With his own children, Tolstoy was a rigorous and exacting teacher, and it was sometimes hard keeping up with him (Tanya dreaded her maths lessons with her father as he could be very impatient). Not only did the word ‘can’t’ not exist in his vocabulary, but he always went at a cracking pace, just like the fast trot he maintained on horseback. The Tolstoy children were taught by both their parents, with their father taking them for mathematics, Latin and Greek, while their mother was responsible for Russian and French lessons. Then there was a local priest who came twice a week to teach the Scriptures, a drawing teacher for Tanya later on, and a succession of resident tutors, several of whom were foreign. Since Tolstoy admired many aspects of British education, the first of the many tutors hired for the three eldest children was an English governess, Hannah Tarsey, who arrived in November 1866. Neither Tolstoy nor Sonya knew English well, so before her arrival they read their way through Wilkie Collins’s A Woman in White.
Hannah Tarsey was the daughter of the gardener at Windsor Castle, and she arrived in Russia with her sister Jenny, who was taken on by another family. At nineteen, Hannah was only three years younger than Sonya. The two could not communicate at all at first,96 but she was hard-working and friendly, and was to become an adored member of the family. Soon she had the children on a regime of regular baths, and introduced the family to Christmas pudding and the custom of setting it alight (recipe no. 26 in Sonya’s recipe book: ‘Plump-puding’). Hannah obviously missed Sunday roasts at home in Berkshire, as she also tried out Yorkshire pudding on the Tolstoys (recipe no. 132: ‘Pastry baked for Roast Beef ’). Hannah threw herself into Russian life, and stayed with the Tolstoys for six years, but she suffered from poor health and at the end of the summer in 1872 left to become governess to the children of Sonya’s sister Tanya in the Caucasus. Her health improved in the more temperate southern climate there and two years later she married into impoverished Georgian royalty by becoming the wife of Prince Dmitry Machutadze (and won over her in-laws by eventually making a success of the family’s sheep-cheese business).97 Fyodor (Theodor) kaufmann was installed as the boys’ tutor when Hannah left, and he gave all the children German lessons. He fell for the blonde and pretty Dora who replaced Hannah as the girls’ governess, but she did not last long, as she proved incapable of exerting any authority. This was partly because Tolstoy had a golden-haired Irish setter of the same name (he liked to name his dogs after characters in novels by Dickens). That made it even harder for anyone to take Dora seriously. Then came Emily, who was quiet and serious and cried a lot.
The Tolstoy children saw far more of their tutors and governesses than they did their father, or even their mother, who was always busy sewing clothes for them or attending to domestic matters when she was not copying out manuscripts. Their upbringing was also influenced by other members of the populous household in which they lived, amongst whom were some eccentric characters. First of all there was the ageing Aunt Toinette in her cap and shawl, whose room was full of icons in silver frames that were polished by her maid Aksinya Maximovna, who by then was equally doddering. The children associated Aunt Toinette with the smell of cypress, and drawers in her commode full of gingerbread, which she would treat them to sometimes. She was kind, but the children found both her and her companion very dull. Natalya Petrovna always chuntered on about landowners, army officers and monasteries, and to Sergey she always seemed to speak as if she had a mouthful of kasha. Then there were all the servants – the family’s former serfs. The most venerable of them was Agafya Mikhailovna, the old maid of Tolstoy’s grandmother, who had in later years tended the sheep and worked as the family’s housekeeper, and was now living on a pension on the estate. She was a tall, thin and slightly scary figure for the children when they were small, but she was a beloved member of the household, who before Tolstoy was married used to sit quietly by the samovar reading the lives of saints on cold winter evenings. She was affectionately known by everyone as the ‘dog governess’, as she lived, in a state of some squalor, with all the family’s borzois and other hunting dogs. The small, round Maria Afanasievna Arbuzova, who was nanny to the five eldest Tolstoy children, was also greatly loved. She became housekeeper after Hannah arrived, and always spoiled the children, furtively giving them Persian dried apricots and other treats from the pantry. Both she and her two sons Pavel and Sergey, also trusted family servants, were very close to the Tolstoy children. Pavel later taught Tolstoy the art of cobbling, while Sergey became Tolstoy’s personal servant after the faithful Alexey Stepanov retired. The mild-mannered Alexey, for whom the children had a great respect, had originally been a Yasnaya Polyana house serf, and had accompanied Tolstoy to the Crimea. He was married to Dunyasha Bannikova, the daughter of Tolstoy’s first tutor, and when Ilya was born in 1866, Tolstoy promoted him to become the estate manager. The Tolstoy children had deep connections to nearly everyone in the household. Evlampia Matveyevna, who had acted as Sergey’s wet-nurse, for example, was the wife of the Yasnaya Polyana coachman Filipp Rodionov, who looked after the boys’ ponies.
In order to accommodate their burgeoning family, as well as the foreign tutors, the Tolstoys were soon obliged to build a large new extension on to their house. They had built the first extension back in the summer of 1866, and at the end of 1871 they created a large new drawing room and dining room upstairs, and a study for Tolstoy downstairs, with a spacious wooden veranda outside for summer repasts.98 The additions destroyed the symmetry of the two identical wings that had once flanked the manor house Tolstoy had sold to pay his gambling debts, but provided much-needed extra room. The second and final extension was completed in December 1871, and was ready for Christmas, which was always one of the most joyous times of year for the Tolstoy children. As well as supervising the scrubbing of floors and the hanging of pictures after all the painting and decorating was finished, Sonya retrieved from storage antique candelabras and old family tableware, as well as sewing masquerade costumes and gilding walnuts in preparation for the arrival of the family’s guests just before midnight on Christmas Eve in three sleighs. More guests arrived the following day, and after the tree had been decorated there was ice-skating and tobogganing, with everyone collapsing of fits of laughter when they took a tumble or landed in a snowdrift. That year, as well as the seven Tolstoys plus Hannah, Aunt Toinette and Natalya Petrovna, there was Sonya’s uncle kostya, Tolstoy’s aunt Polina and his nephew and nieces kolya, Varya and Liza, plus the latter’s husband Leonid Dmitrievich, Tolstoy’s old friend Dmitry Alexeyevich Dyakov and his daughter Masha plus Sofya, her former governess and another visiting English governess, katie – all in all, twenty sat down to dinner. Late into the evening, uncle kostya started playing a waltz, and soon everyone was dancing, followed by the hilarious spectacle of watching the rotund, red-bearded Dmitry Alex-eyevich striking up a Cossack dance with Leonid Dmitrievich.
Christmas in Russia was about the only time the Tolstoy children were allowed toys. Tanya in particular cherished the dolls her godfather Dmitry Alexeyevich gave her – they were invariably called Masha, after his daughter, who turned sixteen in 1871, and whom she clearly idolised. Christmas was also the time for wearing masks, cross-dressing, and dressing up as animals, and the second day of festivities that year saw Tanya dressing up as a powdered Marquis in a long blue robe, accompanied by her brother Sergey as the Marquise. Ilya put on a red skirt, katie transformed herself into a clown, Liza became a muzhik, and Sonya donned Russian national dress. Next came the appearance of uncle kostya and kolya as the traditional dancing bears, led by Dmitry Alexeyevich in bast shoes, who was accompanied by a leaping goat whom the children gleefully recognised as their father.99 This was one of the happiest times at Yasnaya Polyana, and also one of the last happy times.