The Project Gutenberg EBook of Reminiscences of Tolstoy, by Ilya Tolstoy
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Title: Reminiscences of Tolstoy
By His Son
Author: Ilya Tolstoy
Posting Date: August 3, 2008 [EBook #813]
Release Date: February, 1997
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY ***
Produced by Judith Boss
REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY
BY HIS SON,
Count Ilya Tolstoy
Translated By George Calderon
REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY (Part I.)
IN one of his letters to his great-aunt, Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstoy,
my father gives the following description of his children:
The eldest [Sergei] is fair-haired and good-looking; there is something
weak and patient in his expression, and very gentle. His laugh is not
infectious; but when he cries, I can hardly refrain from crying, too.
Every one says he is like my eldest brother.
I am afraid to believe it. It is too good to be true. My brother's chief
characteristic was neither egotism nor self-renunciation, but a strict
mean between the two. He never sacrificed himself for any one else; but
not only always avoided injuring others, but also interfering with them.
He kept his happiness and his sufferings entirely to himself.
Ilya, the third, has never been ill in his life; broad-boned, white and
pink, radiant, bad at lessons. Is always thinking about what he is told
not to think about. Invents his own games. Hot-tempered and violent,
wants to fight at once; but is also tender-hearted and very sensitive.
Sensuous; fond of eating and lying still doing nothing.
Tanya [Tatyana] is eight years old. Every one says that she is like
Sonya, and I believe them, although I am pleased about that, too; I
believe it only because it is obvious. If she had been Adam's eldest
daughter and he had had no other children afterward, she would have
passed a wretched childhood. The greatest pleasure that she has is to
look after children.
The fourth is Lyoff. Handsome, dexterous, good memory, graceful. Any
clothes fit him as if they had been made for him. Everything that others
do, he does very skilfully and well. Does not understand much yet.
The fifth, Ma
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