* * * * *
Lenstchka sang without opening her mouth.
* * * * *
Post coitum: We Balderiovs always excelled in vigor and health.
* * * * *
He drove in a cab, and, as he watched his son walking away, thought: "Perhaps, he belongs to the race of men who will no longer trundle in scurvy cabs, as I do, but will fly through the skies in balloons."
* * * * *
She is so beautiful that it is even frightening; dark eye-brows.
* * * * *
The son says nothing, but the wife feels him to be an enemy; she feels that he has overheard everything….
* * * * *
What a lot of idiots there are among ladies. People get so used to it that they do not notice it.
* * * * *
They often go to the theatre and read serious magazines—and yet are spiteful and immoral.
* * * * *
Nat: "I never have fits of hysterics. I am not a pampered darling."[1]
[Footnote 1: This and the following few passages are from the rough draft of Chekhov's play Three Sisters.]
* * * * *
Nat: (continually to her sisters): "O, how ugly you have grown. O, how old you do look!"
* * * * *
To live one must have something to hang on to…. In the provinces only the body works, not the spirit.
* * * * *
You won't become a saint through other people's sins.
* * * * *
Koulyguin: "I am a jolly fellow, I infect every one with my mood."
* * * * *
Koul. Gives lessons at rich houses.
* * * * *
Koul. In Act IV without mustaches.
* * * * *
The wife implores the husband: "Don't get fat."
* * * * *
O if there were a life in which every one grew younger and more beautiful.
* * * * *
Irene: "It is hard to live without a father, without a mother."—"And without a husband."—"Yes, without a husband. Whom could one confide in? To whom could one complain? With whom could one share ones's joy? One must love some one strongly."
* * * * *
Koulyguin (to his wife): "I am so happy to be married to you, that I consider it ungentlemanly and improper to speak of or even mention a dowry. Hush, don't say anything…."
* * * * *
The doctor enjoys being at the duel.
* * * * *
It is difficult to live without orderlies. You cannot make the servants answer your bell.
* * * * *
The 2nd, 3rd, and 6th companies left at 4, and we leave at 12 sharp.[1]
[Footnote 1: Here the fragments from the rough draft of Three
Sisters end.]
* * * * *
In the daytime conversations about the loose manners of the girls in secondary schools, in the evening a lecture on degeneration and the decline of everything, and at night, after all this, one longs to shoot oneself.
* * * * *
In the life of our towns there is no pessimism, no Marxism, and no movements, but there is stagnation, stupidity, mediocrity.
* * * * *
He had a thirst for life, but it seemed to him to mean that he wanted a drink—and he drank wine.
* * * * *
F. in the town-halclass="underline" Serguey Nik. in a plaintive voice: "Gentlemen, where can we get the means? Our town is poor."
* * * * *
To be idle involuntarily means to listen to what is being said, to see what is being done; but he who works and is occupied hears little and sees little.
* * * * *
In the skating rink he raced after L.; he wanted to overtake her and it seemed as if it were life which he wanted to overtake, that life which one cannot bring back or overtake or catch, just as one cannot catch one's shadow.
* * * * *
Only one thought reconciled him to the doctor: just as he had suffered from the doctor's ignorance, so perhaps some one was suffering from his mistakes.
* * * * *
But isn't it strange? In the whole town there is not a single musician, not a single orator, not a prominent man.
* * * * *
Honorable Justice of the Peace, Honorable Member of the Children's
Shelter—all honorable.
* * * * *
L. studied and studied—but people who had finished developing could not understand her, nor could the young. Ut consecutivum.
* * * * *
He is dark, with little side-whiskers, dressed like a dandy, dark eyes, a warm brunet. He exterminates bugs, talks about earthquakes and China. His fiancée has a dowry of 8,000 roubles; she is very handsome, as her aunt says. He is an agent for a fire-insurance company, etc. "You're awfully pretty, my darling, awfully. And 8,000 into the bargain! You are a beauty; when I looked at you to-day, a shiver ran down my back."
* * * * *
He: Earthquakes are caused by the evaporation of water.
* * * * *
Names: Goose, Pan, Oyster.
"Were I abroad, they would give me a medal for such a surname."
* * * * *
I can't be said to be handsome, but I am rather pretty.
ANTON CHEKHOV'S DIARY.
1896
My neighbor V.N.S. told me that his uncle Fet-Shenshin, the famous poet, when driving through the Mokhovaia Street, would invariably let down the window of his carriage and spit at the University. He would expectorate and spit: Bah! His coachman got so used to this that every time he drove past the University, he would stop.
In January I was in Petersburg and stayed with Souvorin. I often saw Potapenko. Met Korolenko. I often went to the Maly Theatre. As Alexander [Chekhov's brother] came downstairs one day, B.V.G. simultaneously came out of the editorial office of the Novoye Vremya and said to me indignantly: "Why do you set the old man (i.e. Souvorin) against Burenin?" I have never spoken ill of the contributors to the Novoye Vremya in Souvorin's presence, although I have the deepest disrespect for the majority of them.
In February, passing through Moscow, I went to see L.N. Tolstoi. He was irritated, made stinging remarks about the décadents, and for an hour and a half argued with B. Tchitcherin, who, I thought, talked nonsense all the time. Tatyana and Mary [Tolstoi's daughters] laid out a patience; they both wished, and asked me to pick a card out; I picked out the ace of spades separately for each of them, and that annoyed them. By accident there were two aces of spades in the pack. Both of them are extraordinarily sympathetic, and their attitude to their father is touching. The countess denounced the painter Gé all the evening. She too was irritated.
May 5. The sexton Ivan Nicolayevitch brought my portrait, which he has painted from a photograph. In the evening V.N.S. brought his friend N. He is director of the Foreign Department … editor of a magazine … and doctor of medicine. He gives the impression of being an unusually stupid person and a reptile. He said: "There's nothing more pernicious on earth than a rascally liberal paper," and told us that, apparently, the peasants whom he doctors, having got his advice and medicine free of charge, ask him for a tip. He and S. speak of the peasants with exasperation and loathing.
June 1. I was at the Vagankov Cemetery and saw the graves there of the victims of the Khodinka. [During the coronation of Nicholas II in Moscow hundreds of people were crushed to death in the Khodinka Fields.] I. Pavlovsky, the Paris correspondent of the Novoye Vremya, came with me to Melikhovo.
August 4. Opening of the school in Talezh. The peasants of Talezh, Bershov, Doubechnia and Sholkovo presented me with four loaves, an icon and two silver salt-cellars. The Sholkovo peasant Postnov made a speech.