Tolstoy

Tolstoy could not remember his mother, who died before he was two years old, but her idealised image was a constant presence throughout his life, right up until his last years. He openly admitted to one of his early biographers in 1906 that he had a culte of his mother, and as an old man was still thinking about her when he went on his solitary morning walks round the estate.⁴ In the memoirs he wrote when he was in his seventies, Tolstoy confesses he had often prayed to her soul to help him at moments of temptation when he was younger. Even in his eighties he could not talk about her without crying. On days when he felt particularly melancholy at the end of his life, he still had an intense longing to curl up and be comforted by his mother, who represented for him a ‘supreme image of pure love’.⁵

By the time Tolstoy was born in 1828, Yasnaya Polyana was getting quite crowded. Maria Nikolayevna had led a mostly secluded and solitary life on the estate while her father was alive. After her marriage to Nikolay Tolstoy in 1822, however, her husband brought various members of his family to live with them. Apart from his venerable mother Pelageya Nikolayevna, by then sixty, there was his younger sister Alexandra Ilyinichna (‘Aline’), who was twenty-seven, and so five years younger than Maria Nikolayevna. Aline came with a ward, Pashenka, who was then about five years old. There was also ‘Toinette’, his distant ‘aunt’ Tatyana Alexandrovna Ergolskaya (pronounced ‘Yorgelskaya’). Her father had been Tolstoy’s grandmother’s cousin, and she was thirty – three years younger than Maria Nikolayevna. All these women were to be important figures in Tolstoy’s life, particularly Aunt Toinette, who lived at Yasnaya Polyana after he inherited the estate. She died when he was in his late forties, and represented a precious link to the parents he lost when he was very young. Three other members of the family also took up residence at Yasnaya Polyana before Tolstoy was born: his elder brothers Nikolay, Sergey and Dmitry, born in 1823, 1826 and 1827, respectively.

Nikolay occupied a special place in his mother’s affections as her first-born. Anxious to inculcate her son with obedience and the right moral qualities, she kept a detailed diary of his behaviour from the age of four, and expressed displeasure at the first sign he showed of cowardice or laziness. She also deplored manifestations of sentimentality, such as when Nikolay shed tears after reading about a bird being shot, or when he was frightened by a beetle. Maria Nikolayevna wanted her son to be brave, stoic and patriotic, and she allowed him to wear a sabre as a reward for good behaviour. She also discouraged vanity. Turgenev, with whom Nikolay was friendly many years later, would remark that unlike his youngest brother Lev he indeed completely lacked the abundance of vanity necessary for anyone wishing to become a writer.⁶

When Lev was born on 28 August 1828, the youngest of four sons, he replaced Nikolay as the chief and final object of his mother’s affections according to Aunt Toinette.⁷ His mother’s nickname for him was ‘mon petit Benjamin’, but he was christened Lev, the Russian form of Leo. Unlike her father, Maria Nikolayevna was deeply religious, and thought carefully about the names of her children. After her fifth (and final) child was born, she commissioned a small icon featuring images of their five namesakes, and St Leo the Great is depicted in the bottom right-hand corner. Tolstoy’s Christian name certainly seems to have been well chosen: he shared with the fifth-century St Leo (only one of two Popes to be called ‘The Great’) not only noble birth but an astonishing fearlessness. Pope Leo is known to have ridden out to the gates of Rome to confront Attila the Hun, whom he persuaded to abandon his idea of invading Europe. Tolstoy fought with bravery while he was in the army, and once wrestled with a bear while he was out hunting. He also shared literary distinction with his illustrious namesake: St Leo founded what would become an influential prose style called cursus leonicus.