In 1864 a good deal of it was already written, and Leo Nikolaevich often read aloud to me and to our two cousins, Varya and Lise, the daughters of Marie Nikolaevna Tolstoy, the charming passages as soon as he had written them. In the same year he read a few chapters to friends and to two literary men, Zhemchuzhnikov and Aksakov, in Moscow, and they were in raptures over it.[{22}] Generally Leo Nikolaevich read extraordinarily well, unless he was very excited, and I remember how pleasant it was in Yasnaya Polyana to listen to him reading Molière's comedies, when he had not anything new from War and Peace.
During the first years at Yasnaya Polyana we lived a very retired life. I could not recall anything of importance during that time in the life of the people, society, or State, because everything passed us by; we lived the whole time in the country, we followed nothing, saw nothing, knew nothing—it did not interest us. I desired nothing else but to live with the characters of War and Peace; I loved them and watched the life of each of them develop as though they were living beings. It was a full life and an unusually happy one, with our mutual love, our children, and, above all, that great work, beloved by me and later by the whole world, the work of my husband. I had no other desires.
Only at times in the evenings, when we had put the children to bed and sent off the MSS. or corrected proofs to Moscow, as a recreation we would sit down at the piano and till late at night play duets. Leo Nikolaevich was particularly fond of Haydn's and Mozart's symphonies.[{23}] At that time I played rather badly, but I tried very hard to improve. Leo Nikolaevich too, it was clear, was satisfied with his fate. In 1864 he wrote in a letter to my brother: "It is as though our honeymoon had only just begun." And again: "I think that only one in a million is as lucky as I am." When his relation, Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy, complained that he wrote little and rarely to her, he replied: "Les peuples heureux n'out pas d'histoire; that is the case with us."[{24}] Every new idea or the successful carrying out of some creation of his genius made him happy. Thus, for instance, he writes in his diary on 19 March, 1865: "A cloud of joy has just come upon me at the idea of writing the psychological history of Alexander and Napoleon."[{25}]
It was because he felt the beauty of his own creations that Leo Nikolaevich wrote: "The poet takes the best out of his life and puts it into his writings. Hence his writing is beautiful and his life bad." But his life at that time was not bad; it was as good and as pure as his work.
How I loved copying War and Peace! I wrote in my diary: "The consciousness of serving a genius and a great man has given me strength for anything." I also wrote in a letter to Leo Nikolaevich: "The copying of War and Peace uplifts me very much morally, i. e. spiritually. When I sit down to copy it, I am carried away into a world of poetry, and sometimes it even seems to me that it is not your novel that is so good, but I that am so clever." In my diary I also wrote: "Levochka all the winter has been writing with irritation, often with tears and pain. In my opinion, his novel, War and Peace, must be superb. Whatever he has read to me moves me to tears." In 1865, when my husband was in Moscow looking up historical material, I wrote to him: "Today I copied and read on a little ahead, what I had not yet seen nor read, namely, how the miserable, muffled-up old Mack himself arrives to admit his defeat, and round him stand the inquisitive aides-de-camp, and he is almost crying, and his meeting with Kutuzov. I liked it immensely, and that is what I am writing to tell you."
In November, 1866, Leo Nikolaevich used to go to the Rumyantsev Museum and read up everything about the freemasons. Before leaving Yasnaya Polyana he always left me work to copy. When I had finished it, I sent it off to Moscow, and I wrote to my husband: "How have you decided about the novel? I have got to love your novel very much. When I sent the fair-copy off to Moscow, I felt as if I had sent off a child and I am afraid that some harm may come to it."
In copying I was often astonished and could not understand why Leo Nikolaevich corrected or destroyed what seemed so beautiful, and I used to be delighted if he put back what he had struck out. Sometimes proofs which had been finally corrected and sent off, were returned again to Leo Nikolaevich at his request in order to be recorrected and recopied. Or a telegram would be sent to substitute one word for another. My whole soul became so immersed in copying that I began myself to feel when it was not altogether right, for instance, when there were frequent repetitions of the same word, long periods, wrong punctuation, obscurity, etc. I used to point all these things out to Leo Nikolaevich. Sometimes he was glad for my remarks; sometimes he would explain why it ought to remain as it was: he would say that details do not matter, only the general scheme matters.
The first thing which I copied out in my clumsy, but legible writing was Polikushka, and for years afterwards that work delighted me. I used to long for the evening when Leo Nikolaevich would bring me something newly written or recorrected. Some passages in War and Peace, and also in his other works, had to be copied over and over again. Others, for instance the description of the uncle's hunting party in War and Peace, were written once and for all and were not corrected. I remember how Leo Nikolaevich called me down to his study and read aloud to me that chapter just after he had written it, and we smiled and were happy together.
In copying I sometimes allowed myself to make remarks and to ask him to strike out anything which I thought not sufficiently pure to be read by young people, for instance in the scene of the beautiful Ellen's cynicism, and Leo Nikolaevich granted my request. But often in my life, when copying the poetical and charming passages in my husband's works, I have wept, not only because they moved me, but simply from the artist's pleasure which I felt together with the author.
It used to grieve me much when Leo Nikolaevich suddenly became depressed and disappointed with his work, and wrote to me that he did not like the novel and was miserable. This was particularly the case in 1864, when he broke his arm, and I wrote to him in Moscow: "Why have you lost heart in everything? Everything depresses you; nothing goes right. Why have you lost heart and courage? Haven't you the strength to rouse yourself? Remember how pleased you were with the novel, how well you thought it all out, and suddenly you don't like it. No, no, you must not. Now, come to us, and instead of the Kremlin's walls you will see our Chepyzh,[J] lighted up by the sun, and the fields ... and with a happy face you will begin telling me the ideas for your work, you will dictate to me, and ideas will again come to you, and the melancholy will pass away." And so it was after he had come home.