Note-Book of Anton Chekhov Read online

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.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  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.

  * * * * *

  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.

  * * * * *

  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.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Viciousness is a bag with which man is born.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  A Jewish surname: Cap.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  Chemist Propter.

  * * * * *

  Rosalie Ossipovna Aromat.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  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.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  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.

  * * * * *

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

  * * * * *

  "That woman." … "I married when I was twenty; I have not drunk a glass of vodka all my life, haven't smoked a single cigarette." After he had run off with another woman, people got to like him more and to believe him more, and, when he walked in the street, he began to notice that they had all become kinder and nicer to him—because he had fallen.

  * * * * *

  A man and woman marry because both of them don't know what to do with themselves.

  * * * * *

  The power and salvation of a people lie in its intellegentsia, in the intellectuals who think honestly, feel, and can work.

  * * * * *

  A man without a mustache is like a woman with a mustache.

  * * * * *

  A man who cannot win a woman by a kiss will not win her by a blow.

  * * * * *

  For one sensible person there are a thousand fools, and for one sensible word there are a thousand stupid ones; the thousand overwhelms the one, and that is why cities and villages progress so slowly. The majority, the mass, always remain stupid; it will always overwhelm; the sensible man should give up hope of educating and lifting it up to himself; he had better call in the assistance of material force, build railways, telegraphs, telephones—in that way he will conquer and help life forward.

  * * * * *

  Really decent people are only to be found amongst men who have definite, either conservative or radical, convictions; so-called moderate men are much inclined to rewards, commissions, orders, promotions.

  * * * * *

  "What did your uncle die of?"

  "Instead of fifteen Botkin drops,[1] as the doctor prescribed, he took sixteen."

  [Footnote 1: A very harmless purgative.]

  * * * * *

  A young philologist, who has just left the University, comes home to his native town. He is elected churchwarden. He does not believe in God, but goes to church regularly, makes the sign of the cross when passing near a church or chapel, thinking that that sort of thing is necessary for the people and that the salvation of Russia is bound up with it. He is elected chairman of the Zemstvo board and a Justice of the Peace, he wins orders and medals; he does not notice that he has reached the age of forty-five; then suddenly he realizes that all the time he has been acting and making a fool of himself, but it is now too late to change his way of life. Once in his sleep he suddenly hears like the report of a gun the words: "What are you doing?"—and he starts up all in a sweat.

  * * * * *

  One cannot resist evil, but one can resist good.

  * * * * *

  He flatters the authorities like a priest.

  * * * * *

  Instead of sheets—dirty tablecloths.

  * * * * *

  A Jewish surname: Perchik (little pepper).

  * * * * *

  A man in conversation: "And all the rest of it."

  * * * * *

  A rich man, usually insolent, his conceit enormous, but bears his riches like a cross. If the ladies and generals did not dispense charity on his account, if it were not for the poor students and the beggars, he would feel the anguish of loneliness. If the beggars struck and agreed not to beg from him, he would go to them himself.

  * * * * *

  The husband invites his friends to his country-house in the Crimea, and afterwards his wife, without her husband's knowledge, brings them the bill and is paid for board and lodging.

  * * * * *

  Potapov becomes attached to the brother, and this is the beginning of his falling in love with the sister. Divorces his wife. Afterwards the son sends him plans for a rabbit-hutch.

  * * * * *

  "I have sown clover and oats."'

  "No good; you had much better sow lucerne."

  "I have begun to keep a pig."

  "No good. It does not pay. You had better go in for mares."

  * * * * *

  A girl, a devoted friend, out of the best of motives, went about with a subscription list for X., who was not in want.

  * * * * *

  Why are the dogs of Constantinople so often described?

  * * * * *

  Disease: "He has got hydropathy."

  * * * * *

  I visit a friend, find him at supper; there are many guests. It is very gay; I am glad to chatter with the women and drink wine. A wonderfully pleasant mood. Suddenly up gets N. with an air of importance, as though he were a public prosecutor, and makes a speech in my honor. "The magician of words … ideals … in our time when ideals grow dim … you are sowing wisdom, undying things…." I feel as if I had had a cover over me and that now the cover had been taken off and some one was aiming a pistol at me.

  * * * * *

  After the speech—a murmur of conversation, then silence. The gayety has gone. "You must speak now," says my nei
ghbor. But what can I say? I would gladly throw the bottle at him. And I go to bed with some sediment in my soul. "Look what a fool sits among you!"

  * * * * *

  The maid, when she makes the bed, always puts the slippers under the bed close to the wall. The fat master, unable to bear it any longer, gives the maid notice. It turns out that the doctor told her to put the slippers as far as possible under the bed so as to cure the man of his obesity.

  * * * * *

  The club blackballed a respectable man because all of the members were out of humor; they ruined his prospects.

  * * * * *

  A large factory. The young employer plays the superior to all and is rude to the employees who have University degrees. Only the gardener, a German, has the courage to be offended: "How dare you, gold bag?"

  * * * * *

  A tiny little schoolboy with the name of Trachtenbauer.

  * * * * *

  Whenever he reads in the newspaper about the death of a great man, he wears mourning.

  * * * * *

  In the theatre. A gentleman asks a lady to take her hat off, as it is in his way. Grumbling, disagreeableness, entreaties. At last a confession: "Madam, I am the author of the play." She answered: "I don't care."

  * * * * *

  In order to act wisely it is not enough to be wise (Dostoevsky).

  * * * * *

  A. and B. have a bet. A. wins the wager, by eating twelve cutlets; B. does not pay even for the cutlets.

  * * * * *

  It is terrible to dine every day with a person who stammers and says stupid things.

  * * * * *

  Glancing at a plump, appetizing woman: "It is not a woman, it is a full moon."

  * * * * *

  From her face one would imagine that under her stays she has got gills.

  * * * * *

  For a farce: Kapiton Ivanovitch Boil.

  * * * * *

  An income-tax inspector and an excise official, in order to justify their occupations to themselves, say spontaneously: "It is an interesting profession, there is a lot of work, it is a live occupation."

  * * * * *

  At twenty she loved Z., at twenty-four she married N. not because she loved him, but because she thought him a good, wise, ideal man. The couple lived happily; every one envies them, and indeed their life passes smoothly and placidly; she is satisfied, and, when people discuss love, she says that for family life not love nor passion is wanted, but affection. But once the music played suddenly, and, inside her heart, everything broke up like ice in spring: she remembered Z. and her love for him, and she thought with despair that her life was ruined, spoilt for ever, and that she was unhappy. Then it happened to her with the New Year greetings; when people wished her "New Happiness," she indeed longed for new happiness.

  * * * * *

  Z. goes to a doctor, who examines him and finds that he is suffering from heart disease. Z. abruptly changes his way of life, takes medicine, can only talk about his disease; the whole town knows that he has heart disease and all the doctors, whom he regularly consults, say that he has got heart disease. He does not marry, gives up amateur theatricals, does not drink, and when he walks does so slowly and hardly breathes. Eleven years later he has to go to Moscow and there he consults a specialist. The latter finds that his heart is perfectly sound. Z. is overjoyed, but he can no longer return to a normal life, for he has got accustomed to going to bed early and to walking slowly, and he is bored if he cannot speak of his disease. The only result is that he gets to hate doctors—that is all.

  * * * * *

  A woman is fascinated not by art, but by the noise made by those who have to do with art.

  * * * * *

  N., a dramatic critic, has a mistress X., an actress. Her benefit night. The play is rotten, the acting poor, but N. has to praise. He writes briefly: "The play and the leading actress had an enormous success. Particulars to-morrow." As he wrote the last two words, he gave a sigh of relief. Next day he goes to X.; she opens the door, allows him to kiss and embrace her, and in a cutting tone says: "Particulars to-morrow."

  * * * * *

  In Kislovodsk or some other watering-place Z. picked up a girl of twenty-two; she was poor, straightforward, he took pity on her and, in addition to her fee, he left twenty-five roubles on the chest of drawers; he left her room with the feeling of a man who has done a good deed. The next time he visited her, he noticed an expensive ash-tray and a man's fur cap, bought out of his twenty-five roubles—the girl again starving, her cheeks hollow.

  * * * * *

  N. mortgages his estate with the Bank of the Nobility at 4 per cent, and then lends the money on mortgage at 12 per cent.

  * * * * *

  Aristocrats? The same ugly bodies and physical uncleanliness, the same toothless old age and disgusting death, as with market-women.

  * * * * *

  N., when a group is being photographed, always stands in the front row; on addresses he always signs the first; at anniversaries he is always the first to speak. Always wonders: "O soup! O pastries!"

  * * * * *

  Z. got tired of having visitors, and he hired a French woman to live in his house as if she were his mistress. This shocked the ladies and he no longer had visitors.

  * * * * *

  Z. is a torch-bearer at funerals. He is an idealist. "In the undertaker's shop."

  * * * * *

  N. and Z. are intimate friends, but when they meet in society, they at once make fun of one another—out of shyness.

  * * * * *

  Complaint: "My son Stepan was delicate, and I therefore sent him to school in the Crimea, but there he was caned with a vine-branch, and that gave him philoxera in the behind and now the doctors can not cure him."

  * * * * *

  Mitya and Katya were told that their papa blasted rocks in the quarry. They wanted to blow up their cross grandpapa, so they took a pound of powder from their father's room, put it in a bottle, inserted a wick, and placed it under their grandfather's chair, when he was dozing after dinner; but soldiers marched by with the band playing—and this was the only thing that prevented them from carrying out their plan.

  * * * * *

  Sleep is a marvelous mystery of Nature which renews all the powers of man, bodily and spiritual. (Bishop Porphyrius Usgensky, "The Book of My Life.")

  * * * * *

  A woman imagines that she has a peculiar, exceptional constitution, whose ailments are different from other people's and which cannot stand ordinary medicine. She thinks that her son is unlike other people's sons, that he has to be brought up differently. She believes in principles, but she thinks that they apply to every one but herself, because she lives in exceptional circumstances. The son grows up, and she tries to find an exceptional wife for him. Those around her suffer. The son turns out a scoundrel.

  * * * * *

  Poor long-suffering art!

  * * * * *

  A man whose madness takes the form of an idea that he is a ghost: walks at night.

  * * * * *

  A sentimental man, like Lavrov, has moments of pleasant emotion and makes the request: "Write a letter to my auntie in Briansk; she is a darling…."

  * * * * *

  There is a bad smell in the barn: ten years ago haymakers slept the night in it and ever since it smells.

  * * * * *

  An officer at a doctor's. The money on a plate. The doctor can see in the looking-glass that the patient takes twenty-five roubles from the plate and pays him with it.

  * * * * *

  Russia is a nobody's country!

  * * * * *

  Z. who is always saying banal things: "With the agility of a bear," "on one's favorite corn."

  * * * * *

  A savings bank: the clerk, a very nice man, looks down on the bank, considers it useless—and yet goes on working there.

  * * * * *

  A radical lady, who crosses herself at night, is secretly full of prejudice an
d superstition, hears that in order to be happy one should boil a black cat by night. She steals a cat and tries to boil it.

  * * * * *

  A publisher's twenty-fifth anniversary. Tears, a speech: "I offer ten roubles to the literary fund, the interest to be paid to the poorest writer, but on condition that a special committee is appointed to work out the rules according to which the distribution shall be made."

  * * * * *

  He wore a blouse and despised those who wore frock coats. A stew of trousers.

  * * * * *

  The ice cream is made of milk in which, as it were, the patients bathed.

  * * * * *

  It was a grand forest of timber, but a Government Conservator was appointed, and in two years time there was no more timber; the caterpillar pest.

  * * * * *

  X.: "Choleraic disorder in my stomach started with the cider."

  * * * * *

  Of some writers each work taken separately is brilliant, but taken as a whole they are indefinite; of others each particular work represents nothing outstanding; but, for all that, taken as a whole they are distinct and brilliant.

  * * * * *

  N. rings at the door of an actress; he is nervous, his heart beats, at the critical moment he gets into a panic and runs away; the maid opens the door and sees nobody. He returns, rings again—but has not the courage to go in. In the end the porter comes out and gives him a thrashing.

  * * * * *

  A gentle quiet schoolmistress secretly beats her pupils, because she believes in the good of corporal punishment.

  * * * * *

  N.: "Not only the dog, but even the horses howled."

  * * * * *

  N. marries. His mother and sister see a great many faults in his wife; they are distressed, and only after four or five years realize that she is just like themselves.

  * * * * *

  The wife cried. The husband took her by the shoulders and shook her, and she stopped crying.

  * * * * *

  After his marriage everything—politics, literature, society—did not seem to him as interesting as they had before; but now every trifle concerning his wife and child became a most important matter.

  * * * * *

  "Why are thy songs so short?" a bird was once asked. "Is it because thou art short of breath?"

  "I have very many songs and I should like to sing them all."

  (A. Daudet.)