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, 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. 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. 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 œuvre d’un grand écrivain et c’est la vraie Russie.”
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. 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 — — “ “How good, how simple,” said Leo Nikolaevich. “Straight to business. That’s the way to write. Pushkin is my master.” 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
