Tolstoy

As Sonya later emphasised, her husband’s work was always the most important thing in his life,⁹⁴ and she would later actually reprove him for his neglect of the younger children when he became a full-time campaigner on behalf of the oppressed. He was the one to make all the decisions about how the children would be educated, however, and was a charismatic figure when they were growing up, all the more so because they saw him less. It was in the 1870s that Tolstoy was most active and involved as a father, particularly in the first half of the decade, before he became swept up by the writing of Anna Karenina and the spiritual crisis which immediately followed it. The elder Tolstoy children consequently received considerably more attention from their father than their younger siblings who grew up in the 1880s, as would become apparent in the case of Andrey and Misha, who later showed no interest whatsoever in living according to their father’s teachings. The younger Tolstoy children also grew up with no memory of their parents being happily married, unlike the three eldest, who as adults all wrote revealing memoirs of their idyllic early years at Yasnaya Polyana.⁹⁵

Even though the Tolstoy children saw less of their father than their mother, his influence was certainly greater when they were young: his word was law. When they were very young, it was always an event whenever he appeared in the nursery, and throughout their childhood they cherished the times he spent with them. In the 1870s the Tolstoy children remembered their father still being full of joie de vivre, and somehow life became more interesting for them when he was present, as he seemed to possess a special energy. He hated to be disturbed while he was working, and insisted on complete peace and quiet, but at other times he was often in high spirits, with the exuberance of an overgrown child himself. As an aficionado of physical exercise and the benefits of being outdoors in the fresh air, he enjoyed taking his children riding, swimming and skating. Tolstoy was particularly keen that his sons take up gymnastics, but he was not at all keen on toys, which were banished from the nursery, forcing Sonya to produce horses and dogs out of cardboard, and sew rag-dolls herself so the children had something to play with. Tolstoy compensated for depriving his children of conventional playthings by granting them the greatest possible liberty. What he hated most of all in his children were lies and rudeness, and to see them eating from their knife; he punished their misdemeanours by simply ignoring them. The Tolstoy children found it impossible to lie to their father, and sometimes found it hard to face his steely gaze, as they were convinced he could read their thoughts. They never doubted his love for them, but since he regarded it as a weakness to exhibit tenderness towards his sons, he was not always demonstrative. Indeed, Ilya could not remember ever being caressed by his father. Tolstoy was always much more physically affectionate with his daughters.

With his own children, Tolstoy was a rigorous and exacting teacher, and it was sometimes hard keeping up with him (Tanya dreaded her maths lessons with her father as he could be very impatient). Not only did the word ‘can’t’ not exist in his vocabulary, but he always went at a cracking pace, just like the fast trot he maintained on horseback. The Tolstoy children were taught by both their parents, with their father taking them for mathematics, Latin and Greek, while their mother was responsible for Russian and French lessons. Then there was a local priest who came twice a week to teach the Scriptures, a drawing teacher for Tanya later on, and a succession of resident tutors, several of whom were foreign. Since Tolstoy admired many aspects of British education, the first of the many tutors hired for the three eldest children was an English governess, Hannah Tarsey, who arrived in November 1866. Neither Tolstoy nor Sonya knew English well, so before her arrival they read their way through Wilkie Collins’s A Woman in White.