Nowadays the boys never let him out in the street on his own and were always watching in case he fell down. When he met Anne driving along the Old Kiev Road in her coach with a pair ofhorses and a side- horse while Artynov sat on the box and acted as coachman, her father would take off his top hat and start to shout something. Then Peter and Andrew would hold his arms and plead with him.
'Oh really, Father. Please don't.'
NOTES
HIS WIFE
I 'Kazan.' Town on the Volga, about 500 milcs east ofMoscow.
'at Cubat's Restaurant.' Probably the Bellevue Restaurant (pro- prietor Cubat), on one of the islands (Kamenny ostrov) in the north ofSt. Petersburg. Most large restaurants in St. Petersburg were run by Frenchmen or Germans.
'a passport.' A Russian citizen was required to possess a passport for purposes of internal as well as e.xternal travel. Wives, who were legally obliged to reside with their husbands, had to have the husband's permission in order to apply for a passport.
A LADY WITH A DOG
'Yalta.' Town and seaside resort on the Crimean coast, where Chekhov built a villa in 1899, and which was his main residence from then until his death in l904;Vemet's cafe is mentioned in Baedeker's Russia (1914). p. 417.
'Belyov.' Small town about 150 miles south of Moscow.
8 'Zhizdra.' Small town about 200 miles south-west of Moscow.
8 'sunny Spain.' The text has 'Grenada' (an island in the West Indies), but it seems more likely that Chekhov had the Spanish 'Granada' in mind.
'Oreanda.' On the coast about five miles south-west of Yalta, Oreanda contained a park which extended down to the sea.
I 2 'Feodosiya.' Resort on the Crimean coast, about 70 miles north- east of Yalta.
'the waterfall.' The waterfall of Uchan-Su, about six miles from Yalta, was a favourite target for e.xcursions.
I 6 'The Geisha.' The operetta by Sidney Jones, first produced in London (1896).
18 'The Slav Fair.' A large hotel in central Moscow, at which Chekhov himself sometimes stayed.
TllE DUEL
'Superfluous Men.' Reference is to a well-known Russian literarv type—the man at odds with societv, as found particu- larlv in certain works by Griboyedov, Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev and Goncharov. See The O.vford Chcklwi', ii. 5-6.
'Tolstoy.' The novdist and thinker L. N. Tolstoy (1828-1910).
24 'Herbert Spencer.' The English philosophn (182^1903).
26 'Tula.' Provincial capital. about 120 miles south of Moscow.
26 'Vereshchagin.' The Russian painter V. V. Vercshchagin (1824-1904).
28 'Order of St. Vladimir.' The imperial Russian 'orders', or decorations for distinction in peace or war, were instituted by Peter the Great and added to as the years went by.
'Circassians.' Inhabitants of an area in the northern Caucasus.
'Anna Karenin.' The reference is to Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenin
(1875-7).
'Abkhazians.' Inhabitants of Abkhazia, an area north-west of Georgia.
'Sevastopol.' The Crimean port.
30 'Kursk.' City in central Russia, about 300 miles south of Moscow.
33 'Prince Vorontsov.' Field Marshal M. S. Vorontsov (1782-1856), Viceroy of the Caucasus (1844-53).
36 'Onegin.' Reference is to Yevgeny Onegin, a Superfluous Man and hero of the verse novel Yei>geny Onegin (1823-31) by A. S. Pushkin (179^1837).
36 'Pechorin.' Reference is to Pechorin. a Superfluous Man and hero of the novel A Hero o/Our Time (1840) by the poet M. Yu. Lermontov (1814-41).
36 'Byron's Cain.' Reference is to Cain (1821) by the English poet Byron (1788-1824).
36 'Bazarov.' Reference is to Yevgeny Bazarov, hero of the novel Fathers and Children (1862) by 1. S. Turgenev (1818-83).
36 'serf system.' That is, they are descended from owners of the serfs, who were emancipated in 1861.
41 'Dorpat.' Reference is to the Estonian town ofTartu, which lay within the Russian Empire, seat of a university reopened in 1802, at which the language of instruction was German until
48 'Vladivostok.' Russian port in the far east ofSiberia on the Sea ofJapan.
48 'Bering Straits.' Between far north-eastern Siberia and Alaska.
48 'Yenisey.' Large river in central Siberia.
50 'Pushkin's "Ukrainian Night".' Reference is to a celebrated descriptive passage beginning 'Quiet is the Ukrainian night' from the Second Canto of Pushkin's narrative poem Poitava (1829).
55 'His beaver collar . . . ' The lines are from Verse xvi of Chapter One ofPushkin's Yevgeny Onegin, being part of a description of a winter scene in St. Petersburg.
6o 'Stanley.' Sir Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904), the explorer.
64 'Whosoever shall offend .. . '. Mark 9:42.
71 'Turgenev's Rudin.' Reference is to the hero of Turgenev's novel Rudin (1856), a Superfluous Man.
74 'Anna Karenin.' Reference is to the tragic climax of Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenin, where the heroine commits suicide by throwing herself under a train as the result of an unhappy adulterous love affair.
83 'New Athos.' New Athos (or Akhali Afoni), a settlement on the Abkhazian shore of the Black Sea, now a spa in the Gudauta District of the Abkhazian A.S.S.R.
83 'Novorossisk.' Black Sea port in the Krasnodar (formerly Yekaterinodar) Region of the northern Caucasus.
92 'Leskov.' N. S. Leskov (1831-95), the Russian novelist and short-story writer.
94 'Peter and Paul dungeons.' The Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. founded in 1703, where manv political prisoners were held.
94 'In my oppressed and anguished mind ...' The last lines of Pushkin's famous lyric Memory (1828).
99 'Chechen.' A people of the northern Caucasus still not entirelv subjected to Russian rule at the end of the nineteenth century.
105 'Lermontov.' Reference is to the duel between Pechorin and Grushnitsky in A Hero of Our Time (see note to p. 36 above).
105 'Turgenev's Bazarov.' Reference is to Bazarov's duel with Paul Kirsanov in Fathers and Childreti (see note to p. 36 above).
A HAUDCASE
i 14 'the: villagc elder's barn.' It was the practice for thc heads of houscholds in a village to elect an elder who became the head of the mir or village commune. He presided over and summoned its meetings, and was in charge of village administration.
i 16 'their Turgenev and their Shchedrin.' The novelist Turgenev (see note to p. 36) was a well-known liberal; M. Ye. Saltykov (1826-89) was a satirist and a well-known radical (who wrote under the pseudonym 'Shchcdrin ', and is often known as Saltykov-Shched rin).
i 16 'Henry Buckles.' Reference is to Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-62), the English social historian and author of History of Civilization (1857—61), which enjoved a great vogue in Russia.
i 17 '"Where Southern Breezes Blow".' A popular Ukrainian folk- song.
i i8 'Gadyach.' A small town in the Ukraine about i50 miles east of Kiev.
GOOSEliERRIES
i29 'si.x foot of earth.' Reference is to Tolstoy's short story Does a Mmi Need /nitch Јm-rh? (i886).
i32 'To hosts of petty truths .. . .' From the poem A Hero (1830) by Pushkin.
CONCEIINING LOVE
'"this is a great mystery".' Ephesians 5:32.
'European Herald.' Vestnik Yevropy—a historico-political and literary monthly of liberal complexion published in St. Petersburg/Pctrograd, i 866-1918.