Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Chapter 1

by Paul Biryukov

The Ancestors of Leo Tolstoy on His Father's Side

The history of the Counts Tolstoy presents a picture of an ancient and noble family descending, according to the accounts of genealogists, from the good and true man Indris, who came from Germany to Chernigov in 1353 with his two sons and a retinue of 3,000 men; he was baptized and received the name of Leonty; he became the founder of several noble families. His great-grandchild, Andrey Kharitonovich, who moved from Chernigov to Moscow and received from the Grand Duke Vasiliy Tyomniy the surname of Tolstoy, was the founder of the branch known to us as the Tolstoys (in which branch Count Lev Tolstoy was born in the twentieth generation from the founder Indris).

One of his descendants, Peter Andreyevich Tolstoy, became a dignitary at the Russian court in 1683, and was afterward one of the chief actors in the rebellion of the Streltsi. The fall of the Tsarevna Sofya caused this Tolstoy abruptly to change his attitude and pass over to the Tsar Peter; but the latter behaved to him for a long time with coldness, and a considerable period passed before Peter Andreyevich enjoyed the full confidence of the Tsar. It is said that at their merry banquets Tsar Peter delighted to pull the big wig off Peter Tolstoy's head, and tapping him on the bald crown to repeat: "Little head, little head, if you were not so clever, you would have parted from your body long ago."

The Tsar's suspicions were not allayed even by the military achievements of Peter Tolstoy during the second Azov campaign (1696).

In 1697 the Tsar sent "volunteers" to study in foreign countries, and Peter Tolstoy, already a middle-aged man, offered himself to go abroad to study naval matters. Two years which he spent in Italy gave him an opportunity of seeing something of the culture of Western Europe. At the end of 1701 Peter Tolstoy was appointed ambassador in Constantinople, an important but very difficult post. During the complications of 1710-1713 Peter Tolstoy was twice confined in the Castle of the Seven Towers, a fact which accounts for this castle being represented in the Tolstoy coat-of-arms.

In 1717 Tolstoy rendered an important service to the Tsar, and so strengthened his position for all subsequent time. Having been sent to Naples, where the Tsarevich Alexis was hiding with his mistress Euphrosyne in the Castle of St. Elmo, Peter Tolstoy, with the help of the lady, adroitly outwitted the Tsarevich, and by means of threats and false promises induced him to return to Russia. For his active participation in the subsequent trial and secret execution of the Tsarevich carried out by Peter Tolstoy, with the aid of Rumyantsev^[1], Oshakov, and Buturlin, his accomplices, at the direction of Peter I, Peter Tolstoy received a present of land, and was appointed Chief of the Secret Chamber, where there was soon a great deal to be done in consequence of the rumors and agitations provoked among the people by the fate of Alexis. From that time Peter Tolstoy is conspicuous as one of the most intimate and trusted persons about the Emperor. The affair of the Tsarevich brought Peter into favor with the Empress Catherine, and on the day of her coronation, May 7, 1724, he was made a Count. After the death of Peter I, Tolstoy, together with Menshikov, greatly aided Catherine's accession to the throne, and consequently enjoyed much favor during her reign. But on Peter II's accession his fall ensued. In spite of his advanced age--he was eighty-two years old--he was exiled to the Solovetsky Convent, where, however, he did not live long. He died in 1729.

We still possess the diary of Peter Tolstoy's journey abroad in 1697-1699, a characteristic exhibition of the impression made on men of his period by their acquaintance with Western Europe. Besides this, in 1706, Peter Tolstoy wrote a detailed description of the Black Sea. There also exist two translations he made: Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Administration of the Turkish Empire.

Peter Tolstoy had a son, Ivan Petrovich, who was himself deprived of his office, that of President of the Court, at the same time as his father, and was exiled to the same convent, where he died soon after him.

It was not till May 26, 1760, when the Empress Elizabeth Petrovna was already on the throne, that the descendants of Peter Andreyevich were restored to the rank of counts in the person of Peter's grandson, Andrey Ivanovich, the grandfather of Lev Tolstoy.

"I heard from my aunt the following story about Andrey Ivanovich, who whilst very young married the Princess Schetinin. For some reason or other his wife had to go to a ball without her husband. Having started on her way, probably in a covered sledge, from which the seat had been removed in order that her high headgear should not be injured, the young countess, perhaps seventeen years old, remembered that she had not said goodby to her husband, and returned home.

"When she arrived, she found him in tears; he was so much distressed at his wife's leaving the house without bidding him goodby."^[2]

In his Reminiscences Tolstoy speaks of his grandfather and grandmother on his father's side as follows:

"My grandmother, Pelageya Nikolayevna, was the daughter of the blind Prince Nikolay Ivanovich Gorchakov, who had amassed a large fortune. As far as I can form an idea of her character, she was not very intelligent, poorly educated--like all at that time, she knew French better than Russian (and to this her education was limited)--and exceedingly spoilt, first by her father, then by her husband, and lastly, in my time, by her son. Besides this, as a daughter of the elder branch, she enjoyed great regard from the Gorchakovs: from the former Minister of War, Nikolay Ivanovich, from Andrey Ivanovich and the sons of Dmitriy Petrovich, the freethinker, Peter, Sergey, and Mikhail of Sevastopol.

"My grandfather, Ilya Andreyevich, her husband was, according to my view of him, a man of limited intelligence, gentle in manner, merry, and not only generous, but carelessly extravagant, and above all, trustful. In his estate, Polyani, in the Belyefski district--not Yasnaya Polyana, but Polyani--incessant fetes, theatrical performances, balls, banquets, and excursions were kept up, which largely owing to my grandfather's tendency to play for high stakes at lomber and whist without knowing the game, and his readiness either to give or lend to any one who asked, both in loan and donation, and above all with the speculations and monopolies he used to start, resulted in his wife's large estate being so involved in debts, that at last there was no means of livelihood, and my grandfather had to procure the post of governor in Kazan, which he did easily owing to his connections.

"My grandfather, as I have been told, would not accept bribes, except from wine merchants, though it was then a universal custom, and he was angry when any were offered to him. But my grandmother, as I am informed, accepted presents unknown to her husband.

"In Kazan, my grandmother gave her youngest daughter Pelageya in marriage to Yushkov; the eldest, Alexandra, while yet in St. Petersburg, had married Count Osten-Saken.

"After the death of her husband in Kazan, and the marriage of my father, my grandmother settled down with my father in Yasnaya Polyana, and here I knew her as an old woman, and well remember her.

"My grandmother passionately loved my father and us, her grandchildren, and amused herself with us. She was fond of my aunts, but I think she did not quite love my mother; she considered her unworthy of my father, and was jealous of her in regard to him. With the servants she could not be exacting, because all knew she was the first person in the house, and tried to please her, but with her maid, Gasha, she gave herself up to her caprices and tormented her, calling her `You, my dear,' and demanding of her what she had not asked for, and in every way worrying her. Strange to say, Gasha or Agafiya Mikhaylovna^[3], whom I knew well, became infected with my grandmother's capricious ways, and with her little daughter, with her cat, and in general with all those beings with whom she could be exacting, was as capricious as my grandmother was with herself.

"My earliest reminiscences of my grandmother, before our removal to Moscow and our life there, amount to three strong impressions concerning her. One was how my grandmother washed, and with some kind of special soap produced on her hands wonderful bubbles, which, so it seemed to me, she alone could produce. We used to be purposely brought to her--probably our delight and wonder at her soap-bubbles amused her--in order to see how she washed. I remember the white jacket, petticoat, white aged hands, and the enormous bubbles rising on them, and her satisfied, smiling, white face.

"The second recollection is how she was drawn out, my father's valets acting as horses, in the yellow cabriolet on springs--in which we used to go for drives with out tutor, Feodor Ivanovich--into the small coppice for gathering nuts, of which there was a specially great quantity that year. I remember the dense thicket of hazel trees into which, thrusting aside and breaking the branches, Petrusha and Matyusha, the house valets, dragged the cabriolet with my grandmother, how they pulled down to her branches with clusters of ripe nuts, sometimes dropping off, how my grandmother herself gathered them into a bag, and how we either ourselves bent down branches, or else were astonished by the strength of Feodor Ivanovich, who bent down thick stems, while we gathered nuts on all sides, and always noticed that there yet remained nuts ungathered by us when Feodor Ivanovich let go the stems, and the bushes slowly catching in one another straightened up again. I remember how hot it was in the open spaces, how pleasantly fresh in the shade, how one breathed the sharp odor of the hazel-tree foliage, how the nuts cracked on all sides under the teeth of the girls who were with us, and how we, without ceasing, chewed the fresh, full, white kernels.

"We gathered the nuts into our pockets, into the skirts of our jackets, into the cabriolet, and our grandmother took them from us and praised us. How we came home, and what happened after, I do not remember. I remember only that grandmother and the hazel trees, the peculiar odor of the foliage of the hazel bushes, the valets, the yellow cabriolet, and the sun were blended into one joyful impression. It seemed to me that, as the soap-bubbles could be produced only by my grandmother, so also the wood, the nuts, the sun, could only be in connection with my grandmother in her yellow cabriolet drawn by Petrusha and Matyusha.

"But the strongest impression connected with my grandmother was a night passed in her bedroom with Lev Stepanovich. Lev Stepanovich was a blind story-teller (he was already an old man when I came to know him)--the survival of ancient luxury, the luxury of my grandfather. He was bought merely for the purpose of narrating stories, which, owing to the extraordinary memory peculiar to blind people, he could retell word for word after they had been twice read to him.

"He lived somewhere in the house, and during the whole day he was not seen. But in the evenings he came up into my grandmother's bedroom (this bedroom was a low little room into which one had to enter up two steps), and he seated himself on a low window ledge, where they used to bring him supper from the master's table. Here he waited for my grandmother, who might with impunity perform her night toilet in the presence of a blind man. On the day when it was my turn to sleep in my grandmother's bedroom, Lev Stepanovich, with his white eyes, clad in a long blue coat with puffs on the shoulders, was already sitting on the window ledge having his supper. I don't remember where my grandmother undressed, whether in this room or another, or how I was put to bed, I remember only the moment when the candle was put out and there remained only a little light in front of the gilded icons, and my grandmother, that same wonderful grandmother who produced the extraordinary soap-bubbles, all white, clothed in white, lying on white, and covered with white, in her white nightcap, lay high on the cushions, and from the window was heard the even quiet voice of Lev Stepanovich. `Will it please you for me to continue?' `Yes, continue,' `"Dearest sister," she said,' recommenced Lev Stepanovich, with his quiet, even, aged voice, `"tell us one of those most interesting stories which you know so well how to narrate." "Willingly," answered Shaheresada, "would I relate the remarkable history of Prince Kamaralzaman, if our lord will express his consent." Having received the consent of the Sultan, Shaheresada began thus: A certain powerful king had an only son"'...and, evidently word for word, according to the book, Lev Stepanovich began the history of Kamaralzaman. I did not listen, I did not understand what he said, so absorbed was I by the mysterious appearance of the white grandmother, by her swaying shadow on the wall, and the appearance of the old man with white eyes whom I could not now see, but whom I realized as sitting immovably on the window ledge, and who was saying with a slow voice some strange words, which seemed to me very solemn as they alone resounded through the darkness of the little room lighted by the trembling of the image-lamp. I probably immediately fell asleep, for I remember nothing further, and in the morning I was again astonished and enraptured by the soap-bubbles which my grandmother when washing produced on her hands.

"According to Marie's recollections, the blind Lev Stepanovich's sense of hearing was so perfect that he could distinctly hear mice running about and could tell in which direction they were going. In grandmother's room one of the special attractions for the mice was the oil used for the image-lamp, which they drank up. At night while telling stories he would say, without changing his tone of voice: `There, your excellency, a little mouse has just run to the image-lamp to get at the oil.' After that he would go on again with his story-telling in the same monotone."

The following genealogoical table gives the reader a view of the nearest ancestors and relations of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy:

The Counts Tolstoy

Number of Generations from Indris

   15        Peter Andreyevich Tolstoy, the first Count
             (died 1729)
   16        Ivan Petrovich (died 1728)
   17        Andrey Ivaonvich (died 1803)
   18        Ilya Andreyevich, Governor of Kazan (died 1820)
   19        Aleksandra, married to Count Osten-Saken. Nikolay (died 1837)
   19        Pelageya, married V.P. Yushkov. Ilya (died childless)
   20        Nikolay (born 1823). Sergey (born 1826).  Dmitriy (born 1827).  Lev (born 1828). Marie (born 1830).[4]

The Counts Tolstoy are known in many branches of social activity. It would probably interest the reader to know the degree of relationship which some of these bear to Tolstoy. For example, let us take Feodor Petrovich Tolstoy, the well-known artist, medallist, and vice-president of the Imperial Academy of Arts, his nephew the poet, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, and the ex-minister Dmitriy Andreyevich Tolstoy, well known for his reactionary measures. These three members of the Tolstoy family were distantly related to our Tolstoy, their common ancestor being Ivan Petrovich Tolstoy, son of the first Count Tolstoy, Peter Andreyevich, who died with his father in exile at the Solovetsky Convent.^[5]

I ought her to mention Theodore Tolstoy, and original man, called the American. He was known for his very unusual adventures, and the following words in Griboyedov's comedy, called "Come to Grief through being too Clever," refer to him: "Exiled to Kamchatka, he returned an Aleoute." Tolstoy speaks of him in his reminiscences of his childhood, and it was his individuality which partly suggested the character of Dolokhov in War and Peace. He was Tolstoy's first cousin once removed.

Footnotes

1. Rumyantsev. Letter to D.T. Titov. The Polar Star, IV. Herzen's publication. London, 1857.
2. Note added by Tolstoy when revising the MS of this work.
3. Agafiya Mikhaylovna died an old woman a few years ago in Yasnaya Polyana, where she had been living in retirement for many years.
4. "Count L.N. Tolstoy and His University Life." N.P. Zagoskin Istoricheskiy Vestnik, Jan., 1894, p. 81.
5. Information given by Lev Tolstoy. See also Brockhaus and Effron's Encyclopedia, vol. xxxiii, p. 462.