Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work. Paul Birukoff
spat out the stone. I further remember her tears of despair when she and my brother Mitenka got up a game which consisted in spitting into each other's mouth a little copper chain, and she spat so strongly, while Mitenka opened his mouth wide, that he swallowed the chain. She cried inconsolably until the doctor arrived and reassured everyone. … "
This brief but valuable information Tolstoy gives concerning the servants who surrounded him during his childhood. The information forms a supplement to what is described in his published story Childhood. We borrow this description also from his Reminiscences:
"I have described Praskovya Issayevna fairly correctly in Childhood. All I there wrote about her was actual truth. She was the housekeeper, a venerable personage. I remember one of the pleasantest impressions was that of sitting in her room after or during a lesson and talking with and listening to her. She probably liked to see us at these moments of specially happy and touching expansiveness: `Praskovya Issayevna, how did grandfather fight? On horseback?' one would ask her.
"`He fought in various ways, on horseback and on foot, and in consequence he was General-in-Chief,' she would answer, opening a cupboard and getting out a burning tablet which she called the `Ochakovskiy smoke.' According to her words, it appeared that this tablet grandfather brought from Ochakov. She would ignite a taper at the little lamp in front of the icons, and with it would light the tablet, which smouldered with a pleasant scent.
"Besides her devotion and honesty, I especially loved her because, with Anna Ivanovna, she was connected in my eyes with that mysterious side of my grandfather's life--with the `Ochakovskiy smoke'.
"Anna Ivanovna lived in retirement, but once or twice she visited the house, and I saw her. It was said that she was a hundred years old, and that she remembered Pogachev.[7] She had very black eyes and one tooth. She was in that stage of old age which inspires children with fear.
"Nurse Tatyana Filipovna, small, dusky, and with plump little hands, was the young assistant of our old nurse Annushka, whom I scarcely recall precisely, because at the time I was with Annushka I was conscious of myself only. And as I did not observe myself nor understand myself as I then was, so also I do not remember Annushka.
"And as I did not look at myself, and don't remember how I looked, so I cannot recall to mind Annushka, but Dunechka's nurse, Eupraksiya, with a little ball on her neck, is well preserved in my memory.
"Nurse Tatyana Filipovna I remember because she was afterward the nurse of my nieces and of my eldest son. She was one of those pathetic beings from among the people who so identify themselves with the families of their nurslings that they transfer all their interests to those families, and so that their own relatives see in them only an opportunity for extortion or await the inheritance of the money they earned. Such have always spendthrift brothers, husbands, or sons. Such were, so far as I can remember, Tatyana Filipovna's husband and son. I remember how he [sic?] painfully, quietly, and meekly died in the very place where I am now sitting writing these Reminiscences. Her brother, Nikolay Filipovich, was a coachman, whom we not only loved, but for whom, as gentlemen's children generally do, we felt a great reverence. He had peculiar thick boots; he always carried with him the pleasant smell of the stables, and his voice was tender and musical.[8]
"The butler, Vasiliy Trubetskoy, should be mentioned. He was a pleasant, kindly man, who evidently loved children, and therefore loved us, especially Seryozha, at whose house he afterward served, and where he died. I remember the kind, one-sided smile of his beaming face with its wrinkles, and his neck, which we saw close, and his peculiar smell when he took us in his arms and seated us on the tray (it was one of our great pleasures; `And me, now me!') and carried us about the pantry--a place mysterious in our eyes, with its strange underground passage. One poignant reminiscence connected with him was his departure to Shcherbachovka, an estate in the government of Kursk, inherited by my father from a relative.
This (Vasiliy's departure) happened during Yule-tide, at the time
when all the children and some of the household servants were playing at `Rublik' in the hall. I must say a word about those Yuletide amusements. They took place thus: all the household servants--and there were many of them, about thirty--used to dress up, come into the house, play various games, and dance to the accompaniment of the fiddle of old Gregoriy, who only appeared in the house on these occasions. It was very amusing. Those masquerading usually represented a bear with its leader, a goat, Turks and Turkish women, tyrolese, brigands, peasant men and women. I remember how beautiful some of the characters appeared to me, and especially so Masha, the Turkish woman. Sometimes Auntie dressed us up also. Especially desirable to us was a belt with stones and a muslin towel, embroidered with silver and gold; and I thought myself very grand with mustaches painted with burnt cork. I remember that looking in the mirror at my face, with black mustaches and eyebrows, I could not refrain from a smile of delight, though I had to assume the fierce expression of a Turk. All these characters walked about the rooms and were treated to various refreshments. During one of the Yule-tides of my earlier childhood, all the Islenevs came to us dressed up: the father, who was my wife's grandfather, with his three sons and three daughters. They all had on costumes, which appeared most extraordinary to us; there was a toilet, there was a boot, there was a cardboard belt, and something else besides. The Islenevs, having driven thirty miles, changed dress in the village, and on entering our hall Islenev sat down to the piano and sang some verses he had invented, to a tune which I can still remember. The verses were: `We have come here to congratulate you on the New Year; should we succeed in amusing you we shall be happy!' This was all very extraordinary, and probably entertaining to the elders, but for us children the most amusing were the household servants. Such entertainments took place during Christmas and at New Year, sometimes even later, up to the day of Baptism[9]; but after New Year few people came and the amusements slackened. So it was on the day when Vasiliy was leaving for Shcherbakova. I remember we were sitting in a circle in the corner of the dimly lighted hall on home-made chairs of imitation mahogany with leather cushions and playing at `Rublik'. One of us was walking about searching for the ruble, while we, passing it on from hand to hand, were singing, `Pass on Rublik, pass on Rublik.' I remember one of the servant-girls kept singing these words with an especially pleasant and true voice. Suddenly the door of the pantry opened, and Vasiliy, buttoned up in an unusual way, without his tray and china, passed along the end of the hall into the study. Then only did I learn that Vasiliy was going as overseer to Shcherbakova. I understood it was a promotion, and was glad for Vasiliy, and at the same time I was not only sorry to part from him, to know that he would no longer be in the pantry and would no longer carry us on his tray, but I did not even understand, did not believe, that such an alteration could take place. I became dreadfully and mysteriously sad, and the chant of `Pass on Rublik' grew pathetically touching. And when Vasiliy left my aunt, and with his dear one-sided smile approached us, and kissed us on the shoulder, I experienced for the first time horror and fear in the presence of the inconstancy of life, and pity and love toward dear Vasiliy. When I afterward used to meet Vasiliy I saw in him merely a good or a bad overseer of my brother's, a man whom I respected, but there was no longer any trace of the former sacred, brotherly, human feeling.
"In a mysterious way, incomprehensible to the human mind, the impressions of early childhood are preserved in one's memory, and not only are they preserved, but they grow in some unfathomed depth of the soul, like a seed thrown on good ground, and after many years all of a sudden thrust their vernal shoots into God's world."
Such a seed-time in Tolstoy's early childhood were the days of his eldest brother Nikolenka's games with the younger brothers. His great influence on Tolstoy's life is referred to in his Reminiscences more than once, for example, in the stories about the Fanfaronov Hill, Ant Brothers, and the Green Wand.
"Yes, the Fanfaronov Hill is one of the earliest, pleasantest, and most important memories. My eldest brother, Nikolenka, was six years older than I. He was consequently ten or eleven when I was four or five, namely, at the time when he led us on to the Fanfaronov Hill. In our earlier youth we used to address him (I don't know how it happened) as `you'.[10] He was a wonderful boy, and later a wonderful man. Turgenev used very truly to say about him that but for the lack of certain faults he would have been a great writer. For instance he was deficient in vanity;