The Novice

The Novice. Ivan Bogdanov, 1893

A drunken cobbler lectures a boy apprentice. The viewer can only guess at the horrors that attended the lives of the craftsmen's helpers whom parents handed over to various masters in search of a better life. The artist, however, knew of this at first hand: Ivan Bogdanov himself grew up in a tailor's family and was surrounded by people of that estate.

The life of these wretched apprentices is described by Chekhov. In the story "Vanka", a nine-year-old boy writes "to grandfather in the village":

And yesterday I got a thrashing. The master dragged me out into the yard by the hair and lashed me with a strap because I was rocking their baby in the cradle and fell asleep by accident. And in the same week the mistress told me to gut a herring, and I began with the tail, and she took the herring and started poking me in the face with its head. The journeymen jeer at me, send me to the tavern for vodka and tell me to steal cucumbers from the masters, and the master beats me with whatever comes to hand. And there is no food at all. In the morning they give me bread, at dinner porridge, and in the evening bread again, but as for tea or cabbage soup, the masters gobble it all up themselves. And they tell me to sleep in the passage, and when their baby cries, I don't sleep at all, but rock the cradle. Dear grandfather, do me the kindness of God's mercy, take me away from here, home to the village, I have no strength left to bear it... I bow down at your feet and will pray to God for ever, take me away from here, or I shall die...