Alexander Goldenweiser arrived at the Astapovo station as soon as he learned that Leo Tolstoy became ill. The musician shared his impressions of his last meetings with the writer with his wife Anna Alekseevna in letters. It was very important for Tolstoy to know that his closest friend was next to him at such a difficult time and even canceled his concert.

When Leo Tolstoy died, it was Alexander Goldenweiser who made the sad news public. He helped the writer’s family organize the funeral, and then returned to Moscow. The writer’s things were not just mere objects for the musician — the power of his artistic imagination made him use them to create the effect of Tolstoy’s presence. In 1955, when a museum of the history of piano art was created in the apartment of Alexander Goldenweiser, the so-called Tolstoy Corner became its important part. Some of Tolstoy’s personal belongings, donated by the writer’s family after the funeral to Goldenweiser, were put on display there. Each item had an interesting story. For example, the writer took the leather belt, the stick of cherry wood and the pen with a steel nib on his last trip, and after his death they were given to Alexander Goldenweiser as a keepsake.

Some of the things relate to the happy time that Leo Tolstloy and Alexander Goldenweiser spent together. On the writer’s eightieth birthday, the musician brought a mechanical pencil sharpener as a gift. This pencil sharpener had been standing on Tolstoy’s desk until the end of his life. He always showed it off and used it to repair his guests’ pencils. Tosltoy would drink tea from an elegant porcelain white cup with a blue rim, when visiting Alexander Borisovich in Telyatinki, where the Goldenweiser family were renting a dacha. All these items witnessed the happy days in Yasnaya Polyana (the Tolstoy family estate) and were carefully kept by Alexander Goldenweiser and his family.