Tolstoy’s lectures Valerya -- even on bonnets!

“Please, walk every day, and whatever the weather,” wrote Tolstoy while courting here. “That is excellent, as every doctor will tell you, and wear your stays and put on your stockings yourself, and generally make improvements of that kind in yourself. Do not despair of becoming perfect. But these are trifles. The chief thing is -- live so that when you go to bed you can say to yourself:
1) I did good to someone,
2) I myself began to live a little better. Try please, please, to plan the day’s occupations in advance and check them off in the evening. You will see what a tranquil and great pleasure it is to say each day to oneself: today I have done better than yesterday.” And on another occasion: “Alas, you are mistaken in believing that you have taste ... For instance, a certain style of dress such as a light-blue bonnet with white flowers is excellent, but it suits an aristocratic young lady who drives with fast trotters in English harness and ascends a staircase with mirrors and camellias, but with the modest surroundings of a fourth floor apartment and hired carriage, and so forth, such a bonnet is ridiculous – and still more so in the country driving in a tarantass (a type of carriage). There is another kind of elegance, modest, shrinking from anything extraordinary or showy, but very particular about small details, such as shoes, collars, gloves, cleanliness of nails, neatness of the hair, etc, about which I stand as firm as a rock, provided it does not take too much attention from serious matters” (p150, Tolstoy, Crankshaw).