On Art
Footman
Housekeeper
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.