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He got so carried away by his subject, and spoke so loudly, that he quite alarmed the order-bedecked general. Nejdanov was a strong admirer of Ostrovsky, but could not help feeling, in spite of the author's great genius, his evident desire to throw a slur on modern civilisation in the burlesqued character of Veherov, in "Never Sit in Another Man's Sledge".
There are portraits of Dickens and Schopenhauer and Fet as a young man on the walls, too, and the well-known group of writers of the Sovremennik circle in 1856, with Turgenieff, Ostrovsky, Gontcharof, Grigorovitch, Druzhinin, and my father, quite young still, without a beard, and in uniform.
Of others we are left to guess even the conclusion of the main action: will Nádya in "A Protégée" submit to her degrading fate, or will she seek refuge in the pond? Ostróvsky rarely uses the drama to treat of great moral or social problems.
She read Ostrovsky or Gogol to him every day, and he used to listen, staring straight in front of him, never laughing, shaking his head, and every now and then muttering to himself: "Anything may happen! Anything may happen!" If there was anything ugly in what she read, he would say vehemently, pointing to the book: "There it is! Lies! That's what lies do!"
The tradesmen had not wholly lost the patriarchal charm of their peasant fathers. A poor apprentice is the hero of "Poverty Is No Crime," and a wealthy manufacturer the villain of the piece. Good-heartedness is the touchstone by which Ostróvsky tries character, and this may be hidden beneath even a drunken and degraded exterior.
Finally, there was young Ostrovsky, later one of the great playwrights and librettists of the country; who, even at this time, had come into popularity in Moscow through some of his lighter comedies, and a farce or two, produced at the Little Theatre.
He was admitted ... with perplexity and alarm still he was admitted. The house of the widow Milovidov turned out to be exactly as Kupfer had described it; and the widow herself really was like one of the tradesmen's wives in Ostrovsky, though the widow of an official; her husband had held his post under government.
In the earlier play Ostróvsky had adopted a satiric tone that proved him a worthy disciple of Gógol, the great founder of Russian realism. Not one lovable character appears in that gloomy picture of merchant life in Moscow; even the old mother repels us by her stupidity more than she attracts us by her kindliness.
Ostrovsky, the librettist, was behind the scenes, still on his knees before the Menschikov, in a mad endeavor to obtain her promise to abstain from the French habit of adding an e to the end of every word.
And so it came about that when we felt able to abandon Lexington Avenue, in favour of a purer air and water supply, Miss Fraenkel chanted the praises of her own Netley in the Garden State, and Bill, journeying thither to spy out the land, returned an hour late for dinner, and incoherent with horticultural details. It will be seen that though undoubtedly competent to criticize Ostrovsky or Mrs.
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