Tolstoy

The small, dark-skinned Tatyana Filippovna took over from Annushka as nanny to the Tolstoy children. She returned to Yasnaya Polyana after helping to raise Tolstoy’s sister’s daughters, and helped care for his first-born, Sergey. She later died in the house at Yasnaya Polyana, in the very room where Tolstoy sat writing his memoirs as an old man. He describes Tatyana Filippovna as a simple soul who was completely devoted to his family and was continually exploited by her own family: her good-for-nothing husband and son saw her as a source of ready money. Her brother Nikolay Filippovich was the coachman at Yasnaya Polyana, and he was also loved and respected by the Tolstoy children, who liked the fact that he smelled pleasantly of manure, and had a gentle, melodious voice.

Every Russian landowner had his favourites amongst their servants, and Tolstoy commented that this was particularly true of people like his father, who were passionate about hunting. The preferential treatment Nikolay Ilyich gave the two brothers Petrusha and Matyusha, who were invaluable in the field and doubled up by serving at table at home, meant they were not so popular with other servants, who resented the gifts and other privileges given to them. As was quite common in such cases, when they were given their freedom the brothers did not cope well with the sudden change from their former state of slavery, and never seemed to be satisfied with what they had been given. Neither of them ever married. As a young boy, Tolstoy simply admired them as strong, handsome men, always neatly turned out.

Along with Petrusha and Matyusha, the diminutive, grey-eyed Tikhon (the one who stole Nikolay Ilyich’s tobacco on the quiet) also waited at the Tolstoy family table, but he was quite different. He had been a flautist in Nikolay Volkonsky’s orchestra, and his second job was to sweep the reception rooms in the house every morning, after which he would sit in the front hall knitting socks. He was a born comic, and very popular with the Tolstoy children when he stood behind their father or grandmother at table and pulled funny faces. He would immediately become motionless again, plate held tight against his chest, as soon as an adult turned round. The mild-mannered, kind Vasily Trubetskoy, the wine steward with the crooked smile, was also remembered with affection, and he was very fond of all the children: he used to delight the Tolstoy boys when they were very small by putting them on a tray and carrying them round the pantry. Tolstoy tells us in his memoirs that as a six-year-old boy he was thunderstruck when he learned that Vasily had been appointed to manage an estate inherited by the family. He later claimed that the moment when Vasily came to kiss the Tolstoy children on the shoulder that Christmas, after learning of this promotion, was when he first experienced the anguish of confronting change.³²

Christmas was the one time of year when the Tolstoy children traditionally mingled with the serfs on the estate. Extending for the whole twelve days until Epiphany, Yuletide in Russia was a particularly jolly time, when the rules of normal life were temporarily suspended, and mummers dressed in colourful and outlandish costumes would go on wild troika rides, or walk from house to house singing carols, and be treated in return to festive food and drink. It was also the custom for serfs to visit their owners. Every Christmas about thirty peasants belonging to the Tolstoy family would come up to the main house in fancy dress (there was always a bear and a goat), or dressed up as the opposite sex. The Tolstoy children also dressed up, giving themselves black moustaches with the aid of a burnt cork, and old Grigory, the former violinist in Nikolay Volkonsky’s serf orchestra, would make his annual visit to Yasnaya Polyana to accompany the singing and dancing.³³ Happy memories of these festivities, which were continued while Tolstoy’s own children were growing up at Yasnaya Polyana, later inspired the enchanting scene in War and Peace when the young Rostovs, Natasha, Sonya and Nikolay, get dressed up one evening and travel by sleigh to visit their neighbours.