In _Ariadne_, for instance, we are more intrigued by the conversations about women in general (a favourite topic of conversation among the Russians) than by the events that take place. Listen, for instance, to this point of view:
"We want the creatures who bear us and our children to be superior to us and to everything in the world. But the trouble is that when we have been married for some two or three years, we begin to feel deceived and disillusioned: we pair off with others, and again--disappointment, again--reputation, and in the long run we become convinced that women are lying, trivial, fussy, unfair, undeveloped, cruel--in fact, far from being superior, are immeasurably inferior to us men."
There are moments, too, when we could find it in our hearts to wish that Tchehov had given rein to his obvious gifts for scenic description: so many writers indulge in an orgy of nature panegyrics that we rarely want more from any man, and Tchehov very wisely subordinates everything to his main theme, but all the same we could well do with more of this sort of thing:
"Our homestead is on the high bank of a rapid stream, where the water chatters noisily day and night: imagine a big old garden, neat flower-beds, bee-hives, a kitchen garden, and below it a river with leafy willows, which, when there is a heavy dew on them, have a l.u.s.treless look as though they had turned grey: and on the other side a meadow, and beyond the meadow on the upland a terrible, dark pine forest. In that forest delicious reddish agaries grow in endless profusion, and elks still live in its deepest recesses. When I am nailed up in my coffin I believe I shall still dream of those early mornings, you know, when the sun hurts your eyes: or the wonderful spring evenings when the nightingales and the landrails call in the garden and beyond the garden, and sounds of the harmonica float across from the village, while they play the piano indoors and the stream babbles ... when there is such music, in fact, that one wants at the same time to cry and to sing aloud."
But it is for little character sketches like this of Lubkov, who "would sometimes stand still before some magnificent landscape and say: "It would be nice to have tea here,"" that endears Tchehov to us so conclusively.
It is certainly sound psychology and good for a young lover to learn by heart (it would save endless heartaches and a thousand other natural shocks the flesh is heir to if they did) this aphorism: "A woman will forgive you audacity and insolence, but she will never forgive your reasonableness."
It is with more than a thrill of delight that we read of so exquisitely apt a simile as that for the girl who had refused a wealthy but utterly insignificant prince and then immediately fretted at her decision. "Just as a peasant pouts with repulsion at a mug of kra.s.s with c.o.c.kroaches in it but yet drinks it, so she frowned disdainfully at the recollection of the prince."
The story from which these extracts are taken is an amazingly true psychological study of a girl whose coldness only made her more sensual: she lived solely for the purpose of attracting men, was deceitful when deceit was unnecessary, able to appear cultured in society and yet be in reality superst.i.tious, bigoted, illiterate and devoid of all taste.
""She is half a human beast already,"" says the misogynist, who had given up everything to please Ariadne, speaking of educated women generally. ""Thanks to her, a great deal of what had been won by human genius has been lost again: the woman gradually disappears and in her place is the primitive female ... of course a woman"s a woman and a man"s a man, but can all that be as simple in our day as it was before the Flood, and can it be that I, a cultivated man endowed with a complex spiritual organisation, ought to explain the intense attraction I feel towards a woman simply by the fact that her bodily formation is different from mine? To get on terms with a woman is easy enough,"" he concludes. ""You have only to undress her: but afterwards what a bore it is, what a silly business.""
And now by way of a change let me just lightly give the plots of the following few stories. In _Polinka_ we are simply invited to listen to the conversation over the counter of a little milliner and a draper"s a.s.sistant who loves her and objects to her being led astray by a young medical student. The poignancy of the tale lies in the fact that the conversation, which is quite tragic, has to take place in public and therefore covered by discussions about b.u.t.tons and corsets.
_Anynta_ describes the misery of a kept mistress of a medical student who is tired of her.
_The Two Volodyas_ shows us a girl who has married one elderly Volodya pining for the affection of another Volodya, who treats her as a child who has to be humoured. He told her that she was like a little dog waiting for a bit of ham to be thrown to it. Then he sat her on his knee, and dancing her up and down like a child, hummed: "Tara-ra-boom-dee-ay ... tara-ra-boom-dee-ay."
_The Trousseau_ gives us a pathetic picture of a wife and daughter in some dull, out-the-way place preparing year in, year out, material for her "bottom drawer," the girl after all dying before she met anyone who wanted to marry her.
_The Help-Mate_ describes the doings of a suspicious husband who finds that his wife is corresponding secretly: he offers to set his wife free in order that she may marry her lover. We hear of a mother-in-law who aids her daughter in her immorality delightfully touched in in a phrase that cuts like a lash: "A stout lady with small predatory features like a weasel, who loved her daughter to distraction and helped her in everything: if her daughter were strangling someone the mother would not have protested but would only have screened her with her skirts."
The wife refuses to accept a divorce because it will lower her status and perhaps her lover will throw her over. He is younger than she is.
In _An Artist"s Story_ we get some invaluable hints on the problem of the education of the ma.s.ses.
""The whole horror of their position,"" says the artist, ""lies in their never having time to think of their souls, of their image and resemblance. Cold, hunger, animal terror, a burden of toil, like avalanches of snow, block for them every way to spiritual activity--that is, to what distinguishes man from the brutes and what is the only thing which makes life worth living--the people must be freed from hard physical labour: we must lighten their yoke, let them have time to breathe, that they may not spend all their lives at the stove, at the wash-tub, and in the fields, but may also have time to think of G.o.d--may have time to develop their spiritual capacities. The highest vocation of man is spiritual activity, the perpetual search for truth and the meaning of life. Make coa.r.s.e animal labour unnecessary for them, let them feel themselves free, and then you will see what a mockery these dispensaries and books are. Once a man recognises his true vocation, he can only be satisfied by religion, science, and art, and not by these trifles. Take upon yourself a share of their labour. If all of us, townspeople and country people, all without exception, would agree to divide between us the labour which mankind spends on the satisfaction of their physical needs, each of us would perhaps need to work only for two or three hours a day. What is needed is not elementary education, but freedom for a wide development of spiritual capacities. If one must cure, it should not be diseases, but the causes of them. Remove the princ.i.p.al cause--physical labour--and then there will be no disease. We have plenty of doctors, chemists, lawyers, plenty of people can read and write, but we are quite without biologists, mathematicians, philosophers, poets. The whole of our intelligence, the whole of our spiritual energy, is spent on satisfying temporary, pa.s.sing needs.""
The story itself, however, concerns the love of an artist for a girl who disobeys the dictates of her heart and gives up her happiness at her sister"s behest without question. The pa.s.sage where the artist hears that his chance of real abiding love has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from him is peculiarly Tchehov-like at his most poignant. He goes, full of hope and ecstasy, to meet his beloved and hears her sister, who dislikes him, giving a dictation lesson.
""G.o.d ... sent ... a crow,"" she said in a loud, emphatic voice, probably dictating.... ""G.o.d sent a crow a piece of cheese.... A crow ... a piece of cheese ... Who"s there?" she called suddenly, hearing my steps.
""It"s I."
""Ah! Excuse me. I cannot come out to you this minute: I"m giving Dasha her lesson."
""Is Ekaterina Pavlovna in the garden?"
""No, she went away with my sister this morning to our aunt in the province of Penza. And in the winter they will probably go abroad," she added after a pause. "G.o.d sent ... the crow ... a piece ... of cheese.... Have you written it?"
"I went into the hall and stared vacantly at the pond and the village, and the sound reached me of "A piece of cheese ... G.o.d sent the crow a piece of cheese.""
In _Three Years_, a somewhat longer tale, we read of the gradually waning affection between husband and wife and their reconciliation.
Very deftly does the author show us the difference between the pa.s.sion which Laptev felt for Yulia at the beginning and his feeling at the end when she tells him how dear he is to her: though he kept smiling at her and her beautiful neck with a sort of joyous shyness as a sign of the new birth of his love, yet we read that when she put her arm round his neck he cautiously removed her hand. The mingled emotions are exquisitely rendered.
His longest story is _The Duel_ and in it we hear of a neurasthenic, Laevsky, who finds that ""living with a woman who has read Spencer and followed you to the ends of the earth is no more interesting than living with any Anfissa or Kulina. There"s the same smell of ironing, of powder, and of medicines, the same curl-papers every morning, the same self-deception."" He tries every means in his power to raise money by loan to leave the Caucasus and his mistress: there is a clear-headed, cold-blooded zoologist called Von Koren who despises Laevsky for his degeneracy. He thus a.n.a.lyses Laevsky"s character:
""His existence is confined like an egg within its sh.e.l.l. Whether he walks or sits, is angry, writes, rejoices, it may all be reduced to wine, cards, slippers and women. He has had great success with women and therein lies his noxiousness. He is a failure, a superfluous man, a victim of the age."" Meanwhile Laevsky"s mistress had been philandering with other men. He discovers her infidelity just when he is on the point of fighting a duel with Von Koren. He was wounded but slightly and became reconciled to his wife, while Von Koren was the one to go away, leaving lover and mistress almost happy in each other"s society.
_Mire_ is a horrible story about two men neither of whom was able to resist the fascinations of a Jewess prost.i.tute.
_Neighbours_ is an account of a visit paid by a brother to his sister who had run away with a married man: his first intention is to wreak his vengeance on her lover for the dishonour he had brought upon his house, but he remains as their friend.
_At Home_ gives us a picture of the dull monotony of life in the country: a girl returns to her aunt"s house and out of sheer boredom is induced to marry the local doctor.
_Expensive Lessons_ shows the unrequited pa.s.sion of a research student for a poor French governess whom he had hired to teach him French.
_The Princess_ tells of a rich girl who likes to see others happy and revels in the thought that she is the means of making many content who otherwise would not be. She is taken severely to task by a doctor who tries to show her her true character as seen by her inferiors. ""You look upon the ma.s.s of mankind from the Napoleonic standpoint as food for the cannon. But Napoleon had at least some idea: you have nothing except aversion: your philanthropic work has been a farce from the beginning.
There was nothing but the desire to amuse yourself with living puppets."" He says too much, is frightened and apologises, and the Princess goes from him once more reinstated to her former position of Lady Bountiful in her own mind. ""How happy I am!"" she murmured, shutting her eyes. ""How happy I am!""
_The Chemist"s Wife_ is a charming trifle dealing with a country town in which an officer and a doctor knock up a chemist late at night on the pretext of wanting some peppermints, in reality to talk to the pretty young wife of the chemist. She is flattered: adventure has at last come her way: she stays some time downstairs talking to them while her husband sleeps. Reluctantly her visitors leave her, and when she is once more in bed return, this time waking her husband, who attends to them himself.
"Two minutes later the chemist"s wife saw Obvyosov go out of the shop, and after he had gone some steps she saw him throw the packet of peppermints on the dusty road. The doctor came from behind a corner to meet him ... they met, and gesticulating, vanished in the morning mist."
""How unhappy I am!"" said the chemist"s wife, looking angrily at her husband, who was undressing quickly to get into bed again. ""Oh, how unhappy I am!"" she repeated. ""And n.o.body knows, n.o.body knows."
""I forgot fourpence on the counter,"" muttered the chemist, pulling the quilt over him. "Put it away in the till, please...."" And at once he fell asleep again.
In _The Lady with the Dog_ we get one of those notes of optimism which are so characteristic of Tchehov just where the normal writer would be pessimistic.
"The monotonous hollow sound of the sea, rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us: in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection."
The story is about a married man who conceives a violent pa.s.sion for a married woman whom he meets while on holiday.
"Anna and he loved each other like people very close and akin, like husband and wife, like tender friends: it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband: and it was as though they were a pair of birds of pa.s.sage, caught and forced to live in different cages. They forgave each other for what they were ashamed of in their past, they forgave everything in the present, and felt that this love of theirs had changed them both."
By far the greater number of Tchehov"s tales deal with the illicit loves of married women: young girls are compelled to marry husbands who are distasteful to them, and in after years they revenge themselves by giving themselves to sprucer, cleaner, stronger men who flit into and out of their lives only too quickly.
In _A Doctor"s Visit_ Tchehov harks back again to a subject which is always dear to him, the uselessness of modern labour. In this case two thousand workpeople work without rest in unhealthy surroundings making bad cotton goods ... for what purpose? The factory owner"s family are unhappy: "the only one who enjoys her life is Christina Dmitryevna, the governess, a stupid, middle-aged maiden lady in pince-nez. All these five blocks of buildings are at work, and inferior cotton is sold in the Eastern markets, simply that Christina Dmitryevna may eat sterlet and drink Madeira."
The doctor who is called in to attend the daughter of the house ventures on a criticism of present-day life.
""Our generation sleep badly, are restless, talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether we are right or not. For our children or grandchildren that question will have been settled. Things will be clearer for them than for us. Life will be good in fifty years" time.""
_Ionitch_ shows us Tchehov in another characteristic vein. Here he indulges in one of his favourite tricks, that of divulging the foolishness of his _dramatis personae_ through their idiotic conversation. Ivan Petrovitch is an irritating buffoon whose idea of wit is to repeat _ad nauseam_ phrases like "How do you do, if you please?"
and "Not badsome."
Tchehov"s sense of irony is well shown in the following pa.s.sage which occurs in this story:--
"Then they all sat down in the drawing-room with very serious faces and Vera Iosiforna read her novel. It began like this: "The frost was intense ..." The windows were wide open; from the kitchen came the clatter of knives and the smell of fried onions.... It was comfortable in the soft deep arm-chair: the lights had such a friendly twinkle in the twilight of the drawing-room, and at the moment on a summer evening when sounds of voices and laughter floated in from the street and whiffs of lilac from the yard, it was difficult to grasp that the frost was intense, and that the setting sun was lighting with its chilly rays a solitary wayfarer on the snowy plain. Vera read how a beautiful young countess founded a school, a hospital, a library, in her village, and fell in love with a wandering artist: she read of what never happens in real life, and yet it was pleasant to listen ... it was comfortable, and such agreeable, serene thoughts kept coming into the mind one had no desire to get up.
""Not badsome" ... Ivan said softly."