lived throughout those last years of his life which have been immortalized by his grandson in his novel War and Peace.   His remains rest in the Troitsko-Sergey monastery."

In his Reminiscences Tolstoy speaks of his maternal grandfather as follows:

"As for my grandfather, I know that having attained the high position of Commander-in-chief during the reign of Catherine, he suddenly lost it by refusing to marry Potemkin's niece and mistress, Varenka Engelhardt. To Potemkin's suggestion he answered: `What makes him think that I'll marry his strumpet?'

"In consequence of this exclamation, not only was his career checked, but he was nominated Governor of Archangel, where he remained, I believe, until Paul's accession, when he retired; and having after that married Princess Catherine Trubetskaya, he settled down in his estate, Yasnaya Polyana, which he had inherited from his father, Sergey Feodorovich.

"The Princess Catherine died early, leaving my grandfather an only daughter, and with this dearly beloved child and her friend, a Frenchwoman, he lived until his death about 1821. He was regarded as a very exacting master, but I never heard instances of his cruelty or of his inflicting the severe punishments which were usual at that time.  I believe that such cases did occur on his estate, but that the enthusiastic respect for his character and intelligence was so great among the servants and the peasants of his time, whom I have often questioned about him, that although I have heard condemnation of my father, I heard only praises of my grandfather's intelligence, business capacities, and interest in the welfare of the peasants and of his enormous household.  He erected splendid accommodation for his servants, and took care that they should always be not only well fed, but also well dressed and happy. On fete days he arranged recreations for them, swings, dancing, etc.

"Like every intelligent landowner of that time, he was concerned with the welfare of the peasants, and they prospered, the more so that my grandfather's high position, inspiring respect as it did in the police and local authorities, exempted them from oppression from this quarter.

"He probably possessed refined aesthetic feeling. All his buildings were not only durable and commodious, but also of considerable beauty; and these last words would apply also to the park which he laid out in front of the house.  He probably was very fond of music, for he kept a small but excellent orchestra, merely for himself and my mother.  I still remember an enormous elm tree which grew near the avenue of limes and was surrounded by benches with stands for the musicians.  In the mornings he used to walk in the avenue and listen to the music.  He could not bear sport, and he loved flowers and hot-house plants.

"A strange fate brought him into contact with that same Varenka Engelhardt whom he had refused to marry, for which refusal he had suffered during his service. Varenka married Prince Sergey Golitsin, who consequently received various promotions, decorations, and rewards.  With this Sergey Golitsin and his family, consequently also with Varvara Vassiliyevna (Varenka), my grandfather entered into so close a friendship that my mother was betrothed in her childhood to one of Golitsin's ten sons, and the two old princes exchanged portrait galleries (that is, of course, copied made by serf artists).  These Golitsin portraits are all still in our house, among them Prince Sergey Golitsin wearing the ribbon of St. Andrew, and the red-haired, fat Varvara Vassiliyevna dressed as a high lady of the Court.  The alliance, however, was not destined to be concluded: `My mother's betrothed, Lev Golitsin, died from fever before the marriage.'"7

In going through the genealogy of the Princes Volkonsky one comes across another interesting personage, a cousin of Tolstoy's mother, the Princess Varvara Aleksandrovna Volkonskaya, a woman who saw much that went on in the house of Tolstoy's grandfather. We find the following said about her:

"The Princess Varvara Aleksandrovna Volkonskaya, daughter of Prince Aleksandr Sergeyevich, after her mother's death frequently made long visits with her father to the house of his brother Nikolay Sergeyevich. Her she met the persons described by Count Leo Tolstoy in his novel War and Peace, and many details relating to them and to the events of their time remained fresh in her memory in her old age.  Toward the close of her life she moved into a neighboring village, Sogalevo, which also belonged to her parents.  Here she had a house built for herself close to the church, and in the society of a few old women house servants, who did not care to part from her, she passed her life there, full of memories of the past, reading and rereading War and Peace.  Long forgotten by others, the aged princess remained an object of respect and devotion to the local peasants.  To one casual visitor, who called on her in 1876, she related with delight how peasants of villages long before sold and handed over to strangers, had nevertheless on her ninetieth birthday presented her with a sack of flour and a silver rouble, while the women brought her a rouble, fowls, and some linen. She told this not only with a feeling of gratitude, but also with pride, since it was a proof that a kindly recollection of her parents was still cherished among the peasants.

"I knew the dear old lady, my mother's cousin. I made her acquaintance when living in Moscow in the fifties.  Tired of the dissipated worldly life I was then leading in Moscow, I went to stay with her on her little estate in the district of Klin, and passed a few weeks there.  She embroidered, managed her household work in her little farm, treated me to sour cabbage, cream cheese, and fruit marmalades, such as are only made by housewives on such small estates; and she told me about old times, about my mother, my grandfather, and the four coronations at which she had been present.  During my stay with her I wrote the Three Deaths.

"And this visit has remained one of the pure, bright reminiscences of my life."

Let us finally mention one more personality of the Volkonsky family, who, though not an ancestor of Tolstoy's in the direct line, is yet one of his kinsmen, Prince Sergey Grigoriyevich Volkonsky, the Decembrist. He is a second cousin of Tolstoy's mother and a grandson of Simon Fedorovich Volkonsky, brother of Prince Sergey Feodorovich, mentioned above.

The prince was born in 1788, took part in the campaign of 1812, and afterward joined the southern secret society; and for participation in the conspiracy of the Decembrists he was exiled to Eastern Siberia, where he remained for thirty years; the earlier years he spent doing hard labor in irons, but afterward he lived there in Siberia as a settler. The journey and arrival of his wife, Princess Marie Nikolayevna, are described in the well-known poem of Nekrasov.

In 1801 his brother Prince Nikolay Grigoriyevich Volkonsky took, by order of the Emperor Aleksandr I, the surname Repnin, that of his grandfather on his mother's side, whose family in the direct line had died out. "Let not the family of the princes Repnin," said the ukase, "which so gloriously served its country, become extinct with the death of the last of them, but let it be renewed, and remain with its name and example never to be obliterated in the remembrance of the Russian nobility."

Prince Nikolay Grigoriyevich took part in all the campaigns against Napoleon and in the national war. For his share in the battle of Austerlitz he was rewarded by St. George's Order of the fourth class. In the battle he commanded a squadron and took part in the well-known attack of the cavalry guards described in War and Peace, in which he was wounded in the head and otherwise severely hurt. The French bore him from the battlefield and carried him to the hospital tent. On hearing of this, Napoleon ordered that he should be brought on the following day to his quarters, and out of respect for his valor he offered to set him free with all the officers under his command, on the sole condition that they should not take part in the war for two years. Nikolay Grigoriyevich thanked Napoleon for the offer, but said that "he had given his oath to serve his emperor to the last drop of his blood, and therefore could not accept the proposal."

Shortly afterward, on his return from captivity, he was given leave of absence out of consideration for his wounds.

In the Russian periodical entitled Olden Times of 1890, p. 209, appears a letter from Prince Repnin to Mikhailovskiy-Danilevskiy, a veteran of the national war. In this letter Prince Repnin relates in detail the episode described in War and Peace, and quotes the actual words of his conversation with Napoleon. The first part of this conversation is exactly reproduced in the novel War and Peace.