FROM my earliest childhood until the family moved into Moscow--that
was in 1881--all my life was spent, almost without a break, at Yasnaya
Polyana.
This is how we live. The chief personage in the house is my mother. She
settles everything. She interviews Nikolai, the cook, and orders dinner;
she sends us out for walks, makes our shirts, is always nursing some
baby at the breast; all day long she is bustling about the house with
hurried steps. One can be naughty with her, though she is sometimes
angry and punishes us.
She knows more about everything than anybody else. She knows that one
must wash every day, that one must eat soup at dinner, that one must
talk French, learn not to crawl about on all fours, not to put one's
elbows on the table; and if she says that one is not to go out walking
because it is just going to rain, she is sure to be right, and one must
do as she says.
Papa is the cleverest man in the world. He always knows everything.
There is no being naughty with HIM. When he is up in his study
"working," one is not allowed to make a noise, and nobody may go into
his room. What he does when he is at "work," none of us know. Later on,
when I had learned to read, I was told that papa was a "writer."
This was how I learned. I was very pleased with some lines of poetry one
day, and asked my mother who wrote them. She told me they were written
by Pushkin, and Pushkin was a great writer. I was vexed at my father not
being one, too. Then my mother said that my father was also a well-known
writer, and I was very glad indeed.
At the dinner-table papa sits opposite mama and has his own round silver
spoon. When old Natalia Petrovna, who lives on the floor below with
great-aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna, pours herself out a glass of kvass,
he picks it up and drinks it right off, then says, "Oh, I'm so sorry,
Natalia Petrovna; I made a mistake!" We all laugh delightedly, and it
seems odd that papa is not in the least afraid of Natalia Petrovna. When
there is jelly for pudding, papa says it is good for gluing paper boxes;
we run off to get some paper, and papa makes it into boxes. Mama is
angry, but he is not afraid of her either. We have the gayest times
imaginable with him now and then. He can ride a horse better and run
faster than anybody else, and there is no one in the world so strong as
he is.
He hardly ever punishes us, but when he looks me in the eyes he knows
everything that I think, and I am frightened. You can tell stories
to mama, but not to papa, because he will see through you at once. So
nobody ever tries.
Besides papa and mama, there was also Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna
Yergolsky. In her room she had a big eikon with a silver mount. We were
very much afraid of this eikon, because it was very old and black.
When I was six, I remember my father teaching the village children. They
had their lessons in "the other house," [1] where Alexey Stepanytch, the
bailiff, lived, and sometimes on the ground floor of the house we lived
in.
There were a great number of village children who used to come. When
they came, the front hall smelled of sheepskin jackets; they were taught
by papa and Seryozha and Tanya and Uncle Kostya all at once. Lesson-time
was very gay and lively.
The children did exactly as they pleased, sat where they liked, ran
about from place to place, and answered questions not one by one, but
all together, interrupting one another, and helping one another to
recall what they had read. If one left out a bit, up jumped another
and then another, and the story or sum was reconstructed by the united
efforts of the whole class.
What pleased my father most about his pupils was the picturesqueness and
originality of their language. He never wanted a literal repetition of
bookish expressions, and particularly encouraged every one to speak "out
of his own head." I remember how once he stopped a boy who was running
into the next room.
"Where are YOU off to?" he asked.
"To uncle, to bite off a piece of chalk." [2]
"Cut along, cut along! It's not for us to teach them, but for them to
teach."