1820
In 1820 Count Elias died, leaving his estate so encumbered that his son declined to accept the inheritance. The young man had to face the task of providing for his old mother, who was accustomed to great luxury, as well as for his sister and a distant cousin, Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky, who had been adopted into the family; and so a marriage was arranged for him with the wealthy but plain Princess Marie Volkónsky, who was no longer very young.
His father's life, Tolstoy tells us, was then
passed in attending to the estate, a business in which he was not very expert, but in which he exercised a virtue great for those days: he was not cruel, but perhaps even lacked firmness. During his lifetime I never heard of corporal punishment. If it ever was administered to the serfs, the cases were so rare and my father took so little part in them, that we children never heard them mentioned. It was after his death that I learnt, for the first time, that such punishment ever took place at home.
Like most men who served in the army in the early years of Alexander's reign, he [Count Nicholas Tolstoy] was not what is now called a Liberal, but out of self-respect he considered it impossible to serve during the latter [reactionary] part of Alexander's reign, or under Nicholas. During all my childhood and youth, our family had no intimate relations with any Government official. I, of course, understood nothing about this in childhood, but I understood that my father never humbled himself before any one, nor altered his brisk, merry, and often chaffing tone. This feeling of self-respect, which I witnessed in him, increased my love and admiration for him.
Leo Tolstoy's mother's family, the Volkónskys, were descended from Rúrik (the first ruler mentioned in Russian history) as well as from St. Michael the martyr, Prince of Tchernígof; and through them, even more than on his father's side, Tolstoy is connected with many of the leading families of the Russian aristocracy. Prince Nicholas Volkónsky, his mother's father, came into conflict with the most powerful of the favourites of Catherine the Great, for Tolstoy tells us that:
Having attained the high position of Commander-in-Chief, he lost it suddenly by refusing to marry Potémkin's niece and mistress, Varvára Engelhardt. To Potémkin's suggestion that he should do so, he replied: 'What makes him think I will marry his strumpet?'
He married instead, a Princess Catherine Troubetskóy, and after retiring from the service, settled down on his estate at Yásnaya Polyána. His wife soon died, leaving him only one surviving child, a daughter, Tolstoy's mother. Tolstoy writes of this grandfather:
He was regarded as a very exacting master, but I never heard any instance of his being cruel or inflicting the severe punishments usual in those days. I believe such cases did occur on his estate, but the enthusiastic respect for his importance and cleverness was so great among the servants and peasants whom I have often questioned about him, that though I have heard my father condemned, I have heard only praise of my grandfather's intelligence, business capacity, and interest in the welfare both of the peasants and of his enormous household.
Later, a strange chance brought Prince Volkónsky again into touch with Varvára Engelhardt, whom he had refused to marry. She married a Prince Sergius Golítsin, who consequently received promotions and decorations and rewards; and Tolstoy tells us:
With this Sergius Golítsin and his family, my grandfather formed so close a friendship that my mother from her childhood was betrothed to one of his ten sons.... This alliance, however, was not destined to be consummated, for the young man died prematurely of fever.
In a portrait of Prince N. Volkónsky which has been preserved in the family there is much that corresponds to Leo Tolstoy's own appearance. 'Both,' as his brother-in-law remarks, 'have high, open foreheads and large organs of the creative faculty, and in both the organs of musical talent are exceedingly prominent and are covered by thick, overhanging eyebrows, from beneath which small, deep-set, grey eyes literally pierce the soul of the man on whom they are turned.'