Every year at Christmas a part)- of friends gathered around the
t After his death he was replaced by his son Simon, who prepared vegetarian meals for Tolstoy.
lighted tree, presents were distributed and a masquerade held. On one of these festive occasions a gypsy arrived, leading a bear and a goat; the goat was Leo Tolstoy.
One great source of delight was the weekly steambath. This took place in a wooden cabin with a thatched roof. Every Saturday the floor was covered with fresh straw. A servant heated the stove red-hot and then threw buckets of water over it to make steam. The children waited until they were dripping with sweat, then rushed outside to roll in the snow and came running back to the cabin. Sonya believed this was an excellent "health-building" activity for the young. Besides, there was no running water in the house. Whenever anyone wanted to take a bath a servant had to fetch water from the river in buckets.
It was forbidden to buy toys in the shops, for, said Tolstoy, they stifled a child's imagination. (TTiose they made themselves out of three scraps of wood were so much more precious and fun!) To spare their tender souls from humiliation, no punishment was ever administered. Even if the offense was serious, nobody forced the culprit to apologize; he came to see the error of his ways himself, by observing that his parents were treating him coldly. Consideration for the servants was compulsory, as well as continual striving for simplicity, culture and cheerfulness.
Vigilance relaxed a little with the arrival of summer guests—pretty Aunt Tanya and her husband, the boring Kuzminsky. There were picnics, hikes, croquet tournaments, bathing. . . . They played "postbox." The postbox sat on the staircase landing near the clock, and everybody, grownups and children alike, contributed what he had written during the week: poems, caricatures, anecdotes, comical accounts of happenings at Yasnaya Polyana. On Sundays the box was opened in the presence of the entire family and Tolstoy read out the notes; none of them were signed, but all could be identified by the style or the handwriting. At one point in the game, it was decided to make a survey of "the ideals of the inhabitants of Yasnaya Polyana." Some of the anonymous replies were noteworthy. Tolstoy's ideal was expressed as follows: "(1). Poverty, peace and concord. (2). Bum everything he had worshiped and worship everything he had burned." Sonya's was "to have one hundred and fifty children, who never grow up." Tanya's was "eternal youth, and freedom for women."
Another question to which everyone had to reply was, "What is the raison d'etre of the people at Yasnaya Polyana?" Replies: "For Sofya Andreyevna [Countess Tolstoy], it is to be the wife of a famous man and to find enough trivia over which she can wear herself out." "For Tatyana Andreyevna [Tanya], it is the ability to please, entertain and be loved." "For Leo Nikolayevieh [Tolstoy], it is to believe he has found a solution to life." A series of comic portraits entitled "Distressing register of the mentally deranged inmates of Yasnaya Polyana" made a great hit with the family: "Patient No. i. Leo Nikolayevieh Tolstoy. Sanguine temperament. His delusion is that he can change others' lives with words. General symptoms: dissatisfaction with the present scheme of things; blames everyone except himself; voluble irritability, no consideration for his listeners; often goes through phases of manic excitement, giving way to exaggerated and lachrymose sentimentality. . . . Particular symptoms: indulges in irrelevant activities: polishes and repairs shoes, mows hay and so forth." "Patient No. 2: Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy. Her delusion is that everybody is in continual need of quantities of things, and that she doesn't have time to satisfy them all. . . . Treatment: hard work." "Patient No. 6: Tanya Kuzminskava. Causes
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of illness: popularity in her youth, being accustomed to having her vanity flattered; but no moral foundation in either case. Symptoms: fear of imaginary personal demons, inability to withstand all sorts of temptations: luxury, maliciousness, idleness. . . . Prescriptions: truffles and champagne, gowns entirely covered with lace; three changes of dress ever}' day."
These comments are so perceptive that Tolstoy might as well have signed his name to them; moreover, he carried the game into the open one day by sending a long letter to his babushka Alexandra, in which, with mocking affection and indulgent pride, lie sketched the characters of his six children.23 Sergey, the eldest, was rather a pretty lad, clever, with a penchant for daydreaming, attracted to the arts; he was said to be like his dead uncle Nicholas ("That would be too much to ask!"). Behind an engaging fagade, Ilya, "pink, blond, glowing," had a passionate, violent and sensuous nature ("When he cats currant jelly it tickles his lips"); Tanya ("They say she resembles Sonya and I believe it!") was good behavior personified, she loved to take care of the younger ones and would make an excellent mother; Leo, graceful and clever with his hands, had a natural elegance ("Whatever clothes they put on him look as though they were made for him"); Marya, with her milk-white skin and big blue eyes, displayed a keen and restless mind ("All her life she will suffer and try to rcach the inaccessible"); Petya, the big fat baby, only a few months old, was appetizing and incomprehensible. "I do not care for children until they are two or three years old; I don't understand them," wrote Tolstoy. "There are two types of men: hunters and non-hunters. Non-hunters love babies and can pick them up and hold them in their arms; hunters are terrified, sickened and filled with pity at the sight of a baby. I know of no exception to that rule."
In June 1873 Tolstoy decided to transport his entire family to the vast tract of land he had bought eighty miles from Samara. Governesses and servants would follow the family. The wooden house was tumbledown, inconvenient and ill-furnished. The wind from the steppe blew through the cracks between the boards. Kisyak—dried horse-dung—was used for fuel in the stoves, and its sharp tang impregnated the rooms. Clouds of blue flies droned beneath the cciling, and at night, scurrying regiments of rats kept Sonya from sleeping. She did not like this wild place and, ever concerned for the health of her children, complained that there was no doctor within rcach. But Tolstoy was cntranccd with their primitive way of life, and dcclarcd it was far more healthy than all the contraptions invented by civilized peoples. In order to give them all a kumys treatment without leaving the farm, he hired a Bashkir, who arrived with wives, marcs and foals, and pitched his tents just outside the farm. The foals were tethered during the day so that they could not drink their mothers' milk, which was reserved for the distinguished summer visitors. Morning and evening, the veiled women milked the mares. Then, hidden from the men behind cotton curtains, they prepared the kumys. Tolstoy and his sons entered the tent and sat cross-legged on cushions across from the smiling Bashkir. Soon a woman's arm parted the curtains and thrust out a leather jug. The Bashkir stirred the liquid with a whisk and ladled it into cups made of Karelian birch. Tolstoy and his eldest son smacked their lips over the sourish brew, but the other children grimaced.