End of a Tolstoy feud?

Press, 12 July 1980, Page 17

End of a Tolstoy feud?

A long-standing Russian family and literary feud was settled last month according to the “Daily Telegraph” in London. Mrs James Illingworth, nee Tania Tolstoy, shook hands with Mrs Paul Dwyer, a descendant of General Barclay de Tolly, the Russian Minister of War in 1812.

The handshake took place in front of the Tolstoy family samovar which Mrs Illingworth had brought from her home in Battersea, London, to Mrs Dwyer's house in Chelsea. The disagreement began with the rough treatment meted out to Barclay de Tolly by Mrs Illingworth’s ancestors in ’War and Peace.” The de Tolly’s

family have since claimed that Tolstoy was part of a conspiracy of the Russian establishment which disliked de Tolly because of his Scottish blood and lack of noble ancestry. The cause of the reconciliation was the publication by the Oxford University Press of “The Commanders A Life of Barclay de Tolly” by Michael Josselson, which, according to such dispassionate observers as Prof. Antony Brett-James, puts the whole business in a reasonable perspective. Mrs Illingworth celebrated the rapprochement by spilling a glass of champagne over Mrs Dwyer’s highly polished dresser, an incident which was passed off with a merry laugh.