A House of Gentlefolk

A House of Gentlefolk

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Title: A House of Gentlefolk
Author: Ivan Turgenev Translated by Constance Garnett

Release Date: May, 2004 [EBook #5721] [Yes, we are more than one
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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.
"And so," decided Kalitin, who had a great distaste for the quiet of

country life, "there would be no need for them to be dragging
themselves off into the country." In her heart Marya Dmitrievna more
than once regretted her pretty Pokrovskoe, with its babbling brook, its
wide meadows, and green copses; but she never opposed her husband
in anything and had the greatest veneration for his wisdom and
knowledge of the world. When after fifteen years of married life he
died leaving her with a son and two daughters, Marya Dmitrievna had
grown so accustomed to her house and to town life that she