Tolstoy's first long walk...

We're still figuring out where we'll spend the night along the way--we've figured out a couple places. Halfway through the trip, we're staying at Dvoryaninovo, the ancestral estate of Andrey Bolotov. My traveling companion, Tom Newlin, literally wrote the book on Bolotov. I don't think he's ever "officially" visited the estate, so it should be interesting. We're staying in Tula at a place I found on couchsurfing.net. We'll probably stay in hotels in Chekhov and Serpukhov. That leaves only Yasnogorsk to find a berth.

But what did Tolstoy do?

In that day, the last third of the nineteenth century, the roads of European Russia were thronged with stranniki, "wanderers." The were a hodgepodge of pilgrims visiting the shrines (like the Iberian Virgin or the catacombs in Kiev), religious sectarians like Old Believers, retired soldiers who could not return to village life. Add to that crowd the "migrant workers" of the early-industrial (in Russia) age: peasants who worked part-time in the cities.

All these people needed a place to stay, and it was very common in that day to stop at the nearest izba and ask to stay the night. Sort of couchsurfing of the nineteenth century.

And that's is precisely what Tolstoy did.

We have a detailed description of Tolstoy's surfing from Arbuzov, his servant who accompanied him on his first long walk in the spring of 1878, when they visited Optina-Pustyn, a spiritual center of Russia in the nineteenth century. (It was made even more famous by Dostoevsky, who glorified it in Brothers Karamazov--starets Zosima is modeled on Saint Amvrosy.)

Here's my translation of Arbuzov's description of their first night on the road, in the village Selivanovo, which still exists today, about 20 km south-west of Yasnaya Polyana/Tula.

"Let's go into the last hut," said the count. "It's closer to the road."

We approached the house. A mean black dog ran up to us, but did not bite. Hearing the barking, an old woman came out of the house and chased the dog into the courtyard. The old woman was covered with a dirty blue shabby cloth; she was thin, dressed in a blue shirt and а skirt of white coarse linen, barefoot.

"Granny, let us spend the night," the count asked her.
"Father, I am glad to host wanderers [stranniki], but I don't have anywhere to put them. It's hot in the loft, and the flies won't let you sleep. And we don't have beds."

"We don't need a bed," the Count. "Bring us a bundle of straw in the seni*, we'll sleep there. Do you perhaps have a samovar, milk and eggs?"
"I have all that, sir."
"We do not need anything else."
"Well, sir, if you don't mind sleeping in the seni, then you are welcome."

The old lady treated us simply and cordially, and, apparently, liked to host wanderers. At her bidding, we entered the house, dropped our packs. The Count took off his coat and remained in his linen blouse. I asked her to bring out the samovar, a jug of milk and a dozen eggs. [...]

The tea was ready, the eggs were boiled in the samovar. On the table stood a pitcher of milk with cream from the top. The old woman said it was a good milk, milked early that morning. I asked for a mug, took some cream for the Count, then whittled him a little spatula from scrap wood in place of a spoon for the eggs. Everything was ready on the table, and the old woman brought from the cellar a whole loaf of bread and gave us to slice as much as we need.

The Count invited the old woman to drink tea with us at the table, and she was very happy and did not refused, but said: "Drink to your health, but I will probably drink just this one cup. It's nice to warm these old bones."

They started on the tea and eggs. Tolstoy sat on a bench under the icons, me across from him on the bench, the old woman to his left side at the corner of the table. The Count had a glass of tea and went to sit out on the porch to avoid the heat and flies and write in his notebook.

The сени, "seni," is an unheated part of the peasant hut that attached the "front porch" of the hut to the main room. It was essentially the mudroom and shed of the Russian hut--where you took off your boots and stored things you might need. But not really part of the interior of the hut.

Arbuzov mentions that he carried a sheet and pillow in his sack for the Count. Tolstoy slept well. Arbuzov did not. He spent the night watching the swallows who had built a nest in the corner of the seni.

They left early the next morning.