When I was moved downstairs to Theodore Ivánitch and the boys, I experienced for the first time and therefore more strongly than ever since, the feeling which is called the sense of duty, the consciousness of the cross every man is called upon to bear. It was hard to leave what I was accustomed to from the beginning of things, and I was sad, poetically sad, not so much at parting from people: sister, nurse, and aunt, as at parting with my crib, the curtain and the pillow; and I feared the new life into which I was entering. I tried to see the jolly side of this new life awaiting me; I tried to believe the caressing words with which Theodore Ivánitch lured me to him. I tried not to see the contempt with which the boys received me, the youngest boy. I tried to think it was a shame for a big boy to live with girls, and that there was nothing good in the life upstairs with nurse; but my heart was terribly sad, I knew I was irreparably losing my innocence and happiness; and only a feeling of personal dignity and the consciousness of doing my duty upheld me. (Often in after-life I have experienced similar moments at the parting of crossroads, when entering on a fresh course.) I experienced quiet grief at the irreparableness of my loss; I was unable to believe that it would really happen. Though I had been told that I should be moved to the boys' rooms, I remember that the dressing-gown with a cord sewn to its back, which they put on me, seemed to cut me off for ever from upstairs, and I then for the first time observed—not all those with whom I had lived upstairs, but—the chief person with whom I lived, and whom I did not remember before. This was my Aunty Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky. I remember her short, stout, black-haired, kindly, tender, and compassionate. It was she who put the dressing-gown on me, and embracing me and kissing me, tied it round my waist; and I saw that she felt as I did, that it was sad, terribly sad, but had to be; and for the first time I felt that life is not a game but a serious matter.
'Aunty' Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky, mentioned in the above reminiscences, was a very distant relative who being left an orphan, had been brought up by Tolstoy's paternal grandparents. She was very attractive and affectionate. She loved and was loved by Count Nicholas, Leo's father, but stood aside that he might marry the rich Princess Marie Volkónsky and repair the family fortunes. Six years after his wife's death Count Nicholas asked Tatiána to marry him and be a mother to his children. Not wishing (Tolstoy tells us) to spoil her pure, poetic relations with the family, she refused the first but fulfilled the second of these requests.
The joyousness of Tolstoy's boyhood was largely due to the care and affection of this excellent woman, and in the most firmly rooted of his principles—such as his detestation of corporal punishment and his approval of complete chastity—it is easy to trace her unconscious influence.
Here for instance is one episode:
We children were returning home from a walk with our tutor, when near the barn we met the fat steward, Andrew, followed by the coachman's assistant, 'Squinting Kouzmá' as he was called, whose face was sad. He was a married man and no longer young. One of us asked Andrew where he was going, and he quietly replied that he was going to the barn, where Kouzmá had to be punished. I cannot describe the dreadful feeling which these words and the sight of the good-natured crestfallen Kouzmá produced on me. In the evening I told this to my Aunt Tatiána, who hated corporal punishment and, wherever she had influence, never allowed it for us any more than for the serfs. She was greatly revolted at what I told her, and rebuking me said, 'Why did you not stop him?' Her words grieved me still more.... I never thought that we could interfere in such things, and yet it appeared that we could. But it was too late, and the dreadful deed had been done.
To sum up what we know of Tolstoy's antecedents: he was descended on his father's side and still more on his mother's, from aristocratic families who were more or less in passive opposition to the Government, and who shared the humanitarian sympathies current in the early years of the reign of Alexander I. A cousin of Tolstoy's mother was one of the Decembrists, and on the accession of Nicholas I in 1825 took part in their abortive attempt to establish Constitutional Government. He was exiled to Eastern Siberia for thirty years, doing hard labour in irons part of the time. His wife (another Princess Marie Volkónsky) voluntarily accompanied him, as Nekrásof has told in a well-known Russian poem. Several members of the family towards the end of their lives retired into convents or monasteries.
We find strong family love uniting the homes of Tolstoy's parents and grandparents; and even after their death, Tolstoy's nature ripened in a congenial atmosphere of family affection; and many of his most pronounced sympathies and antipathies are not peculiar to himself, but were shared equally by other members of the family.
CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER I
P. Birukof: Lyof Nikolayevitch Tolstoy. Biografiya: Moscow, 1906. (The Russian edition is much more readable and accurate than the English.)
Referred to hereafter as Birukof.