A House of Gentlefolk by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

Page 1 of 102

Produced by L. Michelle Baker

A HOUSE OF GENTLEFOLK

By Ivan Turgenev

LIST OF CHARACTERS

Marya Dmitrievna Kalitin, a widow. Marfa Timofyevna Pestov, her aunt. Sergei Petrovitch Gedeonovsky, a state councillor. Fedor Ivanitch Lavretsky, kinsman of Marya. Elisaveta Mihalovna (Lisa), daughters of Marya. Lenotchka, Shurotchka, an orphan girl, ward of Marfa. Nastasya Karpovna Ogarkoff, dependent of Marfa. Vladimir Nikolaitch Panshin, of the Ministry of the Interior. Christopher Fedoritch Lemm, a German musician. Piotr Andreitch Lavretsky, grandfather of Fedor. Anna Pavlovna, grandmother of Fedor. Ivan Petrovitch, father of Fedor. Glafira Petrovna, aunt of Fedor. Malanya Sergyevna, mother of Fedor. Mihalevitch, a student friend of Fedor. Pavel Petrovitch Korobyin, father of Varvara. Kalliopa Karlovna, mother of Varvara. Varvara Pavlovna, wife of Fedor. Anton, old servants of Fedor. Apraxya, Agafya Vlasyevna, nurse of Lisa.

Chapter I

A bright spring day was fading into evening. High overhead in the clear heavens small rosy clouds seemed hardly to move across the sky but to be sinking into its depths of blue.

In a handsome house in one of the outlying streets of the government town of O---- (it was in the year 1842) two women were sitting at an open window; one was about fifty, the other an old lady of seventy.

The name of the former was Marya Dmitrievna Kalitin. Her husband, a shrewd determined man of obstinate bilious temperament, had been dead for ten years. He had been a provincial public prosecutor, noted in his own day as a successful man of business. He had received a fair education and had been to the university; but having been born in narrow circumstances he realized early in life the necessity of pushing his own way in the world and making money. It had been a love-match on Marya Dmitrievna's side. He was not bad-looking, was clever and could be very agreeable when he chose. Marya Dmitrievna Pesto--that was her maiden name--had lost her parents in childhood. She spent some years in a boarding-school in Moscow, and after leaving school, lived on the family estate of Pokrovskoe, about forty miles from O----, with her aunt and her elder brother. This brother soon after obtained a post in Petersburg, and made them a scanty allowance. He treated his aunt and sister very shabbily till his sudden death cut short his career. Marya Dmitrievna inherited Pokrovskoe, but she did not live there long. Two years after her marriage with Kalitin, who succeeded in winning her heart in a few days, Pokrovskoe was exchanged for another estate, which yielded a much larger income, but was utterly unattractive and had no house. At the same time Kalitin took a house in the town of O----, in which he and his wife took up their permanent abode. There was a large garden round the house, which on one side looked out upon the open country away from the town.

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