If Leo Nikolaevich stopped working, I used to feel dull and wrote to him: "Prepare, prepare work for me." In Moscow he sold the first part of War and Peace to Katkov for the Russkii Vyestnik, and he handed the MS. over to the secretary, Lyubimov.[{26}] Somehow or other it made me sad, and I wrote to my husband: "I felt so sorry that you had sold it. Terrible! Your thoughts, feelings, your talent, even your soul—sold!"
When Leo Nikolaevich had finished War and Peace, I asked him to publish that beautiful epic in book form, and not to publish it in magazines, and he agreed. Soon afterwards N. N. Strakhov's brilliant review of it came out, and Leo Nikolaevich said that the place which Strakhov gave to War and Peace by his appreciation would remain permanent. [{27}]But apart from this Tolstoy's fame grew with great rapidity, and his reputation as a writer rose higher and higher and soon extended to all countries and all classes.
Princess Paskevich was the first to translate War and Peace into French for some charitable purpose, and the French, although surprised, appreciated the work of the Russian writer. Among my papers I have a copy of I. S. Turgenev's letter to Edmond About, in which Turgenev gives the highest praise to War and Peace. Among other things, he says on 20 January, 1880: "Un des livres les plus remarquables de notre temps." And again: "Ceci est une grande œuvre d'un grand écrivain et c'est la vraie Russie."[{28}]
In 1869 the printing of the first edition of War and Peace was completed; it was quickly sold out and a second printed. The writer Shedrin's opinion of War and Peace was strange; he said with contempt that it reminded him of the chatter of nursemaids and old ladies.
After finishing his great work, Leo Nikolaevich's need for creative activity did not come to an end. New ideas sprang up in his mind. In working at the period of Peter the Great, despite all his efforts, he was unable to describe the period, particularly its every-day life. I wrote to my sister about it:
"All the characters of the time of Peter the Great he now has ready; they are dressed, arranged, sitting in their places, but they don't breathe yet. Perhaps they will begin to live."
But these characters did not come to life. The beginning of this work on the time of Peter the Great still remains unpublished.
At one time Leo Nikolaevich intended to write the history of Mirovich, but he did not accomplish that either.[{29}] He always shared with me his plans about work, and in 1870 he told me that he wanted to write a novel about the fall of a society woman in the highest Petersburg circles, and the task which he set himself was to tell the story of the woman and of her fall without condemning her. The idea was later carried out in his new novel, Anna Karenina. I well remember the circumstances in which he began to write that novel.
In order to amuse old Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna Ergolskii, I sent my son Serge, who was her godson, to read aloud to her Pushkin's Tales of Byelkin. She fell asleep while he was reading, and Serge went up to the nursery, leaving the book on a table in the drawing-room. Leo Nikolaevich took up the book and started to read a passage beginning with the words: "The guests were arriving at the country-house of Count L——"[{30}] "How good, how simple," said Leo Nikolaevich. "Straight to business. That's the way to write. Pushkin is my master."[{31}] That same evening Leo Nikolaevich began to write Anna Karenina and read the opening chapter to me; after a short introduction about the families he had written: "Everything was in a muddle in the house of the Oblonskiis." That was on 19 March, 1872.
When he had written the first part of Anna Karenina and had given me the second part to be copied, Leo Nikolaevich suddenly stopped working at it and became interested in education. In 1874 he wrote to Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy: "I am again deep in education, as I was fourteen years ago. I am writing a novel, but I cannot tear myself away from the living in order to describe imaginary people."[{32}]