The Wives: The Women Behind Russia's Literary Giants (15 page)

How could Seryozha, in whom we instilled, since his beginning, the idea of … university education, suddenly
believe that his efforts were futile, and pick up an axe and a plow? How could Tanya, with her love of art, society, theater, gaiety, and smart dresses, give this up, and stay in the country to farm? And finally, how could I … give up my usual life for the sake of an ideal, created not by me but forced upon me? And so, the painful discord has ensued.
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When Sophia rejected his plan, Tolstoy proposed turning their estate over to her. She rejected this, too, realizing that because of the stigma Tolstoy attached to ownership, her position would become vulnerable. Since he believed property was evil, she argued, why should he pass this evil thing to her? As his play reveals, Tolstoy wanted to be free from the moral quandary and obligations that come with ownership. The hero of his play puts it plainly: “Take over the estate, then I won’t be responsible.”
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On May 21, 1883, Tolstoy gave Sophia power of attorney, signing the document in her absence at a law office in Tula. He was obviously relieved to sign his property away, attaching this informal note: “To her excellency, kind madam, and dear wife Sophia Andreevna. I entrust you to manage all my affairs.…”
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When Sophia received the power-of-attorney document, she felt that Tolstoy loved her little, having shifted to her shoulders “the responsibility for the family, the management of the estate, the house, his books, etc.”
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In the coming decades, on top of handling these responsibilities, she would also face disapprobation from Tolstoy and his followers.

In October of 1883, Tolstoy met his first serious follower in a young aristocrat, Vladimir Chertkov. Although twenty-five years Tolstoy’s junior and from a family close to court, Chertkov instantly won his trust. He expressed keen interest in Tolstoy’s interpretation of the Gospels. Their first meeting lasted past midnight: Tolstoy read chapters from
What I Believe
, his recent work where he formulated his doctrine of non-resistance. Chertkov was the first to accept these views as infallible, which mattered
to Tolstoy because his friends and family were at best indifferent to his new writings. At fifty-five, Tolstoy soon addressed his twenty-nine-year-old disciple “my dear, close friend.” The relationship with Chertkov would become detrimental to Tolstoy’s marriage.

Sophia’s first impression of the young man who would become her rival was favorable: she described him as “tall, handsome, manly, and a true aristocrat.”
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During his prolonged stays with the Tolstoys, Chertkov often enjoyed Sophia’s hospitality. Her attitude would change, however, as Chertkov’s influence increased and the disciple worked to further alienate Tolstoy from the family.

On June 18, 1884, Sophia bore their twelfth child, Sasha. Earlier that day, the couple had quarreled after she mentioned Tolstoy’s expensive stallions, which had died in Samara of neglect. For Tolstoy, his property was now only a painful reminder of the past, which he had renounced. He stormed out of the house, saying that he was leaving forever, but returned the same night while Sophia was giving birth. Chertkov was invisibly present in this quarrel, having become Tolstoy’s confidant and, as such, informed about the developments in the family.

That summer, in a letter to Chertkov, Tolstoy called Sophia’s decision to engage a wet nurse for their baby “the most inhumane … and unchristian act.”
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Chertkov would seize on their disagreement, pointing out Sophia’s further “violations” of her husband’s rules and beliefs, and would soon refer to Sophia as “a cross to bear,” words that would travel to Tolstoy’s diaries.

Sophia had nursed almost all their children herself, but now could not afford sleepless nights with the baby. She had to secure the family’s income: within months of giving birth, she was to launch a publishing business. According to her memoir, it was Tolstoy himself who proposed that she publish a new edition of his works: his contract with the Salaev Brothers who had previously produced his collected works was about to expire. The family spent winters in Moscow, so their expenses had increased,
while profits from both estates dwindled. Yasnaya now produced negligible revenue, and there was another bad year in Samara.

To start her publishing enterprise, Sophia borrowed ten thousand rubles from her mother and fifteen thousand from a family friend. She promptly turned the annex of their Moscow residence into her office and warehouse. At first, she was frightened by the complexities of the new undertaking. But she gradually began to invest her heart in this activity, which allowed her to explore her talents and to work independently.

In February 1885, at Strakhov’s advice, Sophia traveled to Petersburg to meet Dostoevskys’ widow, who had been producing her husband’s works for years. Anna Dostoevsky willingly shared her methods of dealing with booksellers, advertising, and subscription, and cautioned Sophia against mistakes. But in addition to publishing practicalities, there was much that Sophia had to learn on her own. Tolstoy’s controversial non-fiction was banned, unlike Dostoevskys’ works, and she had to deal with censors. And this was not all. While Dostoevsky had wholeheartedly approved of Anna’s publishing activity, Sophia would meet with resistance from Tolstoy.

Her publishing would conflict with Tolstoy’s intention to renounce his copyright. At the start, he took interest in her publishing, helped with proofreading, and himself suggested an introduction to the new edition. But soon after, he began to distance himself from the money-making operation. One example of his changing views on copyright was with
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
. That year, Tolstoy gave Sophia the novella for her name day, allowing her to produce it exclusively in the collected works. In a few years, he would release this same story to the public domain.

In April 1885, Sophia launched a new edition in twelve volumes. She was pressed for time: the family had only enough money in their bank account to last a few months. Tolstoy no longer produced novels, and his non-fictional works, critical of the government and the Church, were banned. To speed up publication, she engaged two printing shops simultaneously and was
swamped with proofs, writing sister Tanya, “To save 800 rubles of a proofreader’s fee, I boldly decided to undertake this work myself, and now I’m harnessed for five months ahead.…”
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Despite the pressure, she enjoyed rereading Tolstoy’s prose, telling him that his novel
Childhood
moved her to tears again. She discovered new horizons in
War and Peace
, “surprised, enchanted, and puzzled” by the novel. “How silly I was when you wrote
War and Peace
, and how ingenious you were! …”
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By then, the family lived separately: Tolstoy wrote in Yasnaya, while Sophia looked after practical affairs and the children in Moscow. She had written him a year earlier, “I’m determined to
fulfill my duty
towards you as a writer and a man who needs his freedom above all; so, I’m not asking anything at all from you. And I am guided by the same sense of duty towards the children.…”
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During the years when Tolstoy produced religious, philosophical, and social works, Sophia gave him the freedom to create by shielding him from all practical concerns. Despite renouncing property, he remained at the estate, which Sophia had to manage as long as he continued to work there. The couple corresponded almost daily, and Tolstoy confided his writing plans to her. In 1882, when he mentioned an idea for a fictional story, Sophia lit up:

I was seized with joy when I read you wanted to write in the
poetic genre
again. It was as if you felt what I’ve been longing for. That’s where … you and I will unite again, what will comfort you and will illuminate our lives. This work is genuine, you’re made for it, and outside this sphere there is no peace for your soul. I know you can’t force yourself but I hope God helps you to retain this spark and grow it. I’m thrilled by the idea.
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Sophia’s publishing mattered not only as the source of income for the family. She also wanted to push Tolstoy’s banned works through religious censorship. In November, attempting to publish
Confession
and
What I Believe
in her collected edition, Sophia traveled to Petersburg to meet with Konstantin Pobedonostsev, Ober-Procurator of the Holy Synod, the only official who could lift the ban. Sophia’s argument was that since these works circulated illegally, the ban only generated additional interest and, therefore, it was sensible to allow publication in her limited subscription.

Upon her return to Moscow, Sophia received Pobedonostsev’s reply that the volume of her edition where she included Tolstoy’s non-fiction was banned irrevocably. In a defiant letter to the Ober-Procurator she called the ban Russia’s shame. She had to quickly replace the banned portions with fiction and reprint the final volume, and, while dealing with her publishing crisis, worked long hours in her office.

Tolstoy, staying in Moscow at the time, suffered from the incongruity of his own position: Sophia was about to make a large profit from his works, in which he had renounced money and property. In an unsent letter to Chertkov, he accused her of compromising his teachings by selling his books: “I would go downstairs and meet a customer who would look at me as though I were a fraud, writing against property and then, under my wife’s name, squeezing as much money as possible out of people for my writings.”
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But while Tolstoy agonized over the contradiction between his ideals and their family’s practical life, Sophia’s position was no easier. That fall, she described her situation to her sister: “Our entire life is in conflict with Lyovochka’s convictions and to concur with them … in our daily life is impossible.… It’s painful to me that I have inadvertently become the means to all of this. These persistent demands of life, from which Lyovochka ran away, have besieged me with greater force.”
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When, days before Christmas of 1885, Tolstoy walked into Sophia’s publishing office, his anger came like a bolt from the blue. She described the events next in a dramatic letter to sister Tanya:

As it happened so many times before, Lyovochka became extremely gloomy and nervous. One day, I am sitting and
writing; he walks in, I look up—his face is dreadful. Until then, we lived splendidly,
not a single
unpleasant word was exchanged between us, just nothing at all. “I’ve come to say that I want to divorce you, I can’t live like this, I am leaving for Paris, or America.” You know, Tanya, if the house had collapsed on top of me I couldn’t have been more surprised. I asked him, “What happened?” “Nothing. But you can only go on loading things onto a cart for so long. When the horse can’t pull it any more, the cart stops.” What exactly it is I’ve been loading onto the cart, is unknown. But then the shouting, the reproaches, and insults began to pour.… And when he said: “Wherever you are the air is poisoned,” I went for a trunk and began packing. I wanted to get away and stay with you for awhile. But the children ran in, sobbing.… He pleaded: “Stay!” So I stayed.…
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Daughter Tanya, then twenty-one, remembered that “terrible winter night” when she and her siblings sat in the hall, listening to their parents argue upstairs. “Both were defending something more important to them than their lives: she, the well-being of her children … he, his very soul.”
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In the morning it was decided that Tolstoy, in Tanya’s company, should spend Christmas at the Olsufievs, their old friends who owned a large estate thirty-five miles outside Moscow. The Olsufievs’ estate was far more luxurious than Yasnaya, but this escaped Tolstoy’s criticism, a contradiction Sophia pointed out: “But why is he not bellowing at the Olsufievs?”
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Unlike Tolstoy, who was resting, playing cards, and enjoying masquerades in good company, Sophia’s holiday was spent alone, working on the edition. She wrote Tolstoy, “We have no guests, and there’s no
Christmas tree and no merriment
… I’m sitting at the desk with my envelopes.”
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To stop subscription to the collected works was impossible: she had obligations to readers.

After working into the night, she would wake up late, to find their youngest children, Sasha, Alyosha, and Misha, waiting for her.
She was raising their youngest children alone, and the profit from selling Tolstoy’s books went to support
his
children, she wrote him: “You are always carefully avoiding the question of family responsibilities; if I did not have these responsibilities … I would dedicate myself to serving the public good.… But I cannot, for the benefit of strangers, let my children, given to me by God, grow up uneducated scoundrels.”
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Returning to Moscow after the holidays, Tolstoy made peace with her, “on a condition never to bring up the past.”
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She promised to forget but could not let go of her pain: “I have never been so unfairly and cruelly insulted as this time.”
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The new edition sold out quickly, and Sophia followed up with a cheap edition in small print. Tolstoy wished to reduce the price even further to avoid making profit altogether. As he guiltily mentioned to Strakhov, Sophia’s second edition “should cost only 8 rubles” and, after all, “there would be a profit of 25–30 thousand. This year, the estates produced only 1.5 thousand [rubles].”
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Sophia suggested donating part of her publishing profit to charity, writing Tolstoy she could generate enough money to feed a multitude of hungry people.
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But he believed charity “self-defeating” and rejected her offer: what they could give was but a drop in the ocean.
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In two years, Sophia made sixty-four thousand rubles, almost outshining Anna Dostoevskys’ publishing success. But her gain only led to more conflict with Tolstoy. When, in February 1887, the inexpensive edition was released, she remarked that she had “completely lost interest in it. The money brought me no joy—I never thought it would.”
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Tolstoy’s criticism of her publishing activity was undeserved, because Sophia’s collected works were the cheapest and also the most satisfying to readers, according to his follower and biographer Aylmer Maude.
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Striving for higher standards, Sophia would publish the first illustrated edition of Tolstoy’s works in 1892, documenting his life through photographs she had taken herself.