He worked so quickly that on May 11, 1873, eight weeks after starting to write, he announced to Strakhov: "I am writing a novel that has nothing to do with Peter the Great; 1 started it over a month ago and have finished the first draft, lliis is my first real novel and I am taking it very much to heart. I am completely wrapped up in it. . . . I wrote to you about it in a letter I never sent, telling yon how it came upon me in spite of myself, thanks to the divine Pushkin, who fell into my hands quite by accident and whom I have reread in toto, with renewed admiration. ... I beg you not to repeat this to anyone!"
His draft was far from finished though, and Tolstoy knew it. Early in June he stopped work to go to Samara with his family. When he returned, on August 22, his first gust of energy had spent itself and fresh doubts assailed him. Sonya was copying again, as in the days of War and Peace. For the children, she was the writer in the family.
He was still not quite back in his stride when the painter Kramskoyc, who had vainly begged for the honor of being allowed to paint him on several occasions, made another attempt. The portrait was to go into the Gallery of Famous Russians, founded in Moscow by the Tretyakov brothers. Tolstoy protested that he had no time to waste in posing, which was a useless occupation and unworthy of a solitary and studious man such as he. But Kramskoye came to Yasnaya Polyana to talk to the master in person and argued that if he did not let himself be painted during his lifetime, strangers would make portraits of him afterward, from photographs; but this was not enough to weaken Tolstoy. Kramskoye then offered to paint a second portrait, for a very low price, that he could keep himself. Sonya was delighted and undertook to persuade her husband. They talked money. Without batting an eyelid, Sonya proposed two hundred and fifty rubles.t Kramskoyc usually
f Or $700.
asked one thousand rubles for a commission. Canvas, paint and frame alone cost fifty rubles. Nevertheless, he agreed. Sonya turned victoriously to her husband. Surely he would not refuse now. Pecuniar)' considerations triumphed over principle, and Tolstoy consented for the first time in his life to sit for his portrait. Kramskoye painted him seated, his gray full-sleeved blouse buttoned down the front, his head cocked slightly, with a full beard, imposing brow and a calm, clear, keen expression under his frowning eyebrows. "The two portraits are remarkably alike; it almost frightens me to look at them," Sonya wrote to her sister on September 14. During the sittings the two men chatted amicably about art, morality, politics and religion. Kramskoye did not dream that while he was painting the portrait of the author of War and Peace, Tolstoy was doing as much for him, and that he would reappear in Anna Karenina as the painter Mikhailov. As usual, Tolstoy was making capital out of everything that crossed his field of vision. Nothing could happen to him that would not in some way be essential to his work, he thought.
And yet, on November 9, 1873 a tragedy occurred that almost made him forget literature for a while. His youngest son, Pctya, the pink and blond baby, was carried off in two days by the croup. Grief-stricken, Sonya wrote in her diary: "He died peacefully. I nursed him fourteen and one-half months. He lived from June 13, 1872 to November 9,1873. A gay, healthy child. The darling, I loved him too much! They buried him yesterday. What an emptiness now. I cannot reconcile the images of Petya living and Pctya dead. They are both precious to me, but what is there in common between that being full of life, light and affection, and this other, motionless, solemn and cold. He was very attached to me. Did it hurt him to leave me?"
Tolstoy managed to restrain his emotions; he had said that Petya was too young to interest him. After the burial, while his wife was wandering tearfully about the silent house, he wrote to his brother Sergey:
"Petya is dead and has just been buried. . . . This is something new for us, and very painful, particularly for Sonya. I have just received a letter from the typesetters, telling me that the edition [of my works] will come out on the twelfth of this month. The Dyakovs arrived today. Dyakov is going to Moscow and will leave Masha [his daughter] and Sofya [her governess] with us. I think I ought to go to Moscow too; Sonya would not be completely alone in the house. If you can manage it, let us go the day after tomorrow, the twelfth. Will that l>e all right? Let me know."27
Two lines on the death of his son, the rest on the publication of his books and a forthcoming trip. To Ix: sure, the death of a child was a common occurrence in those days and it was natural for a mother to be more deeply afflicted by the sight of an empty cradle than a father. But how is one to explain the fact that this model head-of- family, this vast compassionate heart, open to all the sufferings of mankind, had only one thought after the funeraclass="underline" to get away from the house, out of earshot of his wife's lamentations? Two day's later he was in Moscow, supposedly in order to see his publisher; but what really drove him away from Yasnaya Polyana was the fear of death. Death had entered his house; he must wait until the noxious vapors of its passage- had been dispelled. Ever since the night at Arzamas, he had been playing hide-and-seek with death. A sneeze, a pimple on his nose, and he was a doomed man. As soon as he returned to Yasnaya Polyana he wrote to Fet to explain:
"This is the first death in the family in eleven years, and the thing is extremely hard for my wife. There is some consolation in the fact that of the eight of us, his death was certainly the easiest for us all to bear; but the heart, and especially the heart of a mother—that astonishing, sublime manifestation of the divine on earth—cannot reason, and my wife is plunged into grief."28
All tilings considered, he told himself, there was another consolation in this bereavement: death could not strike the same family twice in succession. They would be left in peace for a while. Tolstoy went back to work and Sonya "wore out" her grief through the long nights, copying manuscripts that were black with corrections.
The first part was finished in March 1874. "I like the book," he wrote to Alexandra, "but 1 doubt that others will, because it is too simple." Nevertheless, he was in such a hurTy to publish it that he took the beginning (seven sixteen-page sheets) to Katkov, editor of the Russian Herald. While the proofs were being set up in Moscow, the author, after being eager to see them, suddenly lost interest in his characters. His teaching mania had taken hold of him again, and he began to neglect Anna Karenina and Vronsky and Levin for the little muzhiks at Yasnaya Polyana. "I love them again, as I did fourteen years ago, these thousands of youngsters I work with," he wrote to Alexandra. "The only reason why I want the people to be educated is in order to salvage the Pushkins, Ostrogradskys,! Philaretuses* and Loinonosovst in the lot. Every school is crawling with them. ... I have promised my book to the Russian Herald, but I simply cannot tear myself away from living
| M. V. Ostrogradsky, a mathematician (1&01-61).
• Philarctus, son of a deacon who became metropolitan of Moscow.
fLoinonosov, author and scholar (1711-65).
beings to bother with imaginary ones."29 And to Strakhov, "My novel has gone to sleep. Katkov's typesetter is about as speedy as a turtle. One sheet a month—which is fine with me, I'm delighted!"30
On April 22, 1874 Sonya, still in mourning for little Petya, gave birth to a fifth lx)y, Nicholas. A ray of joy crept into the house. But there were fresh alarms early in June. Old Aunt Toinette was at death's door. She was seventy-nine, and had long been confined to her bed; her faithful servant Axinya had preceded her into the grave. Half-deaf and half-blind, she had begun to mix up past and present together. When Leo sat down at her bedside, she mistook him for his father, whom she had loved so deeply and yet refused to marry. She smiled at him in senile flirtatiousness, she called him Nicholas; obscurely frightened, he beat a retreat. Some days he could not bring himself to go to her at all. Did she realize that her end was near? She asked if she might leave her room on the upper floor and move to a wood-paneled recess on the first floor. "I don't want to spoil your lovely upstairs room with my death,"31 she said. Then she began to suffer, complain, struggle. . . . She died on June 20, 1874. Tolstoy felt remorse, at having too often shown his irritation or been inconsiderate of her, and also relief, because he could not bear the presence of sickness under his roof. But both feelings were dominated by a third: sorrow at the loss of another witness of his childhood. Who would love him as she had done? In the end, it was himself he felt most sorry for. Moved as he had not been by his son Petya's death, he wrote to Alexandra: