On Art
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Footman
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Housekeeper
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Natasha (a little girl)
Footman | With a tray. Almond milk for the tea, and rum— |
Housekeeper | Knitting a stocking and counting the stitches. Twenty-three, twenty-four— |
Footman | I say, Avdotia Vasilievna, can’t you hear? |
Housekeeper | I hear, I hear. I’ll give it to you presently. I can’t tear myself to pieces to do all kinds of work at the same moment. To Natasha. Yes, darling; I will bring you the prunes presently. Just wait a moment, till I have given him the milk. Strains the almond milk. |
Footman | Sitting down. I tell you I have seen something tonight. To think that they pay good money for that! |
Housekeeper | Oh, you have been to the theatre. You were out late tonight. |
Footman | An opera is always a long affair. I have always to wait hours and hours. Tonight they were kind, and let me in to see the performance. |
The kitchen-maid, the manservant Pavel enters with the cream and stands listening. | |
Housekeeper | Then there was singing tonight? |
Footman | Singing—humph! Just silly, loud screaming, not a bit like real singing. “I,” he said—“I love her so much.” And he puts it all to a tune, and it is not like anything under heaven. Then they had a row, and ought to have fought it out; but they started singing instead. |
Housekeeper | And yet I’ve heard it costs a lot to get seats for the season. |
Footman | Our box cost three hundred roubles for twelve nights. |
Pavel | Shaking his head. Three hundred! And who does that money go to? |
Footman | Why, the people who sing are paid for it. I was told a lady singer makes fifty thousand a year. |
Pavel | You talk of thousands—why, three hundred is a pile of money in the country. Some folks toil their whole life long, and can’t even get together one hundred. |
Nina, a schoolgirl, enters the servants’ pantry. | |
Nina | Is Natasha here? Why don’t you come? Mother wants you. |
Natasha | Munching a prune. I am coming. |
Nina | To Pavel. What were you saying about a hundred roubles? |
Housekeeper | Simeon pointing to the footman was just telling us about the singing he listened to tonight in the theatre, and about the lady singers being paid such a lot of money. That’s what made Pavel wonder. Is that really true, Nina Mikhailovna, that a lady may get fifty thousand for her singing? |
Nina | More than that. A lady has been engaged to sing in America for a hundred and fifty thousand roubles. But even better than that, yesterday’s paper says a musician has been paid fifty thousand roubles for his fingernail. |
Pavel | The papers write all sorts of nonsense. That couldn’t be. How could he be paid that? |
Nina | Evidently pleased. He was, I tell you. |
Pavel | Just for a fingernail? |
Natasha | How is that possible? |
Nina | He was a pianist, and was insured for that amount in case anything happened to his hand, and he couldn’t go on playing the piano. |
Pavel | Well, I’ll be blowed! |
Senichka | A schoolboy in the upper class of the school, entering the pantry. You’ve got a regular meeting here. What is it all about? |
Nina tells him what they have been talking about. | |
Senichka | With still more complacency than Nina. That story of the nail is nothing at all. Why, a dancer in Paris had her foot insured for two hundred thousand roubles, in case she sprained it and was not able to go on dancing. |
Footman | That’s them girls—excuse me for mentioning it—that work with their legs without any stockings on. |
Pavel | You call that work! And they are paid for it! |
Senichka | But everyone cannot do that kind of work—and she had to study a good many years. |
Pavel | What did she study that did any good? Mere hopping about? |
Senichka | You don’t understand. Art is a great thing. |
Pavel | I think it is all nonsense. People spend money like that because they have such an easy time. If they had to bend their backs as we do to make a living, there wouldn’t be all these singing and dancing girls. They ain’t worth anything—but what is the use of saying so? |
Senichka | There we have the outcome of ignorance. To him Beethoven and Viardot and Rafael are utter folly. |
Natasha | Well, I think what he says is so. |
Nina | Come, let’s go. |