Late morning on Weds I visited Leo Tolstoy's city house.
( author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina,
etc.)
This was particularly interesting to me, after seeing the 2010 movie The
Last Station, with Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren and James McAvoy:
Last Station, with Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren and James McAvoy:
The house is preserved by his ancestors and a historic society. When you go in, you have to wear sock booties over your shoes so you won't scratch the floors.
They have tried to keep all the furniture, fixtures and even place settings the way it was when he and his family lived there.
In one of the rooms, the embroidery on the chair's slipcover was by Tolstoy's wife Solphia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Tolstaya
In daughter Tatyana's room (she was a portrait artist) there is this delightful black tablecloth with 70 embroidered autographs – first written in chalk by visiting friends – then embroidered by Tatyana.
There was not just one, but TWO grand pianos in the house: a baby grand on the ground floor in a private family room, and a large grand in this upstairs entertaining room that had a huge long dining table, lots of chairs, and Limoges china tea service. Here the Tolstoys received guests and held musical and literary evenings, with visitors such as Rachmaninoff, Rimsky-Korsakov, Chekhov and Gorky. Here Tolstoy read his manuscripts to family and close friends, and also played chess.
In the adjoining family salon, there are a lot of textile treasures:
The family employed a dressmaker, and several of Countess Tolstoy's and her daughter's dresses are displayed:
In the back you can look into Tolstoy's study, and see the desk where he wrote his stories.
In the back there is a lovely garden area which is really a small forest! The red brick walls that are the boundaries of the property, are really the walls of textile mills that were there at the time the family lived in the house.
They say that the cats that wander the property are the descendents of the cats that lived with the family. Here are the stables, with the walls of the textile mill behind.
You are most observant, Luana. You would enjoy the house on the estate in Yasnya Polyana. It has more examples of Sophia’s handwork, including afghans and bedcovers. At the station where Tolstoy began his last journey I found a small wall quilt. In a restaurant near the house,quilts decorate the walls. At the Honey cake Museum in nearby Tula, we saw dolls made of straw and dressed in ribbons.
Lovely photos and interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing. I looked at that first photo of the dinig room rable and all I want to know is, what did they talk about? It must have been interesting, funny, mundane, familial, sociable – oh, all sorta of things. And I love that photo of the stables. Mmm.