Death of Leo's Father

When Leo Tolstoy is eight years old the extended family moves to Moscow, in part to give the children a better education. About 30 servants also pile into the sledges and coaches for the four-day trip. Less than six months later, on June 21, 1837, Leo and his siblings become orphans when their father, Count Nicholas Tolstoy, falls down in the street and dies. (Their mother died seven years earlier.) The dead man’s mother takes it badly and passes away on May 25, 1838.

The two youngest boys, Dmitry and Leo, then aged eight, and their sister Marya, return to Yasnaya Polyana with Aunt Toinette, while the older boys, Nicolas and Sergey, stay on in Moscow with Aunt Alexandra but within three years she too is dead. Aunt Toinette * loves the children as her own but she is not related to them, so their father’s remaining sister, Pelagya Yushkov, becomes their legal guardian. Toinette is unpopular with Pelagya because the blood aunt’s husband asked for Toinette’s hand in marriage and was refused. Only then did he propose to Pelagya. All five children move to the Yushkov household in the provincial city of Kazan.