The invigorating influence of spring shows itself in a letter Tolstoy wrote about this time to his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy (whom he calls 'Grandma'):
Grandma!—Spring!
For good people it is excellent to live in the world; and even for such men as me, it is sometimes good. In Nature, in the air, in everything, is hope, future—an attractive future.... Sometimes one deceives oneself and thinks that happiness and a future await not only Nature but oneself also, and then one feels happy. I am now in such a state, and with characteristic egotism hasten to write to you of things that interest only me. When I review things sanely, I know very well that I am an old, frozen little potato, and one already boiled with sauce; but spring so acts on me that I sometimes catch myself in the full blaze of imagining myself a plant which with others has only now blossomed, and which will peacefully, simply and joyfully grow in God's world. The result is that at this time of year, such an internal clearing-out goes on in me, such a cleansing and ordering, as only those who have experienced this feeling can imagine. All the old—away! All worldly conventions, all idleness, all egotism, all vices, all confused indefinite attachments, all regrets, even repentances—away with you all!... Make room for the wonderful little flowers whose buds are swelling and growing with the spring!...
After much more he concludes:
Farewell, dear Grandma, do not be angry with me for this nonsense, but answer with a word of wisdom, imbued with kindness, Christian kindness! I have long wished to say that for you it is pleasanter to write French, and I understand feminine thoughts better in French.
In April he was again at Yásnaya where, in spite of repeated visits to Moscow, he spent most of the summer. There was at this time no railway from Moscow southward to Toúla; and the serfs' belief concerning the new telegraph posts which stood by the side of the highroad, was that when the wire had been completed, 'Freedom' would be sent along it from Petersburg. Even Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky did not understand these new-fangled things, and, when driving along the road one day, asked Tolstoy to explain how letters were written by telegraph. He told her as simply as he could how the telegraphic apparatus works, and received the reply: 'Oui, oui, je comprends, mon cher!' How much she had really understood was however shown half an hour later when, after keeping her eye on the wire all that time, she inquired: 'But how is it, mon cher Léon, that during a whole half-hour I have not seen a single letter go along the telegraph?'
Fet and his wife used to stay a day or two at Yásnaya when journeying to and from Moscow, and Fet's account of Aunt Tatiána accords with Tolstoy's own affectionate recollections of that lady. Fet says that he and his wife 'made the acquaintance of Tolstoy's charming old aunt, Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky, who received us with that old-world affability which puts one at once at one's ease on entering a new house. She did not devote herself to memories of times long past, but lived fully in the present.'
Speaking of them all by their pet names, she mentioned that 'Seryózhenka Tolstoy had gone to his home at Pirogóvo, but Nikólenka would probably stay a bit longer in Moscow with Máshenka, but Lyóvotchka's friend Dyákof had recently visited them,' and so on.
Many years later, Tolstoy jotted down his memories of the long autumn and winter evenings spent with Aunt Tatiána to which, he says, he owed his best thoughts and impulses. He would sit in his arm-chair reading, thinking, and occasionally listening to her kindly and gentle conversation with two of the servants: Natálya Petróvna (an old woman who lived there not because she was of much use, but because she had nowhere else to live) and a maid Doúnetchka.
The chief charm of that life lay in the absence of any material care; in good relations with those nearest—relations no one could spoil; and in the leisureliness and the unconsciousness of flying time....