University of Virginia Library

1. PART I
The Family Origin of Leo Tolstoy

1. Chapter I
The Ancestors of Leo Tolstoy on His Father's Side

The history of the Counts Tolstoy presents a picture of an ancient and noble family descending, according to the accounts of genealogists, from the good and true man Indris, who came from Germany to Chernigov in 1353 with his two sons and a retinue of 3,000 men; he was baptized and received the name of Leonty; he became the founder of several noble families. His great-grandchild, Andrey Kharitonovich, who moved from Chernigov to Moscow and received from the Grand Duke Vasiliy Tyomniy the surname of Tolstoy, was the founder of the branch known to us as the Tolstoys (in which branch Count Lev Tolstoy was born in the twentieth generation from the founder Indris).

One of his descendants, Peter Andreyevich Tolstoy, became a dignitary at the Russian court in 1683, and was afterward one of the chief actors in the rebellion of the Streltsi. The fall of the Tsarevna Sofya caused this Tolstoy abruptly to change his attitude and pass over to the Tsar Peter; but the latter behaved to him for a long time with coldness, and a considerable period passed before Peter Andreyevich enjoyed the full confidence of the Tsar. It is said that at their merry banquets Tsar Peter delighted to pull the big wig off Peter Tolstoy's head, and tapping him on the bald crown to repeat: "Little head, little head, if you were not so clever, you would have parted from your body long ago."

The Tsar's suspicions were not allayed even by the military achievements of Peter Tolstoy during the second Azov campaign (1696).

In 1697 the Tsar sent "volunteers" to study in foreign countries, and Peter Tolstoy, already a middle-aged man, offered himself to go abroad to study naval matters. Two years which he spent in Italy gave him an opportunity of seeing something of the culture of Western Europe. At the end of 1701 Peter Tolstoy was appointed ambassador in Constantinople, an important but very difficult post. During the complications of 1710-1713 Peter Tolstoy was twice confined in the Castle of the Seven Towers, a fact which accounts for this castle being represented in the Tolstoy coat-of-arms.

In 1717 Tolstoy rendered an important service to the Tsar, and so strengthened his position for all subsequent time. Having been sent to Naples, where the Tsarevich Alexis was hiding with his mistress Euphrosyne in the Castle of St. Elmo, Peter Tolstoy, with the help of the lady, adroitly outwitted the Tsarevich, and by means of threats and false promises induced him to return to Russia. For his active participation in the subsequent trial and secret execution of the Tsarevich carried out by Peter Tolstoy, with the aid of Rumyantsev1, Oshakov, and Buturlin, his accomplices, at the direction of Peter I, Peter Tolstoy received a present of land, and was appointed Chief of the Secret Chamber, where there was soon a great deal to be done in consequence of the rumors and agitations provoked among the people by the fate of Alexis. From that time Peter Tolstoy is conspicuous as one of the most intimate and trusted persons about the Emperor. The affair of the Tsarevich brought Peter into favor with the Empress Catherine, and on the day of her coronation, May 7, 1724, he was made a Count. After the death of Peter I, Tolstoy, together with Menshikov, greatly aided Catherine's accession to the throne, and consequently enjoyed much favor during her reign. But on Peter II's accession his fall ensued. In spite of his advanced age—he was eighty-two years old—he was exiled to the Solovetsky Convent, where, however, he did not live long. He died in 1729.

We still possess the diary of Peter Tolstoy's journey abroad in 1697-1699, a characteristic exhibition of the impression made on men of his period by their acquaintance with Western Europe. Besides this, in 1706, Peter Tolstoy wrote a detailed description of the Black Sea. There also exist two translations he made: Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Administration of the Turkish Empire.

Peter Tolstoy had a son, Ivan Petrovich, who was himself deprived of his office, that of President of the Court, at the same time as his father, and was exiled to the same convent, where he died soon after him.

It was not till May 26, 1760, when the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna was already on the throne, that the descendants of Peter Andreyevich were restored to the rank of counts in the person of Peter's grandson, Andrey Ivanovich, the grandfather of Lev Tolstoy.

"I heard from my aunt the following story about Andrey Ivanovich, who whilst very young married the Princess Schetinin. For some reason or other his wife had to go to a ball without her husband. Having started on her way, probably in a covered sledge, from which the seat had been removed in order that her high headgear should not be injured, the young countess, perhaps seventeen years old, remembered that she had not said goodby to her husband, and returned home.

"When she arrived, she found him in tears; he was so much distressed at his wife's leaving the house without bidding him goodby."2

In his Reminiscences Tolstoy speaks of his grandfather and grandmother on his father's side as follows:

"My grandmother, Pelageya Nikolayevna, was the daughter of the blind Prince Nikolay Ivanovich Gorchakov, who had amassed a large fortune. As far as I can form an idea of her character, she was not very intelligent, poorly educated—like all at that time, she knew French better than Russian (and to this her education was limited)—and exceedingly spoilt, first by her father, then by her husband, and lastly, in my time, by her son. Besides this, as a daughter of the elder branch, she enjoyed great regard from the Gorchakovs: from the former Minister of War, Nikolay Ivanovich, from Andrey Ivanovich and the sons of Dmitriy Petrovich, the freethinker, Peter, Sergey, and Mikhail of Sevastopol.

"My grandfather, Ilya Andreyevich, her husband was, according to my view of him, a man of limited intelligence, gentle in manner, merry, and not only generous, but carelessly extravagant, and above all, trustful. In his estate, Polyani, in the Belyefski district—not Yasnaya Polyana, but Polyani—incessant fetes, theatrical performances, balls, banquets, and excursions were kept up, which largely owing to my grandfather's tendency to play for high stakes at lomber and whist without knowing the game, and his readiness either to give or lend to any one who asked, both in loan and donation, and above all with the speculations and monopolies he used to start, resulted in his wife's large estate being so involved in debts, that at last there was no means of livelihood, and my grandfather had to procure the post of governor in Kazan, which he did easily owing to his connections.

"My grandfather, as I have been told, would not accept bribes, except from wine merchants, though it was then a universal custom, and he was angry when any were offered to him. But my grandmother, as I am informed, accepted presents unknown to her husband.

"In Kazan, my grandmother gave her youngest daughter Pelageya in marriage to Yushkov; the eldest, Alexandra, while yet in St. Petersburg, had married Count Osten-Saken.

"After the death of her husband in Kazan, and the marriage of my father, my grandmother settled down with my father in Yasnaya Polyana, and here I knew her as an old woman, and well remember her.

"My grandmother passionately loved my father and us, her grandchildren, and amused herself with us. She was fond of my aunts, but I think she did not quite love my mother; she considered her unworthy of my father, and was jealous of her in regard to him. With the servants she could not be exacting, because all knew she was the first person in the house, and tried to please her, but with her maid, Gasha, she gave herself up to her caprices and tormented her, calling her `You, my dear,' and demanding of her what she had not asked for, and in every way worrying her. Strange to say, Gasha or Agafiya Mikhaylovna3, whom I knew well, became infected with my grandmother's capricious ways, and with her little daughter, with her cat, and in general with all those beings with whom she could be exacting, was as capricious as my grandmother was with herself.

"My earliest reminiscences of my grandmother, before our removal to Moscow and our life there, amount to three strong impressions concerning her. One was how my grandmother washed, and with some kind of special soap produced on her hands wonderful bubbles, which, so it seemed to me, she alone could produce. We used to be purposely brought to her—probably our delight and wonder at her soap-bubbles amused her—in order to see how she washed. I remember the white jacket, petticoat, white aged hands, and the enormous bubbles rising on them, and her satisfied, smiling, white face.

"The second recollection is how she was drawn out, my father's valets acting as horses, in the yellow cabriolet on springs—in which we used to go for drives with out tutor, Feodor Ivanovich—into the small coppice for gathering nuts, of which there was a specially great quantity that year. I remember the dense thicket of hazel trees into which, thrusting aside and breaking the branches, Petrusha and Matyusha, the house valets, dragged the cabriolet with my grandmother, how they pulled down to her branches with clusters of ripe nuts, sometimes dropping off, how my grandmother herself gathered them into a bag, and how we either ourselves bent down branches, or else were astonished by the strength of Feodor Ivanovich, who bent down thick stems, while we gathered nuts on all sides, and always noticed that there yet remained nuts ungathered by us when Feodor Ivanovich let go the stems, and the bushes slowly catching in one another straightened up again. I remember how hot it was in the open spaces, how pleasantly fresh in the shade, how one breathed the sharp odor of the hazel-tree foliage, how the nuts cracked on all sides under the teeth of the girls who were with us, and how we, without ceasing, chewed the fresh, full, white kernels.

"We gathered the nuts into our pockets, into the skirts of our jackets, into the cabriolet, and our grandmother took them from us and praised us. How we came home, and what happened after, I do not remember. I remember only that grandmother and the hazel trees, the peculiar odor of the foliage of the hazel bushes, the valets, the yellow cabriolet, and the sun were blended into one joyful impression. It seemed to me that, as the soap-bubbles could be produced only by my grandmother, so also the wood, the nuts, the sun, could only be in connection with my grandmother in her yellow cabriolet drawn by Petrusha and Matyusha.

"But the strongest impression connected with my grandmother was a night passed in her bedroom with Lev Stepanovich. Lev Stepanovich was a blind story-teller (he was already an old man when I came to know him)—the survival of ancient luxury, the luxury of my grandfather. He was bought merely for the purpose of narrating stories, which, owing to the extraordinary memory peculiar to blind people, he could retell word for word after they had been twice read to him.

"He lived somewhere in the house, and during the whole day he was not seen. But in the evenings he came up into my grandmother's bedroom (this bedroom was a low little room into which one had to enter up two steps), and he seated himself on a low window ledge, where they used to bring him supper from the master's table. Here he waited for my grandmother, who might with impunity perform her night toilet in the presence of a blind man. On the day when it was my turn to sleep in my grandmother's bedroom, Lev Stepanovich, with his white eyes, clad in a long blue coat with puffs on the shoulders, was already sitting on the window ledge having his supper. I don't remember where my grandmother undressed, whether in this room or another, or how I was put to bed, I remember only the moment when the candle was put out and there remained only a little light in front of the gilded icons, and my grandmother, that same wonderful grandmother who produced the extraordinary soap-bubbles, all white, clothed in white, lying on white, and covered with white, in her white nightcap, lay high on the cushions, and from the window was heard the even quiet voice of Lev Stepanovich. `Will it please you for me to continue?' `Yes, continue,' `"Dearest sister," she said,' recommenced Lev Stepanovich, with his quiet, even, aged voice, `"tell us one of those most interesting stories which you know so well how to narrate." "Willingly," answered Shaheresada, "would I relate the remarkable history of Prince Kamaralzaman, if our lord will express his consent." Having received the consent of the Sultan, Shaheresada began thus: A certain powerful king had an only son"'...and, evidently word for word, according to the book, Lev Stepanovich began the history of Kamaralzaman. I did not listen, I did not understand what he said, so absorbed was I by the mysterious appearance of the white grandmother, by her swaying shadow on the wall, and the appearance of the old man with white eyes whom I could not now see, but whom I realized as sitting immovably on the window ledge, and who was saying with a slow voice some strange words, which seemed to me very solemn as they alone resounded through the darkness of the little room lighted by the trembling of the image-lamp. I probably immediately fell asleep, for I remember nothing further, and in the morning I was again astonished and enraptured by the soap-bubbles which my grandmother when washing produced on her hands.

"According to Marie's recollections, the blind Lev Stepanovich's sense of hearing was so perfect that he could distinctly hear mice running about and could tell in which direction they were going. In grandmother's room one of the special attractions for the mice was the oil used for the image-lamp, which they drank up. At night while telling stories he would say, without changing his tone of voice: `There, your excellency, a little mouse has just run to the image-lamp to get at the oil.' After that he would go on again with his story-telling in the same monotone."

The following genealogoical table gives the reader a view of the nearest ancestors and relations of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy:

The Counts Tolstoy

• Number of
  Generations
  from Indris
• 15 Peter Andreyevich Tolstoy, the first Count (died 1729)
• 16 Ivan Petrovich (died 1728)
• 17 Andrey Ivaonvich (died 1803)
• 18 Ilya Andreyevich, Governor of Kazan (died 1820)
• 19 Aleksandra, married to Count Osten-Saken. Nikolay (died 1837)
• 19 Pelageya, married V.P. Yushkov. Ilya (died childless)
• 20 Nikolay (born 1823). Sergey (born 1826). Dmitriy (born 1827). Lev (born 1828). Marie (born 1830).4

The Counts Tolstoy are known in many branches of social activity. It would probably interest the reader to know the degree of relationship which some of these bear to Tolstoy. For example, let us take Feodor Petrovich Tolstoy, the well-known artist, medallist, and vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Arts, his nephew the poet, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, and the ex-minister Dmitriy Andreyevich Tolstoy, well known for his reactionary measures. These three members of the Tolstoy family were distantly related to our Tolstoy, their common ancestor being Ivan Petrovich Tolstoy, son of the first Count Tolstoy, Peter Andreyevich, who died with his father in exile at the Solovetsky Convent.5

I ought her to mention Theodore Tolstoy, and original man, called the American. He was known for his very unusual adventures, and the following words in Griboyedov's comedy, called "Come to Grief through being too Clever," refer to him: "Exiled to Kamchatka, he returned an Aleoute." Tolstoy speaks of him in his reminiscences of his childhood, and it was his individuality which partly suggested the character of Dolokhov in War and Peace. He was Tolstoy's first cousin once removed.

Notes to Chapter I:

2. Chapter II
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 preserved1 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.2

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."3

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...."4

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."5

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 Golitsin6, 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.8

"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.9 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.10

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.

Notes to Chapter II:

3. Chapter III
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 lineyka1 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.2 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."3

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, 1825.4

"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.5

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.

Notes to Chapter III: