They would, he thought, be sold up
and sent adrift by the bailiffs; and he therefore had no scruple
in exploiting and even flattering their charm.
The Inhabitants
Tchekov's plays, being less lucrative than swings and
roundabouts, got no further in England, where theatres are only
ordinary commercial affairs, than a couple of performances by the
Stage Society. We stared and said, "How Russian!" They did not
strike me in that way. Just as Ibsen's intensely Norwegian plays
exactly fitted every middle and professional class suburb in
Europe, these intensely Russian plays fitted all the country
houses in Europe in which the pleasures of music, art,
literature, and the theatre had supplanted hunting, shooting,
fishing, flirting, eating, and drinking. The same nice people,
the same utter futility. The nice people could read; some of them
could write; and they were the sole repositories of culture who
had social opportunities of contact with our politicians,
administrators, and newspaper proprietors, or any chance of
sharing or influencing their activities. But they shrank from
that contact. They hated politics. They did not wish to realize
Utopia for the common people: they wished to realize their
favorite fictions and poems in their own lives; and, when they
could, they lived without scruple on incomes which they did
nothing to earn.
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