Tolstoy

Under Russian law in the 1840s, daughters were entitled to inherit one-eighth of their late parents’ property and a fourteenth share of everything else, but the Tolstoy brothers voted to share their inheritance equally with their sister. Nikolay was assigned the Nikolskoye estate in Tula province, together with 317 male serfs (the only ones considered worth counting), and a large piece of land. As a great horse-lover, Sergey inherited the Pirogovo estate, also in Tula province, together with its stud farm and 316 male serfs. Maria received land in the same village, a flour mill, and a large sum of money. Dmitry received Shcherbachevka, the family estate in Kursk province, and over 300 serfs, while Lev inherited Yasnaya Polyana and its neighbouring villages, and also some 300 serfs. There were also sums of money given and received to even everything out.⁴⁶ The legal document was signed by all parties on 11 July 1847 in Tula, after which they departed for their new properties. That November Masha, who throughout the previous few years had lived rather apart from her brothers, married their distant cousin Valerian Petrovich, who was a nephew of Fyodor Tolstoy, the famous ‘American’ (and indeed of Aunt Toinette). She was seventeen; he was thirty-four. In August 1847 Tolstoy turned nineteen, and now had the freedom to do as he wanted.

5

LANDOWNER, GAMBLER, OFFICER, WRITER

Call things by their name.

Diary entry, 21 February 1851¹

TOLSTOY HAD GRAND PLANS for his new life as a member of Russia’s landowning nobility. He wanted to use his time wisely, and for a noble and worthwhile purpose, so on 17 April 1847 he set out in his diary what he planned to do over the next two years as the owner of Yasnaya Polyana. He would study French, German, English, Italian, Russian and Latin as well as acquire a ‘moderate degree of perfection’ in music and painting. He would devote himself to history, geography, statistics, mathematics and natural sciences, practical and theoretical medicine, and farming in all its aspects. He would complete his course of study in law, so that he could take his final exam and graduate. He would write a dissertation. He would write essays on all the subjects he was going to study. And he would write down rules. But all those good intentions came to nothing. The very next day he admitted somewhat sheepishly to himself that he was not actually capable of meeting his own expectations, and so he scaled everything back, deciding he would stick to following just one rule at a time. The first rule he resolved to follow was to carry out whatever task he set himself – except that he failed at the first hurdle. On 19 April he admitted in his diary that he had got up very late, and only decided what he would do that day at two o’clock in the afternoon. There was an easy way out: on 20 April he stopped writing his diary. There were a further three entries in June, then it completely petered out. After the entry on 16 June, in which he lambasted women for emasculating men, and resolved to avoid them as far as possible, came a three-year silence.²

The period from June 1847 to October 1848 is almost a complete blank page in Tolstoy’s biography: there are not even any letters from him which could shed light on what he did when he was not adhering to his rules. Presumably he threw himself into the farming at Yasnaya Polyana, and discovered it was very hard work. Not only had he never worked on the land, and knew nothing about agriculture, but he had no experience in managing the serfs he owned. When his brother Dmitry wrote to ask him in September 1847 whether he had grown bored of running the estate at Yasnaya Polyana yet, we can assume the answer was affirmative.³ Tolstoy seems to have been a very fickle youth at this time. Some indication of his volatility comes from the fact that in the early autumn of 1847 he apparently decided on a whim to accompany his future brother-in-law to Siberia, and jumped into his carriage as he was setting off, thinking twice about it only when he realised he did not have a hat. In the end Valerian Petrovich set off alone to tie up his business in Tobolsk, in advance of marrying Tolstoy’s sister Maria.⁴