BOOK ONE
Book 1, Part 1
7 Jan: Chapter 7
The count is a man who eats well, drinks well, and calls everyone mon cher or ma chère, regardless of rank. He invites everyone to dinner and inspects the dining hall set out for eighty guests for the celebrations for his wife and his daughter’s name-day.
8 Jan: Chapter 8
And here is his “pet” Natasha, “whose name-day it is”. He hugs his daughter and is reproached ironically by his wife.
9 Jan: Chapter 9
Everything is “splendid” in the count’s world, especially anything too complex for him to understand. His son is going to fight for friendship, he insists. But there will be no war, he believes. As for his eldest daughter, his wife was “too clever” in raising her.
11 Jan: Chapter 11
His wife despairs at all the “theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows what” that count Rostov spends their money on. And at the end of the chapter, he makes sure to invite another guest, Pierre, to the party tonight. Taras, the cook, is on standby to impress!
12 Jan: Chapter 12
Always interesting to know what others think of you. Prince Vasili calls Count Rostov an “unlicked bear”, “a stupid fellow” and a gambler. Not to his face, of course.
14 Jan: Chapter 14
Waddling in to see his countess, with sauce on his waistcoat from the kitchen. She asks for 500 rubles, and he gives her 700, in “nice clean notes”. His cook, the serf Taras, cost 1,000 rubles, the price of ten ordinary serfs. It all adds, Count. It all adds up.
15 Jan: Chapter 15
Watch him preside over the name-day celebrations, egging on conversation and laughing good-naturedly. Marvel at his red bald head, unfortunately, positioned too close to the pineapples. Worry, always, about the expense!
17 Jan: Chapter 17
The host fights the urge to sleep off his food and wine, and plays cards with his guests, laughing at everything. And he is a man of hidden talents, as he shows by dancing his favourite Daniel Cooper. “The count danced well and knew it.”
Book 1, Part 3
21 Feb: Chapter 6
Anna Mikhailovna finds him reading Nikolai's letter, "sobbing and laughing.". He does not know how to break it to his wife, so Anna Mikhailovna does the tricky business. At the end of the chapter, we see that he has sent Nikolai "six thousand rubles" and "various other things."
BOOK TWO
Book 2, Part 1
7 Mar: Chapter 1
The father welcomes his son home and his son’s friend Denisov.
8 Mar: Chapter 2
Ilya is feeling flush. He’s re-mortgaged all his estates and so has money to shower on his homecoming son and prepare for a dinner in honour of Prince Bagration. The English Club and the cook are delighted about this:
The club cook and the steward listened to the count’s orders with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner costing several thousand rubles.
The count does not have opinions of his own, so he has accepted the line from the English Club that the battle of Austerlitz was lost because of the Austrians and Germans, and that Bagration and all the Russians are heroes.
9 Mar: Chapter 3
On the day of the dinner, Count Rostov is busy. He is proud to present his son to Bagration, the general who almost killed Nikolai. The food is splendid. He is especially delighted by the fish. And then he is reduced to tears by all the toasts and smashing of glass.
18 Mar: Chapter 12
While playing cards with Dolokhov, Nikolai recalls that when his father gave him two thousand rubles last Sunday, he asked him to be more economical this time. Given how much the old count dislikes talking about money, this was an ominous warning.
22 Mar: Chapter 16
Nikolai tells his father about the forty-three thousand. “Nonsense,” says Ilya Rostov. Nikolai is ashamed of how he tries to make it seem like nothing, and his father’s flustered acquiescence makes it even worse.
Book 2, Part 3
14 Apr: Chapter 2
Andrei visits Ilya Rostov on business at his house at Otradnoe. Rostov is living in the country as he always does: extravagantly, entertaining everyone with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. Andrei mentally calls him “the stupid old man”.
23 Apr: Chapter 10
As the Rostov finances go from bad to worse, the old count heads to Petersburg with his daughters. Berg is boring everyone with his war stories. He uses his “good-natured egotism” to convince the Rostovs that he is an excellent match for Vera, whom they are ashamed of not loving quite so much. Berg presses the count for a dowry, and an embarrassed Ilya Rostov haggles the wrong way, landing the groom with an extra 20k the Rostovs don’t have and can’t afford.
26 Apr: Chapter 14
The Rostovs are getting ready for the ball: “He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and was perfumed and his hair pomaded.” He exclaimed when his wife shlyly appears, “Oo-oo, my beauty! She looks better than any of you.”
29 Apr: Chapter 17
At the ball, the count asks Natasha whether she is enjoying herself. She looks at him with a smile that says: “How can you ask such a question?”
1 May: Chapter 19
Andrei in love sees the count very differently than before:
The old count’s hospitality and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrei could not refuse to stay to dinner.
3 May: Chapter 21
Pierre and Count Rostov play Boston at Vera’s housewarming.