As a small boy, Tolstoy liked to see his father elegantly dressed in frock-coat and close-fitting breeches in preparation for trips into town, but his most vivid memories of his father were connected with hunting. Nikolay Tolstoy loved hunting – both riding to hounds and shooting – and he had a particular affection for two servants, the brothers Petrusha and Matyusha, who usually accompanied him. Like many of his class, Nikolay Tolstoy considered hunting second only to warfare as an arena for showing courage and bravado, and so Tolstoy and his brothers were thus trained to hunt from a young age.19 Nikolay Ilyich thought it important for his sons to start learning to be real men as early as possible and they were each given ponies. In old age Tolstoy cherished memories of walking with his father through the long grass of the meadows with his beloved borzoi puppies running circles round them.20 Tolstoy himself would become a passionate huntsman (the hunting scenes in War and Peace are amongst the most lovingly written in the novel), and it took him a long time in later life to relinquish an activity which clearly contravened the moral and religious principles he embraced after his spiritual crisis. Tolstoy never abandoned horseriding, however, and his love of horses can be seen both in the exquisite detail of his description of Vronsky’s horse Frou-Frou in Anna Karenina, and in ‘Kholstomer’ (‘Strider’), the remarkable story he began in the 1860s and later revised, which is told from a horse’s point of view.
Tolstoy’s most vivid memories of his father may have been connected with hunting, but his fondest ones were of seeing him sitting next to his grandmother on the sofa, and helping her lay out the cards for patience while she occasionally took snuff from her gold snuffbox. His aunts would be in armchairs nearby, one of them reading aloud, while in another armchair his father’s favourite borzoi Milka would be curled up asleep, or gazing at everyone with her beautiful black eyes (she appears in War and Peace as herself). In his memoirs, Tolstoy recollects a particular evening when his father stopped whichever aunt was reading aloud and pointed to the mirror on the wall. Tikhon the manservant could be seen stealing furtively on tiptoes into his study and stealing tobacco from his leather pouch. Tolstoy’s father found this very amusing.21
Nikolay Ilyich had a busy life, and he worked hard to restore the family fortunes. He certainly proved to have greater business acumen than his hapless father, and he left his children a legacy that amounted to far more than his late wife’s dowry. In 1832 he owned 793 male and 800 female serfs, including 219 ‘souls’ at Yasnaya Polyana and the surrounding villages. He was particularly pleased to be able to re-acquire Nikolskoye-Vyazemskoye, one of his mother’s estates that had previously been mortgaged. Tolstoy later inherited it when his brother Nikolay died. In 1837 Tolstoy’s father was also able to buy Pirogovo, a large estate not far from Yasnaya Polyana, which came with 472 serfs, and was later inherited by Tolstoy’s brother Sergey and his sister Maria.
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