On July 9, 1822 Princess Marya Nikolayevna Volkonsky, heiress to the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, married Count Nicholas Ilich Tolstoy. Her dowry comprised eight hundred male peasant serfs in the governments of Tula and Orel; her fiance had nothing to offer but his name and his elegant bearing.
This loveless union proved, nevertheless, to be a harmonious one. True, Marya was not passionately in love with her husband, but she felt affection and esteem for him and something akin to gratitude. And he in turn was not long to discover a quality of integrity in his wife that far outweighed any outward graces, and acknowledged her as his moral and intellectual superior. Indeed, her self-control must have been quite remarkable, to get along with her in-laws. Now that her son's position was secure, the old countess regretted that he had not married someone more dazzling. And she was unhappy because he was neglecting her for his wife. She was jealous and showed it. And Toinette, who was also living with the young couple, silently suffered the daily torture of their wedded bliss. She spied on Marya's every move, tried to find some reason to hate her and couldn't and, subdued by the newcomer's kindly and placid nature, no longer knew whether to rejoice at Nicholas' happiness or despair because he was sharing it with someone else.
On June 31, 1823, Countess Marya gave birth to a son, Nicholas— "Coco"—and it seemed to her that her cup was full. The child became the center of her universe. She asked her husband to hand in his resignation and, in 1824, the entire family left Moscow to settle at Yasnaya Polyana.
Nicholas Tolstoy, who had hitherto shown scant interest in agriculture, became transformed into a country squire. A tradition-bound conservative, he spurned all newfangled methods of farming, but he was always out in the fields, chatting paternally with his serfs; he gave them advice when it was time to sow and only seldom, and reluctantly, issued orders to whip a man guilty of insubordination or negligence. In the autumn he often set off with his borzois at dawn and did not come home until nightfall, exhausted, elated and covered with dirt. His high spirits and vivacity exploded at table. But he was also known to shut himself up in his library to read. There, Buffon consorted with the Vaudevilles du XVllIe sikcle, The Travels of Young Anacharsis stood next to Cuvier, and the History of the Popes alongside the Songs of the Freemasons. He swallowed it all pell-mell and said he would not buy any more books until he had read the ones he had. When he was obliged to leave Yasnaya Polyana and go to Moscow to deal with the numerous lawsuits which his father's creditors had brought against the estate, Marya and he exchanged epistles of restrained affection. At a time when lyrical outpourings between married couples were the rule, Nicholas Tolstoy began his letters simply, "My tender friend," and his wife replied, "My tender friend," and signed herself, "Your devoted Marya." True, she made up for lost time alone in her room, composing French verses in which the prosody was approximative but the sentiments high-flown:
O wedded lovel Our hearts' most gentle bond! The source and nurse of our most cherished pleasures! With thy celestial flame, inspire our souls forever, And in thy peace let our desires be crowned . . . Yes, my heart confirms it, this envied destiny Heaven in its goodness has kept for you and me And these two names now joined, Nicholas and Marie, Will ever signify two souls joined happily.
These exercises were interspersed with meditations on the serious problems of life. Marya liked to compose maxims, also in French, to consult in time of crisis: "The generous impulses of youth must become the principles of adulthood . . . ," "When we are very young we seek everything outside ourselves . . . but, gradually, everything sends us back inside . . . ," "Often, we might resist our own passions, but are swept away by those of others . . ."
Before little Nicholas was three years old she had a second son, Sergey (February 17, 1826). The following year, another birth: Dmitry (April 23, 1827) and, one year later, a fourth heir to the great name of Tolstoy was entered in the parish records: "On August 28, 1828,! in the village of Yasnaya Polyana, at the home of Count Nicholas Ilich Tolstoy, a son, Leo, was bom, and baptized on the twenty-ninth by Vasily Mazhaisky, priest, assisted by the deacon Arkhip Ivanov, the sacristan Alexander Yodorov and the cantor Fyodor Grigoryev; the godparents arc Simon Ivanovich Yasikov, landowner in the district of Belyev, and Countess Pelagya Tolstoy."
After being convinced at thirty-two that she would end her days a spinster, Marya Tolstoy could not get used to the joy of finding herself, at thirty-eight, the mother of four children. She loved them more than she ever loved her father, more than she loved her husband. Leaving Toinette to manage the household, she gave herself up body and soul to her task as educator. She doted upon the last-bom, Leo, "little Benjamin"; but Nicholas, the eldest—"Coco"—received her most ardent attention. Like her father before her, she wanted him to become a man of exceptional abilities. Every evening she recorded his words and deeds in a diary, noted his shortcomings, considered the best ways of correcting them. Her chief fear was that he should prove oversensitive. When lie was four she upbraided him for weeping over a tale of a wounded bird or the sight of a dogfight. She wanted him to be brave, "as befits the son of a father who served his country valiantly." To reward him for progress in reading she gave him numbered slips of paper bearing such notes as "Very good . . . ," "Passable . . . ," "Very slow at the beginning, good on the following page . . ."
After a ccrtain amount of friction, perfect harmony had been established between Marya, her mother-in-law and Toinette. On a trip, Marya wrote to the latter: "Dear Toinette, how can you imagine that I am able to forget you or stop thinking of you just because I am in pleasant surroundings elsewhere? You know that when I love, nothing can efface those dear to me from my heart." And elsewhere: "You are so kind to me and so fond of my little sparrow that I feel that when I talk about him, I give as much joy to you as I do to myself." Her sons
t This date, like all the others in this book, is given according to the Russian Julian calendar, which is twelve days behind the Gregorian calendar in the nineteenth ccntury, and thirteen days in the twentieth.
were growing, handsome and healthy, the estate was beginning to prosper under Nicholas' management, and the future only looked more rosy when the young woman found, in 1829, that she was once again with child. This fifth pregnancy did not prevent her from leading a very- active life. When the children were in bed, she would play the piano— a concerto by Field or the Pathetique sonata—read aloud, give her cousin an Italian lesson or discuss with her the principles of Rousseau's Emile. Nicholas would join them in the drawing room and entertain them with his hunting tales and jokes. He drew on his pipe as he talked and peered through the windows into the dark grounds outside—and now and then they heard the night watchman going down the drive, striking his metal plate. Late in February 1830 there was a great to-do in the house. The black leather divan which Marya had adopted for her deliveries was carried into her room4 where, on March 2, she gave birth to a girl, also called Marya.