Socrates, Plato, and other philosophers, but particularly the Greeks, enchanted me, and I can say that these sages helped me greatly to live and to think. Later on I also tried to read modern philosophers; I read Schopenhauer and others, but I much preferred the ancients. Of Leo Nikolaevich’s philosophical works I liked and understood best his book On Life, and I translated it into French with the assistance of M. Tastevin. I worked hard at that translation, being particularly ill at the time and expecting the birth of our last child, Vanichka. While working conscientiously at the translation, I often went for advice to my husband and to the philosophers, N. Y. Grot and V. S. Solovev.
I always very much liked writing of whatever kind. When Leo Nikolaevich was writing his A. B. C. and Four Reading-Books, he used to intrust to me the work of making up sentences and of re-telling and translating them so as to adapt them to the Russian language and customs. I also wrote the small story Sparrows and others.
On the appearance of Kreutzer Sonata, which I never liked, I wrote a story from the woman’s point of view, but I did not publish it. Later on I wrote a tale, A Song without Words. I got the idea for it by seeing girls at a concert behave strangely to a famous pianist. They kissed his goloshes, tore his handkerchief to pieces and altogether acted as if they were mad.
What has music to do with all that? I wanted to convey the idea that our attitude towards art, as towards nature, must be chaste, i. e. pure, without any mixture of base human passions.
When I taught the children, I wrote a Russian grammar from which they quickly learnt to write correctly. Unfortunately the Russian teacher, who much approved of my work, lost it.
I used to invent stories to tell to my children, and I wrote some of them down and later published them with illustrations. In the first story, Skeleton Aurelias, I used an idea of Leo Nikolaevich’s. He began to write the story, but the beginning was lost. Whether it was lost with his suit-case, or whether it was carried off with the other MSS., I do not know.
I always regarded my literary work with a certain contempt and irony, considering it in the nature of a joke. For instance, after reading various writings of the decadents, I tried to imitate them, and, for a joke, wrote prose poems under the title Groans. They were published, without my name, and without the author being known, in the Journal Dlva Vsvekh for March, 1904.
I remember two others of my writings, translations which Leo Nikolaevich commissioned me to do. One was from the German, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which he afterwards corrected himself, and the other from English, On the Sect of the Bahaists.
I also published various articles in newspapers. The most important were: my appeal for funds for the famine-stricken on 3 November, 1891; my letter to the Metropolitans and Synod on Leo Nikolaevich’s excommunication, which had deeply revolted and pained me. I also published an article, A Recollection of Turgenev, in the Orlovskii Vyestnik, a critical article on Andreyev, and others.
If I ever wrote anything of value, it was the seven thick note-books, under the title My Life. In them I described all my long life up to 1897. When after the death of Leo Nikolaevich I was, quite illegally, forbidden access to the Historical Museum, where I had placed for safe keeping all my husband’s papers, diaries, letters, note-books, as well as my own, I could not continue my work without materials, and three years of my life, which was drawing to a close, were lost to the work. And who knows better than I the life of Leo Nikolaevich? It was I myself who in 1894 placed those documents first in the Rumyantsev Museum, and later during its repair transferred them to the Historical Museum, where they now lie awaiting the verdict as to their fate from the courts of law.
VII
IN THE SUMMER of 1884 Leo Nikolaevich worked a great deal on the land; for whole days he mowed with the peasants, and when tired out he came home in the evenings, he used to sit gloomy and discontented with the life lived by the family. That life was in discordance with his teaching, and this tormented and pained him. At one time he thought of taking a Russian peasant woman, a worker on the land, and of secretly going away with the peasants to start a new life; he confessed this to me himself.
At last, on 17 June, after a little quarrel with me about the horses, he took a sack with a few things on his shoulder and left the house, saying that he was going away for ever, perhaps to America, and that he would never come back. At the time I was beginning to feel the pains of childbirth. My husband’s behaviour drove me to despair, and the two pains, of the body and of the heart, were unendurable. I prayed to God for death. At four o’clock in the morning Leo Nikolaevich came back, and, without coming to me, lay down on the couch downstairs in his study. In spite of my cruel pains I ran down to him; he was gloomy and said nothing to me. At seven o’clock that morning our daughter Alexandra was born. I could never forget that terrible, bright June night.
Once more in 1897 Leo Nikolaevich had the desire to go away; but no one knew of it. He wrote me a letter which, at his desire, was handed over to me only after his death. But that time also he did not go away.
In the autumn of that year Leo Nikolaevich gave me a power-of-attorney to manage all his affairs, including the publication of his works. Inexperienced and without a farthing, I energetically began to learn the business of publishing books, and then of selling and subscribing L. N. Tolstoy’s works. I had to manage the estates and in general all his affairs. How difficult it was, with a large family and with no experience! I had more than once to appeal to the censor, and for that purpose I had to go to Petersburg.
Once Leo Nikolaevich called me into his study and asked me to take over in full ownership all his property, including his copyrights. I asked him what need there was for that, since we were so intimate and had children in common. He replied that he considered property an evil and that he did not wish to own it. “So you wish to hand over that evil to me, the creature nearest to you,” I said, in tears; “I do not want it and I shall take nothing.” So I did not take my husband’s property, but I managed his affairs under the power-of-attorney, and it was only some years afterwards that I agreed to a general division of the property, and the father himself apportioned the shares to each of the children and to myself. He renounced altogether the copyright of his books written after 1881. But he retained until the end of his life the copyright of the previous books. The division was completed in 1891, and Yasnaya Polyana was given to our youngest son, Vanichka, and to myself.
In the same year 1891 an important event happened to me. I went to Petersburg to petition the authorities to remove the ban on the thirteenth volume of L. N. Tolstoy’s works, which contained Kreutzer Sonata. I made an application to the Emperor Alexander III. He graciously received me, and, after I had left, he ordered the ban on the forbidden book to be removed, although he expressed a desire that Kreutzer Sonata should not be sold as a separate volume. But some one secretly published the story, and envious persons calumniated me by telling the Tsar that I had disobeyed his will. The Sovereign was, naturally, highly displeased, and, as Countess A. A. Tolstoy told me he said: “If I was mistaken in that woman, then there are no truthful people in the world.” I got to know about this too late to clear up the matter, and I was deeply grieved, the more so because the Tsar died that autumn without ever knowing the truth.
VIII
THE YEAR 1891 and the two following years were memorable for us because of the assistance given by the family to the famine-stricken Russian people. Distressed by the news which we received about the calamity, I decided to publish in the newspapers an appeal for subscriptions. What a joy to me was the ardent sympathy of the good people who sent generous donations, often accompanied by moving letters! The four younger children remained with me in Moscow. It was extraordinarily difficult for me to part from my husband and the elder children who were exposing themselves to many dangers.
My only comfort was that I, too, was taking part in the good work. I bought trucks of corn, beans, onions, cabbage, everything needed for the feeding centres where the
