Note 13 — THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI October–December 1895

Maria Alexandrovna Schmidt, an old friend, who shared Tolstoi’s opinions and whose personality and whole life, Tolstoi esteemed very highly. In the Journal of February 18, 1909, he wrote, “I never knew and do not know any woman spiritually higher than Maria Alexandrovna.” In the eighties, when class-teacher in the Nicholaievsky Orphan Asylum in Moscow, Mme. Schmidt made the acquaintance of the forbidden works of Tolstoi, upon which she left the asylum and went to live on the land, and up to her death supported herself by the labours of her own hand. The last ten years of her life she lived near the village of Ovsiannikovo, on the estate of T. L. Sukhotin, procuring her livelihood by the sale of the berries and vegetables from her own garden and the dairy products from her cows. She died October 18, 1911.