In August, 1896, Leo Nikolaevich suggested that I should go with him and
his sister, Marie Nikolaevna, to the monastery near Shamardin. From
there we went to the Optina Monastery, where I fasted. While I
confessed, Leo Nikolaevich walked round the cell of the venerable monk,
Father Gerasim, but he did not come in.
After Vanichka's death our family life was no longer happy. Gradually
the other children married and the house became empty. The parting with
our daughter was especially hard. Leo Nikolaevich's health began to be
bad, and in September, 1901, the doctors after a consultation ordered
him off to the south, to the Crimea. Countess Panin kindly lent us her
magnificent house in Gaspra, where our whole family spent nearly ten
months. Leo Nikolaevich's health not only did not improve, it grew
worse. He was ill in Gaspra from one infectious disease after another,
and it is with pain in my heart that I remember how I used to sit at
night by my husband's bed during nearly the whole of those ten months.
We took it in turns to sit by him, I, my daughters, the doctors,
friends, and above all my son, Serge. How much I used to go through and
think over during those nights!{60}
We did not go back again to our life in Moscow, and the doctors and I
decided that it was best for Leo Nikolaevich to live in Yasnaya Polyana,
where he was born and bred.
After making up our minds on our return from the Crimea to remain in the
country, during the following years we lived quietly and peacefully, all
occupied with our own work. I worked hard at writing my memoirs, under
the title _My Life_; I often went to Moscow on business in connection
with Leo Nikolaevich's publications, and then every day in the morning I
used to sit in the Historical Museum, copying from the diaries,
letters, and note-books the material which I wanted for my work. It gave
me great pleasure, that work upstairs in the tower of the museum, in
complete solitude, surrounded by such interesting papers. I did not
arrange the MSS., thinking that I might leave that for others, and
considering it more useful to write my reminiscences, as I did not
anticipate a long life or that my memory would remain fresh.
Moreover by mere accident I took to painting passionately, for it always
attracted me. In Petersburg in the Tauric Palace a very good and
interesting exhibition of old and modern portraits was opened, and we
were asked to lend all our family portraits from Yasnaya Polyana. It
seemed to me most unpleasant to have the walls of the drawing-room bare,
and with my usual boldness I began copying the portraits before they
were removed. I had never studied painting, but I loved it, like all the
arts, and I was terribly excited and worked for whole days, and often
the nights as well. As formerly with music, I was completely carried
away by painting. Leo Nikolaevich laughingly said that I had caught a
disease called "portraititis," and that he was afraid for my sanity. The
most successful of my attempts was a copy of Leo Nikolaevich's portrait
by Kramskoi. Later I tried to paint landscapes and flowers from nature,
but extreme short-sightedness put me at a great disadvantage, and I was
dissatisfied with my want of skill. But I do not regret that I took up
music and painting, however unskilfully, towards the end of my life. One
only thoroughly understands any art when one practises it, however
badly.
My last attempts were water-colour paintings of all the Yasnaya Polyana
flora and of all the fungi of the Yasnaya Polyana woods.
X
In 1904 I had to endure the pain of my son, Andrey, leaving to fight in
the war against Japan. In my heart I was opposed to war as to any other
kind of murder, and it was with a peculiar pain in my heart that I saw
my son off at Tambov and with other mothers looked at the carriages full
of soldiers--our sons doomed to death.
A happy event for our family in 1905 was the birth of an only child to
our daughter, Tatyana Lvovna Sukhotin. This granddaughter, as she grew
up, was a favourite of Leo Nikolaevich and of the whole family.
In 1906 I underwent a serious operation, performed by Professor V. F.
Snegirev in Yasnaya Polyana. How quietly I prepared myself for death,
how happy I felt, when the servants, saying good-bye to me, cried
bitterly! I felt a strange sensation, when I fell asleep under the
anaesthetic which was given to me: it was new and significant. All
external life in its complicated setting, especially of towns, flashed
before my inner vision like a quickly changing panorama. And how
insignificant human vanity appeared to me! I seemed to be asking myself:
what, then, is important? One thing: if God has sent us on to the earth
and we are to live, then the most important thing is to help one another
in whatever way possible. To help one another to live. I think the same
now.
The operation was quite successful, but it seemed as though the will of
fate, having aimed at taking my life, wavered and then removed its hand
to our daughter Masha. I recovered, and that lovely, unselfish,
spiritual creature, Masha, died of pneumonia in our house two and a half
months after my operation. This sorrow was a heavy weight on our life
and aging hearts. The previous rift, the reproaches and unpleasantness
ceased for a while and we humbled ourselves before fate. The time passed
in our usual occupations, and Leo Nikolaevich, as a distraction, played
cards with his children and friends; he was very fond of whist. In the
mornings he wrote, and every afternoon he rode; he lived the most quiet
and regular life. He was, however, often worried by visitors who tired
him, by applicants, and by letters in which people disagreed with his
teaching and reproached him with his way of life, or asked him for money
or to get them jobs.
These reproaches and the interference of outsiders in our peaceful
family life ruined it. Even before this the influence of outside people
was creeping in and towards the end of Leo Nikolaevich's life it assumed
terrifying dimensions. For instance, these outsiders frightened Leo
Nikolaevich with the prediction that the Russian Government would send
the police and seize all his papers. On that pretext they were removed
from Yasnaya Polyana, and, therefore, Leo Nikolaevich could no longer
work at them, as he had not the _whole_ material. Eventually with
difficulty I succeeded in getting back seven thick note-books containing
my husband's diaries which are now in the possession of our daughter
Alexandra; but the affair led to strained relations with the man who had
them in his keeping and he ceased his daily visits.{61}