Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work. Paul Birukoff
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.
Footnotes
1 ↑ A Russian country vehicle, somehwat resembling a low four-wheeled jaunting-car.
2 ↑ In Russia, owing to local conditions, the methods of sport are necessarily different from those in England. Thus foxes, abounding in great numbers, are hunted out of the woods by foxhounds, and then sometimes caught by greyhounds in the surrounding fields.
3 ↑ From a draft of uncorrected memoirs by L. Tolstoy in my possession.--P.B.
4 ↑ "Count L.N. Tolstoy and his University Life." N.P. Zagoskin Istoricheskiy Vestnik, January, 1894.
5 ↑ Sergeyenko, How L.N. Tolstoy Lives and Works, p. 40. Moscow, 1898.
Childhood
"I was born and I spent my earliest childhood in the village Yasnaya Polyana."
With these words Tolstoy opens his Reminiscences, and before we begin the description of his childhood we think it well to say a few words about this little corner of the earth, destined to become of world-wide interest. What a variety of visitors have called at Yasnaya Polyana! Natives of the Malay Archipelago, Australians, Japanese and Americans, Siberian runaways, and representatives of all the European nations, have visited this village and spread abroad a description of it, as well as the words and thoughts of the aged prophet, its inhabitant.
Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate of the Princes Volkonsky, is situated in the Krapivensk district of the province of Tula, almost on the border line of the district of Tula, fifteen versts to the south of the town of the same name. Three high-roads of three different periods cross one another in its neighborhood; the old Kiev road, overgrown with grass, the new Kiev macadamized road, and the Moscow-Kursk Railway line, the nearest station of which, Kozlovka-Zasseka, is at three and a half versts distance from Tolstoy's home.
The beautiful hilly neighborhood surrounding Yasnaya Polyana is divided from east to west by a long belt of Crown forest, called the Abattis. This name points back to ancient times when in that place the Slavs had to repel the attacks of the Crimean Tartars and other Mongolian tribes, and were obliged to cut trees and make barriers which formed a natural and impenetrable defence against the enemies' hordes.
The house in which Tolstoy was born no longer stands in Yasnaya Polyana. The work of building it was started by his grandfather, Prince Volkonsky, and finished by his father; after which the house was sold to a neighboring landowner, Gorokhov, and was removed to the village Dolgoye, where it now stands. It was in the early 1850s, when Tolstoy was in great need of money, that he requested one of his relatives to sell this house. The large-sized residence with columns and balconies was sold for the comparatively insignificant price of about five thousand rubles in paper money. From Tolstoy's letters to his brother it is evident that he was very sorry to part with it, and only dire necessity induced him to do so. At present nobody lives in it. It stands neglected, with its window-shutters nailed up. The present two houses of Yasnaya Polyana consist of the two wings, formerly standing at the sides of the main body of the old house which was sole. The place occupied by the old house is partly planted with trees, partly cleared and turned into a croquet ground and a small square which is used as a dining-place when weather permits.
In front of the house there is at present a flower-bed, and beyond that spreads an old garden with ponds and aged lime-tree avenues. The garden is surrounded by a ditch and a rampart. At the entrance of this garden stand two brick towers, painted white. Old people say that in the time of the grandfather, Prince Volkonsky, sentries used to stand there. A birch avenue, the so-called "Prospect," begins at the towers and leads up to the house.
To the old garden are added new fruit gardens planted under Tolstoy's own supervision. The whole residence is situated on rising ground and surrounded by a luxurious growth of shrubs.
It is unfortunate that there exist no details of interest relating to Tolstoy's birth besides the following extract from the church register, quoted by Zagoskin in his reminiscences:
"In the year 1828, on August 28, in the village of Yasnaya Polyana, a son, Lev, was born to Count Nikolay Ilich Tolstoy and baptized on the 29th of August by the priest Vasiliy Mozhaiskiy, deacon Arkhip Ivanov, chanter Aleksandr Feodorov, and sexton Feodor Grigoriyev. The sponsors at the baptism were the landowner of the Belevsky district, Simon Ivanovich Yazikov, and Countess Pelageya Tolstova."[1]
The countess Pelageya Tolstova was in fact the grandmother of Lev Tolstoy on his father's side, Pelageya Nikolayevna Tolstaya.
It is seldom that a biographer has the good fortune to learn facts of such an early age. In his First Memories, Tolstoy relates his vague sensations on being swathed, sensations, that is, felt during the first year of his life.
We quote these reminiscences as they stand:
"Here are my first reminiscences, which I am unable to arrange in order, not knowing what came before and what after; of some of them I do not even know whether they happened in reality or in a dream. Here they are: I am bound; I wish to free my arms and I cannot do it and I scream and cry, and my cries are unpleasant to myself, but I cannot cease. Somebody bends down over me, I do not remember who. All is in a half light. But I remember that there are two people. My cries affect them; they are disturbed by