1822
Prince N. Volkónsky died in 1820, and two years later his daughter married Count Nicholas Tolstoy. Of her Tolstoy tells us:
I do not remember my mother. I was a year-and-a-half old when she died. By some strange chance no portrait of her has been preserved, so that as a real physical being I cannot picture her to myself. I am in a way glad of this, for in my conception of her there is only her spiritual figure, and all that I know about her is beautiful; and I think this has come about not merely because all who spoke to me of my mother tried to say only what was good, but because there actually was much good in her.
She was well educated, spoke five languages, played the piano well, and had a wonderful gift for improvising tales in the most delightful manner. It is said that at balls her young lady friends would leave the dance and gather in a dark room to hear her tell a story, which shyness induced her to do where she could not be seen. Tolstoy remarks that 'her most valuable quality was that though hot-tempered, she was yet self-restrained. "She would get quite red in the face and even cry," her maid told me, "but would never say a rude word."' She had one quality Tolstoy values very highly—that of never condemning any one. It was a quality shared by her eldest son, Nicholas; and Leo Tolstoy says:
In the Lives of the Saints by D. Rostóvsky, there is a short story which has always touched me exceedingly, of a certain monk, who to the knowledge of all his brethren had many faults, but whom an old monk, in a dream, saw occupying a place of honour among the saints. The old man asked in astonishment, 'How could this monk, so unrestrained in many ways, deserve so great a reward?' The answer was: 'He never condemned any one.'
Tolstoy adds: 'If such rewards did exist, I think my brother and my mother would have received them.'
Another feature Tolstoy records of his mother is 'her truthfulness and the simple tone of her correspondence.' He tells us that in his imagination his mother
appeared to me a creature so elevated, pure and spiritual, that often in the middle period of my life, during my struggles with overwhelming temptations, I prayed to her soul begging her to aid me; and such prayer always helped me much.