Part 1 (2/2)

1897.

From January 10 to February 3 busy with the census. I am enumerator of the 16th district, and have to instruct the other (fifteen) enumerators of our Bavykin Section. They all work superbly, except the priest of the Starospa.s.sky parish and the Government official, appointed to the Zemstvo, G., (who is in charge of the census district); he is away nearly all the time in Serpukhovo, spends every evening at the Club and keeps on wiring that he is not well. All the rest of the Government officials of our district are also said to do nothing.

With such critics as we have, authors like N.S. Lyeskov and S.V.

Maximov cannot be a success.

Between ”there is a G.o.d” and ”there is no G.o.d” lies a whole vast tract, which the really wise man crosses with great effort. A Russian knows one or other of these two extremes, and the middle tract between them does not interest him; and therefore he usually knows nothing, or very little.

The ease with which Jews change their religion is justified by many on the ground of indifference. But this is not a justification. One has to respect even one's indifference, and not change it for anything, since indifference in a decent man is also a religion.

February 13. Dinner at Mme. Morosov's. Tchouprov, Sololevsky, Blaramberg, Sablin and myself were present.

February 15. Pancakes at Soldatienkov's [a Moscow publisher]. Only Golziev [editor of _Russian Thought_] and myself were present. Many fine pictures, nearly all badly hung. After the pancakes we drove to Levitan, from whom Soldatienkov bought a picture and two studies for 1,100 roubles. Met Polyenov [famous painter]. In the evening I was at professor Ostroumov's; he says that Levitan ”can't help dying.” O.

himself is ill and obviously frightened.

February 16. Several of us met in the evening in the offices of _Russian Thought_ to discuss the People's Theatre. Every one liked Shekhtel's plan.

February 19. Dinner at the ”Continental” to commemorate the great reform [the abolition of the serfdom in 1861]. Tedious and incongruous. To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail-coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold--that is lying to the Holy Ghost.

February 22. I went to Serpukhovo to an amateur performance in aid of the school at Novossiolki. As far as Zarizin I was accompanied by ... a little queen in exile,--an actress who imagines herself great; uneducated and a bit vulgar.

From March 25 till April 10 I was laid up in Ostroumov's clinic.

Haemorrhage. Creaking, moisture in the apices of both my lungs; congestion in the apex of the right. On March 28 L.N. Tolstoi came to see me. We spoke of immortality. I told him the gist of Nossilov's story ”The Theatre of the Voguls,” and he evidently listened with great pleasure.

May 1. N. arrived. He is always thanking you for tea and dinner, apologizing, afraid of being late for the train; he talks a great deal, keeps mentioning his wife, like Gogol's Mijniev, pushes the proofs of his play over to you, first one sheet then another, giggles, attacks Mens.h.i.+kov, whom Tolstoi has ”swallowed”; a.s.sures you that he would shoot Sta.s.siulevitch, if the latter were to show himself at a review, as President of the Russian Republic; giggles again, wets his mustaches with the soup, eats hardly anything, and yet is quite a nice man after all.

May 4. The monks from the monastery paid us a visit. Dasha Moussin-Poushkin, the wife of the engineer Gliebov, who has been killed hunting, was there. She sang a great deal.

May 24. I was present at the examination of two schools in Tchirkov.

[The Tchirkov and Mikhailovo schools.]

July 13. Opening of the school at Novossiolki which I have had built.

The peasants gave me an icon with an inscription. The Zemstvo people were absent.

Braz [painter] does my portrait (for the Tretiakov Gallery). Two sittings a day.

July 22. I received a medal for my work on the census.

July 23. In Petersburg. Stopped at Souvorin's, in the drawing-room.

Met VI. T.... who complained of his hysteria and praised his own books. I saw P. Gnyeditch and E. Karpov, who imitated Leykin showing off as a Spanish grandee.

July 27. At Leykin's at Ivanovsk. 28th in Moscow. In the editorial offices of _Russian Thought_, bugs in the sofa.

September 4. Arrived in Paris. ”Moulin Rouge,” danse du ventre, Cafe du Neon with Coffins, Cafe du Ciel, etc.

September 8. In Biarritz. V.M. Sobolevsky and Mme. V.A. Morosov are here. Every Russian in Biarritz complains of the number of Russians here.

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