Tolstoy

When he was at home at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy’s father had his hands full with managing the estate, which he continued to run on the patriarchal lines established by Prince Volkonsky. Now that his family was so numerous, Nikolay Ilyich’s most pressing task was to finish building the main family residence. A couple of thousand roubles thus went on building a second, rather more modestly appointed storey in oak over the elegant ground floor. At its centre were rooms with parquet flooring and high ceilings, while the side rooms had a mezzanine floor, which gave the house the appearance of having three storeys. When everything was complete, there was finally enough room for Nikolay Ilyich and his five children, his mother, the two aunts and his sister’s ward Pashenka, the children’s tutor Fyodor Ivanovich, and the last permanent additions to the household: Evdokiya (Dunechka) Temyasheva, the illegitimate, freckled daughter of a neighbouring landowner and his serf mistress, and her tall, elderly nanny Evpraksiya. Dunechka was five years old when she arrived at Yasnaya Polyana in 1833 (the same age as Tolstoy), and she was brought up with the rest of the family as part of the complex property dealings over the Pirogovo estate. Tolstoy later described Dunechka as a nice, straightforward, not very bright girl who was a big cry-baby, but she got on very well with the rest of the family.²²

In his early childhood, Tolstoy was never alone. Among the grown-ups living at Yasnaya Polyana, his grandmother and the two aunts were important figures in his early life. Tolstoy’s babushka Pelageya Nikolayevna had lived a life of luxury and was not inclined to give it up, despite the family’s straitened circumstances. After being spoiled first by her father, then her husband and finally her son, she became rather tyrannical and capricious in her old age. Since everyone in the household went out of their way to please her in deference to her senior position, she made the most of being able to torment her maid, Agafya Mikhailovna, who put up with it as she was proud to be called a ‘lady-in-waiting’. Agafya Mikhailovna remained a beloved member of Tolstoy’s household when his own children were growing up, and he notes with amusement in his memoirs that his grandmother’s ways must have rubbed off on her, as she later became just as demanding and capricious herself.

Tolstoy remembered his grandmother well. She had never particularly warmed to Maria Nikolayevna, whom she considered unworthy of the son she idolised, but she was very fond of their children, and found them very amusing. Tolstoy retained only a few memories of his grandmother dating from his earliest childhood, but they were vivid ones. First of all he remembered the enormous soap bubbles she produced when washing in the morning. He and his siblings found them so captivating they were sometimes brought into their grandmother’s room just to watch her perform her ablutions. A picture of her white blouse, white skirt, elderly white arms and white shining face imprinted itself forever in Tolstoy’s memory. He himself also acquired the nickname of ‘Levka the bubble’ as he was so rotund as a little boy.

Tolstoy also remembered a magical excursion on a hot day, when the family went into the woods to collect hazelnuts. His grandmother was transported in a yellow cabriolet pulled not by horses, but by his father’s servants Petrusha and Matyusha, who bent down the branches for her so she could gather the nuts.²³ That yellow carriage with the tall springs was also later used for summer outings to the little wooden house with shutters built by Sergey Volkonsky in Grumant, where there was a picturesque view of the River Voronka winding its way through the meadows to one side, and forests on the other. Nearby was a grove with a spring, which was the source of the fresh water used by the Tolstoy family; great quantities of it would be taken over to Yasnaya Polyana every day. There was also a deep pond full of tench, bream, carp, perch and sterlet, where the boys and their tutor could fish. Babushka Pelageya Nikolayevna, who had no great desire to be entertained by Matryona the cattlewoman in her shabby dress, did not join the children on these trips. But the children loved their afternoons with Matryona, her daughter and the peasant children, when they would be treated to chunks of black bread, and milk that had come straight from the cows. They liked being surrounded by cattle and hens, and the assortment of village dogs which congregated round Bertha, their tutor’s setter.²⁴