1904
At Christmas Alexandra Lvovna made a Christmas tree in the lodge to entertain the village children. I do not know who made the choice, but, as there was not enough room, all the children were not admitted. Tolstoi, myself, and some one else, I don’t remember who, came in rather later when the entertainment was at its height. At the door of the lodge stood the children who could not be admitted. When they saw us, the mothers of the children began asking Tolstoi to take their children with him. Tolstoi took two or three inside with him. It was bright and hot. Inside the burning candles flamed. It smelt of burnt branches. We soon came out.
Tolstoi said with a sigh:
“How wrong it is! Some are inside and the others are not allowed in. When our children were small, Sophie Andreevna always had a Christmas tree, and the village children came to it. Once they gave us the scarlet fever, and after that they were no longer admitted, except a few who were carefully chosen. I remember once there was a Christmas tree upstairs. I was lying downstairs on the sofa (where the library now is), and I was terribly ashamed to think of the children crowding outside and not being let in. I remember I could not endure it, came out, and gave them three roubles, and of course made things still worse—they began to dispute and quarrel over the division of it, and it was revolting, shameful, and painful!”
June 5th. Yasnaya Polyana.
On the day of our arrival, May 27th, Tolstoi talked at dinner about the Decembrists whom he knew after their return from banishment (he is again studying that period).
He spoke of Prince Volkonsky:[8]
“His appearance with his long grey hair was altogether like that of an Old Testament prophet. What a pity I spoke so little to him then, when I need him so much now! He was a wonderful old man, the flower of the Petersburg aristocracy both by birth and by his position at Court. And then in Siberia, after he had already served hard labour, and his wife had something like a salon, he worked with the peasants; all sorts of tools for peasants’ work were in his room.”
Tolstoi does not believe the story about the affair between Poggio and Princess Volkonsky.