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It is difficult to picture London as it was then. Ivan Goncharov thus described mid-nineteenth century London:

“I shall not forget the picture of this vast, gas-lit city as it appears to the traveller arriving there in the evening. The steam engine plunges into this ocean of brilliance and flies over the house roofs above the graceful chasms where, as in a kaleidoscope, an ant-hill moves along the sparkling, colourfully painted streets.”

To us, today, that “ocean of brilliance” would look like a dark abyss. The city was quite. Goncharove wrote:" One hears hardly any other noise save for the inevitable sounds made by horses and wheels. The city, a living creature, seems to be holding its breath and the beating of its pulse. There is no senseless shouting, no unnecessary movement, and as for singing, jumping or naughtiness there’s little of it even among the children. Everything seems to have been calculated, weighted and evaluated, as though taxes were levied on voices and mime as they were on windows and cart wheels. The carriages race at great speed but the drivers do not shout and, actually, there’s no need, as a pedestrian will never be caught off his guard. Everyone is in a hurry, everyone is running somewhere: there are no carefree or indolent figures except mine.”

Dickens lived in this city, illumined with yellow gas light, where even in the daytime the sun filtered through a film of smoke to shine down on the grass, on the smoke-shaded buildings, and the iridescent mud of the Thames, bristling with masts. This flashily dressed man who spoke loudly, described things vividly, picked out details from the darkness with his peculiar beam of light, exaggerated people’s characters, laughed, cried and invented- he was the real voice of the silently hurrying city.

 Tolstoy comes to Herzen

Herzen lived in Putney, a suburb of London.

Tolstoy came to the two-storey house with a small front-garden. It was March. He came to the front door and rang. A footman opened the door, took in his card, and left him in the hall. He heard a quick footstep, and Herzen came running down the stairs. He turned out to be a short, fast-moving fat man full of energy.

Holding his flat cap in his hands, Herzen stood looking at his visitor. Tolstoy wore a fashionable long coat and was holding a new silk hat.

They went for a walk, and dropped in at a nearby pub.

“I have never seen anyone like him,” Tolstoy recalled. When Tolstoy spoke of Herzen in his recollections he said that for six weeks they met every day, though actually he spent only sixteen days in London. Those days must have been so important that the number of their meetings had become trebled in his memory in the course of almost fifty years.

Tolstoy remembered Herzen’s words:” If instead of saving the world, people tried to save themselves, and if instead of liberating mankind, they tried to liberate themselves, how much they could do for the saving of the world and the liberation of mankind.”

All Herzen’s daughter could remember of Tolstoy was that he spoke with her father about cockfights and also that there was something said about Sevastopol and a solders’ song.

Tolstoy thought Herzen an old but very powerful man with a mind of his own. Herzen thought Tolstoy a man who took everything by assault.

They came to know, understand and respect each other and though they did not make friends they remembered each other forever. Together with Herzen they thought about Russia, its future and the Decembrists as a movement. They talked about religion, about the social system of the future.

Tolstoy left London the day the manifesto on the abolition of serfdom in Russia was published. 3. English governesses and Tolstoy’s children.  Hanna  Tarsey.

                    LEV TOLSTOY’S CHILDREN ( 1871 )

1                  2                 3               4                5                

Sergei       Tatiana       Ilya           Lev         Maria           

Born on    born on      born on     born on   born on          

28 June,    4 October, 22 May,    20 May,  12 February, 

1863          1864         1866          1869       1871             

  “The big ones”                             “ The little ones”

Tolstoy’s eldest daughter Tatyana said that she was grateful for her happy childhood to the three main persons:

1.father, who ruled their life and created special conditions for their development;

2.mother, who tried her best to make their life interesting and nice;

3. Hanna Tarsey, their English governess, who spent 6 years with Tolstoy’s children teaching them, loving them greatly and helping the little ones to understand what was good and what was bad.

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