Leo Tolstoy

This tortured compromise might possibly have worked as a divorce arrangement, but Tolstoy continued to live in the same house. He now had the dubious status of a dependant without responsibility for the well-being of his family and legally unable to interfere in any conflict that might arise between his family and the peasants. In his diaries, letters and conversations Tolstoy often expressed his revulsion at the ‘luxurious’ life he was living. Today’s visitors to his houses at Yasnaya Polyana and in Moscow will struggle to notice this luxury. The houses seem modest, if not ascetic, and inadequate for such a large family. Tolstoy, however, compared himself not to his peers, but to the hungry peasants jammed in dirty huts. He found the minimal comfort he enjoyed unbearable, directly contradicting what he was preaching to a world that could observe and question the conflict between his teachings and his lifestyle.

Tolstoy’s working room in Yasnaya Polyana.

The copyright agreement was no less precarious. In early 1895 Tolstoy promised his new story ‘Master and Man’ to Liubov’ Gurevich, editor of the magazine Severnyi vestnik (Northern Messenger). In this story a rich merchant, Vasily Brekhunov, rushing to complete a profitable deal in spite of repeated warnings, orders his coachman Nikita to drive him in a snowstorm. They lose their way in the country at night. Suddenly, in an outburst of joy and tenderness he has never experienced before, Brekhunov unbuttons his fur coat and warms Nikita with his body, saving his life but dying himself instead.

Sofia had, by this time, reluctantly reconciled herself to the fact that her husband would publish his works for the benefit of the ‘dark ones’ in cheap editions from ‘Intermediary’. But Tolstoy’s preference for a highbrow literary magazine over her collected works edition insulted her. She concluded that his decision had been caused by an infatuation with ‘the scheming half-Jewess’ (SAT-Ds, I, p. 233) Gurevich and went into a bout of jealous rage. Intending, or pretending to intend, to commit suicide, she rushed out of the house into the freezing night in her gown and slippers. Tolstoy caught her on the way and convinced her to return, but in the following days she made two new attempts to escape and was brought back by children. Later Sofia wrote that she had relished the thought of freezing herself to death like the character in Tolstoy’s story. Finally, Leo backed down and agreed to let her publish the story simultaneously with Northern Messenger. Sofia recorded this in her diary on 21 February 1895. The same night their six-year-old son Ivan (Vanechka) fell ill. He died two days later.

Both Tolstoys knew that Vanechka was their last child and loved him with the tenderness and devotion of late parents. The boy himself was angelic: intelligent, kind, meek, totally devoid of childish egotism and endowed with a unique ability to understand others. As is typical in dysfunctional families, both parents were pulling their children in opposite directions: the daughters took Leo’s side; the sons, with the exception of Sergei, the eldest, who tried to remain neutral and remote, sympathized with their mother. Vanechka was the only one who tried to bring the family together, showing unending love and compassion for both estranged spouses: ‘Isn’t it better to die than to see how people get angry?’ he once said. The physical and moral suffering he experienced as a result of his parents’ quarrels forced them to control their words and behaviour. In a way, he was the only remaining link that still united the family.

Shortly before his death, speaking to his mother about his late brother Alyosha (Alexei), Vanechka had asked whether it was true that children who died before they were seven became angels. Sofia told him that many people believed that. He replied, ‘It would be better for me, Mama, if I too were to die before seven. My birthday will be soon. And if I don’t die, dear Mama, let me fast so that I will not have sins’ (SAT-Ds, I, 512). After that he started to give away his toys and drawings as presents to his siblings and the servants.

‘Mother is terrible in her grief. All her life was in him, she gave him all her love. Papa is the only one who can help her, but he suffers himself terribly and cries all the time,’ wrote Tolstoy’s daughter Maria in a letter to a friend.⁷ Tolstoy, who believed that Vanechka would be ‘his only son to continue the work of God after him’ (SAT-Ds, I, p. 515), had turned overnight from a strong and energetic middle-aged man into a sickly old one. He confessed to his wife that for the first time in his life he felt completely hopeless.

The young writer and future Nobel Prize laureate Ivan Bunin recalls how Tolstoy tried to overcome this despair. Bunin, who visited him in Moscow around that time, began telling Tolstoy how much he admired the recently published ‘Master and Man’: