Tolstoy's first blog entry

Tolstoy kept two blogs of sorts during his walk: His diary, and daily letters home to his wife, who sat worrying in Moscow.

Here's his first letter to his wife, posted from Podolsk:

1886 г. Апреля 5. Подолъскъ.

10 часовъ утра, въ Подольскѣ. Ночевали и идемъ здорово

и весело. Стах[овичъ] разбился ногами и подъѣзжаетъ. Жду

письма въ Серпуховѣ. Целую всѣхъ. У насъ ужъ одинъ

постоянный товарищъ - мужичекъ.

Л. Т.

1886. April 5. Podolsk.

It's 10 in the morning in Podol'sk. We spent the night and we're walking well and happily. Stakhovich's legs broke down on him and he's caught a ride [on the train]. I await your letter in Serpukhov. My love to everyone. We already have one constant companion--a peasant chap. L.T. [Tolstoy]

Podol'sk is the first major town south of Moscow on the Simferopol'skoe shosse (Simferopol' Highway, M2, the main highway south out of Moscow), about 40km south of the center of Moscow, maybe 20km south of where Tolstoy started his walk. (We're starting out from Podol'sk, mostly because we don't want to walk the heavily-trafficked area between Moscow and Podolsk--it would be like hiking along 95 from Manhattan to Boston.)

Stakhovich was the son of one of Tolstoy's close friends, and went on to be a teacher, politician, and one of the founders of the Tolstoy Museum in St Petersburg. He was twenty-five in 1886, and made it all of thirty miles before calling it quits. An object lesson for any walker...

The mail ran surprisingly quickly in the Podmoskov'e area of that time--it was carried daily all along the rail from Kursk to Moscow and back. He wrote the letter the morning of the fifth, it was posted on the sixth, and Sophia Andreevna received it that same day (according to the postage stamps). She wrote back on the seventh:

Нескольно слов из Подольска меня совсем не удовлетворили: промонли ли, устали ли, сыты ли, где ночевали, ничего не известно.

A few words from Podol'sk does not satisfy me in the least: Did you get soaked? Are you tired? Are you hungy? Where did you spend the night? I don't know a thing.

During this period, the mid-1880s, Tolstoy picked up his diary after a decade or two of not writing much... He becomes something of a graphomaniac, filling nine volumes of his Complete Collected Works between 1885 and his death. (Keep in mind that each volume is a thousand pages!) I'll publish some more excerpts from his diary of the period next.