The Eve of St Nicholas
War and Peace Weeks 50–52: Epilogue, Part 1, Chapter 7 – Part 2, Chapter 12
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Welcome to Weeks 50–52 of War and Peace 2024
This is the final post for this year’s slow read. It takes us up to the end of the first part of the epilogue, when we part company with the characters who have shared our lives for the past year.
Everything you need for this read-along and book group can be found on the main War and Peace page of Footnotes and Tangents. There you will find:
The reading schedule with links to daily chat threads for each chapter.
Weekly updates like this one.
Give someone War and Peace in 2025
This readalong will run again next year for paid subscribers. All my posts will be revised and updated so more readers can enjoy this slow read of War and Peace. If you know someone who would enjoy this experience, consider a gift subscription so they can take part next year. Paid subscribers can also join the slow read of Hilary Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, read any of my book guides, or participate in the other 2025 slow reads.
This week’s theme: The Eve of St Nicholas
We have reached the last days of War and Peace. Twelve months ago, we gathered for a soirée at Anna Pavlovna’s, offered our respects to the aged aunt, and began this great undertaking. Congratulations on coming so far! You can now say that you have read War and Peace.
This means you should consider the second part of the epilogue as an optional extra. An appendix. A tangent. Twelve bonus chapters on history from Professor Tolstoy. Many of us love that stuff. I love every chapter of this book in its own way. But for those who don’t, I recommend that you close the book now, feel proud of what you have achieved, and go enjoy the holiday season!
Our story ends with Andrei’s son, Nikolenka, looking to the future.
But does a story ever end?
In 1825, Tsar Alexander died. In the confusion over the succession, a group of liberal officers attempted a military coup. They desired the abolition of serfdom and the creation of a constitutional monarchy. The rebellion failed. Some of the leaders were executed, others were banished to Siberia. This was the Decembrist Revolt of 1825.
War and Peace began as a story about one of these Decembrists returning from exile in the 1850s. Here is Leo Tolstoy, in a draft of the introduction to the novel:
In 1856 I started writing a tale with a certain direction, the hero of which was to be a Decembrist returning with his family to Russia. Without intending to do so, I moved from the present time to the year 1825, a period of error and unhappiness for my hero, and I abandoned what I had begun. But even in the year 1825 my hero was already a grown-up family man. In order to understand him, I had to move once again back to his youth, and his youth coincided with the period of 1812, so glorious for Russia. I abandoned for a second time what I had started and began to write about the year 1812.
This Decembrist is Pierre. In the epilogue, it is 1820. Pierre is a family man. Happily domesticated, celebrating St Nicholas Day with his inlaws. He is caught between the two cataclysmic events of his life: a prisoner of war in 1812 and his exile to Siberia five years from now.
In this light, the final scenes of War and Peace foreshadow a terrible rupture in the family. Nikolai tells Pierre he will do his duty and defend the Fatherland from traitors like his brother-in-law:
And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you and cut you down, I should not hestitate an instant, but should do it.
Nikolai’s nephew, the fifteen-year-old Nikolenka Bolkonsky, is listening. He worships Pierre and is contemptuous of his uncle Nikolai. And to him, Tolstoy gives the last line of War and Peace:
‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father! Oh, father, father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be satisfied …’
Nikolenka will be twenty when Uncle Pierre joins the Decembrist Revolt. Will he, too, join the rebellion? Will he fight Uncle Nikolai in memory of his father, Andrei? The Bolkonsky house has already been cursed by three tragic deaths. When I read Nikolenka’s closing thoughts, I sense the shadow of a fourth.
There are no endings
During our first slow read of War and Peace, one of our number wrote:
Oh, Tolstoy. It would be great if his fiction felt fictional sometimes!
Tolstoy is a master of realism; he is obsessed with capturing life truthfully in his writing. And life is often messy, ugly, and full of contradictions.
For a writer of realism, the ending is a problem. Endings are required of stories; they do not exist in real life. In Bring Up The Bodies, Hilary Mantel put it like this:
There are no endings. If you think so you are decieved as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one.
In fiction, we may expect everyone to live happily ever after. Or not. How satisfying to see Natasha singing to Pierre as he holds their child in the palm of his hand. How devastating to picture Nikolenka falling from a bullet fired by his own uncle.
Tolstoy chooses not to end War and Peace like this.
wrote in our chat that the epilogue feels ‘like the novelette to the world’s longest prologue.’ It is a magnificent open-ended piece of writing that we get to enjoy because we have been on the journey, and grown as our characters have grown.Tolstoy gives us a portrait of two married couples. Both marriages are happy but complicated. They are gently dysfunctional in the way real marriages are. They contain within them compromises and accommodations. Nikolai, Marya, Pierre and Natasha are not the same people they were before marriage and children. And as their friends, we may grieve the loss of independence, Natasha’s singing and Nikolai’s extravagance.
But this is also not their destination. It is a glimpse into a room early in December 1820. A house full of young children and tired adults, with history going on outside.
So, I think we slightly miss the point when we talk about ‘the ending’ of War and Peace. Everything about the epilogue suggests something else. Characters in novels reach the end of story arcs. But this is not a novel, and Natasha and Pierre are more real than characters. Their lives continue to unfold into the future, beyond the final page and the last ellipsis. This dance of time, circling back and stepping on, is encapsulated in Nikolai’s dance with his daughter Natasha, closing a circle on our story:
In her absence Nikolai allowed himself to give his little daughter a gallop around the room. Out of breath, he took the laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart. His capers reminded him of dancing, and looking at the child’s round happy little face he thought of what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had danced the Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
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Chapter 7: Farmer Nikolai
Nikolai and Marya marry and move to Bald Hills. Nikolai dedicates himself to managing his estate and paying off his debts. He is astonishingly successful on both counts. His methods are conventional, conservative and authoritarian. Marya is jealous of his passion and she cannot understand how ‘kind Nicholas’ has become so cruel a master.
‘What I want is that our children should not have to go begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that’s all. And to do that, order and strictness are essential.’
What a journey Nikolai has been on! Remember him when he visited his family's estate and lost his patience and his temper trying to order his father's affairs. He went hunting instead.
Andrei, after Austerlitz, scoffed at Pierre’s good works. He believed in freeing the serfs not because it was virtuous, but because they knew the land better than he. Andrei also sought to avoid his father’s fate: the cruelty a man would regret.
Like Andrei, Nikolai is reacting against the sins of the father: Ilya Rostov’s profligate exuberance and his lack of responsibility for his children. The result is a frightening lurch to another extreme: a cruelty reminiscent of Nikolai’s father-in-law, namesake and the previous master of Bald Hills: Prince Nikolai Bolkonsky.
On an individual level, I believe Tolstoy is exploring how our destinies are so inextricably linked as we repeat or reject the mistakes of our parents. On a societal level, Tolstoy has drawn a portrait of one of the conservative landowners who will support the new Tsar Nicholas I in 1825, and oppose the liberal forces behind the Decembrist Revolt.
What is your assessment of how Nikolai has changed during the course of the novel?
Chapter 8: The Sterile Flower
Rostov’s hot temper endures. Even after Marya makes him feel ashamed of himself, he finds it impossible to entirely renounce his violent ways. He spends more time collecting and reading his ‘serious library’ of ‘serious matters’. Natasha and Marya discuss Sonya’s sad fate, both agreeing that she is like a ‘sterile flower’, a cat who attaches herself not to people, but to a home.
Nikolai • Marya • Natasha • Sonya
‘To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away.’
It's just like Natasha to misinterpret a passage in the Bible to fit her way of seeing. Jesus is talking about wisdom and insight, not material riches or a happy marriage.
In these chapters, Tolstoy’s naturalism and realism are on full show. He writes in response to and reaction against the romanticism of a previous generation of novelists.
Does everyone live happily ever after? Yes and no. Rostov comes from the verb, ‘to grow,’ and Nikolai Rostov grows, for good and for ill. In the opening chapters of War and Peace, Sonya is likened to a cat. Sonya stays the same, for good and for ill. Tolstoy dodges the storybook ending of a marriage between Sonya and Denisov. For better or for worse, not all lives lead to love or marriage.
Whether her story is tragic or not will depend greatly on the reader, and the details we read between the lines. I choose to imagine her happy, and I suspect neither Natasha nor Marya will ever fully understand why.
Meanwhile, as a symbol of the fusing of the Rostov and Bolkonsky spirits, Bald Hills is rebuilt in wood, not stone. Plain and simple. There are parties, but just the right amount.
Do you know someone who has followed a similar path in life as Sonya?
Chapter 9: The Quiet Sadness of a Happy Life
It is 5 December 1820. Before the public celebrations of St Nicholas Day, Nikolai spends the evening with his family. Denisov is here, and Pierre is expected. Nikolai is in a bad mood and retires early, but is disturbed by his children. Marya and Nikolai argue and make up, he capers around with their daughter Natasha, and Pierre arrives, chastised by his gleeful wife, Natasha.
Each time I re-read the epilogue, I marvel more at its magnificence. I am revived by its honesty and humanity. I read it barefoot, heart open, listening to life. It is as though I have woken in the night, from someone else's dream. Free from rancour and reproach, I float down a winding stair, and dance in the dark.
His capers reminded him of dancing, and looking at the child's round happy little face he thought of what she would be like when he was an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka with her as his old father had danced the Daniel Cooper with his daughter.
A little Natasha dances with her father, closing the circle on how the story began.
Tolstoy leaves nothing complete. It is not domestic bliss, but neither is it a nightmare. It's all very real and tender. The children deny their parents their privacy, and the three-year-old Natasha kisses her father's hand, giving Nikolai life, peace and the world.
Chapter 10: An Honest Story
Pierre and Natasha were married in 1813. By 1820, Natasha has three daughters and a son. She has dedicated herself entirely to raising a family, abandoning her love of singing, society and fashion. Her mother thinks her daughter’s behaviour absurd, but Natasha and Pierre establish an accord whereby he submits to her will and she to his wishes, as interpreted by herself. The arrangement affords both a mysterious satisfaction.
Natasha • Countess Rostova • Pierre
She felt that her unity with her husband was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had attracted him to her, but by something else—indefinite but firm as the bond between her own body and soul.
When I read this chapter in my twenties, I did not know what to do with it. My romantic heart burned for a fairy tale ending, and this ain’t that.
Then, when I was around 27 or 28, something happened: I got broody. I was astonished by the power of this sensation, greater than anything I had known. I wanted children; I wanted a family. Babies reduced me to a gooey mess. Everything else seemed dull in comparison to dedicating myself to a future full of children, growing up and discovering the world for themselves.
This feeling helped me understand Natasha in this chapter. Again, Tolstoy doesn’t romanticise or glamourise love or marriage. ‘Poetic feelings’ may have brought them together, but they live now in prose, full of life’s accommodations and shortcomings.
Theirs is not a perfect marriage, but it appears to work. These two erratic individuals have created a strong bond. As a young reader, I grieved for what they had lost. I still do. I was angry about what Natasha could have been. As an older reader, I find myself more forgiving and gently admiring of what they have gained.
Somehow, this chapter makes me think of The Rolling Stones: ‘You don’t always get what you want.’ It encapsulates the spirit of War and Peace, which rarely offers the reader the story we want. Tolstoy seems to delight in frustrating our hopes and squeezing our dreams, thereby creating a reading experience far closer to life itself. It’s not what we wanted, but I think sometimes, it is what we need.
Chapter 11: More Than True
Pierre had left six weeks ago on business, although he had agreed to be gone only four weeks. Meanwhile, their son had fallen sick, and Natasha was sad and irritable. Only her child comforted her. She remonstrates with Pierre when he arrives, but her anger subsides as Pierre takes up their son in his hands.
Natasha • Pierre • Nikolai • Marya
And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this little three-months-old creature when he lay at her breast and she was conscious of the movement of his lips and snuffling of his little nose. That creature said: 'You are angry, you are jealous, you would like to pay him out, you are afraid—but here am I! And he is in me'; and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.
Tolstoy and Natasha are wrong about why Petya is ill; as I understand it, you cannot overfeed a breastfed baby. But this quote resonates powerfully with me now that I have children. Nothing matters more than their well-being, and in their presence, everything else seems small and irrelevant.
Pierre's good with babies, and Nikolai can’t stand them. Somehow, we knew this would be the case. And in another flourish of realism for parents the world over, the chapter ends with this ‘delicious marvel’ pooing on his dad’s hand.
Chapter 12: The Three Ages
All the distinct worlds of Bald Hills are delighted to see Pierre, but each for their own reasons. Nikolenka, we learn, hero-worships Pierre with poetic notions of the events of 1812 and the death of his father. When Pierre goes to town, Natasha furnishes him with a list of things to buy. He always spends too much. Tolstoy gives us a portrait of a frail Countess Rostova, forgotten by the world.
Natasha • Pierre • Countess Rostova • Nikolenka
She ate, drank, slept, or kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She wanted nothing from life but tranquility, and that tranquility only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on living, that is, to use her vital forces.
Nikolenka's hero worship of Pierre; Pierre buying expensive presents from town; the old countess, alive, but not living. Little portraits of youth, middle and old age. I wince, and I smile at all the truths in this chapter.
Nikolenka shows us how the events of this novel have now passed into family legend. Their rough edges have been ironed out into a ‘vague poetic picture’ which will have its own consequences to come.
Meanwhile, Pierre can hardly concern himself with the meaning of life when he has gold combs to buy, set with pearls. Middle age can be a prosaic place of endless lists and inappropriate presents.
The countess is no longer ‘her whole self’. Perhaps this is something some of us have felt, or we have sensed the feeling in others. In the glances of ‘memento mori’ (remember death) and the way children avoid her, we get an honest sketch of the experience of being close to the dying.
Chapter 13: Family Gatherings
Pierre presents his gifts to the old countess. Although they all want to talk about events in Petersburg, they don’t want to have to explain everything to the old countess. But Denisov is unaware of the need for caution and probes Pierre on the new Bible Society, which Pierre says is now running the government. The conversation is interrupted by children’s laughter and a clever bit of knitting.
Natasha • Countess Rostova • Pierre • Nikolai • Marya • Denisov
Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one but unavoidable, continued all through tea-time.
The previous chapter sets up this terribly familiar scene: topics that must be avoided, either because they require excruciating exposition or will ignite a full-blown family row. Instead, we must endure small talk until the young and old are all tucked up. More delightfully familiar is the capacity of children to break the silence with their silliness and rescue the adults from themselves.
Trust Tolstoy to introduce a character on almost the very last page and bring her to life in a sentence or two. Anna Makarovna’s trick is to knit both socks on the same needles, according to ‘a secret process known only to herself.’ It is a mystery to the family but not to knitters, who can learn this technique for themselves here.
The serious conversation is interrupted by peals of laughter from the next room. Pierre exclaims:
‘That’s delightful music!’
Of course, the laughter of the children was music to Pierre, because it is music. And he was fond of that sound because it ‘meant that all was well’ in the house. And Nikolai agreed: ‘I know that feeling.’ They disagree on much, but not this.
Pierre goes to take a look. Nikolai stays behind because the stockings are a present for him. Tolstoy and the reader also stay behind, so we don’t get to see the miraculous stockings. All we hear is Pierre, happy, at last, in himself and with his family:
'Come, Anna Makarovna,’ Pierre’s voice was heard saying, ‘come here into the middle of the room and at the word of command, “One, two,” and when I say “three” … You stand here, and you in my arms—well now! One, two …!’ said Pierre, and a silence followed: ‘three!—and a rapturously breathless cry of childrens’ voices filled the room. ‘Two, two!’ they shouted.
When were you last forced to talk about nothing, in order not to talk about something?
Chapter 14: The Decemberist
After the children go to bed, the discussion turns to politics. Denisov is angry at the government, and Pierre talks with animation about plans to set up a society of gentlemen to defend Russia against mysticism and militarism. Nikolai tells him that he would consider it his duty to oppose Pierre and, if necessary, kill him. Nikolenka asks Pierre whether his father would have agreed with him, and Nikolai says his nephew shouldn’t have been there at all.
Nikolenka • Nikolai • Pierre • Denisov • Natasha
‘The aim is excellent, but in the present circumstances something else is needed.’
If ever there was a chapter designed to set up the unwritten sequel to War and Peace, this is it.
Pierre has been in Petersburg, conspiring with the circle that will launch an uprising five years from now: the Decemberist Revolt of 1825. And, with a sense of ominous foreshadowing, his brother-in-law makes it clear he would defend the Tsar against Pierre if it was required of him.
And who else is in the room? Fifteen-year-old Count Nikolenka Bolkonsky, hero-worshipping Pierre, and wondering what his father would have thought. He was almost not in the room, almost whisked away by his tutor. I sense that eavesdropping on his elders will have great consequences for his life to come.
Chapter 15: The Ticket
After supper, Nikolai goes to Marya and finds her writing her diary. It sets down everything of note about her children’s lives. She explains she has begun marking their behaviour on a ticket they receive at the end of the day. Nikolai approves, and tells her how Pierre, Natasha and Denisov ganged up on him. They share their concerns for Nikolenka, and Marya listens to Nikolai’s plans, thinking of her love for him and her children, agitated only by her imperfect love for Nikolenka.
Countess Marya's soul always strove towards the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute, and could therefore never be at peace.
Tolstoy's parents were called Marya and Nikolai, and these diary entries are similar to those of Tolstoy's mother. What would Tolstoy's ticket have read, once he had been excommunicated from the Church and spoken out against the Tsar? His rather pedestrian parents would no doubt have chalked him up as a very naughty boy.
But the best part of this chapter is when Nikolai accuses Natasha of having no opinions of her own, while Tolstoy tells us that Nikolai is no different. The Rostov siblings were always too impetuous, impressionable and impatient to form their own ideas. Like mirrors, they have married two idealists: Marya and Pierre.
Marya, as ever, is so intent on doing good, but always worried she is doing harm. As our time with them ends, we can see Nikolai has found peace in his farming, while Marya – striving towards the infinite – may forever be at war with herself.
Chapter 16: To Be Continued…
Pierre and Natasha talk, without pause and without logic, but with love and complete understanding. They talk of the children and of Pierre’s time in Petersburg. Pierre says Platon would not have approved of his rebellious ideas, but he would have been happy with their family life. They talk about their love and their quarrels, of the need for honest folk to unite, and of Petya, their beloved little son.
Meanwhile, Nikolenka awakes from a dream. He and Uncle Pierre are riding into battle together. His Uncle Nikolai tells him he has orders to kill him, and Nikolenka sees his father at his side and wakes up.
‘But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father? Oh, father, father! Yes, I will do something with which even he would be satisfied ...’
The one thing we know without a doubt is that Andrei was a difficult man to satisfy. His life was a series of failed attempts to find satisfaction in the world and in himself. So, his son’s vow has a greater significance than he can know. ‘History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’
Meanwhile, here is a lovely parting scene of Pierre and Natasha finishing each other's sentences and lost in thought. They have their flaws, but they are happy, and I am hopeful to leave them here, despite the clouds gathering on the horizon.
But at our journey’s end, I worry for Nikolenka.
Congratulations on completing part one of the epilogue. Here’s your penultimate merit badge from
:
Thank you for reading
And with that, we have reached the end of our slow read of War and Peace. I hope you have found it rewarding, nourishing and entertaining. I will run the chat threads through to the end of the year, so those who wish can discuss the second part of the epilogue and reflect on a year with War and Peace. You will find those threads in the reading schedule.
If you are leaving us here, I wish you all the best in 2025 and the years beyond. If you are joining us for any of next year’s slow reads, I look forward to meeting you between the pages in the stories to come.
And last but not least, I get told off when I forget to rattle my tin. So, if you have enjoyed our year of War and Peace and would like to leave me a tip, you can do so by following the link below.
I have been your guide, Simon Haisell. Thank you for reading. Happy holidays and a happy new year!
Thank you so much for doing this Simon. I read War & Peace when I was a student and had the time. I tried a few years ago but couldn't manage it; the slow read has now enabled me to do so and it's been a wonderful experience. The Epilogue in particular is deeply moving, not least because it only works because of the journey to get there.
Dear Simon- thank you so much for all the work that has gone into this read. I have enjoyed it so much and it has properly enriched my year. My friends and family are tired of hearing about it! I would not have attempted WaP without your help and the support of the wonderful community you have gathered here to muse and think, and I am so glad I did. I m going to do the AK slow read you recommended and join you your A Place of Greater Safety in the Spring. I am eking out the last few pages of TMATL too- thank you for changing my reading life this year. Happy holidays!