Seryozha was different from all the other Tolstoys because of his great shyness and reserve. He often concealed his emotions, his outbursts of tender… - Alexandra Tolstaya

Tanya strove to reconcile her parents. She was very fond of her mother, but she sympathized with her father's views and she pleaded with her mother to make some concessions. Sergei tried to get away from it all. Ilya was absorbed in his own material cares and family. Lev was inclined to his mother's side. Masha was on bad terms with her mother; wholeheartedly devoted to her father, she suffered more than anyone else on his account.

From time to time he <nowiki>[</nowiki>Tolstoy] posed—a tiring obligation—for painters and sculptors: for Repin, Pasternak who did a study of the family, Aronson, and Paolo Trubetskoy. Trubetskoy, a Russian educated in Italy, did some splendid little statues of Tolstoy—one of him on horseback. Father was very fond of him. A sweet and childlike person in addition to his great gifts, he read practically nothing, spoke little, all his life was wrapped up in sculpture. As a convinced vegetarian he would not eat meat but cried: “Je ne mange pas de cadavre!” if anyone offered him some. In his studio in St. Petersburg there was a whole zoo: a bear, a fox, a horse, and a vegetarian wolf.

There was one characteristic which Tolstoy kept until late in life—a childlike, spontaneous gaiety, an unaffected, almost passionate enthusiasm for sports, games, all sorts of pastimes. “A game is a serious matter”—this was a saying of Tatiana A. Behrs-Kuzminskaya which Tolstoy loved to repeat. When he was playing, wrestling, hunting, chasing his children, he did it in earnest, he threw himself into it with all his being and enjoyed it as much as his children. The school children were infected with his gaiety.