Tolstoy

In late May 1877 Alexeyev returned to Russia, now with Malikov’s peasant wife Elizaveta and her two children in tow, one of whom was his. They had been dreadfully homesick in the American plains, and crossed the border on Trinity Sunday (Troitsa) to see young people dancing in the fields through the train window. In pre-revolutionary times, Russians traditionally celebrated Troitsa as the day on which the Holy Spirit descended on all of nature, not just the apostles. ‘Green Yuletide’, as it was also called in reference to the pagan traditions which accompanied all the major Christian holy days, was a particularly fertile and joyous time, when everything was in full bloom. It was also a date in the calendar particularly associated with youth, so it was a poignant day for Alexeyev to return to Russia – at twenty-nine he was four years younger than his future employer Countess Tolstoy. Trinity Sunday was celebrated at Yasnaya Polyana like everywhere else²⁹ – the Tolstoy children would go to church in their Sunday best bearing armfuls of flowers, then take part in the dancing. Sonya would plant flowers and the local village girls would ask the cuckoos how many years awaited them before they married, calculating their answer from the number of calls they heard.³⁰ Homes and village streets would be decorated with greenery, with bunches of carnations placed behind icons, and a profusion of periwinkles, peonies, cornflowers, violets and lilies placed on window-ledges. When Tolstoy went to worship that morning in May 1877 he would have encountered birch saplings and freshly cut grass and fragrant thyme strewn on the floor of the church. Along with other parishioners he would also have held a birch twig or flowers during the service as symbols of the Holy Spirit coming down to bring renewal.³¹ As well as the ritual songs and dances that came after church on Trinity Sunday in Russia, village girls at Yasnaya Polyana would weave garlands which they would throw on to ponds and lakes, in the hope they would float – a sign of long life.

Given his moral convictions and his past experiences, Alexeyev was understandably reluctant at first to become tutor to the Tolstoy children. Despite being desperately poor and in need of a job, he recoiled at the idea of coming to live in the house of a count, where meals were served by white-gloved servants. When Tolstoy heard this, however, he took an immediate interest in Alexeyev, and persuaded him to come just for a visit. Alexeyev’s doubts vanished as soon as they set off for a walk, during which he was closely questioned about his outlook on life. Tolstoy was a good listener, and Alexeyev was soon unbuttoning himself completely. He felt so uninhibited he even went into propaganda mode and showed Tolstoy the calloused hands he had acquired from all the manual labour he had done in America, imagining he was talking to an upper-class writer who had never picked up a tool. To his surprise, Tolstoy declared they were worth far more than the huge salaries earned by civil servants, and opened up to Alexeyev about his own ideals, sharing with him his despair at not being able to find answers to the questions that tormented him. He even showed Alexeyev the bough in the garden he had considered hanging himself from to escape from his afflictions. Tolstoy carried on talking to Alexeyev in his study for the rest of that day, and by evening Alexeyev had agreed to take the job, accepting Tolstoy’s suggestion that he rent the cottage just outside the Yasnaya Polyana gates for his family. Soon he was coming to the house every morning at eight to have coffee with the children before starting lessons in Russian and mathematics with Sergey, Tanya and Ilya. Within a year he felt so at home in the Tolstoy household that he moved with his family into the guest wing which Sonya’s sister stayed in during the summer months. The fact that he and Elizaveta were not actually married (which Sonya would not have approved of) was somehow glossed over.

Alexeyev was a gifted teacher and popular, particularly with fourteen-year-old Sergey, who became very attached to him. Sergey was the most musical of the Tolstoy children, and Alexeyev records in his memoirs his pupil playing Chopin’s D Flat Major Prelude especially for him. Eleven-year-old Ilya, by contrast, only seemed interested in dogs and hunting, and took great delight in taking his violin outside and playing mournful sounds on it, attracting all the dogs in the vicinity to gather round and start howling in unison.³²