Alexander II happened to be visiting Moscow, which meant the letter could be hand-delivered. The Tsar did not bother to reply to Tolstoy himself, but Prince Dolgorukov, the head of the secret police, was instructed to send a mealy-mouthed letter of self-justification to the governor of Tula for him to pass on.11
Fortunately Tolstoy had other things to occupy him at this time. Rather than return to Yasnaya Polyana, he had stayed on in Moscow when the Bers returned to their kremlin apartment at the beginning of September, and for once the strength of his romantic feelings stopped him from becoming too self-analytical. The previous year, when he was considering the merits of another woman as a potential bride, his sister Maria had warned: ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t analyse too much, because once you start analysing, you always find some stumbling block in every straightforward issue, and without knowing how to respond to what and why, you run away.’12 He had indeed prevaricated back then, and nothing came of the liaison, but this time he moved swiftly, perhaps realising the dangers of reflection. On Sunday 16 September he proposed to Sonya and, at his insistence, they were married seven days later.
It was not just the fact that the engagement lasted only a week which made their marriage quite unusual, or even that Sonya could only eat pickled cucumbers and black bread in the days leading up to the wedding.13 Tolstoy offered his fiancée the choice of going back to live with her parents, a honeymoon abroad, or starting their new life straight away in Yasnaya Polyana.14 Sonya chose the last option; she never went abroad even later in her life. There was no time for Lyubov Alexandrovna to sew her daughter a complete trousseau, but Tolstoy made sure to give Sonya his old diaries to read, not wanting to conceal anything in his past. As an innocent and inexperienced girl who had seen little of life, she was deeply shocked and upset by what she later termed his ‘excessive conscientiousness’. The previous month she had given him a thinly disguised autobiographical story to read, it is true, in which she described a young girl being courted by a prince of ‘unusually unattractive appearance’ and volatile opinions.15 But this was different. Sonya found it painful to learn about his sexual conquests and romantic liaisons with peasant women, no matter how much he now repented of them.16 Her father, meanwhile, was seething with anger. Initially opposed to the marriage, he felt deeply for his slighted elder daughter, who should have been the one to marry first, and he was only gradually reconciled. Sonya’s mother was also hardly overjoyed by the match, and for a while adopted a patronising tone with Tolstoy, whom she continued to call by his childhood nickname of ‘Lyovochka’.17 Both parents were well aware, however, of Tolstoy’s eligibility, and of the unlikelihood of finding similar suitors for their other daughters.
The wedding was scheduled for eight in the evening but was delayed by at least an hour and a half. In the haste of all the packing that had to be done in preparation for the journey to Yasnaya Polyana, which would begin immediately after the ceremony, Tolstoy’s servant had forgotten to leave out a clean shirt for him. Thus instead of his best man arriving at the Bers’ apartment to announce that the bridegroom was waiting in the church, a sheepish Alexey Stepanovich came to rummage through the packed luggage.18 The ceremony took place at the Church of the Nativity of Our Lady in the heart of the kremlin, minutes from the Bers’ apartment. Dating back to the late fourteenth century, this small church is the oldest of all the kremlin buildings, and in the nineteenth century it became part of the Great Palace built by Nicholas I. (All one can see of it nowadays is its single white drum and golden cupola rising above the palace’s green rooftop – it has not been returned to the Orthodox Church, nor is it open to the public.) unlike the grand cathedrals nearby, where state occasions were held, this was a church attended by those who lived and worked in the kremlin, and on the evening of Tolstoy’s wedding it was filled with gatecrashers – curious employees of the court who worked in the palace – as well as the small number of invited guests. None of Tolstoy’s own family were present except for his aunt Polina, who accompanied Sonya to the church in the carriage, along with her nine-year-old brother Volodya, who carried the icon of St Sophia the Martyr she had just been blessed with by her mother and uncle. Tolstoy’s brother Sergey had been in Moscow, but had departed already so that he could organise a proper welcome party for the couple at Yasnaya Polyana.19 His sister Masha was in Marseilles.
Late in the evening, after the celebratory champagne, and after observing the Russian custom of sitting down and saying prayers before going on a journey,20 the newly-weds set off in the brand new dormeuse Tolstoy had purchased for the occasion: a particularly well-sprung carriage with extensions so that a bed could be made up for the occupants. It came with six horses, driven by a coachman and postilion. Sonya found it difficult to leave her family, as she had never been parted from them before, nor had she ever travelled in the autumn or winter, let alone at night. The light given off by the streetlamps of Moscow was exchanged for pitch blackness as soon as they left the city. It was also raining heavily. Still unable to pluck up the courage to switch from the vy form of address to the more intimate ty with her husband, Sonya was also terrified: they had never been alone before. The married couple barely spoke before stopping at the coaching inn in Biryulevo, fifteen miles south of Moscow, where they spent their wedding night. ‘She knows everything’, ‘Her fright’, ‘Something painful’ were amongst the pithy telegraphic comments Tolstoy made in his diary after they finally arrived at Yasnaya Polyana the following evening.21 A couple of weeks later Sonya was evidently still struggling to come to terms with the ‘physical manifestations’ of their relationship, which she found appalling, but which she discovered were clearly so important to him.22
At the house they were greeted by Sergey, who offered the traditional Russian bread and salt as a sign of welcome, and by Aunt Toinette, holding up the family icon of the Mother of God of the Sign. Sonya bowed deeply before them both, crossed herself, kissed first the icon and then Aunt Toinette. Tolstoy did the same.23 Over the next few days Sonya met the various members of the household as they came to offer their congratulations to the happy couple. They included Nikolay Mikhailovich the cook, Anna Petrovna the cowherd, accompanied by her daughters Annushka and Dushka, grandmother Pelageya Nikolayevna’s old maid Agafya Mikhailovna, always knitting stockings, even while she was walking about,24 the jolly laundrywoman Aksinya Maximovna and her pretty daughters Polya and Marfa, as well as the coachman, the gardener, the pastry cook and numerous other servants and peasants from the estate and neighbouring villages. Sonya’s mother had thoughtfully given her 300 roubles, so she would not have to depend on her husband for money initially, but it nearly all disappeared as gifts to those who came to offer congratulations. Henceforth, Sonya was entirely dependent on her husband in financial matters, and disliked having to ask him for money. He never made her feel she was a penniless bride without a dowry, however, nor that his wealth belonged to him alone, she notes in her autobiography.25