1 (return)
[ The name we gave to the
stone annex.]
2 (return)
[ The instinct for lime,
necessary to feed their bones, drives Russian children to nibble pieces of
chalk or the whitewash off the wall. In this case the boy was running to
one of the grown-ups in the house, and whom he called uncle, as Russian
children call everybody uncle or aunt, to get a piece of the chalk that he
had for writing on the blackboard. "Us," he said to some one when the boy
was gone. Which of us would have expressed himself like that? You see, he
did not say to "get" or to "break off," but to "bite off," which was
right, because they did literally "bite" off the chalk from the lump with
their teeth, and not break it off.]
3 (return)
[ About $3000.]
4 (return)
[ The zala is the chief room
of a house, corresponding to the English drawing-room, but on a grand
scale. The gostinaya—literally guest-room, usually translated as
drawing-room—is a place for more intimate receptions. At Yasnaya
Polyana meals were taken in the zala, but this is not the general Russian
custom, houses being provided also with a stolovaya, or dining-room.]
5 (return)
[ Kaftan, a long coat of
various cuts, including military and naval frock-coat, and the long gown
worn by coachmen.]
6 (return)
[ Afanasyi Shenshin, the
poet, who adopted his mother's name, Fet, for a time, owing to official
difficulties about his birth-certificate. An intimate friend of
Tolstoy's.]
7 (return)
[ "Sovremennik," or
"Contemporary Review," edited by the poet Mekrasof, was the rallying-place
for the "men of the forties," the new school of realists. Ostrovsky is the
dramatist; Gontcharof the novelist, author of "Oblomof"; Grigorovitch
wrote tales about peasant life, and was the discoverer of Tchekhof's
talent as a serious writer.]
8 (return)
[ The balks are the banks
dividing the fields of different owners or crops. Hedges are not used for
this purpose in Russia.]
9 (return)
[ Pazanki, tracks of a hare,
name given to the last joint of the hind legs.]
10 (return)
[ A Moscow monthly, founded
by Katkof, who somehow managed to edit both this and the daily
"Moskovskiya Vyedomosti," on which "Uncle Kostya" worked at the same
time.]
11 (return)
[ Dmitry. My father's
brother Dmitry died in 1856; Nikolai died September 20, 1860.]
12 (return)
[ That is to say, his eyes
went always on the straightest road to attain satisfaction for himself.]
13 (return)
[ Khamsvniki, a street in
Moscow.]
14 (return)
[ Maria Mikhailovna, his
wife.]
15 (return)
[ Tolstoy's sister. She
became a nun after her husband's death and the marriage of her three
daughters.]
16 (return)
[ Tolstoy was in the
artillery, and commanded a battery in the Crimea.]
17 (return)
[ Fet, at whose house the
quarrel took place, tells all about it in his memoirs. Tolstoy dogmatized
about lady-like charity, apropos of Turgenieff's daughter. Turgenieff, in
a fit of nerves, threatened to box his ears. Tolstoy challenged him to a
duel, and Turgenieff apologized.]
18 (return)
[ Turgenieff was ten years
older than Tolstoy.]
19 (return)
[ I had written to my
father that my fiancee's mother would not let me marry for two years.]
20 (return)
[ My father took
Griboyehof's PRINCESS MARYA ALEXEVNA as a type. The allusion here is to
the last words of Griboyehof's famous comedy, "The Misfortune of
Cleverness," "What will PRINCESS MARYA ALEXEVNA say?"]
21 (return)
[ Be loved by them.]
22 (return)
[ His wife's.]
23 (return)
[ A novelist, died 1895.]
24 (return)
[ One of the authors of
"Junker Schmidt."]
25 (return)
[ The curious may be
disposed to trace to some such "corrections beforehand" the remarkable
discrepancy of style and matter which distinguishes some of Tolstoy's
later works, published after his death by Mr. Tchertkof and his literary
executors.]
26 (return)
[ Tolstoy's private
secretary, arrested and banished in 1908.]
27 (return)
[ Five weeks after Leskof's
death.]
28 (return)
[ The Countess Tolstoy.]
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg