“I don’t care for novels... I can’t see what they are about. They seem to be an endless fuss about nothing.”
“That may apply in certain cases. But it is a too extreme statement.”
“It is extreme. Why not? How can a statement be too extreme if it is true?”
“I cannot express an opinion on English novelistic writings. But of Tolstoy it is certainly not true. No; it is not in general true that in fictional representations there is no actuality. I have read with my first English teacher in Moscow a story of your Myne-Reade. There was in this story a Scotch captain who remained for me most typical British. He was very fine this chap. This presentation here made me the more want what I have want always since a boy; to come to England.” Was Mayne Reade a novelist? Those boys’ stories were glorious. But they were about the sea; and the fifth form ... “a noble three-bladed knife, minus the blades”.....
“There’s a thing called the Ebb-Tide,” she began, wondering how she could convey her impression of the tropical shore; but Mr. Shatov’s attention, though polite, was wandering, “I’ve read some of Gorki’s short stories,” she finished briskly. They were not novels; they were alive in some way English books were not. Perhaps all Russian books were...
“Ah Gorrrki. He is come out direct from the peasantry; very powerfully strange and rough presentations. He may be called the apostle of misère.”
... the bakery and the yard; the fighting eagles, the old man at the prow of the boat with his daughter-in-law.... All teaching something. How did people find it out?
“But really I must tell you of yesterday” said Mr. Shatov warmly. “I have made a Schach-Partei. That was for me very good. It include also a certain exploration of London. That is for me I need not say most fascinatink.” Miriam listened eagerly. The time was getting on; they had done no work. She had not once corrected him and he was plunging into his preliminary story as if their hour had not yet begun. She was to share...
“There was on one of these many omnibuses a gentleman who tell me where in London I shall obtain a genuine coffee. Probably you know it is at this Vienna Café, in Holeborne. You do not know this place? Strange. It is quite near to you all the time. Almost at your British Museum. Ah; this gentleman has told me too a most funny story of a German who go there proudly talking English. He was waiting; ach they are very slow in this place, and at last he shouts for everyone to hear, Vaiter! Venn shall I become a cup of coffee?”
Miriam laughed her delight apprehensively. “Ah, I like very much these stories,” he was saying, his eyes dreamily absent, she feared, on a memory-vista of similar anecdotes. But in a moment he was alive again in his adventure. “It was at London Bridge. I have come all the way, walkingly, to this Café. It is a strange place. Really glahnend; Viennese; very dirrty. But coffee most excellent; just as on the Continent. You shall go there; you will see. Upstairs it is most dreadful. More dirrty; and in an intense gloom of smoke, very many men, ah they are dreadful, I could not describe to you. Like monkeys; but all in Schach-parteis. That shall be very good for me. I am most enthusiastic with this game since a boy.”