Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Chapter 3

Tolstoy's Parents
In speaking of his parents, Tolstoy's Reminiscences follow a certain chronological order. First he tells us of the faintly seen features of his mother, supplementing his description by accounts furnished by surviving members of her family; after this he gives his fresher and more exact recollections of his father and of his aunts. We propose to follow his example, endeavoring to change as little as possible the order of his narrative. In giving his account of his father and mother we have omitted only what he says of his grandfather Volkonsky, which we have already quoted in the chapter dealing with the ancestors.

"My mother I do not at all remember. I was a year and a half old when she died.  Owing to some strange chance no portrait whatever of her has been preserved, so that, as a real physical being, I cannot represent her to myself.  I am in a sense glad of this, for in my conception of her there is only her spiritual figure, and all that I know about her is beautiful, and I think this is so, not only because all who spoke to me of my mother tried to say only what was good, but because there was actually very much of this good in her.

"However, not only my mother, but also all those who surrounded my infancy, from my father to the coachman, appear to me as exceptionally good people. Probably my pure loving feeling, like a bright ray, disclosed to me in people their best qualities (such always exist); when all these people seemed to me exceptionally good, I was much nearer truth than when I saw only their defects.

"My mother was not handsome. She was very well educated for her time.  Besides Russian, which, contrary to the national illiterateness then current, she wrote correctly, she knew four other languages, French, German, English, and Italian, and was probably sensitive to art.  She played well on the piano, and her friends have told me that she was a great hand at narrating most attractive tales invented at the moment.  But the most valuable quality in her was that she was, according to the words of the servants, although hot-tempered, yet self-restrained.  `She would get quite red in the face, even cry,' her maid told me, `but would never say a rude word.'  Indeed she did not know such words. "I have preserved several of her letters to my father and aunts, and her diary concerning the conduct of Nikolenka (my eldest brother), who was six years old when she died, and I think resembled her more than the rest of us. They both possessed a feature very dear to me, which I infer from my mother's letters, but personally witnessed in my brother: their indifference to the opinion of others, and their modesty in their endeavors to conceal those mental, educational, and moral advantages which they had in comparison with others. They were, as it were, ashamed of these advantages. "I well knew these qualities in my brother, about whom Turgenev very correctly remarked that he did not possess those faults which are necessary in order to become a great writer. "I remember once how a very silly and bad man, an adjutant of the governor, when out shooting with him, ridiculed him in my presence, and how my brother smiled good-humoredly, evidently greatly relishing the position. "I remark the same feature in my mother's letters. She evidently stood on a higher spiritual level than my father and his family, with the exception, perhaps, of Tatyana Yergolskaya, with whom I passed half my life, and who was a woman remarkable for her moral qualities. "Besides this, they both had yet another feature which I believe contributed to their indifference to the judgment of men--it was that they never condemned any one. This I know most certainly about my brother, with whom I lived half my life. The utmost extreme expression of his negative relation to a man consisted with my brother in good-natured humor and a similar smile. I observe the same in my mother's letters, and have heard of it from those who knew her. "In the Lives of the Saints, by Dmitriy Rostovskiy, there is a short narrative which has always exceedingly touched me, of the life of a certain monk who had, to the knowledge of all his brethren, many faults, and, notwithstanding this, appeared to an old monk in a dream among the saints in a place of honor. The astonished old man asked: `How could this monk, so unrestrained in many respects, deserve such a reward?'  The answer was: `He never condemned any one.' "If such rewards did exist, I think that my brother and my mother would have received them. "A third feature which distinguishes my mother among her circle was her truthfulness and the simple tone of her letters. At that time the expression of exaggerated feelings was especially cultivated in letters: `Incomparable, divine, the joy of my life, unutterably precious,' etc., were the most usual epithets between friends, and the more inflated the less sincere. "This feature, although not in a strong degree, is noticeable in my father's letters. He writes: `Ma bien douce amie, je ne pense qu'au bonheur d'etre aupres de toi.' Whereas she addresses her letters invariably in the same way, `Mon bon ami,' and in one of her letters she frankly says, `Le temps me parait long sans toi, quoiqu'a dire vrai, nous ne jouissons pas beaucoup de ta societe quand tu es ici,' and she always subscribes herself in the same way: `Ta devouee Marie.' "My mother passed her childhood partly in Moscow, partly in the country with a clever and talented, though proud man, my grandfather Volkonsky. I have been told that my mother loved me very much, and called me `Mon petit Benjamin.' "I think that her love for her deceased betrothed, precisely because it was terminated by death, was that poetic love which girls feel only once. Her marriage with my father was arranged by her relatives and my father's. She was a rich orphan, no longer young, whereas my father was a merry, brilliant young man with name and connections, but the family fortune was much impaired by my grandfather Tolstoy--indeed my father even refused to accept the heritage. I think that my mother loved my father, but more because he was her husband and especially as he was the father of her children; she was never in love with him. Of real loves she had, as I understand, experienced three or four: there was her love to her deceased betrothed; then a passionate friendship for a Frenchwoman, Mlle. Enissienne, about which I heard from my aunts and which I believe was terminated by a disillusionment. Mlle. Enissienne married a cousin of my mother's Prince Mikhail Volkonsky, the grandfather of the present-day writer of that name. "This is what my mother writes about her friendship with this lady. She is referring to two girls who were living in her house: "`I get on very well with both of them. I do some music, I laugh and joke with the one, and I talk sentiment and condemn the frivolous world with the other. I am passionately loved by both and am the confidante of each; I reconcile them when they have quarreled, for there never was friendship more quarrelsome and funny to witness than theirs; it is a series of sulks, tears, reconciliations, and reproaches, and then of transports of affection; in a word, I see as in a mirror the exalted and romantic friendship which had animated and troubled my life during several years. I contemplate them with an indefinable feeling; sometimes I envy them their illusion which I no longer possess, but of which I know the sweetness. Let us ask frankly whether the solid and real happiness of ripe years is worth the charming illusions of youth, when everything is embellished by the all-powerful imagination. And sometimes I smile at their childishness.' "Her third strong feeling, perhaps the most passionate, was her love for my eldest brother Koko, the diary of whose conduct she kept in Russian--putting down in it his bad conduct--and then read to him. From this diary one can see that while she had a passionate desire to do all that was possible toward giving Koko the best education, she had a very indefinite idea as to what was necessary for this purpose.  Thus, for instance, she rebukes him for being too sensitive and being moved to tears at the sight of animals suffering.  A man, according to her ideas, should be firm. Another fault which she endeavors to correct in him is that he is absorbed in his thoughts, and instead of `Bon soir,' or `Bon jour,' says to his grandmother, `Je vous remercie.' "The fourth strong feeling which did perhaps exist as my aunts told me--I earnestly hope that it did exist--was her love for me, which took the place of her love for Koko, who at the time of my birth had already detached himself from his mother and been transferred into male hands. It was a necessity for her to love what was not herself, and one love took the place of another. "Such was the figure of my mother in my imagination. She appeared to me a creature so elevated, pure, and spiritual that often in the middle period of my life, during my struggle with overwhelming temptations, I prayed to her soul, begging her to aid me, and this prayer always helped me much. "My mother's life in her father's family was a very good and happy one, as I may conclude from letters and stories. "My father's household consisted of his mother, an old lady; of her daughter, my aunt Countess Aleksandra Osten-Saken, and her ward Pashenka; of another aunt, as we used to call her, although she was a very distant relative, Tatyana Yergolskaya, who had been educated in my grandfather's house and had passed all her later life in my father's; and the tutor, Feodor Ivanovich Resselier, fairly correctly described by me in Childhood. We were five children--Nikolay, Sergey, Dmitriy, myself, the youngest boy, and our younger sister Mashenka, at whose birth my mother died.  My mother's very short married life--I think it lasted not more than nine years--was very full, and adorned by everyone's love to her and hers to every one who lived with her.  Judging by the letters, I see that she lived at that time in great solitude.  Scarcely any one visited Yasnaya Polyana except our intimate friends the Ogaryovs and some relatives who, if casually travelling along the high-road might look in upon them. "My mother's life was passed in occupations with the children, in reading novels aloud of an evening to my grandmother, and in serious readings, such as Emile by Rousseau, and discussions about what had been read; in playing the piano, teaching Italian to one of her aunts, walks, and household work. In all families there are periods when illness and death are yet unknown, and the members live peacefully.  Such a period, it seems to me, my mother was living through in her husband's family until her death.  No one died, no one was seriously ill, my father's disordered affairs were improving.  All were healthy, happy, and friendly.  My father amused everyone with his stories and jokes.  I did not witness that time.  At the time with which my remembrances begin, my mother's death had already laid its seal upon the life of our family. "All this I have described from what I have heard and from letters. Now I shall begin about what I have my self experienced and remember. I shall not speak about the vague, indistinct recollections of infancy, in which one cannot yet distinguish reality from dream-land. I will commence with what I clearly remember, with the circumstances and the persons that surrounded me from my first years. The first place among them is occupied, of course, by my father, if not owing to his influence upon me, yet from my feeling toward him. "My father from his early years had remained his parents' only son. His younger brother, Ilenka, was injured, became a cripple, and died in childhood.  In the year 1812, my father was seventeen years old, and, notwithstanding the horror and fear and pleading of his parents, he entered the military service.  At that time Prince Nikolay Gorchakov, a near relative of my grandmother, Princess Gorchakov, was Minister of War, his brother Andrey was a general in command of troops in the field, and my father was attached to him as adjutant.  He went through the campaigns of the years '13 and '14, and in '14, having somewhere in Germany been despatched as a courier, he was taken prisoner by the French, and was liberated only in the year '15, when our troops entered Paris.  Even at the age of twenty my father was not a chaste youth, but before he entered the military service, consequently when he was sixteen years old, a connection had been arranged by his parents between him and a servant-girl, as such a union was at that time deemed necessary for health. A son was born, Mishenka, who was made a postilion, and who, during my father's life, lived well, but afterward went wrong and often applied for help to us, his half-brothers. I remember my strange feeling of consternation when this brother of mine, fallen into destitution, bearing a greater resemblance to our father than any of us, begged help of us and was thankful for ten or fifteen rubles which were given him. "After the campaign, my father, disillusioned as to military service, as is evident from his letters, resigned and came to Kazan, where my grandfather, already completely ruined, was governor, and where also resided my father's sister who was married to Yushkov. My grandfather soon died in Kazan, and my father remained with an inheritance which was not equal to all the debts, and with an old mother accustomed to luxury, as well as a sister and a cousin, on his hands.  At this time his marriage with my mother was arranged for him, and he removed to Yasnaya Polyana, where, after living nine years with my mother, he became a widower, and within my memory lived with us. "My father was a lively man of sanguine temperament; he was of medium height, well built, with a pleasant face, and eyes of a constantly serious expression. His life was passed in attending to the estate, a business in which he, as it seems, was not very expert, but in which he exercised a virtue great for that time: he not only was not cruel, but was, perhaps, even weak. So that during his time, too, I never heard of corporal punishment. Probably it was administered, for it is difficult to imagine at that time the management of an estate without the use of such punishments, but the cases were probably so rare, and my father took so little part in them, that we children never came to hear of them. It was only after my father's death that I learned for the first time that such punishments took place at home. "We children with our tutor were returning home from a walk, when by the barn we met the fat steward, Andrey Flyin, followed by the coachman's assistant - `Squinting Kuzma,' as he was called - with a sad face. He was a married man, no longer young.  One of us asked Andrey Flyin where he was going, and he quietly answered that he was going to the barn, where Kuzma had to be punished.  I cannot describe the dreadful feeling which these words and the sight of the good-natured, crestfallen Kuzma produced on me.  In the evening I related this to my aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna, who had educated us and hated corporal punishment, never having allowed it for us any more than for the serfs, wherever she had influence.  She was greatly revolted at what I told her, and rebuking me said: `And why did you not stop him?'  Her words grieved me still more...I never thought that we could interfere in such things, and yet it appeared that we could. But it was too late, and the dreadful deed had been committed. "I return to what I knew about my father, and how I represent to myself his life. His occupation consisted in managing the estate, and above all in litigation, which was very frequent at that time, and I think particularly so with my father, who had to disentangle my grandfather's affairs.  These lawsuits often compelled my father to leave home, besides which he used often to go out shooting and hunting.  His chief sporting companions were his old friend, a wealthy bachelor, Kireyevskiy, Yazikov, Glebov, and Islenyev.  My father, in common with other landowners of that time, had special favorites among the house serfs.  Of these there were two brothers, Petrusha and Matyusha, both handsome, smart fellows, who helped in the sport.  At home my father, besides his occupations with his business and with us children, was greatly given to reading.  He collected a library consisting, in accordance with the taste of the time, of French classics, historical works, and books on natural history by Buffon, Cuvier, etc. My aunt told me that my father had made a rule not to buy new books until he had read those previously purchased. But although he read much, it is difficult to believe that he mastered all these Histoires des Croisades and des Papes which he purchased for his library. As far as I can judge, he had no leanings toward science, but was on a level with the educated people of his time. Like most men of the first period of Aleksandr's reign, who served in the campaigns of the years '13, '14, and '15, he was not what is now called a Liberal, but, merely as a matter of self-respect, he regarded it as impossible to serve either during the latter part of Aleksandr's reign or during the reign of Nicholas. Not only did he never serve himself, but even all his friends were similarly people of independent character, who did not serve, and who were in some opposition to the government of Nicholas I. During all my childhood and even youth, our family had no intimate relations with any government official. Naturally I understood nothing about this in childhood, but I did understand that my father never humbled himself before any one, nor altered his brisk, merry, and often chaffing tone. And this feeling of self-respect which I witnessed in him increased my love, my admiration for him. I remember him in his study, where we used to come to say good-night to him and sometimes merely to play, where he with a pipe in his mouth used to sit on a leather couch and caress us, and sometimes, to our immense delight, used to allow us to mount the couch behind his back, while he would continue reading, or talking to the steward standing by the door, or to S.I. Yazikov, my godfather, who often stayed with us. I remember how he used to come downstairs to us and draw pictures which appeared to us the height of perfection, as well as how he once made me declaim to him some verses of Pushkin, which had taken my fancy, and which I had learned by heart: `To the Sea,' `Fare thee well, free element,' and to Napoleon, `The wonderful fate is accomplished, the great man is extinguished,' and so on. He was evidently impressed by the pathos with which I recited these verses, and, having listened to the end, he in a significant way exchanged glances with Yazikov, who was there. I understood that he saw something good in this recitation of mine, and at this I was very happy. I remember his merry jokes and stories at dinner and supper, and how my grandmother and aunt and we children laughed listening to him. I remember also his journeys to town, and the wonderfully fine appearance he had when he put on his frock-coat and tight-fitting trousers. But I principally remember him in connection with hunting. I remember his departures from the house for the hunt. It afterward always seemed to me that Pushkin took his description of the departure for the hunt in Count Nulin from my father. I remember how we used to go for walks with him, how the young greyhounds who had followed him gambolled on the unmown fields in which the high grass flicked them and tickled their bellies, how they flew round with their tails on one side, and how he admired them. I remember how, on the day of the hunting festival of the 1st September, we all drove out in a lineyka to the cover, where a fox had been let loose, and how the foxhounds pursued him, and, somewhere out of our sight, the greyhounds caught him. I particularly well remember the baiting of a wolf. It was quite near the house. We all came out to look. A big gray wolf, muzzled, and with his legs tied, was brought out in a cart. He lay quietly, only looking through the corners of his eyes at those who approached him. At a place behind the garden the wolf was taken out, held to the ground with pitchforks, and his legs untied. He began to struggle and jerk about, fiercely biting the bit of wood tied into his mouth. At last this was untied at the back of his neck, and some one called out, `Off!' The forks were lifted, the wolf got up and stood still for about ten seconds, but there was a shout raised, and the dogs were let loose. The wolf, the dogs, and the horsemen all flew down the field; and the wolf escaped. I remember how my father, scolding and angrily gesticulating, returned home. "But the pleasantest recollections of him were those of his sitting with grandmother on the sofa and helping her to play Patience. My father was polite and tender with everyone, but to grandmother he was always particularly tenderly subservient.  They used to sit, grandmother, with her long chin, in a cap with ruche and a bow, on the sofa, playing Patience, and from time to time taking pinches from a gold snuffbox.  Close to the sofa, in an arm-chair, sat Petrovna, a Tula tradeswoman who dealt in fire-arms, dressed in her military jacket, and spinning thread, and at intervals tapping her reel against the wall, in which she had already knocked a hole.  My aunts are sitting in arm-chairs, and one of them is reading out loud.  In one of the arm-chairs, having arranged a comfortable depression in it, lies black-and-tan Milka, my father's favorite fast greyhound, with beautiful black eyes.  We come to say good-night, and sometimes sit here. We always take leave of grandmother and our aunts by kissing their hands. I remember once, in the middle of the game of Patience and of the reading, my father interrupts my aunt, points to the looking-glass, and whispers something. We all look in the same direction. It was the footman Tikhon, who, knowing that my father was in the drawing-room, was going into his study to take some tobacco from a big, leather, folding tobacco-pouch. My father sees him in the looking-glass, and examines his figure, carefully stepping on tiptoe. My aunts are laughing. Grandmother for a long time does not understand, and when she does she cheerfully smiles. I am enchanted by my father's kindness, and taking leave of him with special tenderness, kiss his white muscular hand. I loved my father very much, but did not know how strong this love of mine for him was until he died." To the above valuable information about his parents, given by Tolstoy himself, we need add only a few facts taken from historical documents. Count Nikolay Ilich Tolstoy, the father of Lev Tolstoy, was born in 1797.  In the documents of the Kazan University, among the papers connected with Tolstoy's admission as a student, one of some interest is the certificate of the military service of his father, Nikolay Ilich. We give the material part of the text of this document, dated January 29, 1825. "The bearer of this, Lieutenant-Colonel Nikolay Ilich, the son of Tolstoy, as appears by the official documents, is twenty-eight years old, has the order of St. Vladimir of the fourth class, belongs to the nobility, owns no serfs. Being a government secretary, he entered his Majesty's service as a cornet in 1812, June 11, in the Irkutsk regular regiment of Cossacks, whence he was transferred to the Irkutsk regiment of hussars in 1812, August 18; he distinguished himself and was promoted lieutenant in 1813, April 27; and in the same year was promoted second cavalry captain. He further distinguished himself, and was transferred in the same rank to the regiment of horse-guards in 1814, August 8. From this he was transferred to the regiment of the prince of Orange with the rank of major in 1817, December 11. Having resigned, owing to illness, he was rewarded with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1819, March 14. He received an appointment in the Military Orphanage as assistant to the superintendent in 1821, December 15. During his service he took part in various campaigns. In 1813 he was often in action; on April 2 he was taken prisoner by the enemy before the fall of Paris, and, for his distinguished conduct in battle, was rewarded as above described with the ranks of lieutenant and captain of cavalry, and the order of St. Vladimir of the fourth class with ribbon." From the same document we learn that count N.I. Tolstoy resigned his post in the Military Orphanage and definitely retired from service, "for family reasons," January 8, 1824. After his resignation Count Nikolay Ilich Tolstoy settled in Yasnaya Polyana. At that time he and his wife had only one child, their son Nikolay, one year old, born in 1823.  In the country the family quickly increased.  On February 17, 1826, a son, Sergey, was born; on April 23, 1827, Dmitriy; on August 28, 1828, a third son, Lev. The peaceful and calm country life of the family did not last long.  In 1830, having brought into the world a daughter, Mariya (born March 7), the Countess Tolstoy died, leaving her husband with five children. After the death of their mother the children were left under the care of a distant relation, the above-mentioned Miss Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya, who had been practically brought up in the house of Count Ilya Andreyevich, the grandfather of our Count Tolstoy. An interesting episode in the life of the father of Tolstoy is remembered in the family. In 1813, after the blockade of Erfurt, he was sent to St. Petersburg with despatches, and on his way back, near the village of St. Obie, he was taken prisoner together with his orderly, but the latter managed to hide in his boot all his master's gold coins. For several months, while they were kept prisoners, he never took off his boots, for fear he should reveal his secret. He had to bear extreme discomfort; he had, for instance, a bad sore on his foot, still he showed no sign of pain. When Nikolay Ilich arrived in Paris he could, thanks to his orderly, live in luxury. He long retained a grateful recollection of his devoted servant. Any one who has read Tolstoy's personal reminiscences will readily agree that the parents whom he describes in the novel Childhood are not his own. In fact, so far as we know, in the father was represented A.M. Islenev, a neighboring landowner and a friend of Tolstoy's father. The mother is an imaginary character. But in War and Peace it is not difficult to find an artistic description of his parents in the persons of Count Nikolay Ilich Rostov and Princess Mariya Volkonskaya. Almost every member of the Rostov family, from Count Ilya Andreyevich to Sonya the adopted, corresponds to some personage in the Tolstoy family; and the inhabitants of the Bleak Hills can be similarly brought into comparison. The reading of this novel therefore may add much to our knowledge of the manners and characters of the ancestors and parents of Tolstoy.