To-morrow as soon as I get up, I shall go and tell everything or
shoot myself....
I accepted Leo Nikolaevich and our engagement lasted only one week. On
23 September we were married in the royal church of the Nativity of Our
Lady, and immediately afterwards left for Yasnaya Polyana in a new
carriage with a team of six horses and a postillion. We were accompanied
by Alexei Stepanovich,{18} Leo Nikolaevich's devoted servant, and the
old maid-servant, Varvara.
After coming to Yasnaya Polyana, we decided to settle down there with
Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna Ergolskii.{19} From the very first I assisted
my husband in the management of the house and estate, and in copying out
his writings.{20}
After the first days of our married life had passed, Leo Nikolaevich
realized that besides his happiness he needed activity and work. In his
diary of December, 1862, he wrote: "I feel the force of the need to
write." That force was a great one, creating a great work which made the
first years of our married life bright with joy and happiness.
Soon after our marriage Leo Nikolaevich finished _Polikushka_, finally
completed _The Cossacks_ and gave it to Katkov's _Russkii Vyestnik_. He
then began to work on the Decembrists whose fate and activity interested
him a great deal. When he began to write about that period, he
considered it necessary to relate who they were, to describe their
origin and previous history, and so to go back from 1825 to 1805. He
became dissatisfied with the Decembrists, but _The Year 1805_ served as
a beginning for _War and Peace_ and was published in _Russkii
Vyestnik_.{21} This work, which Leo Nikolaevich did not like to be
called a novel, he wrote with pleasure, assiduously, and it filled our
life with a living interest.
In 1864 a good deal of it was already written, and Leo Nikolaevich often
read aloud to me and to our two cousins, Varya and Lise, the daughters
of Marie Nikolaevna Tolstoy, the charming passages as soon as he had
written them. In the same year he read a few chapters to friends and to
two literary men, Zhemchuzhnikov and Aksakov, in Moscow, and they were
in raptures over it.{22} Generally Leo Nikolaevich read extraordinarily
well, unless he was very excited, and I remember how pleasant it was in
Yasnaya Polyana to listen to him reading Moliere's comedies, when he had
not anything new from _War and Peace_.
During the first years at Yasnaya Polyana we lived a very retired life.
I could not recall anything of importance during that time in the life
of the people, society, or State, because everything passed us by; we
lived the whole time in the country, we followed nothing, saw nothing,
knew nothing--it did not interest us. I desired nothing else but to live
with the characters of _War and Peace_; I loved them and watched the
life of each of them develop as though they were living beings. It was a
full life and an unusually happy one, with our mutual love, our
children, and, above all, that great work, beloved by me and later by
the whole world, the work of my husband. I had no other desires.
Only at times in the evenings, when we had put the children to bed and
sent off the MSS. or corrected proofs to Moscow, as a recreation we
would sit down at the piano and till late at night play duets. Leo
Nikolaevich was particularly fond of Haydn's and Mozart's
symphonies.{23} At that time I played rather badly, but I tried very
hard to improve. Leo Nikolaevich too, it was clear, was satisfied with
his fate. In 1864 he wrote in a letter to my brother: "It is as though
our honeymoon had only just begun." And again: "I think that only one
in a million is as lucky as I am." When his relation, Countess Alexandra
Andreevna Tolstoy, complained that he wrote little and rarely to her, he
replied: "_Les peuples heureux n'out pas d'histoire_; that is the case
with us."{24} Every new idea or the successful carrying out of some
creation of his genius made him happy. Thus, for instance, he writes in
his diary on 19 March, 1865: "A cloud of joy has just come upon me at
the idea of writing the psychological history of Alexander and
Napoleon."{25}
It was because he felt the beauty of his own creations that Leo
Nikolaevich wrote: "The poet takes the best out of his life and puts it
into his writings. Hence his writing is beautiful and his life bad." But
his life at that time was not bad; it was as good and as pure as his
work.
How I loved copying _War and Peace_! I wrote in my diary: "The
consciousness of serving a genius and a great man has given me strength
for anything." I also wrote in a letter to Leo Nikolaevich: "The copying
of _War and Peace_ uplifts me very much morally, _i. e._ spiritually.
When I sit down to copy it, I am carried away into a world of poetry,
and sometimes it even seems to me that it is not your novel that is so
good, but I that am so clever." In my diary I also wrote: "Levochka all
the winter has been writing with irritation, often with tears and pain.
In my opinion, his novel, _War and Peace_, must be superb. Whatever he
has read to me moves me to tears." In 1865, when my husband was in
Moscow looking up historical material, I wrote to him: "Today I copied
and read on a little ahead, what I had not yet seen nor read, namely,
how the miserable, muffled-up old Mack himself arrives to admit his
defeat, and round him stand the inquisitive aides-de-camp, and he is
almost crying, and his meeting with Kutuzov. I liked it immensely, and
that is what I am writing to tell you."
In November, 1866, Leo Nikolaevich used to go to the Rumyantsev Museum
and read up everything about the freemasons. Before leaving Yasnaya
Polyana he always left me work to copy. When I had finished it, I sent
it off to Moscow, and I wrote to my husband: "How have you decided
about the novel? I have got to love your novel very much. When I sent
the fair-copy off to Moscow, I felt as if I had sent off a child and I
am afraid that some harm may come to it."
In copying I was often astonished and could not understand why Leo
Nikolaevich corrected or destroyed what seemed so beautiful, and I used
to be delighted if he put back what he had struck out. Sometimes proofs
which had been finally corrected and sent off, were returned again to
Leo Nikolaevich at his request in order to be recorrected and recopied.
Or a telegram would be sent to substitute _one_ word for another. My
whole soul became so immersed in copying that I began myself to feel
when it was not altogether right, for instance, when there were frequent
repetitions of the same word, long periods, wrong punctuation,
obscurity, etc. I used to point all these things out to Leo Nikolaevich.
Sometimes he was glad for my remarks; sometimes he would explain why it
ought to remain as it was: he would say that details do not matter,
only the general scheme matters.
The first thing which I copied out in my clumsy, but legible writing was
_Polikushka_, and for years afterwards that work delighted me. I used to
long for the evening when Leo Nikolaevich would bring me something newly
written or recorrected. Some passages in _War and Peace_, and also in
his other works, had to be copied over and over again. Others, for
instance the description of the uncle's hunting party in _War and
Peace_, were written once and for all and were not corrected. I remember
how Leo Nikolaevich called me down to his study and read aloud to me
that chapter just after he had written it, and we smiled and were happy
together.
In copying I sometimes allowed myself to make remarks and to ask him to
strike out anything which I thought not sufficiently pure to be read by
young people, for instance in the scene of the beautiful Ellen's
cynicism, and Leo Nikolaevich granted my request. But often in my life,
when copying the poetical and charming passages in my husband's works, I
have wept, not only because they moved me, but simply from the artist's
pleasure which I felt together with the author.
It used to grieve me much when Leo Nikolaevich suddenly became depressed
and disappointed with his work, and wrote to me that he did not like the
novel and was miserable. This was particularly the case in 1864, when he
broke his arm, and I wrote to him in Moscow: "Why have you lost heart in
everything? Everything depresses you; nothing goes right. Why have you
lost heart and courage? Haven't you the strength to rouse yourself?
Remember how pleased you were with the novel, how well you thought it
all out, and suddenly you don't like it. No, no, you must not. Now, come
to us, and instead of the Kremlin's walls you will see our _Chepyzh_,[J]
lighted up by the sun, and the fields ... and with a happy face you will
begin telling me the ideas for your work, you will dictate to me, and
ideas will again come to you, and the melancholy will pass away." And so
it was after he had come home.
If Leo Nikolaevich stopped working, I used to feel dull and wrote to
him: "Prepare, prepare work for me." In Moscow he sold the first part of
_War and Peace_ to Katkov for the _Russkii Vyestnik_, and he handed the
MS. over to the secretary, Lyubimov.{26} Somehow or other it made me
sad, and I wrote to my husband: "I felt so sorry that you had sold it.
Terrible! Your thoughts, feelings, your talent, even your soul--sold!"
When Leo Nikolaevich had finished _War and Peace_, I asked him to
publish that beautiful epic in book form, and not to publish it in
magazines, and he agreed. Soon afterwards N. N. Strakhov's brilliant
review of it came out, and Leo Nikolaevich said that the place which
Strakhov gave to _War and Peace_ by his appreciation would remain
permanent.{27} But apart from this Tolstoy's fame grew with great
rapidity, and his reputation as a writer rose higher and higher and soon
extended to all countries and all classes.
Princess Paskevich was the first to translate _War and Peace_ into
French for some charitable purpose, and the French, although surprised,
appreciated the work of the Russian writer. Among my papers I have a
copy of I. S. Turgenev's letter to Edmond About, in which Turgenev gives
the highest praise to _War and Peace_. Among other things, he says on 20
January, 1880: "_Un des livres les plus remarquables de notre temps_."
And again: "_Ceci est une grande oeuvre d'un grand ecrivain et c'est
la vraie Russie_."{28}
In 1869 the printing of the first edition of _War and Peace_ was
completed; it was quickly sold out and a second printed. The writer
Shedrin's opinion of _War and Peace_ was strange; he said with contempt
that it reminded him of the chatter of nursemaids and old ladies.
After finishing his great work, Leo Nikolaevich's need for creative
activity did not come to an end. New ideas sprang up in his mind. In
working at the period of Peter the Great, despite all his efforts, he
was unable to describe the period, particularly its every-day life. I
wrote to my sister about it:
"All the characters of the time of Peter the Great he now has ready;
they are dressed, arranged, sitting in their places, but they don't
breathe yet. Perhaps they will begin to live."
But these characters did not come to life. The beginning of this work on
the time of Peter the Great still remains unpublished.
At one time Leo Nikolaevich intended to write the history of Mirovich,
but he did not accomplish that either.{29} He always shared with me his
plans about work, and in 1870 he told me that he wanted to write a novel
about the fall of a society woman in the highest Petersburg circles, and
the task which he set himself was to tell the story of the woman and of
her fall without condemning her. The idea was later carried out in his
new novel, _Anna Karenina_. I well remember the circumstances in which
he began to write that novel.
In order to amuse old Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna Ergolskii, I sent my son
Serge, who was her godson, to read aloud to her Pushkin's _Tales of
Byelkin_. She fell asleep while he was reading, and Serge went up to
the nursery, leaving the book on a table in the drawing-room. Leo
Nikolaevich took up the book and started to read a passage beginning
with the words: "The guests were arriving at the country-house of Count
L----"{30} "How good, how simple," said Leo Nikolaevich. "Straight to
business. That's the way to write. Pushkin is my master."{31} That same
evening Leo Nikolaevich began to write _Anna Karenina_ and read the
opening chapter to me; after a short introduction about the families he
had written: "Everything was in a muddle in the house of the
Oblonskiis." That was on 19 March, 1872.
When he had written the first part of _Anna Karenina_ and had given me
the second part to be copied, Leo Nikolaevich suddenly stopped working
at it and became interested in education. In 1874 he wrote to Countess
Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy: "I am again deep in education, as I was
fourteen years ago. I am writing a novel, but I cannot tear myself away
from the living in order to describe imaginary people."{32}
However difficult I might find it to combine the copying with my
maternal and other duties, when I had not got it, I missed it and waited
impatiently for my husband's artistic work to begin again.
The conditions under which _Anna Karenina_ was written were much more
difficult than those under which _War and Peace_ was written. Then we
had undisturbed happiness, now there died in succession three of our
children{33} and two aunts.{34} I became ill, grew thin, coughed blood,
and suffered from pains in the back. Leo Nikolaevich became alarmed, and
in Moscow, on the way to get kumiss, he consulted Professor Zakharin,
who said: "It is not yet consumption, but her nerves may be shattered";
and he added reproachfully: "You have neglected her, though." He forbade
me to teach the children or do the copying, and he prescribed a regime
of silence. For a long time I got no better, especially as we had to
spend the summer on the Samara steppes in very inconvenient surroundings
and living on kumiss, which I could not drink. Miserable and ill, I
wrote to my sister: "Levochka's novel is published and is said to be a
great success. In me it arouses strange feelings; there is so much
sorrow in our house, and we are everywhere made so much of."
After _Anna Karenina_, Leo Nikolaevich, wishing to purify the literature
read by simple folk and to introduce more morality and art into it,
wrote a series of stories and legends which I admired very much; I
sympathized keenly with their idea and object. I remember being present
at the university when these legends were read aloud, and I wrote to Leo
Nikolaevich at Yasnaya Polyana:
"The legends were a tremendous success. They were beautifully read by
Professor Storozhenko. The majority of the audience were students. The
impression which the stories makes on one is that the _style_ is
remarkably severe, concise, not a single unnecessary word, everything
true and pointed--a harmonious whole. Much meaning, few words; it gives
one satisfaction right up to the end."
I mention these works, as I have done those which were created during
the happiest years of our life.