Delphi Complete Works of Anton Chekhov (Illustrated) (605 page)

A government clerk gave his son a thrashing because he had only obtained five marks in all his subjects at school. It seemed to him not good enough. When he was told that he was in the wrong, that five is the highest mark obtainable, he thrashed his son again — out of vexation with himself.

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A very good man has such a face that people take him for a detective; he is suspected of having stolen shirt-studs.

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A serious phlegmatic doctor fell in love with a girl who danced very well, and, to please her, he started to learn a mazurka.

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The hen sparrow believes that her cock sparrow is not chirping but singing beautifully.

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When one is peacefully at home, life seems ordinary, but as soon as one walks into the street and begins to observe, to question women, for instance, then life becomes terrible. The neighborhood of Patriarshi Prudy (a park and street in Moscow) looks quiet and peaceful, but in reality life there is hell.

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These red-faced young and old women are so healthy that steam seems to exhale from them.

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The estate will soon be brought under the hammer; there is poverty all round; and the footmen are still dressed like jesters.

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There has been an increase not in the number of nervous diseases and nervous patients, but in the number of doctors able to study those diseases.

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The more refined the more unhappy.

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Life does not agree with philosophy: there is no happiness which is not idleness and only the useless is pleasurable.

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The grandfather is given fish to eat, and if it does not poison him and he remains alive, then all the family eat it.

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A correspondence. A young man dreams of devoting himself to literature and constantly writes to his father about it; at last he gives up the civil service, goes to Petersburg, and devotes himself to literature — he becomes a censor.

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First class sleeping car. Passengers numbers 6, 7, 8 and 9. They discuss daughters-in-law. Simple people suffer from mothers-in-law, intellectuals from daughters-in-law.

“My elder son’s wife is educated, arranges Sunday schools and libraries, but she is tactless, cruel, capricious, and physically revolting. At dinner she will suddenly go off into sham hysterics because of some article in the newspaper. An affected thing.” Another daughter-in-law: “In society she behaves passably, but at home she is a dolt, smokes, is miserly, and when she drinks tea, she keeps the sugar between her lips and teeth and speaks at the same time.”

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Miss Mieschankina.

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In the servants’ quarters Roman, a more or less dissolute peasant, thinks it his duty to look after the morals of the women servants.

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A large fat barmaid — a cross between a pig and white sturgeon.

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At Malo-Bronnaya (a street in Moscow). A little girl who has never been in the country feels it and raves about it, speaks about jackdaws, crows and colts, imagining parks and birds on trees.

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Two young officers in stays.

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A certain captain taught his daughter the art of fortification.

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New literary forms always produce new forms of life and that is why they are so revolting to the conservative human mind.

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A neurasthenic undergraduate comes home to a lonely country-house, reads French monologues, and finds them stupid.

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People love talking of their diseases, although they are the most uninteresting things in their lives.

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An official, who wore the portrait of the Governor’s wife, lent money on interest; he secretly becomes rich. The late Governor’s wife, whose portrait he has worn for fourteen years, now lives in a suburb, a poor widow; her son gets into trouble and she needs 4,000 roubles. She goes to the official, and he listens to her with a bored look and says: “I can’t do anything for you, my lady.”

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Women deprived of the company of men pine, men deprived of the company of women become stupid.

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A sick innkeeper said to the doctor: “If I get ill, then for the love of God come without waiting for a summons. My sister will never call you in, whatever happens; she is a miser, and your fee is three roubles a visit.” A month or two later the doctor heard that the innkeeper was seriously ill, and while he was making his preparations to go and see him, he received a letter from the sister saying: “My brother is dead.” Five days later the doctor happened to go to the village and was told there that the innkeeper had died that morning. Disgusted he went to the inn. The sister dressed in black stood in the corner reading a psalm book. The doctor began to upbraid her for her stinginess and cruelty. The sister went on reading the psalms, but between every two sentences she stopped to quarrel with him — “Lots of your like running about here…. The devils brought you here.” She belongs to the old faith, hates passionately and swears desperately.

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The new governor made a speech to his clerks. He called the merchants together — another speech. At the annual prize-giving of the secondary school for girls — a speech on true enlightenment. To the representatives of the press a speech. He called the Jews together: “Jews, I have summoned you.” … A month or two passes — he does nothing. Again he calls the merchants together — a speech. Again the Jews: “Jews, I have summoned you.”… He has wearied them all. At last he says to his Chancellor: “No, the work is too much for me, I shall have to resign.”

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A student at a village theological school was learning Latin by heart. Every half-hour he runs down to the maids’ room and, closing his eyes, feels and pinches them; they scream and giggle; he returns to his book again. He calls it “refreshing oneself.”

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The Governor’s wife invited an official, who had a thin voice and was her adorer, to have a cup of chocolate with her, and for a week afterwards he was in bliss. He had saved money and lent it but not on interest. “I can’t lend you any, your son-in-law would gamble it away. No, I can’t.” The son-in-law is the husband of the daughter who once sat in a box in a boa; he lost at cards and embezzled Government money. The official, who was accustomed to herring and vodka, and who had never before drunk chocolate, felt sick after the chocolate. The expression on the lady’s face: “Aren’t I a darling?”; she spent any amount of money on dresses and looked forward to making a display of them — so she gave parties.

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Going to Paris with one’s wife is like going to Tula with one’s samovar.

[Footnote 1: Tula is a Russian city where samovars are manufactured.]

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The young do not go in for literature, because the best of them work on steam engines, in factories, in industrial undertakings. All of them have now gone into industry, and industry is making enormous progress.

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Families where the woman is bourgeoise easily breed adventurers, swindlers, and brutes without ideals.

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A professor’s opinion: not Shakespeare, but the commentaries on him are the thing.

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Let the coming generation attain happiness; but they surely ought to ask themselves, for what did their ancestors live and for what did they suffer.

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Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as common hatred for something.

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13th December. I saw the owner of a mill, the mother of a family, a rich Russian woman, who has never seen a lilac bush in Russia.

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In a letter: “A Russian abroad, if not a spy, is a fool.” The neighbor goes to Florence to cure himself of love, but at a distance his love grows stronger.

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Yalta. A young man, interesting, liked by a lady of forty. He is indifferent to her, avoids her. She suffers and at last, out of spite, gets up a scandal about him.

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Pete’s mother even in her old age beaded her eyes.

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Viciousness is a bag with which man is born.

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B. said seriously that he is the Russian Maupassant. And so did S.

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A Jewish surname: Cap.

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A lady looking like a fish standing on its head; her mouth like a slit, one longs to put a penny in it.

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Russians abroad: the men love Russia passionately, but the women don’t like her and soon forget her.

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Chemist Propter.

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Rosalie Ossipovna Aromat.

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It is easier to ask of the poor than of the rich.

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And she began to engage in prostitution, got used to sleeping on the bed, while her aunt, fallen into poverty, used to lie on the little carpet by her side and jumped up each time the bell rang; when they left, she would say mindingly, with a pathetic grimace; “Something for the chamber-maid.” And they would tip her sixpence.

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Prostitutes in Monte Carlo, the whole tone is prostitutional; the palm trees, it seems, are prostitutes, and the chickens are prostitutes.

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A big dolt, Z., a qualified nurse, of the Petersburg Rozhdestvensky School, having ideals, fell in love with X., a teacher, and believed him to be ideal, a public spirited worker after the manner of novels and stories of which she was so fond. Little by little she found him out, a drunkard, an idler, good-natured and not very clever. Dismissed, he began to live on his wife, sponged on her. He was an excrescence, a kind of sarcoma, who wasted her completely. She was once engaged to attend some intellectual country people, she went to them every day; they felt it awkward to give her money — and, to her great vexation, gave her husband a suit as a present. He would drink tea for hours and this infuriated her. Living with her husband she grew thin, ugly, spiteful, stamped her foot and shouted at him: “Leave me, you low fellow.” She hated him. She worked, and people paid the money to him, for, being a Zemstvo worker, she took no money, and it enraged her that their friends did not understand him and thought him ideal.

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A young man made a million marks, lay down on them, and shot himself.