Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends Anton Pavlovich Chekhov 2643 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Letters of Anton Chekhov to
His Family and Friends
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

Author: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov

Translator: Constance Garnett

Release date: September 1, 2004 [eBook #6408]
Most recently updated: January 27, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6408

Credits: Produced by Tom Allen, Charles Franks, David Widger and the
Online
Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LETTERS OF
ANTON CHEKHOV TO HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS ***

LETTERS OF ANTON
CHEKHOV TO HIS FAMILY
AND FRIENDS
With Biographical Sketch

By Anton Chekhov

Translated By Constance Garnett

CONTENTS
TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
LETTERS
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TO HIS COUSIN, MIHAIL CHEKHOV.
TO HIS UNCLE, M. G. CHEKHOV.
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO D. V. GRIGOROVITCH.
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
TO MADAME M. V. KISELYOV.
MOSCOW,
September 29.

December 3.
December 13.
TO HIS BROTHER NIKOLAY.
TO MADAME M. V. KISELYOV.
TO HIS UNCLE, M. G. CHEKHOV.
TO HIS SISTER.
April 6.
April 8, 9, and 10.
April 25.
RAGOZINA BALKA,
TAGANROG,
TO V. G. KOROLENKO.
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
November 24.
TO D. V. GRIGOROVITCH.
TO V. G. KOROLENKO.
TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
February 9.
March 6.
TO I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.
May 3.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

TO HIS SISTER.
July 22.
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
MOSCOW,
November, 1888.
MOSCOW,
November 11, 1888.
November 15, 1888.
(No date), 1888.
December 23, 1888.
December 26, 1888.
December 30, 1888.
January 7, 1889.
March 5, 1889.
SUMY,
May 4, 1889.
May 7.
May 14, 1889.
May 15, 1889.
TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.

October, 1889.
MOSCOW,
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
February 28.
March 4.
TO N. M. LINTVARYOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
March 29.
April 1.
April 11.
April 15.
TO HIS SISTER.
FROM THE STEAMER,
April 29, 1890.
TO MADAME KISELYOV.
TO HIS SISTER.
TOMSK,
TOMSK,
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO HIS SISTER.
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.

TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
TO HIS SISTER.
IRKUTSK,
STATION LISTVENITCHNAYA,
TO HIS MOTHER.
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
TO HIS SISTER.
POKROVSKAYA STANITSA,
June 26.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO HIS SISTER.
TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.
TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO HIS MOTHER.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
MOSCOW,
TO HIS SISTER.
January, later.
January, later.
January 16, 1891.

TO A. F. KONI.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
February 23.
March 5.
TO MADAME KISELYOV.
TO HIS SISTER.
VIENNA,
TO HIS BROTHER IVAN.
TO MADAME KISELYOV.
TO HIS SISTER,
VENICE,
BOLOGNA,
FLORENCE,
FLORENCE,
TO MADAME KISELYOV.
TO HIS SISTER.
NAPLES,
NAPLES,
MONTE CARLO,
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TO HIS SISTER.
PARIS,

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
ALEXIN,
ALEXIN,
TO L. S. MIZINOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
BOGIMOVO,
BOGIMOVO,
BOGIMOVO,
TO L. S. MIZINOV.
TO L. S. MIZINOV.
TO THE SAME.
TO HIS SISTER.
TO MADAME KISELYOV.
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
July 29.
August 6.
August 18.
August 18.
August 28.
August 28.
MOSCOW,
TO E. M. S.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
TO MADAME LINTVARYOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
TO E. M. S.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
TO N. A. LEIKIN.
TO E. P. YEGOROV.
TO A. I. SMAGIN.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
December 13, 1891.
TO A. I. SMAGIN.
TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
TO V. A. TIHONOV.
TO A. S. KISELYOV.
TO I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO MADAME AVILOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MELIHOVO,
MELIHOVO,

TO MADAME AVILOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
May 28, 1892.
June 16.
MELIHOVO,
August 16.
MELIHOVO,
November 22, 1892.
November 25, 1892.
February, 1893.
April 26, 1893.
MELIHOVO,
YALTA,
TO L. S. MIZINOV.
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
May 9.
TO MADAME AVILOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MELIHOVO,
MELIHOVO,
MELIHOVO,
MELIHOVO,

MELIHOVO,
MELIHOVO,
MOSCOW,
MELIHOVO,
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO HIS SISTER.
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO E. M. S.
TO A. F. KONI.
TO V. I. NEMIROVITCH-DANTCHENKO.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW,
MOSCOW,
MOSCOW,
TO A. I. ERTEL.
TO SUVORIN.
TO MADAME AVILOV.
TO F. D. BATYUSHKOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO F. D. BATYUSHKOV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.

TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TO GORKY.
YALTA,
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TO I. I. ORLOV.
TO MADAME AVILOV.
TO GORKY.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
TO G. I. ROSSOLIMO.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
YALTA,
TO GORKY.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO P. I. KURKIN.
TO V. M. SOBOLEVSKY.
TO G. I. ROSSOLIMO.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
TO F. D. BATYUSHKOV.
TO M. O. MENSHIKOV.
TO L. S. MIZINOV.

TO GORKY.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
TO GORKY.
TO V. A. POSSE.
YALTA,
TO A. S. SUVORIN,
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
TO HIS SISTER.
TO O. L. KNIPPER.
TO HIS SISTER.
TO GORKY.
MOSCOW,
July 29, 1902.
TO S. P. DYAGILEV.
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
July 1, 1903.
TO S. P. DYAGILEV.
TO K. S. STANISLAVSKY.
TO MADAME STANISLAVSKY.
TO K. S. STANISLAVSKY.
TO V. I. NEMIROVITCH DANTCHENKO.

TO A. L. VISHNEVSKY.
TO K. S. STANISLAVSKY.
TO F. D. BATYUSHKOV.
TO MADAME AVILOV.
TO FATHER SERGEY SHTCHUKIN.
TO HIS SISTER.
BERLIN,
BADENWEILER,
June 16.
June 21.
June 28.
THE END
[Transcriber’s Note: In the Biographical Sketch, “Chekhov was

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE
Of the eighteen hundred and ninety letters published by Chekhov’s
family I have chosen for translation these letters and passages from letters
which best to illustrate Chekhov’s life, character and opinions. The brief
memoir is abridged and adapted from the biographical sketch by his brother
Mihail. Chekhov’s letters to his wife after his marriage have not as yet been
published.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
In 1841 a serf belonging to a Russian nobleman purchased his freedom
and the freedom of his family for 3,500 roubles, being at the rate of 700
roubles a soul, with one daughter, Alexandra, thrown in for nothing. The
grandson of this serf was Anton Chekhov, the author; the son of the
nobleman was Tchertkov, the Tolstoyan and friend of Tolstoy.
There is in this nothing striking to a Russian, but to the English student it
is sufficiently significant for several reasons. It illustrates how recent a
growth was the educated middle-class in pre-revolutionary Russia, and it
shows, what is perhaps more significant, the homogeneity of the Russian
people, and their capacity for completely changing their whole way of life.
Chekhov’s father started life as a slave, but the son of this slave was even
more sensitive to the Arts, more innately civilized and in love with the
things of the mind than the son of the slaveowner. Chekhov’s father, Pavel
Yegorovitch, had a passion for music and singing; while he was still a serf
boy he learned to read music at sight and to play the violin. A few years
after his freedom had been purchased he settled at Taganrog, a town on the
Sea of Azov, where he afterwards opened a “Colonial Stores.”
This business did well until the construction of the railway to
Vladikavkaz, which greatly diminished the importance of Taganrog as a
port and a trading centre. But Pavel Yegorovitch was always inclined to
neglect his business. He took an active part in all the affairs of the town,
devoted himself to church singing, conducted the choir, played on the
violin, and painted ikons.
In 1854 he married Yevgenia Yakovlevna Morozov, the daughter of a
cloth merchant of fairly good education who had settled down at Taganrog
after a life spent in travelling about Russia in the course of his business.
There were six children, five of whom were boys, Anton being the third
son. The family was an ordinary patriarchal household of the kind common
at that time. The father was severe, and in exceptional cases even went so
far as to chastise his children, but they all lived on warm and affectionate
terms. Everyone got up early, the boys went to the high school, and when

they returned learned their lessons. All of them had their hobbies. The
eldest, Alexandr, would construct an electric battery, Nikolay used to draw,
Ivan to bind books, while Anton was always writing stories. In the evening,
when their father came home from the shop, there was choral singing or a
duet.
Pavel Yegorovitch trained his children into a regular choir, taught them to
sing music at sight, and play on the violin, while at one time they had a
music teacher for the piano too. There was also a French governess who
came to teach the children languages. Every Saturday the whole family
went to the evening service, and on their return sang hymns and burned
incense. On Sunday morning they went to early mass, after which they all
sang hymns in chorus at home. Anton had to learn the whole church service
by heart and sing it over with his brothers.
The chief characteristic distinguishing the Chekhov family from their
neighbours was their habit of singing and having religious services at home.
Though the boys had often to take their father’s place in the shop, they
had leisure enough to enjoy themselves. They sometimes went for whole
days to the sea fishing, played Russian tennis, and went for excursions to
their grandfather’s in the country. Anton was a sturdy, lively boy, extremely
intelligent, and inexhaustible in jokes and enterprises of all kinds. He used
to get up lectures and performances, and was always acting and mimicking.
As children, the brothers got up a performance of Gogol’s “Inspector
General,” in which Anton took the part of Gorodnitchy. One of Anton’s
favourite improvisations was a scene in which the Governor of the town
attended church parade at a festival and stood in the centre of the church, on
a rug surrounded by foreign consuls. Anton, dressed in his high-school
uniform, with his grandfather’s old sabre coming to his shoulder, used to act
the part of the Governor with extraordinary subtlety and carry out a review
of imaginary Cossacks. Often the children would gather round their mother
or their old nurse to hear stories.
Chekhov’s story “Happiness” was written under the influence of one of
his nurse’s tales, which were always of the mysterious, of the extraordinary,
of the terrible, and poetical.
Their mother, on the other hand, told the children stories of real life,
describing how she had travelled all over Russia as a little girl, how the
Allies had bombarded Taganrog during the Crimean War, and how hard life

had been for the peasants in the days of serfdom. She instilled into her
children a hatred of brutality and a feeling of regard for all who were in an
inferior position, and for birds and animals.
Chekhov in later years used to say: “Our talents we got from our father,
but our soul from our mother.”
In 1875 the two elder boys went to Moscow.
After their departure the business went from bad to worse, and the family
sank into poverty.
In 1876 Pavel Yegorovitch closed his shop, and went to join his sons in
Moscow. While earning their own living, one was a student at the
University, and the other a student at the School of Sculpture and Painting.
The house was sold by auction, one of the creditors took all the furniture,
and Chekhov’s mother was left with nothing. Some months afterwards she
went to rejoin her husband in Moscow, taking the younger children with
her, while Anton, who was then sixteen, lived on in solitude at Taganrog for
three whole years, earning his own living, and paying for his education at
the high school.
He lived in the house that had been his father’s, in the family of one
Selivanov, the creditor who had bought it, and gave lessons to the latter’s
nephew, a Cossack. He went with his pupil to the latter’s house in the
country, and learned to ride and shoot. During the last two years he was
very fond of the society of the high-school girls, and used to tell his
brothers that he had had the most delightful flirtations.
At the same time he went frequently to the theatre and was very fond of
French melodramas, so that he was by no means crushed by his early
struggle for existence. In 1879 he went to Moscow to enter the University,
bringing with him two school-fellows who boarded with his family. He
found his father had just succeeded in getting work away from home, so
that from the first day of his arrival he found himself head of the family,
every member of which had to work for their common livelihood. Even
little Mihail used to copy out lectures for students, and so made a little
money. It was the absolute necessity of earning money to pay for his fees at
the University and to help in supporting the household that forced Anton to
write. That winter he wrote his first published story, “A Letter to a Learned
Neighbour.” All the members of the family were closely bound together

round one common centre—Anton. “What will Anton say?” was always
their uppermost thought on every occasion.
Ivan soon became the master of the parish school at Voskresensk, a little
town in the Moscow province. Living was cheap there, so the other
members of the family spent the summer there; they were joined by Anton
when he had taken his degree, and the Chekhovs soon had a large circle of
friends in the neighbourhood. Every day the company met, went long
walks, played croquet, discussed politics, read aloud, and went into raptures
over Shtchedrin. Here Chekhov gained an insight into military society
which he afterwards turned to account in his play “The Three Sisters.”
One day a young doctor called Uspensky came in from Zvenigorod, a
small town fourteen miles away. “Look here,” he said to Chekhov, “I am
going away for a holiday and can’t find anyone to take my place.... You take
the job on. My Pelageya will cook for you, and there is a guitar there....”
Voskresensk and Zvenigorod played an important part in Chekhov’s life
as a writer; a whole series of his tales is founded on his experiences there,
besides which it was his first introduction to the society of literary and
artistic people. Three or four miles from Voskresensk was the estate of a
landowner, A. S. Kiselyov, whose wife was the daughter of Begitchev, the
director of the Moscow Imperial Theatre. The Chekhovs made the
acquaintance of the Kiselyovs, and spent three summers in succession on
their estate, Babkino.
The Kiselyovs were musical and cultivated people, and intimate friends
of Dargomyzhsky, Tchaykovsky the composer, and the Italian actor Salvini.
Madame Kiselyov was passionately fond of fishing, and would spend hours
at a time sitting on the river bank with Anton, fishing and talking about
literature. She was herself a writer. Chekhov was always playing with the
Kiselyov children and running about the old park with them. The people he
met, the huntsman, the gardener, the carpenters, the sick women who came
to him for treatment, and the place itself, river, forests, nightingales—all
provided Chekhov with subjects to write about and put him in the mood for
writing. He always got up early and began writing by seven o’clock in the
morning. After lunch the whole party set off to look for mushrooms in the
woods. Anton was fond of looking for mushrooms, and said it stimulated
the imagination. At this time he was always talking nonsense.

Levitan, the painter, lived in the neighbourhood, and Chekhov and he
dressed up, blacked their faces and put on turbans. Levitan then rode off on
a donkey through the fields, where Anton suddenly sprang out of the bushes
with a gun and began firing blank cartridges at him.
In 1886 Chekhov suffered for the second time from an attack of spitting
blood. There is no doubt that consumption was developing, but apparently
he refused to believe this himself. He went on being as gay as ever, though
he slept badly and often had terrible dreams. It was one of these dreams that
suggested the subject of his story “The Black Monk.”
That year he began to write for the Novoye Vremya, which made a special
feature of his work. Under the influence of letters from Grigorovitch, who
was the first person to appreciate his talent, Chekhov began to take his
writing more seriously.
In 1887 he visited the south of Russia and stayed at the Holy Mountains,
which gave him the subjects of two of his stories, “Easter Eve” and
“Uprooted.” In the autumn of that year he was asked by Korsh, a theatrical
manager who knew him as a humorous writer, to write something for his
theatre. Chekhov sat down and wrote “Ivanov” in a fortnight, sending off
every act for rehearsal as it was completed.
By this time he had won a certain amount of recognition, everyone was
talking of him, and there was consequently great curiosity about his new
play. The performance was, however, only partially a success; the audience,
divided into two parties, hissed vigorously and clapped noisily. For a long
time afterwards the newspapers were full of discussions of the character and
personality of the hero, while the novelty of the dramatic method attracted
great attention.
In January, 1889, the play was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in
Petersburg and the controversy broke out again.
“Ivanov” was the turning-point in Chekhov’s mental development, and
literary career. He took up his position definitely as a writer, though his
brass plate continued to hang on the door. Shortly after writing “Ivanov,” he
wrote a one-act play called “The Bear.” The following season Solovtsev,
who had taken the chief character in “The Bear,” opened a theatre of his
own in Moscow, which was not at first a success. He appealed to Chekhov
to save him with a play for Christmas, which was only ten days off.
Chekhov set to work and wrote an act every day. The play was produced in

time, but the author was never satisfied with it, and after a short, very
successful run took it off the stage. Several years later he completely
remodelled it and produced it as “Uncle Vanya” at the Art Theatre in
Moscow. At this time he was writing a long novel, of which he often
dreamed aloud, and which he liked to talk about. He was for several years
writing at this novel, but no doubt finally destroyed it, as no trace of it could
be found after his death. He wanted it to embody his views on life, opinions
which he expressed in a letter to Plestcheyev in these words:
“I am not a Liberal, not a Conservative.... I should have liked to have
been a free artist and nothing more—and I regret that God has not given me
the strength to be one. I hate lying and violence in all their forms—the most
absolute freedom, freedom from force and fraud in whatever form the two
latter may be expressed, that is the programme I would hold to if I were a
great artist.”
At this time he was always gay and insisted on having people round him
while he worked. His little house in Moscow, which “looked like a chest of
drawers,” was a centre to which people, and especially young people,
flocked in swarms. Upstairs they played the piano, a hired one, while
downstairs he sat writing through it all. “I positively can’t live without
visitors,” he wrote to Suvorin; “when I am alone, for some reason I am
frightened.” This gay life which seemed so full of promise was, however,
interrupted by violent fits of coughing. He tried to persuade other people,
and perhaps himself, that it was not serious, and he would not consent to be
properly examined. He was sometimes so weak from haemorrhage that he
could see no one, but as soon as the attack was over his mood changed, the
doors were thrown open, visitors arrived, there was music again, and
Chekhov was once more in the wildest spirits.
The summers of those two years, 1888 and 1889, he spent with his family
in a summer villa at Luka, in the province of Harkov. He was in ecstasies
beforehand over the deep, broad river, full of fish and crayfish, the pond full
of carp, the woods, the old garden, and the abundance of young ladies. His
expectations were fulfilled in every particular, and he had all the fishing and
musical society he could wish for. Soon after his arrival Plestcheyev came
to stay with him on a month’s visit.
He was an old man in feeble health, but attractive to everyone. Young
ladies in particular were immediately fascinated by him. He used to

compose his works aloud, sometimes shouting at the top of his voice, so
that Chekhov would run in and ask him if he wanted anything. Then the old
man would give a sweet and guilty smile and go on with his work. Chekhov
was in constant anxiety about the old man’s health, as he was very fond of
cakes and pastry, and Chekhov’s mother used to regale him on them to such
an extent that Anton was constantly having to give him medicine.
Afterwards Suvorin, the editor of Novoye Vremya, came to stay. Chekhov
and he used to paddle in a canoe, hollowed out of a tree, to an old mill,
where they would spend hours fishing and talking about literature.
Both the grandsons of serfs, both cultivated and talented men, they were
greatly attracted by each other. Their friendship lasted for several years, and
on account of Suvorin’s reactionary opinions, exposed Chekhov to a great
deal of criticism in Russia. Chekhov’s feelings for Suvorin began to change
at the time of the Dreyfus case, but he never broke entirely with him.
Suvorin’s feelings for Chekhov remained unchanged.
In the spring of 1889 his brother Nikolay, the artist, fell ill with
consumption, and his illness occupied Anton entirely, and completely
prevented his working. That summer Nikolay died, and it was under the
influence of this, his first great sorrow, that Chekhov wrote “A Dreary
Story.” For several months after the death of his brother he was extremely
restless and depressed.
In 1890 his younger brother Mihail was taking his degree in law at
Moscow, and studying treatises on the management of prisons. Chekhov got
hold of them, became intensely interested in prisons, and resolved to visit
the penal settlement of Sahalin. He made up his mind to go to the Far East
so unexpectedly that it was difficult for his family to believe that he was in
earnest.
He was afraid that after Kennan’s revelations about the penal system in
Siberia, he would, as a writer, be refused permission to visit the prisons in
Sahalin, and therefore tried to get a free pass from the head of the prison
administration, Galkin-Vrasskoy. When this proved fruitless he set off in
April, 1890, with no credentials but his card as a newspaper correspondent.
The Siberian railway did not then exist, and only after great hardships,
being held up by floods and by the impassable state of the roads, Chekhov
succeeded in reaching Sahalin on the 11th of July, having driven nearly
3,000 miles. He stayed three months on the island, traversed it from north to

south, made a census of the population, talked to every one of the ten
thousand convicts, and made a careful study of the convict system.
Apparently the chief reason for all this was the consciousness that “We have
destroyed millions of men in prisons.... It is not the superintendents of the
prisons who are to blame, but all of us.” In Russia it was not possible to be
a “free artist and nothing more.”
Chekhov left Sahalin in October and returned to Europe by way of India
and the Suez Canal. He wanted to visit Japan, but the steamer was not
allowed to put in at the port on account of cholera.
In the Indian Ocean he used to bathe by diving off the forecastle deck
when the steamer was going at full speed, and catching a rope which was let
down from the stern. Once while he was doing this he saw a shark and a
shoal of pilot fish close to him in the water, as he describes in his story
“Gusev.”
The fruits of this journey were a series of articles in Russkaya Myssl on
the island of Sahalin, and two short stories, “Gusev” and “In Exile.” His
articles on Sahalin were looked on with a favourable eye in Petersburg, and,
who knows, it is possible that the reforms which followed in regard to penal
servitude and exile would not have taken place but for their influence.
After about a month in Moscow, Chekhov went to Petersburg to see
Suvorin. The majority of his Petersburg friends and admirers met him with
feelings of envy and ill-will. People gave dinners in his honour and praised
him to the skies, but at the same time they were ready to “tear him to
pieces.” Even in Moscow such people did not give him a moment for work
or rest. He was so prostrated by the feeling of hostility surrounding him that
he accepted an invitation from Suvorin to go abroad with him. When
Chekhov had completed arrangements for equipping the Sahalin schools
with the necessary books, they set off for the South of Europe. Vienna
delighted him, and Venice surpassed all his expectations and threw him into
a state of childlike ecstasy.
Everything fascinated him—and then there was a change in the weather
and a steady downpour of rain. Chekhov’s spirits drooped. Venice was
damp and seemed horrible, and he longed to escape from it.
He had had just such a change of mood in Singapore, which interested
him immensely and suddenly filled him with such misery that he wanted to
cry.

After Venice Chekhov did not get the pleasure he expected from any
Italian town. Florence did not attract him; the sun was not shining. Rome
gave him the impression of a provincial town. He was feeling exhausted,
and to add to his depression he had got into debt, and had the prospect of
spending the summer without any money at all.
Travelling with Suvorin, who did not stint himself, drew him into
spending more than he intended, and he owed Suvorin a sum which was
further increased at Monte Carlo by Chekhov’s losing nine hundred roubles
at roulette. But this loss was a blessing to him in so far as, for some reason,
it made him feel satisfied with himself. At the end of April, 1891, after a
stay in Paris, Chekhov returned to Moscow. Except at Vienna and for the
first days in Venice and at Nice, it had rained the whole time. On his return
he had to work extremely hard to pay for his two tours. His brother Mihail
was at this time inspector of taxes at Alexino, and Chekhov and his
household spent the summer not far from that town in the province of
Kaluga, so as to be near him. They took a house dating from the days of
Catherine. Chekhov’s mother had to sit down and rest halfway when she
crossed the hall, the rooms were so large. He liked the place with its endless
avenues of lime-trees and poetical river, while fishing and gathering
mushrooms soothed him and put him in the mood for work. Here he went
on with his story “The Duel,” which he had begun before going abroad.
From the windows there was the view of an old house which Chekhov
described in “An Artist’s Story,” and which he was very eager to buy.
Indeed from this time he began thinking of buying a country place of his
own, not in Little Russia, but in Central Russia. Petersburg seemed to him
more and more idle, cold and egoistic, and he had lost all faith in his
Petersburg acquaintances. On the other hand, Moscow no longer seemed to
him as before “like a cook,” and he grew to love it. He grew fond of its
climate, its people and its bells. He always delighted in bells. Sometimes in
earlier days he had gathered together a party of friends and gone with them
to Kamenny Bridge to listen to the Easter bells. After eagerly listening to
them he would set off to wander from church to church, and with his legs
giving way under him from fatigue would, only when Easter night was
over, make his way homewards. Meanwhile his father, who was fond of
staying till the end of the service, would return from the parish church, and
all the brothers would sing “Christ is risen” in chorus, and then they all sat
down to break their fast. Chekhov never spent an Easter night in bed.

Meanwhile in the spring of 1892 there began to be fears about the crops.
These apprehensions were soon confirmed. An unfortunate summer was
followed by a hard autumn and winter, in which many districts were
famine-stricken. Side by side with the Government relief of the starving
population there was a widespread movement for organizing relief, in
which various societies and private persons took part. Chekhov naturally
was drawn into this movement. The provinces of Nizhni-Novogorod and
Voronezh were in the greatest distress, and in the former of these two
provinces, Yegorov, an old friend of Chekhov’s Voskresensk days, was a
district captain (Zemsky Natchalnik). Chekhov wrote to Yegorov, got up a
subscription fund among his acquaintance, and finally set off himself for
Nizhni-Novogorod. As the starving peasants were selling their horses and
cattle for next to nothing, or even slaughtering them for food, it was feared
that as spring came on there would be no beasts to plough with, so that the
coming year threatened to be one of famine also.
Chekhov organized a scheme for buying up the horses and feeding them
till the spring at the expense of a relief fund, and then, as soon as field
labour was possible, distributing them among the peasants who were
without horses.
After visiting the province of Nizhni-Novogorod, Chekhov went with
Suvorin to Voronezh. But this expedition was not a successful one. He was
revolted by the ceremonious dinners with which he was welcomed as an
author, while the whole province was suffering from famine. Moreover
travelling with Suvorin tied him down and hindered his independent action.
Chekhov longed for intense personal activity such as he displayed later in
his campaign against the cholera.
In the winter of the same year his long-cherished dream was realized: he
bought himself an estate. It was in the province of Moscow, near the hamlet
of Melihovo. As an estate it had nothing to recommend it but an old, badly
laid out homestead, wastes of land, and a forest that had been felled. It had
been bought on the spur of the moment, simply because it had happened to
turn up. Chekhov had never been to the place before he bought it, and only
visited it when all the formalities had been completed. One could hardly
turn round near the house for the mass of hurdles and fences. Moreover the
Chekhovs moved into it in the winter when it was under snow, and all
boundaries being obliterated, it was impossible to tell what was theirs and

what was not. But in spite of all that, Chekhov’s first impression was
favourable, and he never showed a sign of being disappointed. He was
delighted by the approach of spring and the fresh surprises that were
continually being revealed by the melting snow. Suddenly it would appear
that a whole haystack belonged to him which he had supposed to be a
neighbour’s, then an avenue of lime-trees came to light which they had not
distinguished before under the snow. Everything that was amiss in the
place, everything he did not like, was at once abolished or altered. But in
spite of all the defects of the house and its surroundings, and the appalling
road from the station (nearly nine miles) and the lack of rooms, so many
visitors came that there was nowhere to put them, and beds had sometimes
to be made up in the passages. Chekhov’s household at this time consisted
of his father and mother, his sister, and his younger brother Mihail. These
were all permanent inmates of Melihovo.
As soon as the snow had disappeared the various duties in the house and
on the land were assigned: Chekhov’s sister undertook the flower-beds and
the kitchen garden, his younger brother undertook the field work. Chekhov
himself planted the trees and looked after them. His father worked from
morning till night weeding the paths in the garden and making new ones.
Everything attracted the new landowner: planting the bulbs and watching
the flight of rooks and starlings, sowing the clover, and the goose hatching
out her goslings. By four o’clock in the morning Chekhov was up and
about. After drinking his coffee he would go out into the garden and would
spend a long time scrutinizing every fruit-tree and every rose-bush, now
cutting off a branch, now training a shoot, or he would squat on his heels by
a stump and gaze at something on the ground. It turned out that there was
more land than they needed (639 acres), and they farmed it themselves,
with no bailiff or steward, assisted only by two labourers, Frol and Ivan.
At eleven o’clock Chekhov, who got through a good deal of writing in
the morning, would go into the dining-room and look significantly at the
clock. His mother would jump up from her seat and her sewing-machine
and begin to bustle about, crying: “Oh dear! Antosha wants his dinner!”
When the table was laid there were so many homemade and other
dainties prepared by his mother that there would hardly be space on the
table for them. There was not room to sit at the table either. Besides the five
permanent members of the family there were invariably outsiders as well.

After dinner Chekhov used to go off to his bedroom and lock himself in to
“read.” Between his after-dinner nap and tea-time he wrote again. The time
between tea and supper (at seven o’clock in the evening) was devoted to
walks and outdoor work. At ten o’clock they went to bed. Lights were put
out and all was stillness in the house; the only sound was a subdued singing
and monotonous recitation. This was Pavel Yegorovitch repeating the
evening service in his room: he was religious and liked to say his prayers
aloud.
From the first day that Chekhov moved to Melihovo the sick began
flocking to him from twenty miles around. They came on foot or were
brought in carts, and often he was fetched to patients at a distance.
Sometimes from early in the morning peasant women and children were
standing before his door waiting. He would go out, listen to them and sound
them, and would never let one go away without advice and medicine. His
expenditure on drugs was considerable, as he had to keep a regular store of
them. Once some wayfarers brought Chekhov a man they had picked up by
the roadside in the middle of the night, stabbed in the stomach with a
pitchfork. The peasant was carried into his study and put down in the
middle of the floor, and Chekhov spent a long time looking after him,
examining his wounds and bandaging them up. But what was hardest for
Chekhov was visiting the sick at their own homes: sometimes there was a
journey of several hours, and in this way the time essential for writing was
wasted.
The first winter at Melihovo was cold; it lasted late and food was short.
Easter came in the snow. There was a church at Melihovo in which a
service was held only once a year, at Easter. Visitors from Moscow were
staying with Chekhov. The family got up a choir among themselves and
sang all the Easter matins and mass. Pavel Yegorovitch conducted as usual.
It was out of the ordinary and touching, and the peasants were delighted: it
warmed their hearts to their new neighbours.
Then the thaw came. The roads became appalling. There were only three
broken-down horses on the estate and not a wisp of hay. The horses had to
be fed on rye straw chopped up with an axe and sprinkled with flour. One of
the horses was vicious and there was no getting it out of the yard. Another
was stolen in the fields and a dead horse left in its place. And so for a long
time there was only one poor spiritless beast to drive which was nicknamed

Anna Petrovna. This Anna Petrovna contrived to trot to the station, to take
Chekhov to his patients, to haul logs and to eat nothing but straw sprinkled
with flour. But Chekhov and his family did not lose heart. Always
affectionate, gay and plucky, he cheered the others, work went ahead, and in
less than three months everything in the place was changed: the house was
furnished with crockery; there was the ring of carpenters’ axes; six horses
were bought, and all the field work for the spring had been completed in
good time and in accordance with the rules of agricultural science. They
had no experience at all, but bought masses of books on the management of
the land, and every question, however small, was debated in common.
Their first successes delighted Chekhov. He had thirty acres under rye,
thirty under oats, and fully thirty under hay. Marvels were being done in the
kitchen garden: tomatoes and artichokes did well in the open air. A dry
spring and summer ruined the oats and the rye; the peasants cut the hay in
return for half the crop, and Chekhov’s half seemed a small stack; only in
the kitchen garden things went well.
The position of Melihovo on the highroad and the news that Chekhov the
author had settled there inevitably led to new acquaintances. Doctors and
members of the local Zemstvos began visiting Chekhov; acquaintance was
made with the officials of the district, and Chekhov was elected a member
of the Serpuhov Sanitary Council.
At that time cholera was raging in the South of Russia. Every day it came
nearer and nearer to the province of Moscow, and everywhere it found
favourable conditions among the population weakened by the famine of
autumn and winter. It was essential to take immediate measures for meeting
the cholera, and the Zemstvo of Serpuhov worked its hardest. Chekhov as a
doctor and a member of the Sanitary Council was asked to take charge of a
section. He immediately gave his services for nothing. He had to drive
about among the manufacturers of the district persuading them to take
adequate measures to combat the cholera. Owing to his efforts the whole
section containing twenty-five villages and hamlets was covered with a
network of the necessary institutions. For several months Chekhov scarcely
got out of his chaise. During that time he had to drive all over his section,
receive patients at home, and do his literary work. He returned home
shattered and exhausted, but always behaved as though he were doing
something trivial; he cracked little jokes and made everyone laugh as

before, and carried on conversations with his dachshund, Quinine, about her
supposed sufferings.
By early autumn the place had become unrecognizable. The outhouses
had been rebuilt, unnecessary fences had been removed, rose-trees had been
planted, a flower-bed had been laid out; in the fields before the gates
Chekhov was planning to dig a big new pond. With what interest he
watched each day the progress of the work upon it! He planted trees round
it and dropped into it tiny carp and perch which he brought with him in a jar
from Moscow. The pond became later on more like an ichthyological
station than a pond, as there was no kind of fish in Russia, except the pike,
of which Chekhov had not representatives in this pond. He liked sitting on
the dam on its bank and watching with ecstasy shoals of little fish coming
suddenly to the surface and then hiding in its depths. An excellent well had
been dug in Melihovo before this. Chekhov had been very anxious that it
should be in Little Russian style with a crane. But the position did not allow
of this, and it was made with a big wheel painted yellow like the wells at
Russian railway stations. The question where to dig this well and whether
the water in it would be good greatly interested Chekhov. He wanted exact
information and a theory based on good grounds, seeing that nine-tenths of
Russia uses water out of wells, and has done so since time immemorial; but
whenever he questioned the well-sinkers who came to him, he received the
same vague answer: “Who can tell? It’s in God’s hands. Can you find out
beforehand what the water will be like?”
But the well, like the pond, was a great success, and the water turned out
to be excellent.
He began seriously planning to build a new house and farm buildings.
Creative activity was his passion. He was never satisfied with what he had
ready-made; he longed to make something new. He planted little trees,
raised pines and fir-trees from seed, looked after them as though they were
his children, and, like Colonel Vershinin in his “Three Sisters,” dreamed as
he looked at them of what they would be like in three or four hundred years.
The winter of 1893 was a severe one with a great deal of snow. The snow
was so high under the windows that the hares who ran into the garden stood
on their hind-legs and looked into the window of Chekhov’s study. The
swept paths in the garden were like deep trenches. By then Chekhov had
finished his work in connection with the cholera and he began to live the

life of a hermit. His sister found employment in Moscow; only his father
and mother were left with him in the house, and the hours seemed very
long. They went to bed even earlier than in the summer, but Chekhov would
wake up at one in the morning, sit down to his work and then go back to
bed and sleep again. At six o’clock in the morning all the household was up.
Chekhov wrote a great deal that winter. But as soon as visitors arrived, life
was completely transformed. There was singing, playing on the piano,
laughter. Chekhov’s mother did her utmost to load the tables with dainties;
his father with a mysterious air would produce various specially prepared
cordials and liqueurs from some hidden recess; and then it seemed that
Melihovo had something of its own, peculiar to it, which could be found in
no other country estate. Chekhov was always particularly pleased at the
visits of Miss Mizinov and of Potapenko. He was particularly fond of them,
and his whole family rejoiced at their arrival. They stayed up long after
midnight on such days, and Chekhov wrote only by snatches. And every
time he wrote five or six lines, he would get up again and go back to his
visitors.
“I have written sixty kopecks’ worth,” he would say with a smile.
Braga’s “Serenade” was the fashion at that time, and Chekhov was fond
of hearing Potapenko play it on the violin while Miss Mizinov sang it.
Having been a student at the Moscow University, Chekhov liked to
celebrate St. Tatyana’s Day. He never missed making a holiday of it when
he lived in Moscow. That winter, for the first time, he chanced to be in
Petersburg on the 12th of January. He did not forget “St. Tatyana,” and
assembled all his literary friends on that day in a Petersburg restaurant.
They made speeches and kept the holiday, and this festivity initiated by him
was so successful that the authors went on meeting regularly afterwards.
Though Melihovo was his permanent home, Chekhov often paid visits to
Moscow and Petersburg. He frequently stayed at hotels, and there he
sometimes had difficulties over his passport. As a landowner he had no
need of credentials from the police in the Serpuhov district, and found his
University diploma sufficient. In Petersburg and Moscow, under the old
passport regulations they would not give him a passport because he resided
permanently in the provinces. Misunderstandings arose, sometimes
developing into disagreeable incidents and compelling Chekhov to return
home earlier than he had intended. Someone suggested to Chekhov that he

should enter the Government service and immediately retire from it, as
retired officials used at that time to receive a permanent passport from the
department in which they had served. Chekhov sent a petition to the
Department of Medicine for a post to be assigned to him, and received an
appointment as an extra junior medical clerk in that Department, and soon
afterwards sent in his resignation, after which he had no more trouble.
Chekhov spent the whole spring of 1893 at Melihovo, planted roses,
looked after his fruit-trees, and was enthusiastic over country life. That
summer Melihovo was especially crowded with visitors. Chekhov was
visited not only by his friends, but also by people whose acquaintance he
neither sought nor desired. People were sleeping on sofas and several in a
room; some even spent the night in the passage. Young ladies, authors, local
doctors, members of the Zemstvo, distant relations with their sons—all
these people flitted through Melihovo. Life was a continual whirl, everyone
was gay; this rush of visitors and the everlasting readiness of Chekhov’s
mother to regale them with food and drink seemed like a return to the good
old times of country life in the past. Chekhov was the centre on which all
attention was concentrated. Everyone sought him, lived in him, and caught
up every word he uttered. When he was with friends he liked taking walks
or making expeditions to the neighbouring monastery. The chaise, the cart,
and the racing droshky were brought out. Chekhov put on his white tunic,
buckled a strap round his waist, and got on the racing droshky. A young
lady would sit sideways behind him, holding on to the strap. The white
tunic and strap used to make Chekhov call himself an Hussar. The party
would set off; the “Hussar” in the racing droshky would lead the way, and
then came the cart and the chaise full of visitors.
The numbers of guests necessitated more building, as the house would
not contain them all. Instead of a farm, new buildings close to the house
itself were begun. Some of the farm buildings were pulled down, others
were put up after Chekhov’s own plans. A new cattle yard made its
appearance, and by it a hut with a well and a hurdle fence in the Little
Russian style, a bathhouse, a barn, and finally Chekhov’s dream—a lodge.
It was a little house with three tiny rooms, in one of which a bedstead was
put with difficulty, and in another a writing-table. At first this lodge was
intended only for visitors, but afterwards Chekhov moved into it and there
he wrote his “Seagull.” This little lodge was built among the fruit-bushes,
and to reach it one had to pass through the orchard. In spring, when the

apples and cherries were in blossom, it was pleasant to live in this lodge,
but in winter it was so buried in the snow that pathways had to be cut to it
through drifts as high as a man.
Chekhov suffered terribly about this time from his cough. It troubled him
particularly in the morning. But he made light of it. He was afraid of
worrying his family. His younger brother once saw his handkerchief
spattered with blood, and asked what it meant. Chekhov seemed
disconcerted and said:
“Oh, nothing; it is no matter.... Don’t tell Masha and Mother.”
The cough was the reason for Chekhov’s going in 1894 to the Crimea. He
stayed in Yalta, though he evidently did not like it and longed to be home.
Chekhov’s activity in the campaign against the cholera resulted in his
being elected a member of the Zemstvo. He was keenly interested in
everything to do with the new roads to be constructed, and the new
hospitals and schools it was intended to open. Besides this public work the
neighbourhood was indebted to him for the making of a highroad from the
station of Lopasnya to Melihovo, and for the building of schools at Talezh,
Novoselka, and Melihovo. He made the plans for these schools himself,
bought the material, and superintended the building of them. When he
talked about them his eyes kindled, and it was evident that if he had had the
means he would have built, not three, but a multitude.
At the opening of the school at Novoselka, the peasants brought him the
ikon and offered him bread and salt. Chekhov was much embarrassed in
responding to their gratitude, but his face and his shining eyes showed that
he was pleased. Besides the schools he built a fire-station for the village and
a belfry for the church, and ordered a cross made of looking-glass for the
cupola, the flash of which in the sun or moonlight was visible more than
eight miles away.
Chekhov spent the year 1894 at Melihovo, began writing “The Seagull,”
and did a great deal of work. He paid a visit to Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana,
and returned enchanted with the old man and his family. Chekhov was
already changing; he looked haggard, older, sallower. He coughed, he was
tortured by intestinal trouble. Evidently he was now aware of the gravity of
his illness, but, as before, made no complaint and tried to hide it from
others.

In 1896 “The Seagull” was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in
Petersburg. It was a fiasco. The actors did not know their parts; in the
theatre there was “a strained condition of boredom and bewilderment.” The
notices in the press were prejudiced and stupid. Not wishing to see or meet
anyone, Chekhov kept out of sight after the performance, and by next
morning was in the train on his way back to Melihovo. The subsequent
performances of “The Seagull,” when the actors understood it, were
successful.
Chekhov had collected a large number of books, and in 1896 he resolved
to present them to the public library in his native town of Taganrog. Whole
bales of books were sent by Chekhov from Petersburg and Moscow, and
Iordanov, the mayor of Taganrog, sent him lists of the books needed. At the
same time, at Chekhov’s suggestion, something like an Information Bureau
was instituted in connection with the Taganrog Library. There were to be
catalogues of all the important commercial firms, all the existing
regulations and government enactments on all current questions,
everything, in fact, which might be of immediate service to a reader in any
practical difficulty. The library at Taganrog has now developed into a fine
educational institution, and is lodged in a special building designed and
equipped for it and dedicated to the memory of Chekhov.
Chekhov took an active interest in the census of the people in 1896. It
will be remembered that he had made a census of the whole convict
population of the island of Sahalin on his own initiative and at his own
expense in 1890. Now he was taking part in a census again. He studied
peasant life in all its aspects; he was on intimate terms with his peasant
neighbours, to whom he was now indispensable as a doctor and a friend
always ready to give them good counsel.
Just before the census was completed Chekhov was taken ill with
influenza, but that did not prevent his carrying out his duties. In spite of
headache, he went from hut to hut and village to village, and then had to
work at putting together his materials. He was absolutely alone in his work.
The Zemsky Natchalniks, upon whom the government relied principally to
carry out the census, were inert, and for the most part the work was left to
private initiative.
In February, 1897, Chekhov was completely engrossed by a project of
building a “People’s Palace” in Moscow. “People’s Palaces” had not been

thought of; the common people spent their leisure in drink-shops. The
“People’s Palace” in Moscow was designed on broad principles; there was
to be a library, a reading-room, lecture-rooms, a museum, a theatre. It was
proposed to run it by a company of shareholders with a capital of half a
million roubles. Owing to various causes in no way connected with
Chekhov, this scheme came to nothing.
In March he paid a visit to Moscow, where Suvorin was expecting him.
He had hardly sat down to dinner at The Hermitage when he had a sudden
haemorrhage from the lungs. He was taken to a private hospital, where he
remained till the 10th of April. When his sister, who knew nothing of his
illness, arrived in Moscow, she was met by her brother Ivany who gave her
a card of admission to visit the invalid at the hospital. On the card were the
words: “Please don’t tell father or mother.” His sister went to the hospital.
There casting a casual glance at a little table, she saw on it a diagram of the
lungs, in which the upper part of the left lung was marked with a red pencil.
She guessed at once that this was what was affected in Chekhov’s case. This
and the sight of her brother alarmed her. Chekhov, who had always been so
gay, so full of spirits and vitality, looked terribly ill; he was forbidden to
move or to talk, and had hardly the strength to do so.
He was declared to be suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs, and it was
essential to try and ward it off at all costs, and to escape the unwholesome
northern spring. He recognized himself that this was essential.
When he left the hospital he returned to Melihovo and prepared to go
abroad. He went first to Biarritz, but there he was met by bad weather. A
fashionable, extravagant way of living did not suit his tastes, and although
he was delighted with the sea and the life led (especially by the children) on
the beach, he soon moved on to Nice. Here he stayed for a considerable
time at the Pension Russe in the Rue Gounod. He seemed to be fully
satisfied with the life there. He liked the warmth and the people he met, M.
Kovalevsky, V. M. Sobolesky, V. T. Nemirovitch-Dantchenko, the artist V.
T. Yakobi and I. N. Potapenko. Prince A. I. Sumbatov arrived at Nice too,
and Chekhov used sometimes to go with him to Monte Carlo to roulette.
Chekhov followed all that he had left behind in Russia with keen
attention: he was anxious about the Chronicle of Surgery, which he had
more than once saved from ruin, made arrangements about Melihovo, and
so on.

He spent the autumn and winter in Nice, and in February, 1898, meant to
go to Africa. He wanted to visit Algiers and Tunis, but Kovalevsky, with
whom he meant to travel, fell ill, and he had to give up the project. He
contemplated a visit to Corsica, but did not carry out that plan either, as he
was taken seriously ill himself. A wretched dentist used contaminated
forceps in extracting a tooth, and Chekhov was attacked by periostitis in a
malignant form. In his own words, “he was in such pain that he climbed up
the wall.”
As soon as the spring had come he felt an irresistible yearning for Russia.
He was weary of enforced idleness; he missed the snow and the Russian
country, and at the same time he was depressed at having gained no weight
in spite of the climate, good nourishment, and idleness.
While he was at Nice France was in the throes of the Dreyfus affair.
Chekhov began studying the Dreyfus and Zola cases from shorthand notes,
and becoming convinced of the innocence of both, wrote a heated letter to
Suvorin, which led to a coolness between them.
He spent March, 1898, in Paris. He sent three hundred and nineteen
volumes of French literature from Paris to the public library at Taganrog.
The lateness of the spring in Russia forced Chekhov to remain in Paris
till May, when he returned to Melihovo. Melihovo became gay and lively
on his arrival. Visitors began coming again; he was as hospitable as ever,
but he was quieter, no longer jested as in the past, and perhaps owing to his
illness talked little. But he still took as much pleasure in his roses.
After a comparatively good summer there came days of continual rain,
and on the 14th of September Chekhov went away to Yalta. He had to
choose between Nice and Yalta. He did not want to go abroad, and preferred
the Crimea, reckoning that he might possibly seize an opportunity to pay a
brief visit to Moscow, where his plays were to appear at the Art Theatre. His
choice did not disappoint him. That autumn in Yalta was splendid; he felt
well there, and the progress of his disease led him to settle in Yalta
permanently.
Chekhov obtained a piece of land at Autka, and the same autumn began
building. He spent whole days superintending the building. Stone and
plaster was brought, Turks and Tatars dug the ground and laid the
foundation, while he planted little trees and watched with fatherly anxiety
every new shoot on them. Every stone, every tree there is eloquent of

Chekhov’s creative energy. That same autumn he bought the little property
of Kutchuka. It was twenty-four miles from Yalta, and attracted him by its
wildness and primitive beauty. To reach it one had to drive along the road at
a giddy height. He began once more dreaming and drawing plans. The
possible future began to take a different shape to him now, and he was
already dreaming of moving from Melihovo, farming and gardening and
living there as in the country. He wanted to have hens, cows, a horse and
donkeys, and, of course, all of this would have been quite possible and
might have been realized if he had not been slowly dying. His dreams
remained dreams, and Kutchuka stands uninhabited to this day.
The winter of 1898 was extremely severe in the Crimea. The cold, the
snow, the stormy sea, and the complete lack of people akin to him in spirit
and of “interesting women” wearied Chekhov; he began to be depressed.
He was irresistibly drawn to the north, and began to fancy that if he moved
for the winter to Moscow, where his plays were being acted with such
success and where everything was so full of interest for him, it would be no
worse for his health than staying in Yalta, and he began dreaming of buying
a house in Moscow. He wanted at one moment to get something small and
snug in the neighbourhood of Kursk Station, where it might be possible to
stay the three winter months in every comfort; but when such a house was
found his mood changed and he resigned himself to life at Yalta.
The January and February of 1899 were particularly irksome to Chekhov:
he suffered from an intestinal trouble which poisoned his existence.
Moreover consumptive patients from all over Russia began appealing to
him to assist them to come to Yalta. These invalids were almost always
poor, and on reaching Yalta mostly ended their lives in miserable
conditions, pining for their native place. Chekhov exerted himself on behalf
of everyone, printed appeals in the papers, collected money, and did his
utmost to alleviate their condition.
After the unfavourable winter came an exquisite warm spring, and on the
12th of April Chekhov was in Moscow and by May in Melihovo. His father
had died the previous October, and with his death a great link with the place
was broken. The consciousness of having to go away early in the autumn
gradually brought Chekhov to decide to sell the place.
On the 25th of August he went back to his own villa at Yalta, and soon
afterwards Melihovo was sold, and his mother and sister joined him. During

the last four and a half years of his life Chekhov’s health grew rapidly
worse. His chief interest was centred in Moscow, in the Art Theatre, which
had just been started, and the greater part of his dramatic work was done
during this period.
Chekhov was ill all the winter of 1900, and only felt better towards the
spring. During those long winter months he wrote “In the Ravine.” The
detestable spring of that year affected his mood and his health even more.
Snow fell on the 5th of March, and this had a shattering effect on him. In
April he was again very ill. An attack of intestinal trouble prevented him
from eating, drinking, or working. As soon as it was over Chekhov,
homesick for the north, set off for Moscow, but there he was met by severe
weather. Returning in August to Yalta, he wrote “The Three Sisters.”
He spent the autumn in Moscow, and at the beginning of December went
to the French Riviera, settled in Nice, and dreamed again of a visit to
Africa, but went instead to Rome. Here, as usual, he met with severe
weather. Early in February he returned to Yalta. That year there was a soft,
sunny spring. Chekhov spent whole days in the open air, engaged in his
favourite occupations; he planted and pruned trees, looked after his garden,
ordered all sorts of seeds, and watched them coming up. At the same time
he was working on behalf of the invalids coming to Yalta, who appealed to
him for help, and also completing the library he had founded at Taganrog,
and planning to open a picture gallery there.
In May, 1901, Chekhov went to Moscow and was thoroughly examined
by a physician, who urged him to go at once to Switzerland or to take a
koumiss cure. Chekhov preferred the latter.
On the 25th of May he married Olga Knipper, one of the leading
actresses at the Art Theatre, and with her went off to the province of Ufa for
the koumiss cure. On the way they had to wait twenty-four hours for a
steamer, in very unpleasant surroundings, at a place called Pyany Bor
(“Drunken Market”), in the province of Vyatka.
In the autumn of 1901 Tolstoy was staying, for the sake of his health, at
Gaspra. Chekhov was very fond of him and frequently visited him.
Altogether that autumn was an eventful one for him: Kuprin, Bunin and
Gorky visited the Crimea; the writer Elpatyevsky settled there also, and
Chekhov felt fairly well. Tolstoy’s illness was the centre of general
attention, and Chekhov was very uneasy about him.

In 1902 there was suddenly a change for the worse: violent haemorrhage
exhausted him till the beginning of February; he was for over a month
confined to his study. It was at this time that the incident of Gorky’s
election to the Academy and subsequent expulsion from it led Chekhov to
write a letter to the Royal President of the Academy asking that his own
name should be struck off the list of Academicians.
Chekhov had hardly recovered when his wife was taken seriously ill.
When she was a little better he made a tour by the Volga and the Kama as
far as Perm. On his return he settled with his wife in a summer villa not far
from Moscow; he spent July there and returned home to Yalta in August.
But the longing for a life of movement and culture, the desire to be nearer
to the theatre, drew him to the north again, and in September he was back in
Moscow. Here he was not left in peace for one minute; swarms of visitors
jostled each other from morning till night. Such a life exhausted him; he ran
away from it to Yalta in December, but did not escape it there. His cough
was worse; every day he had a high temperature, and these symptoms were
followed by an attack of pleurisy. He did not get up all through the
Christmas holidays; he still had an agonizing cough, and it was in this
enforced idleness that he thought out his play “The Cherry Orchard.”
It is quite possible that if Chekhov had taken care of himself his disease
would not have developed so rapidly or proved fatal. The feverish energy of
his temperament, his readiness to respond to every impression, and his thirst
for activity, drove him from south to north and hack again, regardless of his
health and of the climate. Like all invalids, he ought to have gone on living
in the same place, at Nice or at Yalta, until he was better, but he lived
exactly as though he had been in good health. When he arrived in the north
he was always excited and absorbed by what was going on, and this
exhilaration he mistook for an improvement in his health; but he had only to
return to Yalta for the reaction to set in, and it would seem to him at once
that his case was hopeless, that the Crimea had no beneficial effect on
consumptives, and that the climate was wretched.
The spring of 1903 passed fairly favourably. He recovered sufficiently to
go to Moscow and even to Petersburg. On returning from Petersburg he
began preparing to go to Switzerland. But his state of health was such that
his doctor in Moscow advised him to give up the idea of Switzerland and
even of Yalta, and to stay somewhere not very far from Moscow. He

followed this advice and settled at Nar. Now that it was proposed that he
should stay the winter in the north, all that he had created in Yalta—his
house and his garden—seemed unnecessary and objectless. In the end he
returned to Yalta and set to work on “The Cherry Orchard.”
In October, 1903, the play was finished and he set off to produce it
himself in Moscow. He spent days at a time in the Art Theatre, producing
his “Cherry Orchard,” and incidentally supervising the setting and
performance of the plays of other authors. He gave advice and criticized,
was excited and enthusiastic.
On the 17th of January, 1904, “The Cherry Orchard” was produced for
the first time. The first performance was the occasion of the celebration of
the twenty-fifth anniversary of Chekhov’s literary activity. A great number
of addresses were read and speeches were made. Chekhov was many times
called before the curtain, and this expression of universal sympathy
exhausted him to such a degree that the very day after the performance he
began to think with relief of going back to Yalta, where he spent the
following spring.
His health was completely shattered, and everyone who saw him secretly
thought the end was not far off; but the nearer Chekhov was to the end, the
less he seemed to realize it. Ill as he was, at the beginning of May he set off
for Moscow. He was terribly ill all the way on the journey, and on arrival
took to his bed at once. He was laid up till June.
On the 3rd of June he set off with his wife for a cure abroad to the Black
Forest, and settled in a little spa called Badenweiler. He was dying,
although he wrote to everyone that he had almost recovered, and that health
was coming back to him not by ounces but by hundredweights. He was
dying, but he spent the time dreaming of going to the Italian lakes and
returning to Yalta by sea from Trieste, and was already making inquiries
about the steamers and the times they stopped at Odessa.
He died on the 2nd of July.
His body was taken to Moscow and buried in the Novodyevitchy
Monastery, beside his father’s tomb.

LETTERS

TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
TAGANROG, July 1, 1876.

DEAR BROTHER MISHA,

I got your letter when I was fearfully bored and was sitting at the gate
yawning, and so you can judge how welcome that immense letter was. Your
writing is good, and in the whole letter I have not found one mistake in
spelling. But one thing I don’t like: why do you style yourself “your
worthless and insignificant brother”? You recognize your insignificance? ...
Recognize it before God; perhaps, too, in the presence of beauty,
intelligence, nature, but not before men. Among men you must be conscious
of your dignity. Why, you are not a rascal, you are an honest man, aren’t
you? Well, respect yourself as an honest man and know that an honest man
is not something worthless. Don’t confound “being humble” with
“recognizing one’s worthlessness.” ...
It is a good thing that you read. Acquire the habit of doing so. In time you
will come to value that habit. Madame Beecher-Stowe has wrung tears from
your eyes? I read her once, and six months ago read her again with the
object of studying her—and after reading I had an unpleasant sensation
which mortals feel after eating too many raisins or currants.... Read “Don
Quixote.” It is a fine thing. It is by Cervantes, who is said to be almost on a
level with Shakespeare. I advise my brothers to read—if they haven’t
already done so—Turgenev’s “Hamlet and Don Quixote.” You won’t
understand it, my dear. If you want to read a book of travel that won’t bore
you, read Gontcharov’s “The Frigate Pallada.”
... I am going to bring with me a boarder who will pay twenty roubles a
month and live under our general supervision. Though even twenty roubles
is not enough if one considers the price of food in Moscow and mother’s
weakness for feeding boarders with righteous zeal. [Footnote: This letter
was written by Chekhov when he was in the fifth class of the Taganrog high
school.]

TO HIS COUSIN, MIHAIL CHEKHOV.
TAGANROG, May 10, 1877.
... If I send letters to my mother, care of you, please give them to her
when you are alone with her; there are things in life which one can confide
in one person only, whom one trusts. It is because of this that I write to my
mother without the knowledge of the others, for whom my secrets are quite
uninteresting, or, rather, unnecessary.... My second request is of more
importance. Please go on comforting my mother, who is both physically
and morally broken. She has found in you not merely a nephew but a great
deal more and better than a nephew. My mother’s character is such that the
moral support of others is a great help to her. It is a silly request, isn’t it?
But you will understand, especially as I have said “moral,” i.e., spiritual
support. There is no one in this wicked world dearer to us than our mother,
and so you will greatly oblige your humble servant by comforting his worn-
out and weary mother....

TO HIS UNCLE, M. G. CHEKHOV.
MOSCOW, 1885.
... I could not come to see you last summer because I took the place of a
district doctor friend of mine who went away for his holiday, but this year I
hope to travel and therefore to see you. Last December I had an attack of
spitting blood, and decided to take some money from the Literary Fund and
go abroad for my health. I am a little better now, but I still think that I shall
have to go away. And whenever I go abroad, or to the Crimea, or to the
Caucasus, I will go through Taganrog.
... I am sorry I cannot join you in being of service to my native
Taganrog.... I am sure that if my work had been there I should have been
calmer, more cheerful, in better health, but evidently it is my fate to remain
in Moscow. My home and my career are here. I have work of two sorts. As
a doctor I should have grown slack in Taganrog and forgotten my medicine,
but in Moscow a doctor has no time to go to the club and play cards. As a
writer I am no use except in Moscow or Petersburg.
My medical work is progressing little by little. I go on steadily treating
patients. Every day I have to spend more than a rouble on cabs. I have a lot
of friends and therefore many patients. Half of them I have to treat for
nothing, but the other half pay me three or five roubles a visit.... I need
hardly say I have not made a fortune yet, and it will be a long time before I
do, but I live tolerably and need nothing. So long as I am alive and well the
position of the family is secure. I have bought new furniture, hired a good
piano, keep two servants, give little evening parties with music and singing.
I have no debts and do not want to borrow. Till quite recently we used to
run an account at the butcher’s and grocer’s, but now I have stopped even
that, and we pay cash for everything. What will come later, there is no
knowing; as it is we have nothing to complain of....

TO N. A. LEIKIN.
MOSCOW, October, 1885.
... You advise me to go to Petersburg, and say that Petersburg is not
China. I know it is not, and as you are aware, I have long realized the
necessity of going there; but what am I to do? Owing to the fact that we are
a large family, I never have a ten-rouble note to spare, and to go there, even
if I did it in the most uncomfortable and beggarly way, would cost at least
fifty roubles. How am I to get the money? I can’t squeeze it out of my
family and don’t think I ought to. If I were to cut down our two courses at
dinner to one, I should begin to pine away from pangs of conscience....
Allah only knows how difficult it is for me to keep my balance, and how
easy it would be for me to slip and lose my equilibrium. I fancy that if next
month I should earn twenty or thirty roubles less, my balance would be
gone, and I should be in difficulties. I am awfully apprehensive about
money matters and, owing to this quite uncommercial cowardice in
pecuniary affairs, I avoid loans and payments on account. I am not difficult
to move. If I had money I should fly from one city to another endlessly.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, February 21, 1886.
... Thank you for the flattering things you say about my work and for
having published my story so soon. You can judge yourself how refreshing,
even inspiring, the kind attention of an experienced and gifted writer like
yourself has been to me.
I agree with what you say about the end of my story which you have cut
out; thank you for the helpful advice. I have been writing for the last six
years, but you are the first person who has taken the trouble to advise and
explain.
... I do not write very much—not more than two or three short stories
weekly.

TO D. V. GRIGOROVITCH.
MOSCOW, March 28, 1886.
Your letter, my kind, fervently beloved bringer of good tidings, struck me
like a flash of lightning. I almost burst into tears, I was overwhelmed, and
now I feel it has left a deep trace in my soul! May God show the same
tender kindness to you in your age as you have shown me in my youth! I
can find neither words nor deeds to thank you. You know with what eyes
ordinary people look at the elect such as you, and so you can judge what
your letter means for my self-esteem. It is better than any diploma, and for a
writer who is just beginning it is payment both for the present and the
future. I am almost dazed. I have no power to judge whether I deserve this
high reward. I only repeat that it has overwhelmed me.
If I have a gift which one ought to respect, I confess before the pure
candour of your heart that hitherto I have not respected it. I felt that I had a
gift, but I had got into the habit of thinking that it was insignificant. Purely
external causes are sufficient to make one unjust to oneself, suspicious, and
morbidly sensitive. And as I realize now I have always had plenty of such
causes. All my friends and relatives have always taken a condescending
tone to my writing, and never ceased urging me in a friendly way not to
give up real work for the sake of scribbling. I have hundreds of friends in
Moscow, and among them a dozen or two writers, but I cannot recall a
single one who reads me or considers me an artist. In Moscow there is a so-
called Literary Circle: talented people and mediocrities of all ages and
colours gather once a week in a private room of a restaurant and exercise
their tongues. If I went there and read them a single passage of your letter,
they would laugh in my face. In the course of the five years that I have been
knocking about from one newspaper office to another I have had time to
assimilate the general view of my literary insignificance. I soon got used to
looking down upon my work, and so it has gone from bad to worse. That is
the first reason. The second is that I am a doctor, and am up to my ears in
medical work, so that the proverb about trying to catch two hares has given
to no one more sleepless nights than me.

I am writing all this to you in order to excuse this grievous sin a little
before you. Hitherto my attitude to my literary work has been frivolous,
heedless, casual. I don’t remember a single story over which I have spent
more than twenty-four hours, and “The Huntsman,” which you liked, I
wrote in the bathing-shed! I wrote my stories as reporters write their notes
about fires, mechanically, half-unconsciously, taking no thought of the
reader or myself.... I wrote and did all I could not to waste upon the story
the scenes and images dear to me which—God knows why—I have
treasured and kept carefully hidden.
The first impulse to self-criticism was given me by a very kind and, to
the best of my belief, sincere letter from Suvorin. I began to think of writing
something decent, but I still had no faith in my being any good as a writer.
And then, unexpected and undreamed of, came your letter. Forgive the
comparison: it had on me the effect of a Governor’s order to clear out of the
town within twenty-four hours—i.e., I suddenly felt an imperative need to
hurry, to make haste and get out of where I have stuck....
I agree with you in everything. When I saw “The Witch” in print I felt
myself the cynicism of the points to which you call my attention. They
would not have been there had I written this story in three or four days
instead of in one.
I shall put an end to working against time, but cannot do so just yet.... It
is impossible to get out of the rut I have got into. I have nothing against
going hungry, as I have done in the past, but it is not a question of myself....
I give to literature my spare time, two or three hours a day and a bit of the
night, that is, time which is of no use except for short things. In the summer,
when I have more time and have fewer expenses, I will start on some
serious work.
I cannot put my real name on the book because it is too late: the design
for the cover is ready and the book printed. [Footnote: “Motley Tales” is
meant.] Many of my Petersburg friends advised me, even before you did,
not to spoil the book by a pseudonym, but I did not listen to them, probably
out of vanity. I dislike my book very much. It’s a hotch-potch, a disorderly
medley of the poor stuff I wrote as a student, plucked by the censor and by
the editors of comic papers. I am sure that many people will be
disappointed when they read it. Had I known that I had readers and that you
were watching me, I would not have published this book.

I rest all my hopes on the future. I am only twenty-six. Perhaps I shall
succeed in doing something, though time flies fast.
Forgive my long letter and do not blame a man because, for the first time
in his life, he has made bold to treat himself to the pleasure of writing to
Grigorovitch.
Send me your photograph, if possible. I am so overwhelmed with your
kindness that I feel as though I should like to write a whole ream to you.
God grant you health and happiness, and believe in the sincerity of your
deeply respectful and grateful

A. CHEKHOV.

TO N. A. LEIKIN.
MOSCOW, April 6, 1886.
... I am ill. Spitting of blood and weakness. I am not writing anything....
If I don’t sit down to write to-morrow, you must forgive me—I shall not
send you a story for the Easter number. I ought to go to the South but I have
no money.... I am afraid to submit myself to be sounded by my colleagues. I
am inclined to think it is not so much my lungs as my throat that is at
fault.... I have no fever.

TO MADAME M. V. KISELYOV.
BABKINO, June, 1886.
LOVE UNRIPPLED [Footnote: Parody of a feminine novel.]
(A NOVEL) Part I.
It was noon.... The setting sun with its crimson, fiery rays gilded the tops
of pines, oaks, and fir-trees.... It was still; only in the air the birds were
singing, and in the distance a hungry wolf howled mournfully.... The driver
turned round and said:
“More snow has fallen, sir.”
“What?”
“I say, more snow has fallen.”
“Ah!”
Vladimir Sergeitch Tabatchin, who is the hero of our story, looked for the
last time at the sun and expired.

A week passed.... Birds and corncrakes hovered, whistling, over a newly-
made grave. The sun was shining. A young widow, bathed in tears, was
standing by, and in her grief sopping her whole handkerchief....

MOSCOW,
September 21, 1886.
... It is not much fun to be a great writer. To begin with, it’s a dreary life.
Work from morning till night and not much to show for it. Money is as
scarce as cats’ tears. I don’t know how it is with Zola and Shtchedrin, but in
my flat it is cold and smoky.... They give me cigarettes, as before, on
holidays only. Impossible cigarettes! Hard, damp, sausage-like. Before I
begin to smoke I light the lamp, dry the cigarette over it, and only then I
begin on it; the lamp smokes, the cigarette splutters and turns brown, I burn
my fingers ... it is enough to make one shoot oneself!
... I am more or less ill, and am gradually turning into a dried dragon-fly.
... I go about as festive as though it were my birthday, but to judge from
the critical glances of the lady cashier at the Budilnik, I am not dressed in
the height of fashion, and my clothes are not brand-new. I go in buses, not
in cabs.
But being a writer has its good points. In the first place, my book, I hear,
is going rather well; secondly, in October I shall have money; thirdly, I am
beginning to reap laurels: at the refreshment bars people point at me with
their fingers, they pay me little attentions and treat me to sandwiches. Korsh
caught me in his theatre and straight away presented me with a free pass....
My medical colleagues sigh when they meet me, begin to talk of literature
and assure me that they are sick of medicine. And so on....

September 29.
... Life is grey, there are no happy people to be seen.... Life is a nasty
business for everyone. When I am serious I begin to think that people who
have an aversion for death are illogical. So far as I understand the order of
things, life consists of nothing but horrors, squabbles, and trivialities mixed
together or alternating!

December 3.
This morning an individual sent by Prince Urusov turned up and asked
me for a short story for a sporting magazine edited by the said Prince. I
refused, of course, as I now refuse all who come with supplications to the
foot of my pedestal. In Russia there are now two unattainable heights:
Mount Elborus and myself.
The Prince’s envoy was deeply disappointed by my refusal, nearly died
of grief, and finally begged me to recommend him some writers who are
versed in sport. I thought a little, and very opportunely remembered a lady
writer who dreams of glory and has for the last year been ill with envy of
my literary fame. In short, I gave him your address.... You might write a
story “The Wounded Doe”—you remember, how the huntsmen wound a
doe; she looks at them with human eyes, and no one can bring himself to
kill her. It’s not a bad subject, but dangerous because it is difficult to avoid
sentimentality—you must write it like a report, without pathetic phrases,
and begin like this: “On such and such a date the huntsmen in the
Daraganov forest wounded a young doe....” And if you drop a tear you will
strip the subject of its severity and of everything worth attention in it.

December 13.
... With your permission I steal out of your last two letters to my sister
two descriptions of nature for my stories. It is curious that you have quite a
masculine way of writing. In every line (except when dealing with children)
you are a man! This, of course, ought to flatter your vanity, for speaking
generally, men are a thousand times better than women, and superior to
them.
In Petersburg I was resting—i.e., for days together I was rushing about
town paying calls and listening to compliments which my soul abhors. Alas
and alack! In Petersburg I am becoming fashionable like Nana. While
Korolenko, who is serious, is hardly known to the editors, my twaddle is
being read by all Petersburg. Even the senator G. reads me.... It is
gratifying, but my literary feeling is wounded. I feel ashamed of the public
which runs after lap-dogs simply because it fails to notice elephants, and I
am deeply convinced that not a soul will know me when I begin to work in
earnest.

TO HIS BROTHER NIKOLAY.
MOSCOW, 1886.
... You have often complained to me that people “don’t understand you”!
Goethe and Newton did not complain of that.... Only Christ complained of
it, but He was speaking of His doctrine and not of Himself.... People
understand you perfectly well. And if you do not understand yourself, it is
not their fault.
I assure you as a brother and as a friend I understand you and feel for you
with all my heart. I know your good qualities as I know my five fingers; I
value and deeply respect them. If you like, to prove that I understand you, I
can enumerate those qualities. I think you are kind to the point of softness,
magnanimous, unselfish, ready to share your last farthing; you have no
envy nor hatred; you are simple-hearted, you pity men and beasts; you are
trustful, without spite or guile, and do not remember evil.... You have a gift
from above such as other people have not: you have talent. This talent
places you above millions of men, for on earth only one out of two millions
is an artist. Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even
then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.
You have only one failing, and the falseness of your position, and your
unhappiness and your catarrh of the bowels are all due to it. That is your
utter lack of culture. Forgive me, please, but veritas magis amicitiae.... You
see, life has its conditions. In order to feel comfortable among educated
people, to be at home and happy with them, one must be cultured to a
certain extent. Talent has brought you into such a circle, you belong to it,
but ... you are drawn away from it, and you vacillate between cultured
people and the lodgers vis-a-vis.
Cultured people must, in my opinion, satisfy the following conditions:
1. They respect human personality, and therefore they are always kind,
gentle, polite, and ready to give in to others. They do not make a row
because of a hammer or a lost piece of india-rubber; if they live with
anyone they do not regard it as a favour and, going away, they do not say

“nobody can live with you.” They forgive noise and cold and dried-up meat
and witticisms and the presence of strangers in their homes.
2. They have sympathy not for beggars and cats alone. Their heart aches
for what the eye does not see.... They sit up at night in order to help P...., to
pay for brothers at the University, and to buy clothes for their mother.
3. They respect the property of others, and therefor pay their debts.
4. They are sincere, and dread lying like fire. They don’t lie even in small
things. A lie is insulting to the listener and puts him in a lower position in
the eyes of the speaker. They do not pose, they behave in the street as they
do at home, they do not show off before their humbler comrades. They are
not given to babbling and forcing their uninvited confidences on others. Out
of respect for other people’s ears they more often keep silent than talk.
5. They do not disparage themselves to rouse compassion. They do not
play on the strings of other people’s hearts so that they may sigh and make
much of them. They do not say “I am misunderstood,” or “I have become
second-rate,” because all this is striving after cheap effect, is vulgar, stale,
false....
6. They have no shallow vanity. They do not care for such false diamonds
as knowing celebrities, shaking hands with the drunken P., [Translator’s
Note: Probably Palmin, a minor poet.] listening to the raptures of a stray
spectator in a picture show, being renowned in the taverns.... If they do a
pennyworth they do not strut about as though they had done a hundred
roubles’ worth, and do not brag of having the entry where others are not
admitted.... The truly talented always keep in obscurity among the crowd, as
far as possible from advertisement.... Even Krylov has said that an empty
barrel echoes more loudly than a full one.
7. If they have a talent they respect it. They sacrifice to it rest, women,
wine, vanity.... They are proud of their talent.... Besides, they are fastidious.
8. They develop the aesthetic feeling in themselves. They cannot go to
sleep in their clothes, see cracks full of bugs on the walls, breathe bad air,
walk on a floor that has been spat upon, cook their meals over an oil stove.
They seek as far as possible to restrain and ennoble the sexual instinct....
What they want in a woman is not a bed-fellow ... They do not ask for the
cleverness which shows itself in continual lying. They want especially, if
they are artists, freshness, elegance, humanity, the capacity for
motherhood.... They do not swill vodka at all hours of the day and night, do

not sniff at cupboards, for they are not pigs and know they are not. They
drink only when they are free, on occasion.... For they want mens sana in
corpore sano.
And so on. This is what cultured people are like. In order to be cultured
and not to stand below the level of your surroundings it is not enough to
have read “The Pickwick Papers” and learnt a monologue from “Faust.” ...
What is needed is constant work, day and night, constant reading, study,
will.... Every hour is precious for it.... Come to us, smash the vodka bottle,
lie down and read.... Turgenev, if you like, whom you have not read.
You must drop your vanity, you are not a child ... you will soon be thirty.
It is time!
I expect you.... We all expect you.

TO MADAME M. V. KISELYOV.
MOSCOW, January 14, 1887.
... Even your praise of “On the Road” has not softened my anger as an
author, and I hasten to avenge myself for “Mire.” Be on your guard, and
catch hold of the back of a chair that you may not faint. Well, I begin.
One meets every critical article with a silent bow even if it is abusive and
unjust—such is the literary etiquette. It is not the thing to answer, and all
who do answer are justly blamed for excessive vanity. But since your
criticism has the nature of “an evening conversation on the steps of the
Babkino lodge” ... and as, without touching on the literary aspects of the
story, it raises general questions of principle, I shall not be sinning against
the etiquette if I allow myself to continue our conversation.
In the first place, I, like you, do not like literature of the kind we are
discussing. As a reader and “a private resident” I am glad to avoid it, but if
you ask my honest and sincere opinion about it, I shall say that it is still an
open question whether it has a right to exist, and no one has yet settled it....
Neither you nor I, nor all the critics in the world, have any trustworthy data
that would give them the right to reject such literature. I do not know which
are right: Homer, Shakespeare, Lopez da Vega, and, speaking generally, the
ancients who were not afraid to rummage in the “muck heap,” but were
morally far more stable than we are, or the modern writers, priggish on
paper but coldly cynical in their souls and in life. I do not know which has
bad taste—the Greeks who were not ashamed to describe love as it really is
in beautiful nature, or the readers of Gaboriau, Marlitz, Pierre Bobo.
[Footnote: P. D. Boborykin.] Like the problems of non-resistance to evil, of
free will, etc., this question can only be settled in the future. We can only
refer to it, but are not competent to decide it. Reference to Turgenev and
Tolstoy—who avoided the “muck heap”—does not throw light on the
question. Their fastidiousness does not prove anything; why, before them
there was a generation of writers who regarded as dirty not only accounts of
“the dregs and scum,” but even descriptions of peasants and of officials
below the rank of titular councillor. Besides, one period, however brilliant,
does not entitle us to draw conclusions in favour of this or that literary

tendency. Reference to the demoralizing effects of the literary tendency we
are discussing does not decide the question either. Everything in this world
is relative and approximate. There are people who can be demoralized even
by children’s books, and who read with particular pleasure the piquant
passages in the Psalms and in Solomon’s Proverbs, while there are others
who become only the purer from closer knowledge of the filthy side of life.
Political and social writers, lawyers, and doctors who are initiated into all
the mysteries of human sinfulness are not reputed to be immoral; realistic
writers are often more moral than archimandrites. And, finally, no literature
can outdo real life in its cynicism, a wineglassful won’t make a man drunk
when he has already emptied a barrel.
2. That the world swarms with “dregs and scum” is perfectly true. Human
nature is imperfect, and it would therefore be strange to see none but
righteous ones on earth. But to think that the duty of literature is to unearth
the pearl from the refuse heap means to reject literature itself. “Artistic”
literature is only “art” in so far as it paints life as it really is. Its vocation is
to be absolutely true and honest. To narrow down its function to the
particular task of finding “pearls” is as deadly for it as it would be to make
Levitan draw a tree without including the dirty bark and the yellow leaves. I
agree that “pearls” are a good thing, but then a writer is not a confectioner,
not a provider of cosmetics, not an entertainer; he is a man bound, under
contract, by his sense of duty and his conscience; having put his hand to the
plough he mustn’t turn back, and, however distasteful, he must conquer his
squeamishness and soil his imagination with the dirt of life. He is just like
any ordinary reporter. What would you say if a newspaper correspondent
out of a feeling of fastidiousness or from a wish to please his readers would
describe only honest mayors, high-minded ladies, and virtuous railway
contractors?
To a chemist nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as
a chemist, he must lay aside his personal subjective standpoint and must
understand that muck heaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and
that the evil passions are as inherent in life as the good ones.
3. Writers are the children of their age, and therefore, like everybody
else, must submit to the external conditions of the life of the community.
Thus, they must be perfectly decent. This is the only thing we have a right

to ask of realistic writers. But you say nothing against the form and
executions of “Mire.” ... And so I suppose I have been decent.
4. I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write. This is
due to habit and the brevity of my work. And so when I express this or that
opinion about literature, I do not take myself into account.
5. You write: “If I were the editor I would have returned this feuilleton to
you for your own good.” Why not go further? Why not muzzle the editors
themselves who publish such stories? Why not send a reprimand to the
Headquarters of the Press Department for not suppressing immoral
newspapers?
The fate of literature would be sad indeed if it were at the mercy of
individual views. That is the first thing. Secondly, there is no police which
could consider itself competent in literary matters. I agree that one can’t
dispense with the reins and the whip altogether, for knaves find their way
even into literature, but no thinking will discover a better police for
literature than the critics and the author’s own conscience. People have been
trying to discover such a police since the creation of the world, but they
have found nothing better.
Here you would like me to lose one hundred and fifteen roubles and be
put to shame by the editor; others, your father among them, are delighted
with the story. Some send insulting letters to Suvorin, pouring abuse on the
paper and on me, etc. Who, then, is right? Who is the true judge?
6. Further you write, “Leave such writing to spiritless and unlucky
scribblers such as Okrects, Pince-Nez, [Footnote: The pseudonym of
Madame Kisselyov.] or Aloe.” [Footnote: The pseudonym of Chekhov’s
brother Alexandr.]
Allah forgive you if you were sincere when you wrote those words! A
condescending and contemptuous tone towards humble people simply
because they are humble does no credit to the heart. In literature the lower
ranks are as necessary as in the army—this is what the head says, and the
heart ought to say still more.
Ough! I have wearied you with my drawn-out reflections. Had I known
my criticism would turn out so long I would not have written it. Please
forgive me! ...

You have read my “On the Road.” Well, how do you like my courage? I
write of “intellectual” subjects and am not afraid. In Petersburg I excite a
regular furore. A short time ago I discoursed upon non-resistance to evil,
and also surprised the public. On New Year’s Day all the papers presented
me with a compliment, and in the December number of the Russkoye
Bogatstvo, in which Tolstoy writes, there is an article thirty-two pages long
by Obolensky entitled “Chekhov and Korolenko.” The fellow goes into
raptures over me and proves that I am more of an artist than Korolenko. He
is probably talking rot, but, anyway, I am beginning to be conscious of one
merit of mine: I am the only writer who, without ever publishing anything
in the thick monthlies, has merely on the strength of writing newspaper
rubbish won the attention of the lop-eared critics—there has been no
instance of this before.... At the end of 1886 I felt as though I were a bone
thrown to the dogs.
... I have written a play [Footnote: “Calchas,” later called “Swansong.”]
on four sheets of paper. It will take fifteen to twenty minutes to act.... It is
much better to write small things than big ones: they are unpretentious and
successful.... What more would you have? I wrote my play in an hour and
five minutes. I began another, but have not finished it, for I have no time.

TO HIS UNCLE, M. G. CHEKHOV.
MOSCOW, January 18, 1887.
... During the holidays I was so overwhelmed with work that on Mother’s
name-day I was almost dropping with exhaustion.
I must tell you that in Petersburg I am now the most fashionable writer.
One can see that from papers and magazines, which at the end of 1886 were
taken up with me, bandied my name about, and praised me beyond my
deserts. The result of this growth of my literary reputation is that I get a
number of orders and invitations—and this is followed by work at high
pressure and exhaustion. My work is nervous, disturbing, and involving
strain. It is public and responsible, which makes it doubly hard. Every
newspaper report about me agitates both me and my family.... My stories
are read at public recitations, wherever I go people point at me, I am
overwhelmed with acquaintances, and so on, and so on. I have not a day of
peace, and feel as though I were on thorns every moment.
... Volodya [Translator’s Note: He had apparently criticized the name
Vladimir, which means “lord of the world.”] is right.... It is true that a man
cannot possess the world, but a man can be called “the lord of the world.”
Tell Volodya that out of gratitude, reverence, or admiration of the virtues of
the best men—those qualities which make a man exceptional and akin to
the Deity—peoples and historians have a right to call their elect as they
like, without being afraid of insulting God’s greatness or of raising a man to
God. The fact is we exalt, not a man as such, but his good qualities, just that
divine principle which he has succeeded in developing in himself to a high
degree. Thus remarkable kings are called “great,” though bodily they may
not be taller than I. I. Loboda; the Pope is called “Holiness,” the patriarch
used to be called “Ecumenical,” although he was not in relations with any
planet but the earth; Prince Vladimir was called “the lord of the world,”
though he ruled only a small strip of ground, princes are called “serene” and
“illustrious,” though a Swedish match is a thousand times brighter than they
are—and so on. In using these expressions we do not lie or exaggerate, but
simply express our delight, just as a mother does not lie when she calls her
child “my golden one.” It is the feeling of beauty that speaks in us, and

beauty cannot endure what is commonplace and trivial; it induces us to
make comparisons which Volodya may, with his intellect, pull to pieces, but
which he will understand with his heart. For instance, it is usual to compare
black eyes with the night, blue with the azure of the sky, curls with waves,
etc., and even the Bible likes these comparisons; for instance, “Thy womb
is more spacious than heaven,” or “The Sun of righteousness arises,” “The
rock of faith,” etc. The feeling of beauty in man knows no limits or bounds.
This is why a Russian prince may be called “the lord of the world”; and my
friend Volodya may have the same name, for names are given to people, not
for their merits, but in honour and commemoration of remarkable men of
the past.... If your young scholar does not agree with me, I have one more
argument which will be sure to appeal to him: in exalting people even to
God we do not sin against love, but, on the contrary, we express it. One
must not humiliate people—that is the chief thing. Better say to man “My
angel” than hurl “Fool” at his head—though men are more like fools than
they are like angels.

TO HIS SISTER.
TAGANROG, April 2, 1887.
The journey from Moscow to Serpuhov was dull. My fellow-travellers
were practical persons of strong character who did nothing but talk of the
prices of flour....
... At twelve o’clock we were at Kursk. An hour of waiting, a glass of
vodka, a tidy-up and a wash, and cabbage soup. Change to another train.
The carriage was crammed full. Immediately after Kursk I made friends
with my neighbours: a landowner from Harkov, as jocose as Sasha K.; a
lady who had just had an operation in Petersburg; a police captain; an
officer from Little Russia; and a general in military uniform. We settled
social questions. The general’s arguments were sound, short, and liberal; the
police captain was the type of an old battered sinner of an hussar yearning
for amorous adventures. He had the affectations of a governor: he opened
his mouth long before he began to speak, and having said a word he gave a
long growl like a dog, “er-r-r.” The lady was injecting morphia, and sent the
men to fetch her ice at the stations.
At Belgrade I had cabbage soup. We got to Harkov at nine o’clock. A
touching parting from the police captain, the general and the others.... I
woke up at Slavyansk and sent you a postcard. A new lot of passengers got
in: a landowner and a railway inspector. We talked of railways. The
inspector told us how the Sevastopol railway stole three hundred carriages
from the Azov line and painted them its own colour. [Footnote: See the
story “Cold Blood.”]
... Twelve o’clock. Lovely weather. There is a scent of the steppe and one
hears the birds sing. I see my old friends the ravens flying over the steppe.
The barrows, the water-towers, the buildings—everything is familiar and
well-remembered. At the station I have a helping of remarkably good and
rich sorrel soup. Then I walk along the platform. Young ladies. At an upper
window at the far end of the station sits a young girl (or a married lady,
goodness knows which) in a white blouse, beautiful and languid. [Footnote:
See the story “Two Beauties.”] I look at her, she looks at me.... I put on my

glasses, she does the same.... Oh, lovely vision! I caught a catarrh of the
heart and continued my journey. The weather is devilishly, revoltingly fine.
Little Russians, oxen, ravens, white huts, rivers, the line of the Donets
railway with one telegraph wire, daughters of landowners and farmers, red
dogs, the trees—it all flits by like a dream.... It is hot. The inspector begins
to bore me. The rissoles and pies, half of which I have not got through,
begin to smell bitter.... I shove them under somebody else’s seat, together
with the remains of the vodka.
... I arrive at Taganrog.... It gives one the impression of Herculaneum and
Pompeii; there are no people, and instead of mummies there are sleepy
drishpaks [Footnote: Uneducated young men in the jargon of Taganrog.]
and melon-shaped heads. All the houses look flattened out, and as though
they had long needed replastering, the roofs want painting, the shutters are
closed....
At eight o’clock in the evening my uncle, his family, Irina, the dogs, the
rats that live in the storeroom, the rabbits were fast asleep. There was
nothing for it but to go to bed too. I sleep on the drawing-room sofa. The
sofa has not increased in length, and is as short as it was before, and so
when I go to bed I have either to stick up my legs in an unseemly way or to
let them hang down to the floor. I think of Procrustes and his bed....

April 6.
I wake up at five. The sky is grey. There is a cold, unpleasant wind that
reminds one of Moscow. It is dull. I wait for the church bells and go to late
Mass. In the cathedral it is all very charming, decorous, and not boring. The
choir sings well, not at all in a plebeian style, and the congregation entirely
consists of young ladies in olive-green dresses and chocolate-coloured
jackets....

April 8, 9, and 10.
Frightfully dull. It is cold and grey.... During all my stay in Taganrog I
could only do justice to the following things: remarkably good ring rolls
sold at the market, the Santurninsky wine, fresh caviare, excellent crabs and
uncle’s genuine hospitality. Everything else is poor and not to be envied.
The young ladies here are not bad, but it takes some time to get used to
them. They are abrupt in their movements, frivolous in their attitude to men,
run away from their parents with actors, laugh loudly, easily fall in love,
whistle to dogs, drink wine, etc....
On Saturday I continued my journey. At the Moskaya station the air is
lovely and fresh, caviare is seventy kopecks a pound. At Rostdov I had two
hours to wait, at Taganrog twenty. I spent the night at an acquaintance’s.
The devil only knows what I haven’t spent a night on: on beds with bugs,
on sofas, settees, boxes. Last night I spent in a long and narrow parlour on a
sofa under a looking-glass....

April 25.
... Yesterday was the wedding—a real Cossack wedding with music,
feminine bleating, and revolting drunkenness.... The bride is sixteen. They
were married in the cathedral. I acted as best man, and was dressed in
somebody else’s evening suit with fearfully wide trousers, and not a single
stud on my shirt. In Moscow such a best man would have been kicked out,
but here I looked smarter than anyone.
I saw many rich and eligible young ladies. The choice is enormous, but I
was so drunk all the time that I took bottles for young ladies and young
ladies for bottles. Probably owing to my drunken condition the local ladies
found me witty and satirical! The young ladies here are regular sheep, if one
gets up from her place and walks out of the room all the others follow her.
One of them, the boldest and the most brainy, wishing to show that she is
not a stranger to social polish and subtlety, kept slapping me on the hand
and saying, “Oh, you wretch!” though her face still retained its scared
expression. I taught her to say to her partners, “How naive you are!”
The bride and bridegroom, probably because of the local custom of
kissing every minute, kissed with such gusto that their lips made a loud
smack, and it gave me a taste of sugary raisins in my mouth and a spasm in
my left calf. The inflammation of the vein in my left leg got worse through
their kisses.
... At Zvyerevo I shall have to wait from nine in the evening till five in
the morning. Last time I spent the night there in a second-class railway-
carriage on the siding. I went out of the carriage in the night and outside I
found veritable marvels: the moon, the limitless steppe, the barrows, the
wilderness; deathly stillness, and the carriages and the railway lines sharply
standing out from the dusk. It seemed as though the world were dead.... It
was a picture one would not forget for ages and ages.

RAGOZINA BALKA,
April 30, 1887.
It is April 30. The evening is warm. There are storm-clouds about, and so
one cannot see a thing. The air is close and there is a smell of grass.
I am staying in the Ragozina Balka at K.‘s. There is a small house with a
thatched roof, and barns made of flat stone. There are three rooms, with
earthen floors, crooked ceilings, and windows that lift up and down instead
of opening outwards.... The walls are covered with rifles, pistols, sabres and
whips. The chest of drawers and the window-sills are littered with
cartridges, instruments for mending rifles, tins of gunpowder, and bags of
shot. The furniture is lame and the veneer is coming off it. I have to sleep
on a consumptive sofa, very hard, and not upholstered ... Ash-trays and all
such luxuries are not to be found within a radius of ten versts.... The first
necessaries are conspicuous by their absence, and one has in all weathers to
slip out to the ravine, and one is warned to make sure there is not a viper or
some other creature under the bushes.
The population consists of old K., his wife, Pyotr, a Cossack officer with
broad red stripes on his trousers, Alyosha, Hahko (that is, Alexandr), Zoika,
Ninka, the shepherd Nikita and the cook Akulina. There are immense
numbers of dogs who are furiously spiteful and don’t let anyone pass them
by day or by night. I have to go about under escort, or there will be one
writer less in Russia.... The most cursed of the dogs is Muhtar, an old cur on
whose face dirty tow hangs instead of wool. He hates me and rushes at me
with a roar every time I go out of the house.
Now about food. In the morning there is tea, eggs, ham and bacon fat. At
midday, soup with goose, roast goose with pickled sloes, or a turkey, roast
chicken, milk pudding, and sour milk. No vodka or pepper allowed. At five
o’clock they make on a camp fire in the wood a porridge of millet and
bacon fat. In the evening there is tea, ham, and all that has been left over
from dinner.
The entertainments are: shooting bustards, making bonfires, going to
Ivanovka, shooting at a mark, setting the dogs at one another, preparing

gunpowder paste for fireworks, talking politics, building turrets of stone,
etc.
The chief occupation is scientific farming, introduced by the youthful
Cossack, who bought five roubles’ worth of works on agriculture. The most
important part of this farming consists of wholesale slaughter, which does
not cease for a single moment in the day. They kill sparrows, swallows,
bumblebees, ants, magpies, crows—to prevent them eating bees; to prevent
the bees from spoiling the blossom on the fruit-trees they kill bees, and to
prevent the fruit-trees from exhausting the ground they cut down the fruit-
trees. One gets thus a regular circle which, though somewhat original, is
based on the latest data of science.
We retire at nine in the evening. Sleep is disturbed, for Belonozhkas and
Muhtars howl in the yard and Tseter furiously barks in answer to them from
under my sofa. I am awakened by shooting: my hosts shoot with rifles from
the windows at some animal which does damage to their crops. To leave the
house at night one has to call the Cossack, for otherwise the dogs would
tear one to bits.
The weather is fine. The grass is tall and in blossom. I watch bees and
men among whom I feel myself something like a Mikluha-Maklay. Last
night there was a beautiful thunderstorm.
... The coal mines are not far off. To-morrow morning early I am going
on a one-horse droshky to Ivanovka (twenty-three versts) to fetch my letters
from the post.
... We eat turkeys’ eggs. Turkeys lay eggs in the wood on last year’s
leaves. They kill hens, geese, pigs, etc., by shooting here. The shooting is
incessant.

TAGANROG,
May 11.
... From K.‘s I went to the Holy Mountains.... I came to Slavyansk on a
dark evening. The cabmen refuse to take me to the Holy Mountains at night,
and advise me to spend the night at Slavyansk, which I did very willingly,
for I felt broken and lame with pain.... The town is something like Gogol’s
Mirgorod; there is a hairdresser and a watchmaker, so that one may hope
that in another thousand years there will be a telephone. The walls and
fences are pasted with the advertisements of a menagerie.... On green and
dusty streets walk pigs, cows, and other domestic creatures. The houses
look cordial and friendly, rather like kindly grandmothers; the pavements
are soft, the streets are wide, there is a smell of lilac and acacia in the air;
from the distance come the singing of a nightingale, the croaking of frogs,
barking, and sounds of a harmonium, of a woman screeching.... I stopped in
Kulikov’s hotel, where I took a room for seventy-five kopecks. After
sleeping on wooden sofas and washtubs it was a voluptuous sight to see a
bed with a mattress, a washstand.... Fragrant breezes came in at the wide-
open window and green branches thrust themselves in. It was a glorious
morning. It was a holiday (May 6th) and the bells were ringing in the
cathedral. People were coming out from mass. I saw police officers, justices
of the peace, military superintendents, and other principalities and powers
come out of the church. I bought two kopecks’ worth of sunflower seeds,
and hired for six roubles a carriage on springs to take me to the Holy
Mountains and back (in two days’ time). I drove out of the town through
little streets literally drowned in the green of cherry, apricot, and apple
trees. The birds sang unceasingly. Little Russians whom I met took off their
caps, taking me probably for Turgenev; my driver jumped every minute off
the box to put the harness to rights, or to crack his whip at the boys who ran
after the carriage.... There were strings of pilgrims along the road. On all
sides there were white hills, big and small. The horizon was bluish-white,
the rye was tall, oak copses were met with here and there—the only things
lacking were crocodiles and rattlesnakes.

I came to the Holy Mountains at twelve o’clock. It is a remarkably
beautiful and unique place. The monastery stands on the bank of the river
Donets at the foot of a huge white rock covered with gardens, oaks, and
ancient pines crowded together and over-hanging, one above another. It
seems as if the trees had not enough room on the rock, and as if some force
were driving them upwards.... The pines literally hang in the air and look as
though they might fall any minute. Cuckoos and nightingales sing night and
day.
The monks, very pleasant people, gave me a very unpleasant room with a
pancake-like mattress. I spent two nights at the monastery and gathered a
mass of impressions. While I was there some fifteen thousand pilgrims
assembled because of St. Nicolas’ Day; eight-ninths of them were old
women. I did not know before that there were so many old women in the
world; had I known, I would have shot myself long ago. About the monks,
my acquaintance with them and how I gave medical advice to the monks
and the old women, I will write to the Novoye Vremya and tell you when we
meet. The services are endless: at midnight they ring for matins, at five for
early mass, at nine for late mass, at three for the song of praise, at five for
vespers, at six for the special prayers. Before every service one hears in the
corridors the weeping sound of a bell, and a monk runs along crying in the
voice of a creditor who implores his debtor to pay him at least five kopecks
for a rouble:
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy upon us! Please come to matins!”
It is awkward to stay in one’s room, and so one gets up and goes out. I
have chosen a spot on the bank of the Donets, where I sit during all the
services.
I have bought an ikon for Auntie. [Translator’s Note: His mother’s sister.]
The food is provided gratis by the monastery for all the fifteen thousand:
cabbage soup with dried fresh-water fish and porridge. Both are good, and
so is the rye bread.
The church bells are wonderful. The choir is not up to much. I took part
in a religious procession on boats.

TO V. G. KOROLENKO.
MOSCOW, October 17, 1887.
... I am extremely glad to have met you. I say it sincerely and with all my
heart. In the first place, I deeply value and love your talent; it is dear to me
for many reasons. In the second, it seems to me that if you and I live in this
world another ten or twenty years we shall be bound to find points of
contact. Of all the Russians now successfully writing I am the lightest and
most frivolous; I am looked upon doubtfully; to speak the language of the
poets, I have loved my pure Muse but I have not respected her; I have been
unfaithful to her and often took her to places that were not fit for her to go
to. But you are serious, strong, and faithful. The difference between us is
great, as you see, but nevertheless when I read you, and now when I have
met you, I think that we have something in common. I don’t know if I am
right, but I like to think it.

TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
MOSCOW, November 20, 1887.
Well, the first performance [Translator’s Note: “Ivanov.”] is over. I will
tell you all about it in detail. To begin with, Korsh promised me ten
rehearsals, but gave me only four, of which only two could be called
rehearsals, for the other two were tournaments in which messieurs les
artistes exercised themselves in altercation and abuse. Davydov and Glama
were the only two who knew their parts; the others trusted to the prompter
and their own inner conviction.
Act One.—I am behind the stage in a small box that looks like a prison
cell. My family is in a box of the benoire and is trembling. Contrary to my
expectations, I am cool and am conscious of no agitation. The actors are
nervous and excited, and cross themselves. The curtain goes up ... the actor
whose benefit night it is comes on. His uncertainty, the way that he forgets
his part, and the wreath that is presented to him make the play
unrecognizable to me from the first sentences. Kiselevsky, of whom I had
great hopes, did not deliver a single phrase correctly—literally not a single
one. He said things of his own composition. In spite of this and of the stage
manager’s blunders, the first act was a great success. There were many
calls.
Act Two.—A lot of people on the stage. Visitors. They don’t know their
parts, make mistakes, talk nonsense. Every word cuts me like a knife in my
back. But—o Muse!—this act, too, was a success. There were calls for all
the actors, and I was called before the curtain twice. Congratulations and
success.
Act Three.—The acting is not bad. Enormous success. I had to come
before the curtain three times, and as I did so Davydov was shaking my
hand, and Glama, like Manilov, was pressing my other hand to her heart.
The triumph of talent and virtue.
Act Four, Scene One.—It does not go badly. Calls before the curtain
again. Then a long, wearisome interval. The audience, not used to leaving
their seats and going to the refreshment bar between two scenes, murmur.

The curtain goes up. Fine: through the arch one can see the supper table (the
wedding). The band plays flourishes. The groomsmen come out: they are
drunk, and so you see they think they must behave like clowns and cut
capers. The horseplay and pot-house atmosphere reduce me to despair. Then
Kiselevsky comes out: it is a poetical, moving passage, but my Kiselevsky
does not know his part, is drunk as a cobbler, and a short poetical dialogue
is transformed into something tedious and disgusting: the public is
perplexed. At the end of the play the hero dies because he cannot get over
the insult he has received. The audience, grown cold and tired, does not
understand this death (the actors insisted on it; I have another version).
There are calls for the actors and for me. During one of the calls I hear
sounds of open hissing, drowned by the clapping and stamping.
On the whole I feel tired and annoyed. It was sickening though the play
had considerable success....
Theatre-goers say that they had never seen such a ferment in a theatre,
such universal clapping and hissing, nor heard such discussions among the
audience as they saw and heard at my play. And it has never happened
before at Korsh’s that the author has been called after the second act.

November 24.
... It has all subsided at last, and I sit as before at my writing-table and
compose stories with untroubled spirit. You can’t think what it was like! ... I
have already told you that at the first performance there was such
excitement in the audience and on the stage as the prompter, who has served
at the theatre for thirty-two years, had never seen. They made an uproar,
shouted, clapped and hissed; at the refreshment bar it almost came to
fighting, and in the gallery the students wanted to throw someone out and
two persons were removed by the police. The excitement was general....
... The actors were in a state of nervous tension. All that I wrote to you
and Maslov about their acting and attitude to their work must not, of course,
go any further. There is much one has to excuse and understand.... It turned
out that the actress who was doing the chief part in my play had a daughter
lying dangerously ill—how could she feel like acting? Kurepin did well to
praise the actors.
The next day after the performance there was a review by Pyotr
Kitcheyev in the Moskovsky Listok. He calls my play impudently cynical
and immoral rubbish. The Moskovskiya Vyedomosti praised it.
... If you read the play you will not understand the excitement I have
described to you; you will find nothing special in it. Nikolay, Shehtel, and
Levitan—all of them painters—assure me that on the stage it is so original
that it is quite strange to look at. In reading one does not notice it.

TO D. V. GRIGOROVITCH.
MOSCOW, 1887.
I have just read “Karelin’s Dream,” and I am very much interested to
know how far the dream you describe really is a dream. I think your
description of the workings of the brain and of the general feeling of a
person who is asleep is physiologically correct and remarkably artistic. I
remember I read two or three years ago a French story, in which the author
described the daughter of a minister., and probably without himself
suspecting it, gave a correct medical description of hysteria. I thought at the
time that an artist’s instinct may sometimes be worth the brains of a
scientist, that both have the same purpose, the same nature, and that perhaps
in time, as their methods become perfect, they are destined to become one
vast prodigious force which now it is difficult even to imagine.... “Karelin’s
Dream” has suggested to me similar thoughts, and to-day I willingly believe
Buckle, who saw in Hamlet’s musings on the dust of Alexander the Great,
Shakespeare’s knowledge of the law of the transmutation of substance—
i.e., the power of the artist to run ahead of the men of science.... Sleep is a
subjective phenomenon, and the inner aspect of it one can only observe in
oneself. But since the process of dreaming is the same in all men, every
reader can, I think, judge Karelin by his own standards, and every critic is
bound to be subjective. From my own personal experience this is how I can
formulate my impression.
In the first place the sensation of cold is given by you with remarkable
subtlety. When at night the quilt falls off I begin to dream of huge slippery
stones, of cold autumnal water, naked banks—and all this dim, misty,
without a patch of blue sky; sad and dejected like one who has lost his way,
I look at the stones and feel that for some reason I cannot avoid crossing a
deep river; I see then small tugs that drag huge barges, floating beams.... All
this is infinitely grey, damp, and dismal. When I run from the river I come
across the fallen cemetery gates, funerals, my school-teachers.... And all the
time I am cold through and through with that oppressive nightmare-like
cold which is impossible in waking life, and which is only felt by those who
are asleep. The first pages of “Karelin’s Dream” vividly brought it to my

memory—especially the first half of page five, where you speak of the cold
and loneliness of the grave.
I think that had I been born in Petersburg and constantly lived there, I
should always dream of the banks of the Neva, the Senate Square, the
massive monuments.
When I feel cold in my sleep I dream of people.... I happened to have
read a criticism in which the reviewer blames you for introducing a man
who is “almost a minister,” and thus spoiling the generally dignified tone of
the story. I don’t agree with him. What spoils the tone is not the people but
your characterization of them, which in some places interrupts the picture
of the dream. One does dream of people, and always of unpleasant ones....
I, for instance, when I feel cold, always dream of my teacher of scripture, a
learned priest of imposing appearance, who insulted my mother when I was
a little boy; I dream of vindictive, implacable, intriguing people, smiling
with spiteful glee—such as one can never see in waking life. The laughter at
the carriage window is a characteristic symptom of Karelin’s nightmare.
When in dreams one feels the presence of some evil will, the inevitable ruin
brought about by some outside force, one always hears something like such
laughter.... One dreams of people one loves, too, but they generally appear
to suffer together with the dreamer.
But when my body gets accustomed to the cold, or one of my family
covers me up, the sensation of cold, of loneliness, and of an oppressive evil
will, gradually disappears.... With the returning warmth I begin to feel that I
walk on soft carpets or on grass, I see sunshine, women, children.... The
pictures change gradually, but more rapidly than they do in waking life, so
that on awaking it is difficult to remember the transitions from one scene to
another.... This abruptness is well brought out in your story, and increases
the impression of the dream.
Another natural fact you have noticed is also extremely striking:
dreamers express their moods in outbursts of an acute kind, with childish
genuineness, like Karelin. Everyone knows that people weep and cry out in
their sleep much more often than they do in waking life. This is probably
due to the lack of inhibition in sleep and of the impulses which make us
conceal things.
Forgive me, I so like your story that I am ready to write you a dozen
sheets, though I know I can tell you nothing new or good.... I restrain

myself and am silent, fearing to bore you and to say something silly.
I will say once more that your story is magnificent. The public finds it
“vague,” but to a writer who gloats over every line such vagueness is more
transparent than holy water.... Hard as I tried I could detect only two small
blots, even those are rather farfetched!
(1) I think that at the beginning of the story the feeling of cold is soon
blunted in the reader and becomes habitual, owing to the frequent repetition
of the word “cold,” and (2), the word “glossy” is repeated too often.
There is nothing else I could find, and I feel that as one is always feeling
the need of refreshing models, “Karelin’s Dream” is a splendid event in my
existence as an author. This is why I could not contain myself and ventured
to put before you some of my thoughts and impressions.
There is little good I can say about myself. I write not what I want to be
writing, and I have not enough energy or solitude to write as you advised
me.... There are many good subjects jostling in my head—and that is all. I
am sustained by hopes of the future, and watch the present slip fruitlessly
away.
Forgive this long letter, and accept the sincere good wishes of your
devoted

A. CHEKHOV.

TO V. G. KOROLENKO.
MOSCOW, January 9, 1888.
Following your friendly advice I began writing a story [Footnote: “The
Steppe”] for the Syeverny Vyestnik. To begin with I have attempted to
describe the steppe, the people who live there, and what I have experienced
in the steppe. It is a good subject, and I enjoy writing about it, but
unfortunately from lack of practice in writing long things, and from fear of
making it too rambling, I fall into the opposite extreme: each page turns out
a compact whole like a short story, the pictures accumulate, are crowded,
and, getting in each other’s way, spoil the impression as a whole. As a result
one gets, not a picture in which all the details are merged into one whole
like stars in the heavens, but a mere diagram, a dry record of impressions. A
writer—you, for instance—will understand me, but the reader will be bored
and curse.
... Your “Sokolinets” is, I think, the most remarkable novel that has
appeared of late. It is written like a good musical composition, in
accordance with all the rules which an artist instinctively divines.
Altogether in the whole of your book you are such a great artist, such a
force, that even your worst failings, which would have been the ruin of any
other writer, pass unnoticed. For instance, in the whole of your book there is
an obstinate exclusion of women, and I have only just noticed it.

TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
MOSCOW, February 5, 1888.
... I am longing to read Korolenko’s story. He is my favourite of
contemporary writers. His colours are rich and vivid, his style is
irreproachable, though in places rather elaborate, his images are noble.
Leontyev [Footnote: I. L. Shtcheglov.] is good too. He is not so mature and
picturesque, but he is warmer than Korolenko, more peaceful and
feminine.... But, Allah kerim, why do they both specialize? The first will
not part with his convicts, and the second feeds his readers with nothing but
officers.... I understand specialization in art such as genre, landscape,
history, but I cannot admit of such specialties as convicts, officers, priests....
This is not specialization but partiality. In Petersburg you do not care for
Korolenko, and here in Moscow we do not read Shtcheglov, but I fully
believe in the future of both of them. Ah, if only we had decent critics!

February 9.
... You say you liked Dymov [Translator’s Note: One of the characters in
“The Steppe.”] as a subject. Life creates such characters as the dare-devil
Dymov not to be dissenters nor tramps, but downright revolutionaries....
There never will be a revolution in Russia, and Dymov will end by taking to
drink or getting into prison. He is a superfluous man.

March 6.
It is devilishly cold, but the poor birds are already flying to Russia! They
are driven by homesickness and love for their native land. If poets knew
how many millions of birds fall victims to their longing and love for their
homes, how many of them freeze on the way, what agonies they endure on
getting home in March and at the beginning of April, they would have sung
their praises long ago! ... Put yourself in the place of a corncrake who does
not fly but walks all the way, or of a wild goose who gives himself up to
man to escape being frozen.... Life is hard in this world!

TO I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.
MOSCOW, April 18, 1888.
... In any case I am more often merry than sad, though if one comes to
think of it I am bound hand and foot.... You, my dear man, have a flat, but I
have a whole house which, though a poor specimen, is still a house, and one
of two storeys, too! You have a wife who will forgive your having no
money, and I have a whole organization which will collapse if I don’t earn a
sufficient number of roubles a month—collapse and fall on my shoulders
like a heavy stone.

May 3.
... I have just sent a story [Footnote: “The Lights.”] to the Syeverny
Vyestnik. I feel a little ashamed of it. It is frightfully dull, and there is so
much discussion and preaching in it that it is mawkish. I didn’t like to send
it, but had to, for I need money as I do air....
I have had a letter from Leman. He tells me that “we” (that is all of you
Petersburg people) “have agreed to print advertisements about each other’s
work on our books,” invites me to join, and warns me that among the elect
may be included only such persons as have a “certain degree of solidarity
with us.” I wrote to say that I agreed, and asked him how does he know
with whom I have solidarity and with whom I have not? How fond of
stuffiness you are in Petersburg! Don’t you feel stifled with such words as
“solidarity,” “unity of young writers,” “common interests,” and so on?
Solidarity and all the rest of it I admit on the stock-exchange, in politics, in
religious affairs, etc., but solidarity among young writers is impossible and
unnecessary.... We cannot feel and think in the same way, our aims are
different, or we have no aims whatever, we know each other little or not at
all, and so there is nothing on to which this solidarity could be securely
hooked.... And is there any need for it? No, in order to help a colleague, to
respect his personality and his work, to refrain from gossiping about him,
envying him, telling him lies and being hypocritical, one does not need so
much to be a young writer as simply a man.... Let us be ordinary people, let
us treat everybody alike, and then we shall not need any artificially worked
up solidarity. Insistent desire for particular, professional, clique solidarity
such as you want, will give rise to unconscious spying on one another,
suspiciousness, control, and, without wishing to do so, we shall become
something like Jesuits in relation to one another.... I, dear Jean, have no
solidarity with you, but I promise you as a literary man perfect freedom so
long as you live; that is, you may write where and how you wish, you may
think like Koreisha [Footnote: A well-known religious fanatic in Moscow.]
if you like, betray your convictions and tendencies a thousand times, etc.,
etc., and my human relations with you will not alter one jot, and I will
always publish advertisements of your books on the wrappers of mine.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
SUMY, MADAME LINTVARYOV’S ESTATE, May 30, 1888.
... I am staying on the bank of the Psyol, in the lodge of an old signorial
estate. I took the place without seeing it, trusting to luck, and have not
regretted it so far. The river is wide and deep, with plenty of islands, of fish
and of crayfish. The banks are beautiful, well-covered with grass and trees.
And best of all, there is so much space that I feel as if for my one hundred
roubles I have obtained a right to live on an expanse of which one can see
no end. Nature and life here is built on the pattern now so old-fashioned and
rejected by magazine editors. Nightingales sing night and day, dogs bark in
the distance, there are old neglected gardens, sad and poetical estates shut
up and deserted where live the souls of beautiful women; old footmen,
relics of serfdom, on the brink of the grave; young ladies longing for the
most conventional love. In addition to all these things, not far from me there
is even such a hackneyed cliche as a water-mill (with sixteen wheels), with
a miller, and his daughter who always sits at the window, apparently
waiting for someone. All that I see and hear now seems familiar to me from
old novels and fairy-tales. The only thing that has something new about it is
a mysterious bird, which sits somewhere far away in the reeds, and night
and day makes a noise that sounds partly like a blow on an empty barrel and
partly like the mooing of a cow shut up in a barn. Every Little Russian has
seen this bird in the course of his life, but everyone describes it differently,
which means that no one has seen it.... Every day I row to the mill, and in
the evening I go to the islands to fish with fishing maniacs from the
Haritovenko factory. Our conversations are sometimes interesting. On the
eve of Whit Sunday all the maniacs will spend the night on the islands and
fish all night; I, too. There are some splendid types.
My hosts have turned out to be very nice and hospitable people. It is a
family worth studying. It consists of six members. The old mother, a very
kind, rather flabby woman who has had suffering enough in her life; she
reads Schopenhauer and goes to church to hear the Song of Praise; she
conscientiously studies every number of the Vyestnik Evropi and Syeverny
Vyestnik, and knows writers I have not dreamed of; attaches much

importance to the fact that once the painter Makovsky stayed in her lodge
and now a young writer is staying there; talking to Pleshtcheyev she feels a
holy thrill all over and rejoices every minute that it has been “vouchsafed”
to her to see the great poet.
Her eldest daughter, a woman doctor—the pride of the whole family and
“a saint” as the peasants call her—really is remarkable. She has a tumour on
the brain, and in consequence of it she is totally blind, has epileptic fits and
constant headaches. She knows what awaits her, and stoically with amazing
coolness speaks of her approaching death. In the course of my medical
practice I have grown used to seeing people who were soon going to die,
and I have always felt strange when people whose death was at hand talked,
smiled, or wept in my presence; but here, when I see on the verandah this
blind woman who laughs, jokes, or hears my stories read to her, what
begins to seem strange to me is not that she is dying, but that we do not feel
our own death, and write stories as though we were never going to die.
The second daughter, also a woman doctor, is a gentle, shy, infinitely
kind creature, loving to everyone. Patients are a regular torture to her, and
she is scrupulous to morbidity with them. At consultations we always
disagree: I bring good tidings where she sees death, and I double the doses
which she prescribes. But where death is obvious and inevitable my lady
doctor feels quite in an unprofessional way. I was receiving patients with
her one day at a medical centre; a young Little Russian woman came with a
malignant tumour of the glands in her neck and at the back of her head. The
tumour had spread so far that no treatment could be thought of. And
because the woman was at present feeling no pain, but would in another six
months die in terrible agony, the doctor looked at her in such a guilty way
as though she were asking forgiveness for being well, and ashamed that
medical science was helpless. She takes a zealous part in managing the
house and estate, and understands every detail of it. She knows all about
horses even. When the side horse does not pull or gets restless, she knows
how to help matters and instructs the coachman. I believe she has never hurt
anyone, and it seems to me that she has not been happy for a single instant
and never will be.
The third daughter, who has finished her studies at Bezstuzhevka, is a
vigorous, sunburnt young girl with a loud voice. Her laugh can be heard a
mile away. She is a passionate Little Russian patriot. She has built a school

on the estate at her own expense, and teaches the children Krylov’s fables
translated into Little Russian. She goes to Shevtchenko’s grave as a Turk
goes to Mecca. She does not cut her hair, wears stays and a bustle, looks
after the housekeeping, is fond of laughing and singing.
The eldest son is a quiet, modest, intelligent, hardworking young man
with no talents; he has no pretensions, and is apparently content with what
life has given him. He has been dismissed from the University [Translator’s
Note: On political grounds, of course, is understood.] just before taking his
degree, but he does not boast of it. He speaks little. He loves farming and
the land and lives in harmony with the peasants.
The second son is a young man mad over Tchaikovsky’s being a genius.
He dreams of living according to Tolstoy.

Pleshtcheyev is staying with us. They all look upon him as a demi-god,
consider themselves happy if he bestows attention on somebody’s junket,
bring him flowers, invite him everywhere, and so on.... And he “listens and
eats,” and smokes his cigars which give his admirers a headache. He is slow
to move, with the indolence of old age, but this does not prevent the fair sex
from taking him about in boats, driving with him to the neighbouring
estates, and singing songs to him. Here he is by way of being the same thing
as in Petersburg—i.e., an ikon which is prayed to for being old and for
having once hung by the side of the miracle-working ikons. So far as I am
concerned I regard him—not to speak of his being a very good, warm-
hearted and sincere man—as a vessel full of traditions, interesting
memories, and good platitudes.
... What you say about “The Lights” is quite just. You say that neither the
conversation about pessimism nor Kisotcha’s story in any way help to solve
the question of pessimism. It seems to me it is not for writers of fiction to
solve such questions as that of God, of pessimism, etc. The writer’s
business is simply to describe who has been speaking about God or about
pessimism, how, and in what circumstances. The artist must be not the
judge of his characters and of their conversations, but merely an impartial
witness. I have heard a desultory conversation of two Russians about
pessimism—a conversation which settles nothing—and I must report that
conversation as I heard it; it is for the jury, that is, for the readers, to decide
on the value of it. My business is merely to be talented—i.e., to know how

to distinguish important statements from unimportant, how to throw light on
the characters, and to speak their language. Shtcheglov-Leontyev blames
me for finishing the story with the words, “There’s no making out anything
in this world.” He thinks a writer who is a good psychologist ought to be
able to make it out—that is what he is a psychologist for. But I don’t agree
with him. It is time that writers, especially those who are artists, recognized
that there is no making out anything in this world, as once Socrates
recognized it, and Voltaire, too. The mob thinks it knows and understands
everything; and the more stupid it is the wider it imagines its outlook to be.
And if a writer whom the mob believes in has the courage to say that he
does not understand anything of what he sees, that alone will be something
gained in the realm of thought and a great step in advance.

TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
SUMY, June 28, 1888.
... We have been to the province of Poltava. We went to the Smagins’,
and to Sorotchintsi. We drove with a four-in-hand, in an ancestral, very
comfortable carriage. We had no end of laughter, adventures,
misunderstandings, halts, and meetings on the way.... If you had only seen
the places where we stayed the night and the villages stretching eight or ten
versts through which we drove! ... What weddings we met on the road, what
lovely music we heard in the evening stillness, and what a heavy smell of
fresh hay there was! Really one might sell one’s soul to the devil for the
pleasure of looking at the warm evening sky, the pools and the rivulets
reflecting the sad, languid sunset....
... The Smagins’ estate is “great and fertile,” but old, neglected, and dead
as last year’s cobwebs. The house has sunk, the doors won’t shut, the tiles
in the stove squeeze one another out and form angles, young suckers of
cherries and plums peep up between the cracks of the floors. In the room
where I slept a nightingale had made herself a nest between the window and
the shutter, and while I was there little naked nightingales, looking like
undressed Jew babies, hatched out from the eggs. Sedate storks live on the
barn. At the beehouse there is an old grandsire who remembers the King
Goroh [Translator’s Note: The equivalent of Old King Cole.] and Cleopatra
of Egypt.
Everything is crumbling and decrepit, but poetical, sad, and beautiful in
the extreme.

TO HIS SISTER.
FEODOSIA, July, 1888.
... The journey from Sumy to Harkov is frightfully dull. Going from
Harkov to Simferopol one might well die of boredom. The Crimean steppe
is depressing, monotonous, with no horizon, colourless like Ivanenko’s
stories, and on the whole rather like the tundra.... From Simferopol
mountains begin and, with them, beauty. Ravines, mountains, ravines,
mountains, poplars stick out from the ravines, vineyards loom dark on the
mountains—all this is bathed in moonlight, is new and wild, and sets one’s
imagination working in harmony with Gogol’s “Terrible Vengeance.”
Particularly fantastic are the alternating precipices and tunnels when you
see now depths full of moonlight and now complete sinister darkness. It is
rather uncanny and delightful. One feels it is something not Russian,
something alien. I reached Sevastopol at night. The town is beautiful in
itself and beautiful because it stands by a marvellous sea. The best in the
sea is its colour, and that one cannot describe. It is like blue copperas. As to
steamers and sailing vessels, piers and harbours, what strikes one most of
all is the poverty of the Russians. Except the “popovkas,” which look like
Moscow merchants’ wives, and two or three decent steamers, there is
nothing to speak of in the bay.
... In the morning it was deadly dull. Heat, dust, thirst.... In the harbour
there was a stench of ropes, and one caught glimpses of faces burnt brick-
red, sounds of a pulley, of the splashing of dirty water, knocking, Tatar
words, and all sorts of uninteresting nonsense. You go up to a steamer: men
in rags, bathed in sweat and almost baked by the sun, dizzy, with tatters on
their backs and shoulders, unload Portland cement; you stand and look at
them and the whole scene becomes so remote, so alien, that one feels
insufferably dull and uninterested. It is entertaining to get on board and set
off, but it is rather a bore to sail and talk to a crowd of passengers consisting
of elements all of which one knows by heart and is weary of already.... Yalta
is a mixture of something European that reminds one of the views of Nice,
with something cheap and shoddy. The box-like hotels in which unhappy
consumptives are pining, the impudent Tatar faces, the ladies’ bustles with

their very undisguised expression of something very abominable, the faces
of the idle rich, longing for cheap adventures, the smell of perfumery
instead of the scent of the cedars and the sea, the miserable dirty pier, the
melancholy lights far out at sea, the prattle of young ladies and gentlemen
who have crowded here in order to admire nature of which they have no
idea—all this taken together produces such a depressing effect and is so
overwhelming that one begins to blame oneself for being biassed and
unfair.... At five o’clock in the morning I arrived at Feodosia—a greyish-
brown, dismal, and dull-looking little town. There is no grass, the trees are
wretched, the soil is coarse and hopelessly poor. Everything is burnt up by
the sun, and only the sea smiles—the sea which has nothing to do with
wretched little towns or tourists. Sea bathing is so nice that when I got into
the water I began to laugh for no reason at all....

July 22.
... Yesterday we went to Shah-Mamai Aivazovsky’s estate, twenty-five
versts from Feodosia. It is a magnificent estate, rather like fairyland; such
estates may probably be seen in Persia. Aivazovsky [Translator’s Note: The
famous marine painter.] himself, a vigorous old man of seventy-five, is a
mixture of a good-natured Armenian and an overfed bishop; he is full of
dignity, has soft hands, and offers them like a general. He is not very
intelligent, but is a complex nature worthy of attention. He combines in
himself a general, a bishop, an artist, an Armenian, a naive old peasant, and
an Othello. He is married to a young and very beautiful woman whom he
rules with a rod of iron. He is friendly with Sultans, Shahs, and Amirs. He
collaborated with Glinka in writing “Ruslan and Liudmila.” He was a friend
of Pushkin, but has never read him. He has not read a single book in his life.
When it is suggested to him that he should read something he answers,
“Why should I read when I have opinions of my own?” I spent a whole day
in his house and had dinner there. The dinner was fearfully long, with
endless toasts. By the way, at that dinner I was introduced to the lady
doctor, wife of the well-known professor. She is a fat, bulky piece of flesh.
If she were undressed and painted green she would look just like a frog.
After talking to her I mentally scratched her off the list of women doctors....

TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
July 28, 1888.

On the Seas Black, Caspian, and of Life.
... A wretched little cargo steamer, Dir, is racing full steam from Suhum
to Poti. It is about midnight. The little cabin—the only one in the steamer—
is insufferably hot and stuffy. There is a smell of burning, of rope, of fish
and of the sea. One hears the engine going “Boom-boom-boom.” ... There
are devils creaking up aloft and under the floor. The darkness is swaying in
the cabin and the bed rocks up and down.... One’s stomach’s whole
attention is concentrated on the bed, and, as though to find its level, it rolls
the Seltzer water I had drunk right up to my throat and then lets it down to
my heels. Not to be sick over my clothes in the dark I hastily put on my
things and go out.... It is dark. My feet stumble against some invisible iron
bars, a rope; wherever you step there are barrels, sacks, rags. There is coal
dust under foot. In the dark I knock against a kind of grating: it is a cage
with wild goats which I saw in the daytime. They are awake and anxiously
listening to the rocking of the boat. By the cage sit two Turks who are not
asleep either.... I grope my way up the stairs to the captain’s bridge.... A
warm but violent and unpleasant wind tries to blow away my cap.... The
steamer rocks. The mast in front of the captain’s bridge sways regularly and
leisurely like a metronome; I try to look away from it, but my eyes will not
obey me and, just like my stomach, insist on following moving objects....
The sky and the sea are dark, the shore is not in sight, the deck looks a dark
blur ... there is not a single light.
Behind me is a window ... I look into it and see a man who looks
attentively at something and turns a wheel with an expression as though he
were playing the ninth symphony.... Next to me stands the little stout
captain in tan shoes.... He talks to me of Caucasian emigrants, of the heat,
of winter storms, and at the same time looks intently into the dark distance
in the direction of the shore.
“You seem to be going too much to the left again,” he says to someone;
or, “There ought to be lights here.... Do you see them?”

“No, sir,” someone answers from the dark.
“Climb up and look.”
A dark figure appears on the bridge and leisurely climbs up. In a minute
we hear:
“Yes, sir.”
I look to the left where the lights of the lighthouse are supposed to be,
borrow the captain’s glasses, but see nothing.... Half an hour passes, then an
hour. The mast sways regularly, the devils creak, the wind makes dashes at
my cap.... It is not pitch dark, but one feels uneasy.
Suddenly the captain dashes off somewhere to the rear of the ship,
crying, “You devil’s doll!”
“To the left,” he shouts anxiously at the top of his voice. “To the left! ...
To the right! A-va-va-a!”
Incomprehensible words of command are heard. The steamer starts, the
devils give a creak.... “A-va-va!” shouts the captain; at the bows a bell is
rung, on the black deck there are sounds of running, knocking, cries of
anxiety.... The Dir starts once more, puffs painfully, and apparently tries to
move backwards.
“What is it?” I ask, and feel something like a faint terror. There is no
answer.
“He’d like a collision, the devil’s doll!” I hear the captain’s harsh shout.
“To the left!”
Red lights appear in front, and suddenly among the uproar is heard the
whistling, not of the Dir, but of some other steamer.... Now I understand it:
there is going to be a collision! The Dir puffs, trembles, and does not move,
as though waiting for a signal to go down.... But just when I think all is lost,
the red lights appear on the left of us, and the dark silhouette of a steamer
can be discerned.... A long black body sails past us, guiltily blinks its red
eyes, and gives a guilty whistle....
“Oof! What steamer is it?” I ask the captain.
The captain looks at the silhouette through his glasses and replies:
“It is the Tweedie.”
After a pause we begin to talk of the Vesta, which collided with two
steamers and went down. Under the influence of this conversation the sea,

the night and the wind begin to seem hideous, created on purpose for man’s
undoing, and I feel sorry as I look at the fat little captain.... Something
whispers to me that this poor man, too, will sooner or later sink to the
bottom and be choked with salt water. [Footnote: Chekhov’s presentiment
about the captain was partly fulfilled: that very autumn the Dir was
wrecked on the shores of Alupka.]
I go back to my cabin.... It is stuffy, and there is a smell of cooking. My
travelling companion, Suvorin-fils, is asleep already.... I take off all my
clothes and go to bed.... The darkness sways to and fro, the bed seems to
breathe.... Boom-boom-boom! Bathed in perspiration, breathless, and
feeling an oppression all over with the rocking, I ask myself, “What am I
here for?”
I wake up. It is no longer dark. Wet all over, with a nasty taste in my
mouth, I dress and go out. Everything is covered with dew.... The wild goats
look with human eyes through the grating of their cage and seem to be
asking “Why are we here?” The captain stands still as before and looks
intently into the distance....
A mountainous shore stretches on the left.... Elborus is seen from behind
the mountains.
A blurred sun rises in the sky.... One can see the green valley of Rion and
the Bay of Poti by the side of it.

TO N. A. LEIKIN.
SUMY, August 12.
... I have been to the Crimea. I spent twelve days at Suvorin’s in
Feodosia, bathed, idled about; I have been to Aivazovsky’s estate. From
Feodosia I went by steamer to Batum. On the way I spent half a day at
Suhum—a charming little town buried in luxuriant, un-Russian greenery,
and one day at the Monastery, at New Athos. It is so lovely there at New
Athos that there is no describing it: waterfalls, eucalyptuses, tea-plants,
cypresses, olive-trees, and, above all, sea and mountains, mountains,
mountains. From Athos and Suhum I went to Poti; the River Rion,
renowned for its valley and its sturgeons, is close by. The vegetation is
luxuriant. All the streets are planted with poplars. Batum is a big
commercial and military, foreign-looking, cafe’-chantant sort of town; you
feel in it at every step that we have conquered the Turks. There is nothing
special about it (except a great number of brothels), but the surrounding
country is charming. Particularly fine is the road to Kars and the swift river
Tchoraksu.
The road from Batum to Tiflis is poetical and original; you look all the
time out of window and exclaim: there are mountains, tunnels, rocks, rivers,
waterfalls, big and little. But the road from Tiflis to Baku is the abomination
of desolation, a bald plain, covered with sand and created for Persians,
tarantulas, and phalangas to live in. There is not a single tree, there is no
grass ... dreary as hell.... Baku and the Caspian Sea are such rotten places
that I would not agree to live there for a million. There are no roofs, there
are no trees either; Persian faces everywhere, fifty degrees Reaumur of heat,
a smell of kerosine, the naphtha-soaked mud squelches under one’s feet, the
drinking water is salt.
... You have seen the Caucasus. I believe you have seen the Georgian
Military Road, too. If you have not been there yet, pawn your wives and
children and the Oskolki [Translator’s Note: Oskolki, (i.e., “Chips,” “Bits”)
the paper of which Leikin was editor.] and go. I have never in my life seen
anything like it. It is not a road, but unbroken poetry, a wonderful, fantastic
story written by the Demon in love with Tamara.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
SUMY, August 29, 1888.
... When as a boy I used to stay at my grandfather’s on Count Platov’s
estate, I had to sit from sunrise to sunset by the thrashing machine and write
down the number of poods and pounds of corn that had been thrashed; the
whistling, the hissing, and the bass note, like the sound of a whirling top,
that the machine makes at full speed, the creaking of the wheels, the lazy
tread of the oxen, the clouds of dust, the grimy, perspiring faces of some
three score of men—all this has stamped itself upon my memory like the
Lord’s Prayer. And now, too, I have been spending hours at the thrashing
and felt intensely happy. When the thrashing engine is at work it looks as
though alive; it has a cunning, playful expression, while the men and oxen
look like machines. In the district of Mirgorod few have thrashing machines
of their own, but everyone can hire one. The engine goes about the whole
province drawn by six oxen and offers itself to all who can pay for it.

MOSCOW,
September 11.
... You advise me not to hunt after two hares, and not to think of medical
work. I do not know why one should not hunt two hares even in the literal
sense.... I feel more confident and more satisfied with myself when I reflect
that I have two professions and not one. Medicine is my lawful wife and
literature is my mistress. When I get tired of one I spend the night with the
other. Though it’s disorderly, it’s not so dull, and besides neither of them
loses anything from my infidelity. If I did not have my medical work I
doubt if I could have given my leisure and my spare thoughts to literature.
There is no discipline in me.

MOSCOW,
October 27, 1888.
... In conversation with my literary colleagues I always insist that it is not
the artist’s business to solve problems that require a specialist’s knowledge.
It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand. We
have specialists for dealing with special questions: it is their business to
judge of the commune, of the future of capitalism, of the evils of
drunkenness, of boots, of the diseases of women. An artist must only judge
of what he understands, his field is just as limited as that of any other
specialist—I repeat this and insist on it always. That in his sphere there are
no questions, but only answers, can only be maintained by those who have
never written and have had no experience of thinking in images. An artist
observes, selects, guesses, combines—and this in itself presupposes a
problem: unless he had set himself a problem from the very first there
would be nothing to conjecture and nothing to select. To put it briefly, I will
end by using the language of psychiatry: if one denies that creative work
involves problems and purposes, one must admit that an artist creates
without premeditation or intention, in a state of aberration; therefore, if an
author boasted to me of having written a novel without a preconceived
design, under a sudden inspiration, I should call him mad.
You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent
attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and
stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for the
artist. In “Anna Karenin” and “Evgeny Onyegin” not a single problem is
solved, but they satisfy you completely because all the problems are
correctly stated in them. It is the business of the judge to put the right
questions, but the answers must be given by the jury according to their own
lights.

... You say that the hero of my “Party” is a character worth developing.
Good Lord! I am not a senseless brute, you know, I understand that. I
understand that I cut the throats of my characters and spoil them, and that I
waste good material.... To tell you the truth, I would gladly have spent six

months over the “Party”; I like taking things easy, and see no attraction in
publishing at headlong speed. I would willingly, with pleasure, with feeling,
in a leisurely way, describe the whole of my hero, describe the state of his
mind while his wife was in labour, his trial, the horrid feeling he has after
he is acquitted; I would describe the midwife and the doctors having tea in
the middle of the night, I would describe the rain.... It would give me
nothing but pleasure because I like to rummage about and dawdle. But what
am I to do? I begin a story on September 10th with the thought that I must
finish it by October 5th at the latest; if I don’t I shall fail the editor and be
left without money. I let myself go at the beginning and write with an easy
mind; but by the time I get to the middle I begin to grow timid and to fear
that my story will be too long: I have to remember that the Syeverny
Vyestnik has not much money, and that I am one of their expensive
contributors. This is why the beginning of my stories is always very
promising and looks as though I were starting on a novel, the middle is
huddled and timid, and the end is, as in a short sketch, like fireworks. And
so in planning a story one is bound to think first about its framework: from
a crowd of leading or subordinate characters one selects one person only—
wife or husband; one puts him on the canvas and paints him alone, making
him prominent, while the others one scatters over the canvas like small
coin, and the result is something like the vault of heaven: one big moon and
a number of very small stars around it. But the moon is not a success
because it can only be understood if the stars too are intelligible, and the
stars are not worked out. And so what I produce is not literature, but
something like the patching of Trishka’s coat. What am I to do? I don’t
know, I don’t know. I must trust to time which heals all things.
To tell the truth again, I have not yet begun my literary work, though I
have received a literary prize. Subjects for five stories and two novels are
languishing in my head. One of the novels was thought of long ago, and
some of the characters have grown old without managing to be written. In
my head there is a whole army of people asking to be let out and waiting for
the word of command. All that I have written so far is rubbish in
comparison with what I should like to write and should write with rapture.
It is all the same to me whether I write “The Party” or “The Lights,” or a
vaudeville or a letter to a friend—it is all dull, spiritless, mechanical, and I
get annoyed with critics who attach any importance to “The Lights,” for
instance. I fancy that I deceive him with my work just as I deceive many

people with my face, which looks serious or over-cheerful. I don’t like
being successful; the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and jealous
of what has already been written. I am vexed that the rubbish has been done
and the good things lie about in the lumber-room like old books. Of course,
in thus lamenting I rather exaggerate, and much of what I say is only my
fancy, but there is a part of the truth in it, a good big part of it. What do I
call good? The images which seem best to me, which I love and jealously
guard lest I spend and spoil them for the sake of some “Party” written
against time.... If my love is mistaken, I am wrong, but then it may not be
mistaken! I am either a fool and a conceited fellow or I really am an
organism capable of being a good writer. All that I now write displeases and
bores me, but what sits in my head interests, excites and moves me—from
which I conclude that everybody does the wrong thing and I alone know the
secret of doing the right one. Most likely all writers think that. But the devil
himself would break his neck in these problems.
Money will not help me to decide what I am to do and how I am to act.
An extra thousand roubles will not settle matters, and a hundred thousand is
a castle in the air. Besides, when I have money—it may be from lack of
habit, I don’t know—I become extremely careless and idle; the sea seems
only knee-deep to me then.... I need time and solitude.

November, 1888.
In the November number of the Syeverny Vyestnik there is an article by
the poet Merezhkovsky about your humble servant. It is a long article. I
commend to your attention the end of it; it is characteristic. Merezhkovsky
is still very young, a student—of science I believe. Those who have
assimilated the wisdom of the scientific method and learned to think
scientifically experience many alluring temptations. Archimedes wanted to
turn the earth round, and the present day hot-heads want by science to
conceive the inconceivable, to discover the physical laws of creative art, to
detect the laws and the formulae which are instinctively felt by the artist
and are followed by him in creating music, novels, pictures, etc. Such
formulae probably exist in nature. We know that A, B, C, do, re, mi, fa, sol,
are found in nature, and so are curves, straight lines, circles, squares, green,
blue, and red.... We know that in certain combinations all this produces a
melody, or a poem or a picture, just as simple chemical substances in
certain combinations produce a tree, or a stone, or the sea; but all we know
is that the combination exists, while the law of it is hidden from us. Those
who are masters of the scientific method feel in their souls that a piece of
music and a tree have something in common, that both are built up in
accordance with equally uniform and simple laws. Hence the question:
What are these laws? And hence the temptation to work out a physiology of
creative art (like Boborykin), or in the case of younger and more diffident
writers, to base their arguments on nature and on the laws of nature
(Merezhkovsky). There probably is such a thing as the physiology of
creative art, but we must nip in the bud our dreams of discovering it. If the
critics take up a scientific attitude no good will come of it: they will waste a
dozen years, write a lot of rubbish, make the subject more obscure than ever
—and nothing more. It is always a good thing to think scientifically, but the
trouble is that scientific thinking about creative art will be bound to
degenerate in the end into searching for the “cells” or the “centres” which
control the creative faculty. Some stolid German will discover these cells
somewhere in the occipital lobes, another German will agree with him, a
third will disagree, and a Russian will glance through the article about the

cells and reel off an essay about it to the Syeverny Vyestnik. The Vyestnik
Evropi will criticize the essay, and for three years there will be in Russia an
epidemic of nonsense which will give money and popularity to blockheads
and do nothing but irritate intelligent people.
For those who are obsessed with the scientific method and to whom God
has given the rare talent of thinking scientifically, there is to my mind only
one way out—the philosophy of creative art. One might collect together all
the best works of art that have been produced throughout the ages and, with
the help of the scientific method, discover the common element in them
which makes them like one another and conditions their value. That
common element will be the law. There is a great deal that works which are
called immortal have in common; if this common element were excluded
from each of them, a work would lose its charm and its value. So that this
universal something is necessary, and is the conditio sine qua non of every
work that claims to be immortal. It is of more use to young people to write
critical articles than poetry. Merezhkovsky writes smoothly and youthfully,
but at every page he loses heart, makes reservations and concessions, and
this means that he is not clear upon the subject. He calls me a poet, he styles
my stories “novelli” and my heroes “failures”—that is, he follows the
beaten track. It is time to give up these “failures,” superfluous people, etc.,
and to think of something original. Merezhkovsky calls my monk
[Translator’s Note: “Easter Eve.”] who composes the songs of praise a
failure. But how is he a failure? God grant us all a life like his: he believed
in God, and he had enough to eat and he had the gift of composing poetry....
To divide men into the successful and the unsuccessful is to look at human
nature from a narrow, preconceived point of view. Are you a success or not?
Am I? Was Napoleon? Is your servant Vassily? What is the criterion? One
must be a god to be able to tell successes from failures without making a
mistake.

MOSCOW,
November 7, 1888.
... It is not the public that is to blame for our theatres being so wretched.
The public is always and everywhere the same: intelligent and stupid,
sympathetic and pitiless according to mood. It has always been a flock
which needs good shepherds and dogs, and it has always gone in the
direction in which the shepherds and the dogs drove it. You are indignant
that it laughs at flat witticisms and applauds sounding phrases; but then the
very same stupid public fills the house to hear “Othello,” and, listening to
the opera “Evgeny Onyegin,” weeps when Tatyana writes her letter.
... The water-carrier has stolen from somewhere a Siberian kitten with
long white fur and black eyes, and brought it to us. This kitten takes people
for mice: when it sees anyone it lies flat on its stomach, stalks one’s feet
and rushes at them. This morning as I was pacing up and down the room it
several times stalked me, and a la tigre pounced at my boots. I imagine the
thought of being more terrible than anyone in the house affords it the
greatest delight.

November 11, 1888.
I finished to-day the story [Footnote: “A Nervous Breakdown.”] for the
Garshin sbornik: it is such a load off my mind. In this story I have told my
own opinion—which is of no interest to anyone—of such rare men as
Garshin. I have run to almost 2,000 lines. I speak at length about
prostitution, but settle nothing. Why do they write nothing about
prostitution in your paper? It is the most fearful evil, you know. Our
Sobolev street is a regular slave-market.

November 15, 1888.
My “Party” has pleased the ladies. They sing my praises wherever I go. It
really isn’t bad to be a doctor and to understand what one is writing about.
The ladies say the description of the confinement is true. In the story for the
Garshin sbornik I have described spiritual agony.

(No date), 1888.
... You say that writers are God’s elect. I will not contradict you.
Shtcheglov calls me the Potyomkin of literature, and so it is not for me to
speak of the thorny path, of disappointments, and so on. I do not know
whether I have ever suffered more than shoemakers, mathematicians, or
railway guards do; I do not know who speaks through my lips—God or
someone worse. I will allow myself to mention only one little drawback
which I have experienced and you probably know from experience also. It
is this. You and I are fond of ordinary people; but other people are fond of
us because they think we are not ordinary. Me, for instance, they invite
everywhere and regale me with food and drink like a general at a wedding.
My sister is indignant that people on all sides invite her simply because she
is a writer’s sister. No one wants to love the ordinary people in us. Hence it
follows that if in the eyes of our friends we should appear to-morrow as
ordinary mortals, they will leave off loving us, and will only pity us. And
that is horrid. It is horrid, too, that they like the very things in us which we
often dislike and despise in ourselves. It is horrid that I was right when I
wrote the story “The First-Class Passenger,” in which an engineer and a
professor talk about fame.
I am going away into the country. Hang them all! You have Feodosia. By
the way, about Feodosia and the Tatars. The Tatars have been robbed of
their land, but no one thinks of their welfare. There ought to be Tatar
schools. Write and suggest that the money which is being spent on the
sausage Dorpat University, where useless Germans are studying, should be
devoted to schools for Tatars, who are of use to Russia. I would write about
it myself, but I don’t know how to.

December 23, 1888.
... There are moments when I completely lose heart. For whom and for
what do I write? For the public? But I don’t see it, and believe in it less than
I do in spooks: it is uneducated, badly brought up, and its best elements are
unfair and insincere to us. I cannot make out whether this public wants me
or not. Burenin says that it does not, and that I waste my time on trifles; the
Academy has given me a prize. The devil himself could not make head or
tail of it. Write for the sake of money? But I never have any money, and not
being used to having it I am almost indifferent to it. For the sake of money I
work apathetically. Write for the sake of praise? But praise merely irritates
me. Literary society, students, Pleshtcheyev, young ladies, etc., were
enthusiastic in their praises of my “Nervous Breakdown,” but Grigorovitch
is the only one who has noticed the description of the first snow. And so on,
and so on. If we had critics I should know that I provide material, whether
good or bad does not matter—that to men who devote themselves to the
study of life I am as necessary as a star is to an astronomer. And then I
would take trouble over my work and should know what I was working for.
But as it is you, I, Muravlin, and the rest are like lunatics who write books
and plays to please themselves. To please oneself is, of course, an excellent
thing; one feels the pleasure while one is writing, but afterwards? But ... I
will shut up. In short, I am sorry for Tatyana Repin, [Translator’s Note:
Suvorin’s play.] not because she poisoned herself, but because she lived her
life, died in agony, and was described absolutely to no purpose, without any
good to anyone. A number of tribes, religions, languages, civilizations, have
vanished without a trace—vanished because there were no historians or
biologists. In the same way a number of lives and works of art disappear
before our very eyes owing to the complete absence of criticism. It may be
objected that critics would have nothing to do because all modern works are
poor and insignificant. But this is a narrow way of looking at things. Life
must be studied not from the pluses alone, but from the minuses too. The
conviction that the “eighties” have not produced a single writer may in
itself provide material for five volumes.

... I settled down last night to write a story for the Novoye Vremya, but a
woman appeared and dragged me to see the poet Palmin who, when he was
drunk, had fallen and cut his forehead to the bone. I was busy over the
drunken fellow for nearly two hours, was tired out, began to smell of
iodoform all over, felt cross, and came home exhausted.... Altogether my
life is a dreary one, and I begin to get fits of hating people which used never
to happen to me before. Long stupid conversations, visitors, people asking
for help, and helping them to the extent of one or two or three roubles,
spending money on cabs for the sake of patients who do not pay me a penny
—altogether it is such a hotch-potch that I feel like running away from
home. People borrow money from me and don’t pay it back, they take my
books, they waste my time.... Blighted love is the one thing that is missing.

December 26, 1888.
... You say that from compassion women fall in love, from compassion
they get married.... And what about men? I don’t like realistic writers to
slander women, but I don’t like it either when people put women on a
pedestal and attempt to prove that even if they are worse than men, anyway
they are angels and men scoundrels. Neither men nor women are worth a
brass farthing, but men are more just and more intelligent.

December 30, 1888.
... This is how I understand my characters. [Translator’s Note: In the play
“Ivanov.”] Ivanov is a gentleman, a University man, and not remarkable in
any way. He is excitable, hotheaded, easily carried away, honest and
straightforward like most people of his class. He has lived on his estate and
served on the Zemstvo. What he has been doing and how he has behaved,
what he has been interested in and enthusiastic over, can be seen from the
following words of his, addressed to the doctor (Act I., Scene 5): “Don’t
marry Jewesses or neurotic women or blue-stockings ... don’t fight with
thousands single-handed, don’t wage war on windmills, don’t batter your
head against the wall ... God preserve you from scientific farming,
wonderful schools, enthusiastic speeches....” This is what he has in his past.
Sarra, who has seen his scientific farming and other crazes, says about him
to the doctor: “He is a remarkable man, doctor, and I am sorry you did not
meet him two or three years ago. Now he is depressed and melancholy, he
doesn’t talk or do anything, but in old days ... how charming he was!” (Act
I., Scene 7). His past is beautiful, as is generally the case with educated
Russians. There is not, or there hardly is, a single Russian gentleman or
University man who does not boast of his past. The present is always worse
than the past. Why? Because Russian excitability has one specific
characteristic: it is quickly followed by exhaustion. A man has scarcely left
the class-room before he rushes to take up a burden beyond his strength; he
tackles at once the schools, the peasants, scientific farming, and the Vyestnik
Evropi, he makes speeches, writes to the minister, combats evil, applauds
good, falls in love, not in an ordinary, simple way, but selects either a blue-
stocking or a neurotic or a Jewess, or even a prostitute whom he tries to
save, and so on, and so on. But by the time he is thirty or thirty-five he
begins to feel tired and bored. He has not got decent moustaches yet, but he
already says with authority:
“Don’t marry, my dear fellow.... Trust my experience,” or, “After all,
what does Liberalism come to? Between ourselves Katkov was often
right....” He is ready to reject the Zemstvo and scientific farming, and
science and love. My Ivanov says to the doctor (Act I., Scene 5): “You took

your degree only last year, my dear friend, you are still young and vigorous,
while I am thirty-five. I have a right to advise you....” That is how these
prematurely exhausted people talk. Further down, sighing authoritatively,
he advises: “Don’t you marry in this or that way (see above), but choose
something commonplace, grey, with no vivid colours or superfluous
flourishes. Altogether build your life according to the conventional pattern.
The greyer and more monotonous the background the better.... The life that
I have led—how tiring it is! Ah, how tiring!”
Conscious of physical exhaustion and boredom, he does not understand
what is the matter with him, and what has happened. Horrified, he says to
the doctor (Act I., Scene 3): “Here you tell me she is soon going to die and I
feel neither love nor pity, but a sort of emptiness and weariness.... If one
looks at me from outside it must be horrible. I don’t understand what is
happening to my soul.” Finding themselves in such a position, narrow and
unconscientious people generally throw the whole blame on their
environment, or write themselves down as Hamlets and superfluous people,
and are satisfied with that. But Ivanov, a straightforward man, openly says
to the doctor and to the public that he does not understand his own mind. “I
don’t understand! I don’t understand!” That he really doesn’t understand
can be seen from his long monologue in Act III., where, tete-a-tete with the
public, he opens his heart to it and even weeps.
The change that has taken place in him offends his sense of what is
fitting. He looks for the causes outside himself and fails to find them; he
begins to look for them inside and finds only an indefinite feeling of guilt. It
is a Russian feeling. Whether there is a death or illness in his family,
whether he owes money or lends it, a Russian always feels guilty. Ivanov
talks all the time about being to blame in some way, and the feeling of guilt
increases in him at every juncture. In Act I. he says: “Suppose I am terribly
to blame, yet my thoughts are in a tangle, my soul is in bondage to a sort of
sloth, and I am incapable of understanding myself....” In Act II. he says to
Sasha: “My conscience aches day and night, I feel that I am profoundly to
blame, but in what exactly I have done wrong I cannot make out.”
To exhaustion, boredom, and the feeling of guilt add one more enemy:
loneliness. Were Ivanov an official, an actor, a priest, a professor, he would
have grown used to his position. But he lives on his estate. He is in the
country. His neighbours are either drunkards or fond of cards, or are of the

same type as the doctor. None of them care about his feelings or the change
that has taken place in him. He is lonely. Long winters, long evenings, an
empty garden, empty rooms, the grumbling Count, the ailing wife.... He has
nowhere to go. This is why he is every minute tortured by the question:
what is he to do with himself?
Now about his fifth enemy. Ivanov is tired and does not understand
himself, but life has nothing to do with that! It makes its legitimate
demands upon him, and whether he will or no, he must settle problems. His
sick wife is a problem, his numerous debts are a problem, Sasha flinging
herself on his neck is a problem. The way in which he settles all these
problems must be evident from his monologue in Act III., and from the
contents of the last two acts. Men like Ivanov do not solve difficulties but
collapse under their weight. They lose their heads, gesticulate, become
nervous, complain, do silly things, and finally, giving rein to their flabby,
undisciplined nerves, lose the ground under their feet and enter the class of
the “broken down” and “misunderstood.”
Disappointment, apathy, nervous limpness and exhaustion are the
inevitable consequence of extreme excitability, and such excitability is
extremely characteristic of our young people. Take literature. Take the
present time.... Socialism is one of the forms of this excitement. But where
is socialism? You see it in Tihomirov’s letter to the Tsar. The socialists are
married and are criticizing the Zemstvo. Where is Liberalism? Mihailovsky
himself says that all the labels have been mixed up now. And what are all
the Russian enthusiasms worth? The war has wearied us, Bulgaria has
wearied us till we can only be ironical about it. Zucchi has wearied us and
so has the comic opera.
Exhaustion (Dr. Bertensen will confirm this) finds expression not only in
complaining or the sensation of boredom. The life of an over-tired man
cannot be represented like this:
[Transcriber’s note: The line graph in the print version depicts a wavy
horizontal “line” with minimal variation in the vertical direction. The ASCII
diagram below gives a rough approximation.]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is very unequal. Over-tired people never lose the capacity for becoming
extremely excited, but cannot keep it up for long, and each excitement is

followed by still greater apathy.... Graphically, it could be represented like
this:
[Transcriber’s note: The line graph in the print version depicts a series of
wavy horizontal segments punctuated by sharp “dips,” each horizontal
segment a little lower than the one before. The ASCII illustration below
gives a rough approximation.]

~~~~~~
\ ~~~~~~
\ / \ ~~~~~~
\/ \ / \ ~~~~~~
\ / \/
\/

The fall, as you see, is not continuous but broken. Sasha declares her love
and Ivanov cries out in ecstasy, “A new life!”—and next morning he
believes in this new life as little as he does in spooks (the monologue in Act
III.); his wife insults him, and, fearfully worked up and beside himself with
anger, he flings a cruel insult at her. He is called a scoundrel. This is either
fatal to his tottering brain, or stimulates him to a fresh paroxysm and he
pronounces sentence on himself.
Not to tire you out altogether I pass now to Dr. Lvov. He is the type of an
honest, straightforward, hotheaded, but narrow and uncompromising man.
Clever people say of such men: “He is stupid but his heart is in the right
place.” Anything like width of outlook or unreflecting feeling is foreign to
Lvov. He is the embodiment of a programme, a walking tendency. He looks
through a narrow frame at every person and event, he judges everything
according to preconceived notions. Those who shout, “Make way for honest
labour!” are an object of worship to him; those who do not shout it are
scoundrels and exploiters. There is no middle. He has been brought up on
Mihailov’s [Translator’s Note: The author of second-rate works inculcating
civic virtue with a revolutionary bias.] novels; at the theatre he has seen on
the stage “new men,” i.e., the exploiters and sons of our age, painted by the
modern playwrights. He has stored it all up, and so much so, that when he
reads “Rudin” he is sure to be asking himself, “Is Rudin a scoundrel or
not?” Literature and the stage have so educated him that he approaches
every character in real life and in fiction with this question.... It is not
enough for him that all men are sinners. He wants saints and villains!

He was prejudiced before he came to the district. He at once classed all
the rich peasants as exploiters, and Ivanov, whom he could not understand,
as a scoundrel. Why, the man has a sick wife and he goes to see a rich lady
neighbour—of course he is a scoundrel! It is obvious that he is killing his
wife in order to marry an heiress.
Lvov is honest and straightforward, and he blurts out the truth without
sparing himself. If necessary, he will throw a bomb at a carriage, give a
school inspector a blow in the face, or call a man a scoundrel. He will not
stop at anything. He never feels remorse—it is his mission as “an honest
worker” to fight “the powers of darkness”!
Such people are useful, and are for the most part attractive. To caricature
them, even in the interests of the play, is unfair and, indeed, unnecessary.
True, a caricature is more striking, and therefore easier to understand, but it
is better to put your colour on too faint than too strong.
Now about the women. What do they love Ivanov for? Sarra loves him
because he is a fine man, because he has enthusiasm, because he is brilliant
and speaks with as much heat as Lvov does (Act I., Scene 7). She loves him
so long as he is excited and interesting; but when he begins to grow misty in
her eyes, and to lose definiteness of outline, she ceases to understand him,
and at the end of Act III. speaks out plainly and sharply.
Sasha is a young woman of the newest type. She is well-educated,
intelligent, honest, and so on. In the realm of the blind a one-eyed man is
king, and so she favours Ivanov in spite of his being thirty-five. He is better
than anyone else. She knew him when she was a child and saw his work
close at hand, at the period before he was exhausted. He is a friend of her
father’s.
She is a female who is not won by the vivid plumage of the male, not by
their courage and dexterity, but by their complaints, whinings and failures.
She is the sort of girl who loves a man when he is going downhill. The
moment Ivanov loses heart the young lady is on the spot! That’s just what
she was waiting for. Just think of it, she now has such a holy, such a grateful
task before her! She will raise up the fallen one, set him on his feet, make
him happy.... It is not Ivanov she loves, but this task. Argenton in Daudet’s
book says, “Life is not a novel.” Sasha does not know this. She does not
know that for Ivanov love is only a fresh complication, an extra stab in the

back. And what comes of it? She struggles with him for a whole year and,
instead of being raised, he sinks lower and lower.
... In my description of Ivanov there often occurs the word “Russian.”
Don’t be cross about it. When I was writing the play I had in mind only the
things that really matter—that is, only the typical Russian characteristics.
Thus the extreme excitability, the feeling of guilt, the liability to become
exhausted are purely Russian. Germans are never excited, and that is why
Germany knows nothing of disappointed, superfluous, or over-tired
people.... The excitability of the French is always maintained at one and the
same level, and makes no sudden bounds or falls, and so a Frenchman is
normally excited down to a decrepit old age. In other words, the French do
not have to waste their strength in over-excitement; they spend their powers
sensibly, and do not go bankrupt.
... Ivanov and Lvov appear to my imagination to be living people. I tell
you honestly, in all conscience, these men were born in my head, not by
accident, not out of sea foam, or preconceived “intellectual" ideas. They are
the result of observing and studying life. They stand in my brain, and I feel
that I have not falsified the truth nor exaggerated it a jot. If on paper they
have not come out clear and living, the fault is not in them but in me, for
not being able to express my thoughts. It shows it is too early for me to
begin writing plays.

January 7, 1889.
... I have been cherishing the bold dream of summing up all that has
hitherto been written about whining, miserable people, and with my Ivanov
saying the last word. It seemed to me that all Russian novelists and
playwrights were drawn to depict despondent men, but that they all wrote
instinctively, having no definite image or views on the subject. As far as my
design goes I was on the right track, but the execution is good for nothing. I
ought to have waited! I am glad I did not listen to Grigorovitch two or three
years ago, and write a novel! I can just imagine what a lot of good material
I should have spoiled. He says: “Talent and freshness overcome
everything.” It is more true to say that talent and freshness can spoil a great
deal. In addition to plenty of material and talent, one wants something else
which is no less important. One wants to be mature—that is one thing; and
for another the feeling of personal freedom is essential, and that feeling has
only recently begun to develop in me. I used not to have it before; its place
was successfully filled by my frivolity, carelessness, and lack of respect for
my work.
What writers belonging to the upper class have received from nature for
nothing, plebeians acquire at the cost of their youth. Write a story of how a
young man, the son of a serf, who has served in a shop, sung in a choir,
been at a high school and a university, who has been brought up to respect
everyone of higher rank and position, to kiss priests’ hands, to reverence
other people’s ideas, to be thankful for every morsel of bread, who has been
many times whipped, who has trudged from one pupil to another without
goloshes, who has been used to fighting, and tormenting animals, who has
liked dining with his rich relations, and been hypocritical before God and
men from the mere consciousness of his own insignificance—write how
this young man squeezes the slave out of himself, drop by drop, and how
waking one beautiful morning he feels that he has no longer a slave’s blood
in his veins but a real man’s....

March 5, 1889.
... Last night I drove out of town and listened to the gypsies. They sing
well, the wild creatures. Their singing reminds me of a train falling off a
high bank in a violent snow-storm: there is a lot of turmoil, screeching and
banging.
... I bought Dostoevsky in your shop and am now reading him. It is fine,
but very long and indiscreet. It is over-pretentious.

SUMY,
LINTVARYOVS’ ESTATE, May, 1889.
... Among other things I am reading Gontcharov and wondering. I wonder
how I could have considered Gontcharov a first-rate writer. His “Oblomov”
is not really good. Oblomov himself is exaggerated and is not so striking as
to make it worth while to write a whole book about him. A flabby sluggard
like so many, a commonplace, petty nature without any complexity in it: to
raise this person to the rank of a social type is to make too much of him. I
ask myself, what would Oblomov be if he had not been a sluggard? And I
answer that he would not have been anything. And if so, let him snore in
peace. The other characters are trivial, with a flavour of Leikin about them;
they are taken at random, and are half unreal. They are not characteristic of
the epoch and give one nothing new. Stoltz does not inspire me with any
confidence. The author says he is a splendid fellow, but I don’t believe him.
He is a sly brute, who thinks very well of himself and is very complacent.
He is half unreal, and three-quarters on stilts. Olga is unreal and is dragged
in by the tail. And the chief trouble is that the whole novel is cold, cold,
cold. I scratch out Gontcharov from the list of my demi-gods.
But how direct, how powerful is Gogol, and what an artist he is! His
“Marriage” alone is worth two hundred thousand roubles. It is simply
delicious, and that is all about it. He is the greatest of Russian writers. In
“The Inspector General” the first act is the best, in “The Marriage” the third
act is the worst. I am going to read it aloud to my people.

May 4, 1889.
... Nature is an excellent sedative. It pacifies—that is, it makes one
indifferent. And it is essential in this world to be indifferent. Only those
who are indifferent are able to see things clearly, to be just and to work. Of
course, I am only speaking of intelligent people of fine natures; the empty
and selfish are indifferent enough any way.
You say that I have grown lazy. That does not mean that I am now lazier
than I used to be. I work now as much as I did three or five years ago. To
work and to look as though I were working from nine in the morning till
dinner, and from evening tea till bedtime has become a habit with me, and
in that respect I am just like a government clerk. And if my work does not
produce two novels a month or an income of ten thousand, it is not my
laziness that is at fault, but my fundamental, psychological peculiarities. I
do not care enough for money to succeed in medicine, and for literature I
have not enough passion and therefore not enough talent. The fire burns in
me slowly and evenly, without suddenly spluttering and flaring up, and this
is why it does not happen to me to write three or four signatures a night, or
to be so carried away by work as to prevent myself from going to bed if I
am sleepy; this is why I commit no particular follies nor do anything
particularly wise.
I am afraid that in this respect I resemble Gontcharov, whom I don’t like,
who is ten heads taller than I am in talent. I have not enough passion; add to
that this sort of lunacy: for the last two years I have for no reason at all
ceased to care about seeing my work in print, have become indifferent to
reviews, to literary conversations, to gossip, to success and failure, to good
pay—in short, I have gone downright silly. There is a sort of stagnation in
my soul. I explain it by the stagnation in my personal life. I am not
disappointed, I am not tired, I am not depressed, but simply everything has
suddenly become less interesting. I must do something to rouse myself.

May 7.
I have read Bourget’s “Disciple” in the Russian translation. This is how it
strikes me. Bourget is a gifted, very intelligent and cultured man. He is as
thoroughly acquainted with the method of the natural sciences, and as
imbued with it as though he had taken a good degree in science or
medicine. He is not a stranger in the domain he proposes to deal with—a
merit absent in Russian writers both new and old.
... The novel is interesting. I have read it and understand why you were so
absorbed by it. It is clever, interesting, in places witty, somewhat fantastic.
As to its defects, the chief of them is his pretentious crusade against
materialism. Forgive me, but I can’t understand such crusades. They never
lead to anything and only bring needless confusion into people’s thoughts.
Whom is the crusade against, and what is its object? Where is the enemy
and what is there dangerous about him? In the first place, the materialistic
movement is not a school or tendency in the narrow journalistic sense; it is
not something passing or accidental; it is necessary, inevitable, and beyond
the power of man. All that lives on earth is bound to be materialistic. In
animals, in savages, in Moscow merchants, all that is higher and non-
animal is conditioned by an unconscious instinct, while all the rest is
material, and they of course cannot help it. Beings of a higher order,
thinking men, are also bound to be materialists. They seek for truth in
matter, for there is nowhere else to seek for it, since they see, hear, and
sense matter alone. Of necessity they can only seek for truth where their
microscopes, lancets, and knives are of use to them. To forbid a man to
follow the materialistic line of thought is equivalent to forbidding him to
seek truth. Outside matter there is neither knowledge nor experience, and
consequently there is no truth....
I think that when dissecting a corpse, the most inveterate spiritualist will
be bound to ask himself, “Where is the soul here?” And if one knows how
great is the likeness between bodily and mental diseases, and that both are
treated by the same remedies, one cannot help refusing to separate the soul
from the body.

... To speak of the danger and harm of materialism, and even more to
fight against it, is, to say the least, premature. We have not enough data to
draw up an indictment. There are many theories and suppositions, but no
facts.... The priests complain of unbelief, immorality, and so on. There is no
unbelief. People believe in something, whatever it may be....
As to immorality, it is not people like Mendeleyev but poets, abbots, and
personages regularly attending Embassy churches, who have the reputation
of being perverted debauchees, libertines, and drunkards.
In short, I cannot understand Bourget’s crusade. If, in starting upon it, he
had at the same time taken the trouble to point out to the materialists an
incorporeal God in the sky, and to point to Him in such a way that they
should see Him, that would be another matter, and I should understand what
he is driving at.

May 14, 1889.
... You want to know if the lady doctor hates you as before. Alas! she has
grown stouter and much more resigned, which I do not like at all. There are
not many women doctors left on earth. They are disappearing and dying out
like the branches in the Byelovyezhsky forest. Some die of consumption,
others become mystics, some marry widowed squadron-commanders, some
still try to stand firm, but are obviously losing heart. Probably the first
tailors and the first astrologers also died out rapidly. Life is hard on those
who have the temerity first to enter upon an unknown path. The vanguard
always has a bad time of it.

May 15, 1889.
If you have not gone abroad yet, I will answer your letter about
Bourget.... You are speaking of the “right to live” of this or that branch of
knowledge; I am speaking of peace, not of rights. I want people not to see
war where there is none. Different branches of knowledge have always
lived together in peace. Anatomy and belles-lettres are of equally noble
descent; they have the same purpose and the same enemy—the devil—and
there is absolutely nothing for them to fight about. There is no struggle for
existence between them. If a man knows about the circulation of the blood,
he is rich; if he also learns the history of religion and the song “I remember
a marvellous moment,” he becomes richer, not poorer—that is to say, we
are concerned with pluses alone. This is why geniuses have never fought,
and in Goethe the poet lived amicably side by side with the scientist.
It is not branches of knowledge such as poetry and anatomy, but errors—
that is to say, men—that fight with one another. When a man fails to
understand something he is conscious of a discord, and seeks for the cause
of it not in himself, as he should, but outside himself—hence the war with
what he does not understand. In the middle ages alchemy was gradually in a
natural, peaceful way changing into chemistry, and astrology into
astronomy; the monks did not understand, saw a conflict and fought against
it. Just such a belligerent Spanish monk was our Pisarev in the sixties.
Bourget, too, is fighting. You say he is not, and I say he is. Imagine his
novel falling into the hands of a man whose children are studying in the
faculty of science, or of a bishop who is looking for a subject for his
Sunday sermon. Will the effect be anything like peace? It will not. Or
imagine the novel catching the eye of an anatomist or a physiologist, or any
such. It will not breathe peace into anyone’s soul; it will irritate those who
know and give false ideas to those who don’t.

TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
MOSCOW, September 30, 1889.
... I do not think I ought to change the title of the story. [Footnote: “A
Dreary Story.”] The wags who will, as you foretell, make jokes about “A
Dreary Story,” are so dull that one need not fear them; and if someone
makes a good joke I shall be glad to have given him the occasion for it. The
professor could not write about Katya’s husband because he did not know
him, and Katya does not say anything about him; besides, one of my hero’s
chief characteristics is that he cares far too little about the inner life of those
who surround him, and while people around him are weeping, making
mistakes, telling lies, he calmly talks about the theatre or literature. Were he
a different sort of man, Liza and Katya might not have come to grief.

October, 1889.
I am afraid of those who look for a tendency between the lines, and who
are determined to regard me either as a liberal or as a conservative. I am not
a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk,
not an indifferentist. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more, and I
regret that God has not given me the power to be one. I hate lying and
violence in all their forms, and am equally repelled by the secretaries of
consistories and by Notovitch and Gradovsky. Pharisaism, stupidity and
despotism reign not in merchants’ houses and prisons alone. I see them in
science, in literature, in the younger generation.... That is why I have no
preference either for gendarmes, or for butchers, or for scientists, or for
writers, or for the younger generation. I regard trade-marks and labels as a
superstition. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence,
talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute freedom—freedom from
violence and lying, whatever forms they may take. This is the programme I
would follow if I were a great artist.

MOSCOW,
February 15, 1890.
I answer you, dear Alexey Nikolaevitch, at once on receiving your letter.
It was your name-day, and I forgot it!! Forgive me, dear friend, and accept
my belated congratulations.
Did you really not like the “Kreutzer Sonata”? I don’t say it is a work of
genius for all time, of that I am no judge; but to my thinking, among the
mass of all that is written now, here and abroad, one scarcely could find
anything else as powerful both in the gravity of its conception and the
beauty of its execution. To say nothing of its artistic merits, which in places
are striking, one must be grateful to the novel, if only because it is keenly
stimulating to thought. As one reads it, one can scarcely refrain from crying
out: “That’s true,” or “That’s absurd.” It is true it has some very annoying
defects. Apart from all those you enumerate, it has one for which one
cannot readily forgive the author—that is, the audacity with which Tolstoy
holds forth about what he doesn’t know and is too obstinate to care to
understand. Thus his statements about syphilis, foundling hospitals, the
aversion of women for the sexual relation, and so on, are not merely open to
dispute, but show him up as an ignoramus who has not, in the course of his
long life, taken the trouble to read two or three books written by specialists.
But yet these defects fly away like feathers in the wind; one simply does not
notice them in face of the real worth of the story, or, if one notices them, it
is only with a little vexation that the story has not escaped the fate of all the
works of man, all imperfect and never free from blemish.
My Petersburg friends and acquaintances are angry with me? What for?
For my not having bored them enough with my presence, which has for so
long been a bore to myself! Soothe their minds. Tell them that in Petersburg
I ate a great many dinners and a great many suppers, but did not fascinate
one lady; that every day I was confident of leaving by the evening train, that
I was detained by my friends and by The Marine Almanack, the whole of
which I had to look through from the year 1852. While I was in Petersburg,
I got through in one month more than my young friends would in a year.
Let them be angry, though!

I sit all day long reading and making extracts. I have nothing in my head
or on paper except Sahalin. Mental obsession. Mania Sachalinosa.
Not long ago I dined with Madame Yermolov. [Translator’s Note: The
celebrated actress.] A wild-flower thrust into the same nosegay with the
carnation was the more fragrant for the good company it had kept. So I,
after dining with the star, was aware of a halo round my head for two days
afterwards ...
Good-bye, my dear friend; come and see us....

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, February 23, 1890.
... My brother Alexandr is a slow-witted creature; he is enthusiastic over
Ornatsky’s missionary speech, in which he says that the natives do not
become Christians because they are waiting for a special ukaz (that is,
command) from the Tsar on the subject and are waiting for their chiefs to be
baptized ... (by force—be it understood). This eloquent pontifex says, too,
that the native priests ought, in view of their ascetic manner of life, to be
removed from the natives and put into special institutions somewhat after
the fashion of monasteries. A nice set of people and no mistake! They have
wasted two million roubles, they send out every year from the academy
dozens of missionaries who cost the treasury and the people large sums, yet
they cannot convert the natives, and what is more, want the police and the
military to help them with fire and sword....
If you have Madame Tsebrikov’s article, do not trouble to send it. Such
articles give no information and only waste time; I want facts. Indeed, in
Russia there is a terrible poverty of facts, and a terrible abundance of
reflections of all sorts.

February 28.
... To-morrow is spring, and within ten to fifteen days the larks will come
back. But alas!—the coming spring seems strange to me, for I am going
away from it.
In Sahalin there is very good fish, but there are no hot drinks....
Our geologists, ichthyologists, zoologists and so on, are fearfully
uneducated people. They write such a vile jargon that it not only bores one
to read it, but one actually has at times to remodel the sentences before one
can understand them; on the other hand, they have solemnity and
earnestness enough and to spare. It’s really beastly....

March 4.
I have sent you to-day two stories: Filippov’s (he was here yesterday) and
Yezhov’s. I have not had time to read the latter, and I think it is as well to
say, once for all, that I am not responsible for what I send you. My
handwriting on the address does not mean that I like the story.
Poor Yezhov has been to see me; he sat near the table crying: his young
wife is in consumption. He must take her at once to the south. To my
question whether he had money he answered that he had.... It’s vile catch-
cold weather; the sky itself is sneezing. I can’t bear to look at it.... I have
already begun writing of Sahalin. I have written five pages. It reads all
right, as though written with intelligence and authority ... I quote foreign
authors second-hand, but minutely and in a tone as though I could speak
every foreign language perfectly. It’s regular swindling.
Yezhov has upset me with his tears. He reminded me of something, and I
was sorry for him too.
Don’t forget us sinners.

TO N. M. LINTVARYOV.
MOSCOW, March 5, 1890.
... As for me, I have a cough too, but I am alive and I believe I’m well. I
shan’t be with you this summer, as I am going in April, on affairs of my
own, to the island of Sahalin, and shall not be back till December. I am
going across Siberia (eleven thousand versts) and shall come back by sea. I
believe Misha wrote to you as though someone were commissioning me to
go, but that’s nonsense. I am commissioning myself to go, on my own
account. There are lots of bears and escaped convicts in Sahalin, so that in
case messieurs the wild beasts dine off me or some tramp cuts my throat, I
beg you not to remember evil against me.
Of course if I have the time and the skill to write what I want to about
Sahalin, I shall send you the book immediately that it comes into the world;
it will be dull, a specialist’s book consisting of nothing but figures, but let
me count upon your indulgence: you will suppress your yawns as you read
it....

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, March 9.
About Sahalin we are both mistaken, but you probably more than I. I am
going in the full conviction that my visit will furnish no contribution of
value either to literature or science: I have neither the knowledge, nor the
time, nor the ambition for that. I have neither the plans of a Humboldt nor
of a Kennan. I want to write some 100 to 200 pages, and so do something,
however little, for medical science, which, as you are aware, I have
neglected shockingly. Possibly I shall not succeed in writing anything, but
still the expedition does not lose its charm for me: reading, looking about
me, and listening, I shall learn a great deal and gain experience. I have not
yet travelled, but thanks to the books which I have been compelled to read,
I have learned a great deal which anyone ought to be flogged for not
knowing, and which I was so ignorant as not to have known before.
Moreover, I imagine the journey will be six months of incessant hard work,
physical and mental, and that is essential for me, for I am a Little Russian
and have already begun to be lazy. I must take myself in hand. My
expedition may be nonsense, obstinacy, a craze, but think a moment and tell
me what I am losing if I go. Time? Money? Shall I suffer hardships? My
time is worth nothing; money I never have anyway; as for hardships, I shall
travel with horses, twenty-five to thirty days, not more, all the rest of the
time I shall be sitting on the deck of a steamer or in a room, and shall be
continually bombarding you with letters.
Suppose the expedition gives me nothing, yet surely there will be 2 or 3
days out of the whole journey which I shall remember all my life with
ecstasy or bitterness, etc., etc.... So that’s how it is, sir. All that is
unconvincing, but you know you write just as unconvincingly. For instance,
you say that Sahalin is of no use and no interest to anyone. Can that be true?
Sahalin can be useless and uninteresting only to a society which does not
exile thousands of people to it and does not spend millions of roubles on it.
Except Australia in the past and Cayenne, Sahalin is the only place where
one can study colonization by convicts; all Europe is interested in it, and is
it no use to us? Not more than 25 to 30 years ago our Russians exploring

Sahalin performed amazing feats which exalt them above humanity, and
that’s no use to us: we don’t know what those men were, and simply sit
within four walls and complain that God has made man amiss. Sahalin is a
place of the most unbearable sufferings of which man, free and captive, is
capable. Those who work near it and upon it have solved fearful,
responsible problems, and are still solving them. I am not sentimental, or I
would say that we ought to go to places like Sahalin to worship as the Turks
go to Mecca, and that sailors and gaolers ought to think of the prison in
Sahalin as military men think of Sevastopol. From the books I have read
and am reading, it is evident that we have sent millions of men to rot in
prison, have destroyed them—casually, without thinking, barbarously; we
have driven men in fetters through the cold ten thousand versts, have
infected them with syphilis, have depraved them, have multiplied criminals,
and the blame for all this we have thrown upon the gaolers and red-nosed
superintendents. Now all educated Europe knows that it is not the
superintendents that are to blame, but all of us; yet that has nothing to do
with us, it is not interesting. The vaunted sixties did nothing for the sick and
for prisoners, so breaking the chief commandment of Christian civilization.
In our day something is being done for the sick, nothing for prisoners;
prison management is entirely without interest for our jurists. No, I assure
you that Sahalin is of use and of interest to us, and the only thing to regret is
that I am going there, and not someone else who knows more about it and
would be more able to rouse public interest. Nothing much will come of my
going there.

There have been disturbances among the students on a grand scale here.
It began with the Petrovsky Academy, where the authorities forbade the
students to take young ladies to their rooms, suspecting the ladies of politics
as well as of prostitution. From the Academy it spread to the University,
where now the students, surrounded by fully armed and mounted Hectors
and Achilleses with lances, make the following demands:
1. Complete autonomy for the universities.
2. Complete freedom of teaching.
3. Free right of entrance to the university without distinction of religious
denomination, nationality, sex, and social position.

4. Right of entrance to the university for the Jews without restriction, and
equal rights for them with the other students.
5. Freedom of meeting and recognition of the students’ associations.
6. The establishment of a university and students’ tribunal.
7. The abolition of the police duties of the inspectors.
8. Lowering of the fees for instruction.
This I copied from a manifesto, with some abbreviations.

TO I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.
MOSCOW, March 22, 1890.
My greetings, dear Jean! Thanks for your long letter and for the good will
of which it is full from beginning to end. I shall be delighted to read your
military story. Will it come out in the Easter number? It is a long time since
I read anything of yours or my own. You say that you want to give me a
harsh scolding “especially on the score of morality and art,” you speak
vaguely of my crimes as deserving friendly censure, and threaten me with
“an influential newspaper criticism.” If you scratch out the word “art,” the
whole phrase in quotation marks becomes clearer, but gains a significance
which, to tell the truth, perplexes me not a little. Jean, what is it? How is
one to understand it? Can I really be different in my ideas of morality from
people like you, and so much so as to deserve censure and even an
influential article? I cannot take it that you mean some subtle higher
morality, as there are no lower, higher, or medium moralities, but only one
which Jesus Christ gave us, and which now prevents you and me and
Barantsevitch from stealing, insulting, lying, and so on. If I can trust the
ease of my conscience, I have never by word or deed, in thought, or in my
stories, or in my farces, coveted my neighbour’s wife, nor his man, nor his
ox, nor any of his cattle, I have not stolen, nor been a hypocrite, I have not
flattered the great nor sought their favour, I have not blackmailed, nor lived
at other people’s expense. It is true I have waxed wanton and slothful, have
laughed heedlessly, have eaten too much and drunk too much and been
profligate. But all that is a personal matter, and all that does not deprive me
of the right to think that, as far as morals are concerned, I am nothing out of
the ordinary, one way or the other. Nothing heroic and nothing scoundrelly
—I am just like everyone else; I have many sins, but I am quits with
morality, as I pay for those sins with interest in the discomforts they bring
with them. If you want to abuse me cruelly because I am not a hero, you’d
better throw your cruelty out of the window, and instead of abuse, let me
hear your charming tragic laugh—that’s better.
But of the word “art” I am terrified, as merchants’ wives are terrified of
“brimstone.” When people talk to me of what is artistic and inartistic, of

what is dramatic and not dramatic, of tendency, realism, and so on, I am
bewildered, hesitatingly assent, and answer with banal half-truths not worth
a brass farthing. I divide all works into two classes: those I like and those I
don’t. I have no other criterion, and if you ask me why I like Shakespeare
and don’t like Zlatovratsky, I don’t venture to answer. Perhaps in time and
as I grow wiser I may work out some criterion, but meanwhile all
conversations about what is “artistic” only weary me, and seem to me like a
continuation of the scholastic disputations with which people wearied
themselves in the middle ages.
If criticism, on the authority of which you rely, knows what you and I
don’t know, why has it up till now not spoken? why does it not reveal the
truth and the immutable laws? If it knew, believe me, it would long ago
have shown us the true path and we should have known what to do, and
Fofanov would not have been in a madhouse, Garshin would have been
alive to-day, Barantsevitch would not have been so depressed and we
should not be so dull and ill at ease as we are, and you would not feel drawn
to the theatre and I to Sahalin. But criticism maintains a dignified silence or
gets out of it with idle trashy babble. If it seems to you authoritative it is
because it is stupid, conceited, impudent, and clamorous; because it is an
empty barrel one cannot help hearing.
But let us have done with that and sing something out of a different
opera. Please don’t build any literary hopes on my Sahalin trip. I am not
going for the sake of impressions or observations, but simply for the sake of
living for six months differently from how I have lived hitherto. Don’t rely
on me, old man; if I am successful and clever enough to do something, so
much the better; if not, don’t blame me. I am going after Easter. I will send
you in due time my Sahalin address and minute instructions....

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, March 22, 1890.
... Yesterday a young lady told me that Professor Storozhenko had related
to her the following anecdote. The Sovereign liked the Kreutzer Sonata.
Pobyedonostsev, Lubimov, and the other cherubim and seraphim, hastened
to justify their attitude to Tolstoy by showing his Majesty “Nikolay Palkin.”
After reading it, his Majesty was so furious that he ordered measures to be
taken. Prince Dolgorukov was informed. And so one fine day an adjutant
from Dolgorukov comes to Tolstoy and invites him to go at once to the
prince. The latter replies: “Tell the prince that I only visit the houses of my
acquaintances.” The adjutant, overcome with confusion, rides away, and
next day brings Tolstoy the official notice demanding from him an
explanation in regard to his “Nikolay Palkin.” Tolstoy reads the document
and says:
“Tell his excellency that I have not for a long time past written anything
for publication; I write only for my friends, and if my friends spread my
writings abroad, they are responsible and not I. Tell him that!”
“But I can’t tell him that,” cried the adjutant in horror, “the prince will
not believe me!”
“The prince will not believe his subordinates? That’s bad.”
Two days later the adjutant comes again with a fresh document, and
learns that Tolstoy has gone away to Yasnaya Polyana. That is the end of the
anecdote.
Now about the new movements. They flog in our police stations; a rate
has been fixed; from a peasant they take ten kopecks for a beating, from a
workman twenty—that’s for the rods and the trouble. Peasant women are
flogged too. Not long ago, in their enthusiasm for beating in a police
station, they thrashed a couple of budding lawyers, an incident upon which
Russkiya Vyedomosti has a vague paragraph to-day; an investigation has
begun.
Another sign of the times: the cabmen approve of the students’
disturbances.

“They are making a riot for the poor to be taken in to study,” they
explain, “learning is not only for the rich.” It is said that when a crowd of
students were being taken by night to the prison the populace fell upon the
gendarmes to rescue the students from them. The populace is said to have
shouted: “You have set up flogging for us, but they stand up for us.”

March 29.
... Fatigue is a relative matter. You say you used to work twenty hours out
of the twenty-four and were not exhausted. But you know one may be
exhausted lying all day long on the sofa. You used to write for twenty hours,
but you know you were in perfect health all that time, you were stimulated
by success, defiance, a sense of your talent; you liked your work, or you
wouldn’t have written. Your heir-apparent sits up late, not because he has a
talent for journalism or a love for his work, but simply because his father is
an editor of a newspaper. The difference is vast. He ought to have been a
doctor or a lawyer, to have had an income of two thousand roubles a year,
and published his articles not in Novoye Vremya and not in the spirit of
Novoye Vremya. Only those young people can be accepted as healthy who
refuse to be reconciled with the old order and foolishly or wisely struggle
against it—such is the will of nature and it is the foundation of progress,
while your son began by absorbing the old order. In our most intimate talks
he has never once abused Tatistchev or Burenin, and that’s a bad sign. You
are a hundred times as liberal as he is, and it ought to be the other way. He
utters a listless and indolent protest, he soon drops his voice and soon
agrees, and altogether one has the impression that he has no interest
whatever in the contest; that is, he looks on at the cock-fight like a spectator
and has no cock of his own. And one ought to have one’s own cock, else
life is without interest. The unfortunate thing, too, is that he is intelligent,
and great intelligence with little interest in life is like a great machine which
produces nothing, yet requires a great deal of fuel and exhausts the owner....

April 1.
You abuse me for objectivity, calling it indifference to good and evil, lack
of ideals and ideas, and so on. You would have me, when I describe horse-
stealers, say: “Stealing horses is an evil.” But that has been known for ages
without my saying so. Let the jury judge them, it’s my job simply to show
what sort of people they are. I write: you are dealing with horse-stealers, so
let me tell you that they are not beggars but well-fed people, that they are
people of a special cult, and that horse-stealing is not simply theft but a
passion. Of course it would be pleasant to combine art with a sermon, but
for me personally it is extremely difficult and almost impossible, owing to
the conditions of technique. You see, to depict horse-stealers in seven
hundred lines I must all the time speak and think in their tone and feel in
their spirit, otherwise, if I introduce subjectivity, the image becomes blurred
and the story will not be as compact as all short stories ought to be. When I
write I reckon entirely upon the reader to add for himself the subjective
elements that are lacking in the story.

April 11.
Madame N. who used at one time to live in your family is here now. She
married the artist N., a nice but tedious man who wants at all costs to travel
with me to Sahalin to sketch. To refuse him my company I haven’t the
courage, but to travel with him would be simple misery. He is going to
Petersburg in a day or two to sell his pictures, and at his wife’s request will
call on you to ask your advice. With a view to this his wife came to ask me
for a letter of introduction to you. Be my benefactor, tell N. that I am a
drunkard, a swindler, a nihilist, a rowdy character, and that it is out of the
question to travel with me, and that a journey in my company will do
nothing but upset him. Tell him he will be wasting his time. Of course it
would be very nice to have my book illustrated, but when I learned that N.
was hoping to get not less than a thousand roubles for it, I lost all appetite
for illustrations. My dear fellow, advise him against it!!! Why it is your
advice he wants, the devil only knows.

April 15.
And so, my dear friend, I am setting off on Wednesday or Thursday at
latest. Good-bye till December. Good luck in my absence. I received the
money, thank you very much, though fifteen hundred roubles is a great
deal; I don’t know where to put it.... I feel as though I were preparing for
the battlefield, though I see no dangers before me but toothache, which I am
sure to have on the journey. As I am provided with nothing in the way of
papers but a passport, I may have unpleasant encounters with the
authorities, but that is a passing trouble. If they refuse to show me
something, I shall simply write in my book that they wouldn’t show it me,
and that’s all, and I won’t worry. In case I am drowned or anything of that
sort, you might keep it in mind that all I have or may have in the future
belongs to my sister; she will pay my debts.
I am taking my mother with me and putting her down at the Troitsky
Monastery; I am taking my sister too, and leaving her at Kostroma. I am
telling them I shall be back in September.
I shall go over the university in Tomsk. As the only faculty there is
medicine I shall not show myself an ignoramus.
I have bought myself a fur coat, an officer’s waterproof leather coat, big
boots, and a big knife for cutting sausage and hunting tigers. I am equipped
from head to foot.

TO HIS SISTER.
STEAMER “ALEXANDR NEVSKY 23,” April, 1890, early in the
morning.
My dear Tunguses!
Did you have rain when Ivan was coming back from the monastery? In
Yaroslavl there was such a downpour that I had to swathe myself in my
leather chiton. My first impression of the Volga was poisoned by the rain,
by the tear-stained windows of the cabin, and the wet nose of G., who came
to meet me at the station. In the rain Yaroslavl looks like Zvenigorod, and
its churches remind me of Perervinsky Monastery; there are lots of illiterate
signboards, it’s muddy, jackdaws with big heads strut about the pavement.
In the steamer I made it my first duty to indulge my talent—that is, to
sleep. When I woke I beheld the sun. The Volga is not bad; water meadows,
monasteries bathed in sunshine, white churches; the wide expanse is
marvellous, wherever one looks it would be a nice place to sit down and
begin fishing. Class ladies [Translator’s Note: I.e., School chaperons, whose
duty it is to sit in the classroom while the girls are receiving instruction
from a master.] wander about on the banks, nipping at the green grass. The
shepherd’s horn can be heard now and then. White gulls, looking like the
younger Drishka, hover over the water.
The steamer is not up to much....

Kundasova is travelling with me. Where she is going and with what
object I don’t know. When I question her about it, she launches off into
extremely misty allusions about someone who has appointed a tryst with
her in a ravine near Kineshma, then goes off into a wild giggle and begins
stamping her feet or prodding with her elbow whatever comes first. We
have passed both Kineshma and the ravine, but she still goes on in the
steamer, at which of course I am very much pleased; by the way, yesterday
for the first time in my life I saw her eating. She eats no less than other
people, but she eats mechanically, as though she were munching oats.

Kostroma is a nice town. I saw the stretch of river on which the languid
Levitan used to live. I saw Kineshma, where I walked along the boulevard
and watched the local beaus. Here I went into the chemist’s shop to buy
some Bertholet salts for my tongue, which was like leather after the
medicine I had taken. The chemist, on seeing Olga Petrovna, was overcome
with delight and confusion; she was the same. They were evidently old
acquaintances, and judging from the conversation between them they had
walked more than once about the ravines near Kineshma.
... It’s rather cold and rather dull, but interesting on the whole. The
steamer whistles every minute; its whistle is midway between the bray of an
ass and an Aeolian harp. In five or six hours we shall be in Nizhni. The sun
is rising. I slept last night artistically. My money is safe; that is because I
am constantly pressing my hands on my stomach.
Very beautiful are the steam-tugs, dragging after them four or five barges
each; they look like some fine young intellectual trying to run away while a
plebeian wife, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and wife’s grandmother hold on
to his coat-tails.

The sun is hiding behind the clouds, the sky is overcast, and the broad
Volga looks gloomy. Levitan ought not to live on the Volga. It lays a weight
of gloom on the soul. Though it would not be bad to have an estate on its
banks.

If the waiter would wake I should ask him for some coffee; as it is, I have
to drink water without any relish for it. My greetings to Maryushka and
Olga. [Footnote: The Chekhovs’ servants.]
Well, keep well and take care of yourselves. I will write regularly.

Your bored Volga-travelling
Homo Sachaliensis,
A. CHEKHOV.

FROM THE STEAMER,
Evening, April 24, 1890.

MY DEAR TUNGUSES!

I am floating on the Kama, but I can’t fix the exact locality; I believe we
are near Tchistopol. I cannot extol the beauties of the scenery either, as it is
hellishly cold; the birches are not yet out, there are still patches of snow
here and there, bits of ice float by—in short, the picturesque has gone to the
dogs. I sit in the cabin, where people of all sorts and conditions sit at the
table, and listen to the conversation, wondering whether it is not time for
me to have tea. If I had my way I should do nothing all day but eat; as I
haven’t the money to be eating all day long I sleep and sleep. I don’t go up
on deck, it’s cold. By night it rains and by day there is an unpleasant wind.
Oh, the caviare! I eat it and eat and never have enough.
... It is a pity I did not think to get myself a little bag for tea and sugar. I
have to order it a glass at a time, which is tiresome and expensive. I meant
to buy some tea and sugar to-day at Kazan, but I over-slept myself.
Rejoice, O mother! I believe I stop twenty-four hours at Ekaterinburg,
and shall see the relations. Perhaps their hearts may be softened and they
will give me three roubles and an ounce of tea.
From the conversation I am listening to at this moment, I gather that the
members of a judicial tribunal are travelling with me. They are not gifted
persons. The merchants, who put in their word from time to time seem,
however, intelligent. One comes across fearfully rich people.
Sterlets are cheaper than mushrooms; you soon get sick of them. What
more is there for me to write about? There is nothing.... There is a General,
though, and a lean fair man. The former keeps dashing from his cabin to the
deck and back again, and sending his photograph off somewhere; the latter
is got up to look like Nadson, and tries thereby to give one to know that he
is a writer. Today he was mendaciously telling a lady that he had a book
published by Suvorin; I, of course, put on an expression of awe.

My money is all safe, except what I have eaten. They won’t feed me for
nothing, the scoundrels.
I am neither gay nor bored, but there is a sort of numbness in my soul. I
like to sit without moving or speaking. To-day, for instance, I have scarcely
uttered five words. That’s not true, though: I talked to a priest on deck.
We begin to come across natives; there are lots of Tatars: they are a
respectable and well-behaved people.
I beg Father and Mother not to worry, and not to imagine dangers which
do not exist.

Excuse me for writing about nothing but food. If I did not write about
food I should have to write about cold, for I have no other subjects.

April 29, 1890.
MY DEAR TUNGUSES!

The Kama is a very dull river. To realise its beauties one would have to
be a native sitting motionless on a barge beside a barrel of naphtha, or a
sack of dried fish, continually taking a pull at the bottle. The river banks are
bare, the trees are bare, the earth is a dull brown, there are patches of snow,
and there is such a wind that the devil himself could not blow as keenly and
hatefully. When a cold wind blows and ruffles up the water, which now
after the floods is the colour of coffee slops, one feels cold and bored and
miserable; the strains of a concertina on the bank sound dejected, figures in
tattered sheepskins standing motionless on the barges that meet us look as
though they were petrified by some unending grief. The towns on the Kama
are grey; one would think the inhabitants were employed in the manufacture
of clouds, boredom, soaking fences and mud in the streets, as their sole
occupation. The stopping-places are thronged with inhabitants of the
educated class, for whom the arrival of a steamer is an event....
... To judge from appearances not one of them earns more than thirty-five
roubles, and all of them are ailing in some way.
I have told you already there are some legal gentlemen in the steamer: the
president of the court, one of the judges, and the prosecutor. The president
is a hale and hearty old German who has embraced Orthodoxy, is pious, a
homoeopath, and evidently a devotee of the sex. The judge is an old man
such as dear Nikolay used to draw; he walks bent double, coughs, and is
fond of facetious subjects. The prosecutor is a man of forty-three,
dissatisfied with life, a liberal, a sceptic, and a very good-natured fellow.
All the journey these gentlemen have been occupied in eating, settling
mighty questions and eating, reading and eating. There is a library on the
steamer, and I saw the prosecutor reading my “In the Twilight.” They began
talking about me. Mamin-Sibiryak, who has described the Urals, is the
author most liked in these parts. He is more talked of than Tolstoy.
I have been two and a half years sailing to Perm, so it seems to me. We
reached there at two o’clock in the night. The train went at six o’clock in

the evening. I had to wait. It rained. Rain, cold, mud ... brrr! The Uralsky
line is a good one.... That is due to the abundance of business-like people
here, factories, mines, and so on, for whom time is precious.
Waking yesterday morning and looking out of the carriage window I felt
an aversion for nature: the earth was white, trees covered with hoar-frost,
and a regular blizzard pursuing the train. Now isn’t it revolting? Isn’t it
disgusting? ... I have no goloshes, I pulled on my big boots, and on my way
to the refreshment-room for coffee I made the whole Ural region smell of
tar. And when we got to Ekaterinburg there was rain, snow, and hail. I put
on my leather coat. The cabs are something inconceivable, wretched, dirty,
drenched, without springs, the horse’s four legs straddling, huge hoofs,
gaunt spines ... the droshkies here are a clumsy parody of our britchkas. A
tattered top is put on to a britchka, that is all. And the more exactly I
describe the cabman here and his vehicle, the more it will seem like a
caricature. They drive not on the middle of the road where it is jolting, but
near the gutter where it is muddy and soft. All the cabmen are like
Dobrolyubov.
In Russia all the towns are alike. Ekaterinburg is exactly the same as
Perm or Tula. The note of the bells is magnificent, velvety. I stopped at the
American Hotel (not at all bad), and at once sent word of my arrival to A.
M. S., telling him I meant to stay in my hotel room for two days.
The people here inspire the newcomer with a feeling akin to horror. They
are big-browed, big-jawed, broad-shouldered fellows with huge fists and
tiny eyes. They are born in the local iron foundries, and at their birth a
mechanic officiates instead of an accoucheur. A specimen comes into your
room with a samovar or a bottle of water, and you expect him every minute
to murder you. I stand aside. This morning just such a one came in, big-
browed, big-jawed, huge, towering up to the ceiling, seven feet across the
shoulders and wearing a fur coat too.
Well, I thought, this one will certainly murder me. It appeared that this
was our relation A. M. S. We began to talk. He is a member of the local
Zemstvo and manager of his cousin’s mill, which is lighted by electric light;
he is editor of the Ekaterinburg Week which is under the censorship of the
police-master Baron Taube, is married and has two children, is growing rich
and getting fat and elderly, and lives in a “substantial way.” He says he has
no time to be bored. He advised me to visit the museum, the factories, and

the mines; I thanked him for his advice. He invited me to tea to-morrow
evening; I invited him to dine with me. He did not invite me to dinner, and
altogether did not press me very much to visit him. From this mother may
conclude that the relations’ heart is not softened.... Relations are a race in
which I take no interest.
There is snow in the street, and I have purposely let down the blind over
the windows so as not to see the Asiatic sight. I am sitting here waiting for
an answer from Tyumen to my telegram. I telegraphed: “Tyumen. Kurbatov
steamer line. Reply paid. Inform me when the passenger steamer starts
Tomsk.” It depends on the answer whether I go by steamer or gallop fifteen
hundred versts in the slush of the thaw.
All night long they beat on sheets of iron at every corner here. You need a
head of iron not to go crazy from the incessant clanging. To-day I tried to
make myself coffee. The result was a horrid mess. I just drank it with a
shrug. I looked at five sheets, handled them, and did not take one. I am
going to-day to buy rubber overshoes.

Shall I find a letter from you at Irkutsk?
Ask Lika not to leave such big margins in her letters.

Your Homo Sachaliensis,
A. CHEKHOV.

TO MADAME KISELYOV.
THE BANK OF THE IRTYSH, May 7, 1890.
My greetings, honoured Marya Vladimirovna! I meant to write you a
farewell letter from Moscow, but I had not time; I write to you now sitting
in a hut on the bank of the Irtysh.
It is night. This is how I have come to be here. I am driving across the
plain of Siberia. I have already driven 715 versts; I have been transformed
from head to foot into a great martyr. This morning a keen cold wind began
blowing, and it began drizzling with the most detestable rain. I must
observe that there is no spring yet in Siberia. The earth is brown, the trees
are bare, and there are white patches of snow wherever one looks; I wear
my fur coat and felt overboots day and night.... Well, the wind has been
blowing since early morning.... Heavy leaden clouds, dull brown earth,
mud, rain, wind.... Brrr! I drive on and on.... I drive on endlessly, and the
weather does not improve. Towards evening I am told at the station I can’t
go on further, as everything is under water, the bridges have been carried
away, and so on. Knowing how fond these drivers are of frightening one
with the elements so as to keep the traveller for the night (it is to their
interest), I did not believe them, and ordered them to harness the three
horses; and now—alas for me!—I had not driven more than five versts
when I saw the land on the bank of the Irtysh all covered with great lakes,
the road disappeared under water, and the bridges on the road really had
been swept away or had decayed. I was prevented from turning back partly
by obstinacy and partly by the desire to get out of these dreary parts as
quickly as possible. We began driving through the lakes.... My God, I have
never experienced anything like it in my life! The cutting wind, the cold,
the loathsome rain, and one had to get out of the chaise (not a covered one),
if you please, and hold the horses: at each little bridge one could only lead
the horses over one at a time.... What had I come to? Where was I? All
around, desert, dreariness; the bare sullen bank of the Irtysh in sight.... We
drive into the very biggest lake. Now I should be glad to turn back, but it is
not easy.... We drive on a long strip of land ... the strip comes to an end—we
go splash! Again a strip of land, again a splash.... My hands were numb, and

the wild ducks seemed jeering at us and floated in huge flocks over our
heads.... It got dark. The driver said nothing—he was bewildered. But at last
we reached the last strip that separated the Irtysh from the lake.... The
sloping bank of the Irtysh was nearly three feet above the level; it was of
clay, bare, hollowed out, and looked slippery. The water was muddy....
White waves splashed on the clay, but the Irtysh itself made no roar or din,
but gave forth a strange sound as though someone were nailing up a coffin
under the water.... The further bank was a flat, disconsolate plain.... You
often dream of the Bozharovsky pool; in the same way now I shall dream of
the Irtysh....
But behold a ferry. We must be ferried across to the other side. A peasant
shrinking from the rain comes out of a hut, and tells us that the ferry cannot
cross now as it is too windy.... (The ferries are worked by oars). He advises
us to wait for calm weather....
And so I am sitting at night in a hut on a lake at the very edge of the
Irtysh. I feel a penetrating dampness to the very marrow of my bones, and a
loneliness in my soul; I hear my Irtysh banging on the coffins and the wind
howling, and wonder where I am, why I am here.
In the next room the peasants who work the ferry and my driver are
asleep. They are good-natured people. But if they were bad people they
could perfectly well rob me and drown me in the Irtysh. The hut is the only
one on the river bank; there would be no witnesses.
The road to Tomsk is absolutely free from danger as far as brigands are
concerned. It isn’t the fashion even to talk of robbery. There is no stealing
even from travellers. When you go into a hut you can leave your things
outside and they will all be safe.
But they very nearly did kill me all the same. Imagine the night just
before dawn.... I was driving along in a chaise, thinking and thinking.... All
at once I see coming flying towards us at full gallop a post-cart with three
horses; my driver had hardly time to turn to the right, the three horses
dashed by, and I noticed in it the driver who had to take it back.... Behind it
came another, also at full speed; we had turned to the right, it turned to the
left. “We shall smash into each other,” flashed into my mind ... one instant,
and—there was a crash, the horses were mixed up in a black mass, my
chaise was rearing in the air, and I was rolling on the ground with all my

bags and boxes on the top of me. I leap up and see—a third troika dashing
upon us....
My mother must have been praying for me that night, I suppose. If I had
been asleep, or if the third troika had come immediately after the second, I
should have been crushed to death or maimed. It appeared the foremost
driver lashed on the horses, while the drivers in the second and the third
carts were asleep and did not see us. The collision was followed by the
blankest amazement on both sides, then a storm of ferocious abuse. The
traces were torn, the shafts were broken, the yokes were lying about on the
road.... Ah, how the drivers swore! At night, in that swearing turbulent crew,
I felt in utter solitude such as I have never felt before in my life....
But my paper is running out.

TO HIS SISTER.
THE VILLAGE OF YAR, 45 VERSTS FROM TOMSK, May 14, 1890.
My glorious mother, my splendid Masha, my sweet Misha, and all my
household! At Ekaterinburg I got my reply telegram from Tyumen. “The
first steamer to Tomsk goes on the 18th May.” This meant that, whether I
liked it or not, I must do the journey with horses. So I did. I drove out of
Tyumen on the third of May after spending in Ekaterinburg two or three
days, which I devoted to the repair of my coughing and haemorrhoidal
person. Besides the public posting service, one can get private drivers that
take one across Siberia. I chose the latter: it is just the same. They put me,
the servant of God, into a basketwork chaise and drove me with two horses;
one sits in the basket like a goldfinch, looking at God’s world and thinking
of nothing.... The plain of Siberia begins, I think, from Ekaterinburg, and
ends goodness knows where; I should say it is very like our South Russian
Steppe, except for the little birch copses here and there and the cold wind
that stings one’s cheeks. Spring has not begun yet. There is no green at all,
the woods are bare, the snow has not thawed everywhere. There is opaque
ice on the lakes. On the ninth of May there was a hard frost, and to-day, the
fourteenth, snow has fallen to the depth of three or four inches. No one
speaks of spring but the ducks. Ah, what masses of ducks! Never in my life
have I seen such abundance. They fly over one’s head, they fly up close to
the chaise, swim on the lakes and in the pools—in short, with the poorest
sort of gun I could have shot a thousand in one day. One can hear the wild
geese calling.... There are lots of them here too. One often comes upon a
string of cranes or swans.... Snipe and woodcock flutter about in the birch
copses. The hares which are not eaten or shot here, stand on their hindlegs,
and, pricking up their ears, watch the passer-by with an inquisitive stare
without the slightest misgiving. They are so often running across the road
that to see them doing so is not considered a bad omen.
It’s cold driving ...; I have my fur coat on. My body is all right, but my
feet are freezing. I wrap them in the leather overcoat-but it is no use.... I
have two pairs of breeches on. Well, one drives on and on.... Telegraph
poles, pools, birch copses flash by. Here we overtake some emigrants, then

an etape.... We meet tramps with pots on their back; these gentry promenade
all over the plain of Siberia without hindrance. One time they will murder
some poor old woman to take her petticoat for their leg-wrappers; at
another they will strip from the verst post the metal plate with the number
on it—it might be useful; at another will smash the head of some beggar or
knock out the eyes of some brother exile; but they never touch travellers.
Altogether, travelling here is absolutely safe as far as brigands are
concerned. Neither the post-drivers nor the private ones from Tyumen to
Tomsk remember an instance of any things being stolen from a traveller.
When you reach a station you leave your things outside; if you ask whether
they won’t be stolen, they merely smile in answer. It is not the thing even to
speak of robbery and murder on the road. I believe, if I were to lose my
money in the station or in the chaise, the driver would certainly give it me if
he found it, and would not boast of having done so. Altogether the people
here are good and kindly, and have excellent traditions. Their rooms are
simply furnished but clean, with claims to luxury; the beds are soft, all
feather mattresses and big pillows. The floors are painted or covered with
home-made linen rugs. The explanation of this, of course, is their
prosperity, the fact that a family has sixteen dessyatins [Footnote: I.e., about
48 acres.] of black earth, and that excellent wheat grows in this black earth.
(Wheaten flour costs thirty kopecks a pood here. [Footnote: i.e., about 7-
1/2d. for 36 lb.]) But it cannot all be put down to prosperity and being well
fed. One must give some of the credit to their manner of life. When you go
at night into a room where people are asleep, the nose is not aware of any
stuffiness or “Russian smell.” It is true one old woman when she handed me
a teaspoon wiped it on the back of her skirt; but they don’t set you down to
drink tea without a tablecloth, and they don’t search in each other’s heads in
your presence, they don’t put their fingers inside the glass when they hand
you milk or water; the crockery is clean, the kvass is transparent as beer—
in fact, there is a cleanliness of which our Little Russians can only dream,
yet the Little Russians are far and away cleaner than the Great Russians!
They make the most delicious bread here—I over-ate myself with it at first.
The pies and pancakes and fritters and the fancy rolls, which remind one of
the spongy Little Russian ring rolls, are very good too.... But all the rest is
not for the European stomach. For instance, I am regaled everywhere with
“duck broth.” It’s perfectly disgusting, a muddy-looking liquid with bits of
wild duck and uncooked onion floating in it.... I once asked them to make

me some soup from meat and to fry me some perch. They gave me soup too
salt, dirty, with hard bits of skin instead of meat; and the perch was cooked
with the scales on it. They make their cabbage soup from salt meat; they
roast it too. They have just served me some salt meat roasted: it’s most
repulsive; I chewed at it and gave it up. They drink brick tea. It is a
decoction of sage and beetles—that’s what it is like in taste and appearance.
By the way, I brought from Ekaterinburg a quarter of a pound of tea, five
pounds of sugar, and three lemons. It was not enough tea and there is
nowhere to buy any. In these scurvy little towns even the government
officials drink brick tea, and even the best shops don’t keep tea at more than
one rouble fifty kopecks a pound. I have to drink the sage brew.
The distance apart of the posting stations depends on the distance of the
nearest villages from each other—that is, 20 to 40 versts. The villages here
are large, there are no little hamlets. There are churches and schools
everywhere, the huts are of wood and there are some with two storeys.
Towards the evening the road and the puddles begin to freeze, and at
night there is a regular frost, one wants an extra fur coat ... Brrr! It’s jolting,
for the mud is transformed into hard lumps. One’s soul is shaken inside
out.... Towards daybreak one is fearfully exhausted by the cold, by the
jolting and the jingle of the bells: one has a passionate longing for warmth
and a bed. While they change horses one curls up in some corner and at
once drops asleep, and a minute later the driver pulls at one’s sleeve and
says: “Get up, friend, it is time to start.” On the second night I had acute
toothache in my heels. It was unbearably painful. I wondered whether they
were frostbitten.
I can’t write more though. The “president,” that is the district police
inspector, has come. We have made acquaintance and are beginning to talk.
Goodbye till to-morrow.

TOMSK,
May 16.
It seems my strong boots were the cause, being too tight at the back. My
sweet Misha, if you ever have any children, which I have no doubt you will,
the advice I bequeath to them is not to run after cheap goods. Cheapness in
Russian goods is the label of worthlessness. To my mind it is better to go
barefoot than to wear cheap boots. Picture my agony! I keep getting out of
the chaise, sitting down on damp ground and taking off my boots to rest my
heels. So comfortable in the frost! I had to buy felt over-boots in Ishim....
So I drove in felt boots till they collapsed from the mud and the damp.
In the morning between five and six o’clock one drinks tea at a hut. Tea
on a journey is a great blessing. I know its value now, and drink it with the
fury of a Yanov. It warms one through and drives away sleep; one eats a lot
of bread with it, and in the absence of other nourishment, bread has to be
eaten in great quantities; that is why peasants eat so much bread and
farinaceous food. One drinks tea and talks with the peasant women, who are
sensible, tenderhearted, industrious, as well as being devoted mothers and
more free than in European Russia; their husbands don’t abuse or beat
them, because they are as tall, as strong, and as clever as their lords and
masters are. They act as drivers when their husbands are away from home;
they like making jokes. They are not severe with their children, they spoil
them. The children sleep on soft beds and lie as long as they like, drink tea
and eat with the men, and scold the latter when they laugh at them
affectionately. There is no diphtheria. Malignant smallpox is prevalent here,
but strange to say, it is less contagious than in other parts of the world; two
or three catch it and die and that is the end of the epidemic. There are no
hospitals or doctors. The doctoring is done by feldshers. Bleeding and
cupping are done on a grandiose, brutal scale. I examined a Jew with cancer
in the liver. The Jew was exhausted, hardly breathing, but that did not
prevent the feldsher from cupping him twelve times. Apropos of the Jews.
Here they till the land, work as drivers and ferry-men, trade and are called
Krestyany, [Translator’s Note: I.e., Peasants, literally “Christians.” ]
because they are de jure and de facto Krestyany. They enjoy universal

respect, and according to the “president” they are not infrequently chosen as
village elders. I saw a tall thin Jew who scowled with disgust and spat when
the “president” told indecent stories: a chaste soul; his wife makes splendid
fish-soup. The wife of the Jew who had cancer regaled me with pike caviare
and with most delicious white bread. One hears nothing of exploitation by
the Jews. And, by the way, about the Poles. There are a few exiles here, sent
from Poland in 1864. They are good, hospitable, and very refined people.
Some of them live in a very wealthy way; others are very poor, and serve as
clerks at the stations. Upon the amnesty the former went back to their own
country, but soon returned to Siberia again—here they are better off; the
latter dream of their native land, though they are old and infirm. At Ishim a
wealthy Pole, Pan Zalyessky, who has a daughter like Sasha Kiselyov, for a
rouble gave me an excellent dinner and a room to sleep in; he keeps an inn
and has become a money-grubber to the marrow of his bones; he fleeces
everyone, but yet one feels the Polish gentleman in his manner, in the way
the meals are served, in everything. He does not go back to Poland through
greed, and through greed endures snow till St. Nikolay’s day; when he dies
his daughter, who was born at Ishim, will remain here for ever and so will
multiply the black eyes and soft features in Siberia! This casual
intermixture of blood is to the good, for the Siberian people are not
beautiful. There are no dark-haired people. Perhaps you would like me to
write about the Tatars? Certainly. There are very few of them here. They are
good people. In the province of Kazan everyone speaks well of them, even
the priests, and in Siberia they are “better than the Russians” as the
“president” said to me in the presence of Russians, who assented to this by
their silence. My God, how rich Russia is in good people! If it were not for
the cold which deprives Siberia of the summer, and if it were not for the
officials who corrupt the peasants and the exiles, Siberia would be the
richest and happiest of lands.
I have nothing for dinner. Sensible people usually take twenty pounds of
provisions when they go to Tomsk. It seems I was a fool and so I have fed
for a fortnight on nothing but milk and eggs, which are boiled so that the
yolk is hard and the white is soft. One is sick of such fare in two days. I
have only twice had dinner during the whole journey, not counting the
Jewess’s fish-soup, which I swallowed after I had had enough to eat with
my tea. I have not had any vodka: the Siberian vodka is disgusting, and
indeed, I got out of the habit of taking it while I was on the way to

Ekaterinburg. One ought to drink vodka: it stimulates the brain, dull and
apathetic from travelling, which makes one stupid and feeble.
Stop! I can’t write: the editor of the Sibirsky Vyestnik, N., a local
Nozdryov, a drunkard and a rake, has come to make my acquaintance.
N. has drunk some beer and gone away. I continue.
For the first three days of my journey my collarbones, my shoulders and
my vertebrae ached from the shaking and jolting. I couldn’t stand or sit or
lie.... But on the other hand, all pains in my head and chest have vanished,
my appetite has developed incredibly, and my haemorrhoids have subsided
completely. The overstrain, the constant worry with luggage and so on, and
perhaps the farewell drinking parties in Moscow, had brought on spitting of
blood in the mornings, which induced something like depression, arousing
gloomy thoughts, but towards the end of the journey it has left off; now I
haven’t even a cough. It is a long time since I have coughed so little as now,
after being for a fortnight in the open air. After the first three days of
travelling my body grew used to the jolting, and in time I did not notice the
coming of midday and then of evening and night. The time flew by rapidly
as it does in serious illness. You think it is scarcely midday when the
peasants say—“You ought to put up for the night, sir, or we may lose our
way in the dark”; you look at your watch, and it is actually eight o’clock.
They drive quickly, but the speed is nothing remarkable. Probably I have
come upon the roads in bad condition, and in winter travelling would have
been quicker. They dash uphill at a gallop, and before setting off and before
the driver gets on the box, the horses need two or three men to hold them.
The horses remind me of the fire brigade horses in Moscow. One day we
nearly ran over an old woman, and another time almost dashed into an
etape. Now, would you like an adventure for which I am indebted to
Siberian driving? Only I beg mother not to wail and lament, for it all ended
well. On the 6th of May towards daybreak I was being driven with two
horses by a very nice old man. It was a little chaise, I was drowsy, and, to
while away the time, watched the gleaming of zigzagging lights in the fields
and birch copses—it was last year’s grass on fire; it is their habit here to
burn it. Suddenly I hear the swift rattle of wheels, a post-cart at full speed
comes flying towards us like a bird, my old man hastens to move to the
right, the three horses dash by, and I see in the dusk a huge heavy post-cart
with a driver for the return journey in it. It was followed by a second cart

also going at full speed. We made haste to move aside to the right. To my
great amazement and alarm the approaching cart moved not to its right, but
its left ... I hardly had time to think, “Good heavens! we shall run into each
other,” when there was a desperate crash, the horses were mixed up in a
dark blur, the yokes fell off, my chaise reared up into the air, and I flew to
the ground, and my luggage on the top of me. But that was not all ... A third
cart was dashing upon us. This really ought to have smashed me and my
luggage to atoms but, thank God! I was not asleep, I broke no bones in the
fall, and managed to jump up so quickly that I was able to get out of the
way. “Stop,” I bawled to the third cart, “Stop!” The third dashed up to the
second and stopped. Of course if I were able to sleep in a chaise, or if the
third cart had followed instantly on the second, I should certainly have
come back a cripple or a headless horseman. The results of the collision
were broken shafts, torn traces, yokes and luggage scattered on the ground,
the horses scared and harassed, and the alarming feeling that we had just
been in danger. It turned out that the first driver had lashed up the horses;
while in the other two carts the drivers were asleep, and the horses followed
the first team with no one controlling them. On recovering from the shock,
my old man and the other three men fell to abusing each other ferociously.
Oh, how they swore! I thought it would end in a fight. You can’t imagine
the feeling of isolation in the middle of that savage swearing crew in the
open country, just before dawn, in sight of the fires far and near consuming
the grass, but not warming the cold night air! Oh, how heavy my heart was!
One listened to the swearing, looked at the broken shafts and at one’s
tormented luggage, and it seemed as though one were cast away in another
world, as though one would be crushed in a moment.... After an hour’s
abuse my old man began splicing together the shafts with cord and tying up
the traces; my straps were forced into the service too. We got to the station
somehow, crawling along and stopping from time to time.
After five or six days rain with high winds began. It rained day and night.
The leather overcoat came to the rescue and kept me safe from rain and
wind. It’s a wonderful coat. The mud was almost impassable, the drivers
began to be unwilling to go on at night. But what was worst of all, and what
I shall never forget, was crossing the rivers. One reaches a river at night....
One begins shouting and so does the driver.... Rain, wind, pieces of ice
glide down the river, there is a sound of splashing.... And to add to our
gaiety there is the cry of a heron. Herons live on the Siberian rivers, so it

seems they don’t consider the climate but the geographical position.... Well,
an hour later, in the darkness, a huge ferry-boat of the shape of a barge
comes into sight with huge oars that look like the pincers of a crab. The
ferry-men are a rowdy set, for the most part exiles banished here by the
verdict of society for their vicious life. They use insufferably bad language,
shout, and ask for money for vodka.... The ferrying across takes a long, long
time ... an agonizingly long time. The ferryboat crawls. Again the feeling of
loneliness, and the heron seems calling on purpose, as though he means to
say: “Don’t be frightened, old man, I am here, the Lintvaryovs have sent me
here from the Psyol.”
On the 7th of May when I asked for horses the driver said the Irtysh had
overflowed its banks and flooded the meadows, that Kuzma had set off the
day before and had difficulty in getting back, and that I could not go, but
must wait.... I asked: “Wait till when?” Answer: “The Lord only knows!”
That was vague. Besides, I had taken a vow to get rid on the journey of two
of my vices which were a source of considerable expense, trouble, and
inconvenience; I mean my readiness to give in, and be overpersuaded. I am
quick to agree, and so I have had to travel anyhow, sometimes to pay
double and to wait for hours at a time. I had taken to refusing to agree and
to believe—and my sides have ached less. For instance, they bring out not a
proper carriage but a common, jolting cart. I refuse to travel in the jolting
cart, I insist, and the carriage is sure to appear, though they may have
declared that there was no such thing in the whole village, and so on. Well, I
suspected that the Irtysh floods were invented simply to avoid driving me
by night through the mud. I protested and told them to start. The peasant
who had heard of the floods from Kuzma, and had not himself seen them,
scratched himself and consented; the old men encouraged him, saying that
when they were young and used to drive, they were afraid of nothing. We
set off. Much rain, a vicious wind, cold ... and felt boots on my feet. Do you
know what felt boots are like when they are soaked? They are like boots of
jelly. We drive on and on, and behold, there lies stretched before my eyes an
immense lake from which the earth appears in patches here and there, and
bushes stand out: these are the flooded meadows. In the distance stretches
the steep bank of the Irtysh, on which there are white streaks of snow.... We
begin driving through the lake. We might have turned back, but obstinacy
prevented me, and an incomprehensible impulse of defiance mastered me—
that impulse which made me bathe from the yacht in the middle of the

Black Sea and has impelled me to not a few acts of folly ... I suppose it is a
special neurosis. We drive on and make for the little islands and strips of
land. The direction is indicated by bridges and planks; they have been
washed away. To cross by them we had to unharness the horses and lead
them over one by one.... The driver unharnesses the horses, I jump out into
the water in my felt boots and hold them.... A pleasant diversion! And the
rain and wind.... Queen of Heaven! At last we get to a little island where
there stands a hut without a roof.... Wet horses are wandering about in the
wet dung. A peasant with a long stick comes out of the hut and undertakes
to guide us. He measures the depth of the water with his stick, and tries the
ground. He led us out—God bless him for it!—on to a long strip of ground
which he called “the ridge.” He instructs us that we must keep to the right—
or perhaps it was to the left, I don’t remember—and get on to another ridge.
This we do. My felt boots are soaking and squelching, my socks are
snuffling. The driver says nothing and clicks dejectedly to his horses. He
would gladly turn back, but by now it was late, it was dark.... At last—oh,
joy!—we reach the Irtysh.... The further bank is steep but the near bank is
sloping. The near one is hollowed out, looks slippery, hateful, not a trace of
vegetation.... The turbid water splashes upon it with crests of white foam,
and dashes back again as though disgusted at touching the uncouth slippery
bank on which it seems that none but toads and the souls of murderers
could live.... The Irtysh makes no loud or roaring sound, but it sounds as
though it were hammering on coffins in its depths.... A damnable
impression! The further bank is steep, dark brown, desolate....
There is a hut; the ferry-men live in it. One of them comes out and
announces that it is impossible to work the ferry as a storm has come up.
The river, they said, was wide, and the wind was strong. And so I had to
stay the night at the hut.... I remember the night. The snoring of the ferry-
men and my driver, the roar of the wind, the patter of the rain, the
mutterings of the Irtysh.... Before going to sleep I wrote a letter to Marya
Vladimirovna; I was reminded of the Bozharovsky pool.
In the morning they were unwilling to ferry me across: there was a high
wind. We had to row across in the boat. I am rowed across the river, while
the rain comes lashing down, the wind blows, my luggage is drenched and
my felt boots, which had been dried overnight in the oven, become jelly
again. Oh, the darling leather coat! If I did not catch cold I owe it entirely to
that. When I come back you must reward it with an anointing of tallow or

castor-oil. On the bank I sat for a whole hour on my portmanteau waiting
for horses to come from the village. I remember it was very slippery
clambering up the bank. In the village I warmed myself and had some tea.
Some exiles came to beg for alms. Every family makes forty pounds of
wheaten flour into bread for them every day. It’s a kind of forced tribute.
The exiles take the bread and sell it for drink at the tavern. One exile, a
tattered, closely shaven old man, whose eyes had been knocked out in the
tavern by his fellow-exiles, hearing that there was a traveller in the room
and taking me for a merchant, began singing and repeating the prayers. He
recited the prayer for health and for the rest of the soul, and sang the Easter
hymn, “Let the Lord arise,” and “With thy Saints, O Lord”—goodness
knows what he didn’t sing! Then he began telling lies, saying that he was a
Moscow merchant. I noticed how this drunken creature despised the
peasants upon whom he was living.
On the 11th I drove with posting horses. I read the books of complaints at
the posting station in my boredom.
... On the 12th of May they would not give me horses, saying that I could
not drive, because the River Ob had overflowed its banks and flooded all
the meadows. They advised me to turn off the track as far as Krasny Yar;
then go by boat twelve versts to Dubrovin, and at Dubrovin you can get
posting horses.... I drove with private horses as far as Krasny Yar. I arrive in
the morning; I am told there is a boat, but that I must wait a little as the
grandfather had sent the workman to row the president’s secretary to
Dubrovin in it. Very well, we will wait.... An hour passes, a second, a
third.... Midday arrives, then evening.... Allah kerim, what a lot of tea I
drank, what a lot of bread I ate, what a lot of thoughts I thought! And what a
lot I slept! Night came on and still no boat.... Early morning came.... At last
at nine o’clock the workmen returned.... Thank heaven, we are afloat at last!
And how pleasant it is! The air is still, the oarsmen are good, the islands are
beautiful.... The floods caught men and cattle unawares and I see peasant
women rowing in boats to the islands to milk the cows. And the cows are
lean and dejected. There is absolutely no grass for them, owing to the cold.
I was rowed twelve versts. At the station of Dubrovin I had tea, and for tea
they gave me, can you imagine! waffles.... I suppose the woman of the
house was an exile or the wife of an exile. At the next station an old clerk, a
Pole, to whom I gave some antipyrin for his headache, complained of his

poverty, and said Count Sapyega, a Pole who was a gentleman-in-waiting at
the Austrian Court, and who assisted his fellow-countrymen, had lately
arrived there on his way to Siberia, “He stayed near the station,” said the
clerk, “and I didn’t know it! Holy Mother! He would have helped me! I
wrote to him at Vienna, but I got no answer, ...” and so on. Why am I not a
Sapyega? I would send this poor fellow to his own country.
On the 14th of May again they would not give me horses. The Tom was
flooded. How vexatious! It meant not mere vexation but despair! Fifty
versts from Tomsk and how unexpected! A woman in my place would have
sobbed. Some kind-hearted people found a solution for me. “Drive on, sir,
as far as the Tom, it is only six versts from here; there they will row you
across to Yar, and Ilya Markovitch will take you on from there to Tomsk.” I
hired a horse and drove to the Tom, to the place where the boat was to be. I
drove—there was no boat. They told me it had just set off with the post, and
was hardly likely to return as there was such a wind. I began waiting.... The
ground was covered with snow, it rained and hailed and the wind blew....
One hour passed, a second, and no boat. Fate was laughing at me. I returned
to the station. There the driver of the mail with three posting horses was just
setting off for the Tom. I told him there was no boat. He stayed. Fate
rewarded me; the clerk in response to my hesitating inquiry whether there
was anything to eat told me the woman of the house had some cabbage
soup. Oh, rapture! Oh, radiant day! And the daughter of the house did in
fact give me some excellent cabbage soup, with some capital meat with
roast potatoes and cucumbers. I have not had such a dinner since I was at
Pan Zalyessky’s. After the potatoes I let myself go, and made myself some
coffee.
Towards evening the mail driver, an elderly man who had evidently
endured a good deal in his day, and who did not venture to sit down in my
presence, began preparing to set off to the Tom. I did the same. We drove
off. As soon as we reached the river the boat came into sight—a long boat: I
have never dreamed of a boat so long. While the post was being loaded on
to the boat I witnessed a strange phenomenon—there was a peal of thunder,
a queer thing in a cold wind, with snow on the ground. They loaded up and
rowed off. My sweet Misha, forgive me for being so rejoiced that I did not
bring you with me! How sensible it was of me not to take anyone with me!
At first our boat floated over a meadow near willow-bushes.... As is
common before a storm or during a storm, a violent wind suddenly sprang

up on the water and stirred up the waves. The boatman who was sitting at
the helm advised our waiting in the willow-bushes till the storm was over.
They answered him that if the storm grew worse, they might stay in the
willow-bushes till night and be drowned all the same. They proceeded to
settle it by majority of votes, and decided to row on. An evil mocking fate is
mine. Oh, why these jests? We rowed on in silence, concentrating our
thoughts.... I remember the figure of the mail-driver, a man of varied
experiences. I remember the little soldier who suddenly became as crimson
as cherry juice. I thought, if the boat upsets I will fling off my fur coat and
my leather coat ... then my felt boots, then ... and so on.... But the bank
came nearer and nearer, one’s soul felt easier and easier, one’s heart
throbbed with joy, one heaved deep sighs as though one could breathe
freely at last, and leapt on the wet slippery bank.... Thank God!
At Ilya Markovitch’s, the converted Jew’s, I was told that I could not
drive at night; the road was bad; that I must remain till next day. Very good,
I stayed. After tea I sat down to write you this letter, interrupted by the visit
of the “president.” The president is a rich mixture of Nozdryov, Hlestakov
and a cur. A drunkard, a rake, a liar, a singer, a story-teller, and with all that
a good-natured man. He had brought with him a big trunk stuffed full of
business papers, a bedstead and mattress, a gun, and a secretary. The
secretary is an excellent, well-educated man, a protesting liberal who has
studied in Petersburg, and is free in his ideas; I don’t know how he came to
Siberia, he is infected to the marrow of his bones with every sort of disease,
and is taking to drink, thanks to his principal, who calls him Kolya. The
representative of authority sends for a cordial. “Doctor,” he bawls, “drink
another glass, I beseech you humbly!” Of course, I drink it. The
representative of authority drinks soundly, lies outrageously, uses shameless
language. We go to bed. In the morning a cordial is sent for again. They
swill the cordial till ten o’clock and at last they go. The converted Jew, Ilya
Markovitch, whom the peasants here idolize—so I was told—gave me
horses to drive to Tomsk.
The “president,” the secretary and I got into the same conveyance. All the
way the “president” told lies, drank out of the bottle, boasted that he did not
take bribes, raved about the scenery, and shook his fist at the tramps that he
met. We drove fifteen versts, then halt! The village of Brovkino.... We stop
near a Jew’s shop and go to take “rest and refreshment.” The Jew runs to
fetch us a cordial while his wife makes us some fish-soup, of which I have

written to you already. The “president” gave orders that the sotsky, the
desyatsky, and the road contractor should come to him, and in his
drunkenness began reproving them, not the least restrained by my presence.
He swore like a Tatar.
I soon parted from the “president,” and on the evening of the 15th of May
by an appalling road reached Tomsk. During the last two days I have only
done seventy versts; you can imagine what the roads are like!
In Tomsk the mud was almost impassable. Of the town and the manner of
living here I will write in a day or two, but good-bye for now—I am tired of
writing.

There are no poplars. The Kuvshinnikov General was lying. I have seen
no nightingales. There are magpies and cuckoos.
I received a telegram of eighty words from Suvorin to-day.
Excuse this letter’s being like a hotch-potch. It’s incoherent, but I can’t
help it. Sitting in an hotel room one can’t write better. Excuse its being
long, It’s not my fault. My pen ran away with me—besides, I wanted to go
on talking to you. It’s three o’clock in the night. My hand is tired. The wick
of the candle wants snuffing, I can hardly see. Write to me at Sahalin every
four or five days. It seems that the post goes there, not only by sea but
across Siberia, so I shall get letters frequently.

All the Tomsk people tell me that there has not been a spring so cold and
rainy as this one since 1842. Half Tomsk is under water. My luck!
I am eating sweets.
I shall have to stay at Tomsk till the rains are over. They say the road to
Irkutsk is awful.

TOMSK,
May 20.
It is Trinity Sunday with you, while with us even the willow has not yet
come out, and there is still snow on the banks of the Tom. To-morrow I am
starting for Irkutsk. I am rested. There is no need for hurry, as steam
navigation on Lake Baikal does not begin till the 10th of June; but I shall go
all the same.
I am alive and well, my money is safe; I have a slight pain in my right
eye. It aches.
... Everyone advises me to go back across America, as they say one may
die of boredom in the Volunteer Fleet; it’s all military discipline and red
tape regulations, and they don’t often touch at a port.
To fill up my time I have been writing some impressions of my journey
and sending them to Novoye Vremya; you will read them soon after the 10th
of June. I write a little about everything, chit-chat. I don’t write for glory
but from a financial point of view, and in consideration of the money I have
had in advance.
Tomsk is a very dull town. To judge from the drunkards whose
acquaintance I have made, and from the intellectual people who have come
to the hotel to pay their respects to me, the inhabitants are very dull too.

In two and a half days I shall be in Krasnoyarsk, and in seven or eight in
Irkutsk. It’s fifteen hundred versts to Irkutsk. I have made myself coffee and
am just going to drink it.
... After Tomsk the Taiga begins. We shall see it.
My greeting to all the Lintvaryovs and to our old Maryushka. I beg
mother not to worry and not to put faith in bad dreams. Have the radishes
succeeded? There are none here at all.
Keep well, don’t worry about money—there will be plenty; don’t try to
spend less and spoil the summer for yourselves.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
TOMSK, May 20, 1890.
Greetings to you at last from Siberia, dear Alexey Sergeyevitch! I have
missed you and our correspondence terribly.
I will begin from the beginning, however. At Tyumen I was told the first
steamer to Tomsk went on the 18th of May. I had to do the journey with
horses. For the first three days every joint and sinew ached, but afterwards I
got used to the jolting and felt no more aches. Only the lack of sleep, the
continual worry over the luggage, the jolting and the fasting brought on
spitting of blood when I coughed, and this depressed my spirits, which were
none too grand before. For the first few days it was bearable but then a cold
wind began to blow, the windows of heaven were opened, the rivers flooded
the meadows and roads, I was continually having to change my chaise for a
boat. You’ll read of my struggles with the floods and the mud in the article I
enclose. I did not mention in it that my big high boots were tight, and that I
waded through the mud and the water in my felt boots, and that my felt
boots were soaked to jelly. The road was so abominable that during the last
two days of my journey I only did seventy versts.
When I set off I promised to send you notes of my journey after Tomsk,
since the road between Tyumen and Tomsk has been described a thousand
times already. But in your telegram you have expressed the desire to get my
impressions of Siberia as quickly as possible, and have even had the cruelty,
sir, to reproach me with lapse of memory, as though I had forgotten you. It
was absolutely impossible to write on the road. I kept a brief diary in pencil
and can offer you now only what is written in that diary. To avoid writing at
great length and getting mixed up, I divided all my impressions into
chapters. I am sending you six chapters. They are written for you
personally. I wrote for you only, and so have not been afraid of being too
subjective, and have not been afraid of there being more of Chekhov’s
feelings and thoughts than of Siberia in them. If you find some lines
interesting and worth printing, give them a profitable publicity, signing
them with my name and printing them in separate chapters, a tablespoonful

once an hour. The general title can be From Siberia, then From Trans-
Baikalia, then From the Amur, and so on.
You shall have another helping from Irkutsk, for which I am starting to-
morrow. I shall not be less than ten days on the journey—the road is bad. I
shall send you a few chapters again, and shall send them whether you
intend to print them or not. Read them and when you are tired of them
telegraph to me “Shut up!”
I have been as hungry as a dog the whole way. I stuffed myself with
bread so as not to dream of turbot, asparagus, and suchlike. I even dreamed
of buckwheat porridge. I have dreamed of it for hours at a time.
At Tyumen I bought some sausage for the journey, but what sausage!
When you take a bit in your mouth there’s a sniff as though you had gone
into a stable at the very moment when the coachmen were taking off their
leg-wrappers; when you begin chewing it, you feel as though you had
fastened your teeth into a dog’s tail defiled with pitch. Tfoo! I ate some
once or twice, and threw it away.
I have had one telegram and the letter from you in which you write that
you want to bring out an encyclopaedic dictionary. I don’t know why, but
the news of that dictionary rejoiced me greatly. Do, my dear friend! If I am
any use for working on it, I will devote November and December to you,
and will spend those months in Petersburg. I will sit at it from morning till
night.
I made a fair copy of my notes at Tomsk in horrid hotel surroundings, but
I took trouble about it and was not without a desire to please you. I thought,
he must be bored and hot in Feodosia, let him read about the cold. These
notes will come to you instead of a letter which has been taking shape in my
head during the whole journey. In return you must send to me at Sahalin all
your critical reviews except the first two, which I have read; have Peshel’s
“Ethnology” sent me there too, except the first two instalments, which I
have already.
The post to Sahalin goes both by sea and across Siberia, so if people
write to me I shall get letters often. Don’t lose my address—Island of
Sahalin, Alexandrovsky Post.
Oh, the expense! Gewalt! Thanks to the floods, I had to pay the drivers
double and almost treble, for it has been fiendishly hard work. My trunk, a
very charming article, has turned out unsuitable for the journey; it takes a

lot of room, pokes one in the ribs, and rattles, and worst of all threatens to
burst open. “Don’t take boxes on long journeys!” good people said to me,
but I remembered this advice only when I had gone half-way. Well, I am
leaving my trunk to reside permanently at Tomsk, and am buying instead of
it a sort of leather carcase, which has the advantage that it can be tied so as
to form two halves at the bottom of the chaise as one likes. I paid sixteen
roubles for it. Next point. To travel to the Amur, changing one’s conveyance
at every station, is torture. You shatter both yourself and all your luggage. I
was advised to buy a trap. I bought one to-day for one hundred and thirty
roubles. If I don’t succeed in selling it at Sryetensk, where my horse
journey ends, I shall be in a fix and shall howl aloud. To-day I dined with
the editor of the Sibirsky Vyestnik, a local Nozdryov, a broad nature.... He
drank to the tune of six roubles.
Stop! They announce that the deputy police master wants to see me.
What can it be?!?
My alarm was unnecessary. The police officer turns out to be devoted to
literature and himself an author; he has come to pay his respects to me. He
went home to fetch his play, and I believe intends to regale me with it. He is
just coming again and preventing me from writing to you....
... My greetings to Nastyusha and Boris. I should be genuinely delighted
for their satisfaction to fling myself into the jaws of a tiger and call them to
my aid, but, alas! I haven’t reached the tigers here: the only furry animals I
have seen so far in Siberia are many hares and one mouse.
Stop! The police officer has returned. He has not read me his drama
though he brought it, but regaled me with a story. It’s not bad, only too
local. He showed me a nugget of gold. He asked for some vodka. I don’t
remember a single educated Siberian who has not asked for vodka on
coming to see me. He told me he had a mistress, a married woman; he gave
me a petition to the Tsar about divorce to read....

How glad I am when I am forced to stop somewhere for the night! I no
sooner roll into bed than I am asleep. Here, travelling and not sleeping at
night, one prizes sleep above everything. There is no greater enjoyment in
life than sleep when one is sleepy. In Moscow, in Russia generally, I never
was sleepy as I understand the word now. I went to bed simply because one
had to. But now! Another observation. On a journey one has no desire for

spirits. I can’t drink. I smoke a great deal. One’s mind does not work well. I
cannot put my thoughts together. Time flies rapidly, so that one scarcely
notices it, from ten o’clock in the morning to seven o’clock in the evening.
Evening comes quickly after morning. It’s just the same when one is
seriously ill. The wind and the rain have made my face all scaly, and when I
look in the looking-glass I don’t recognize my once noble features.
I am not going to describe Tomsk. All the towns are alike in Russia.
Tomsk is a dull and intemperate town. There are absolutely no good-
looking women, and the disregard for justice is Asiatic. The town is
remarkable for the fact that governors die in it.
If my letters are short, careless, or dry, don’t be cross, for one cannot
always be oneself on a journey and write as one wants to. The ink is bad,
and there is always a hair or a splodge on one’s pen.

TO HIS SISTER.
KRASNOYARSK, May 28, 1890.
What a deadly road! It was all we could do to crawl to Krasnoyarsk and
my trap had to be repaired twice. The first thing to be broken was the
vertical piece of iron connecting the front of the carriage with the axle; then
the so-called circle under the front broke. I have never in all my life seen
such a road—such impassable mud and such an utterly neglected road. I am
going to write about its horrors to the Novoye Vremya, and so won’t talk
about it now.
The last three stations have been splendid; as one comes down to
Krasnoyarsk one seems to be getting into a different world. You come out
of the forest into a plain which is like our Donets steppe, but here the
mountain ridges are grander. The sun shines its very best and the birch-trees
are out, though three stations back the buds were not even bursting. Thank
God, I have at last reached a summer in which there is neither rain nor a
cold wind. Krasnoyarsk is a picturesque, cultured town; compared with it,
Tomsk is “a pig in a skull-cap and the acme of mauvais ton.” The streets are
clean and paved, the houses are of stone and large, the churches are elegant.
I am alive and perfectly well. My money is all right, and so are my
things; I lost my woollen stockings but soon found them again.
Apart from my trap, everything so far has been satisfactory and I have
nothing to complain of. Only I am spending an awful lot of money.
Incompetence in the practical affairs of life is never felt so much as on a
journey. I pay more than I need to, I do the wrong thing, and I say the
wrong thing, and I am always expecting what does not happen.
... I shall be in Irkutsk in five or six days, shall spend as many days there,
then drive on to Sryetensk—and that will be the end of my journey on land.
For more than a fortnight I have been driving without a break, I think about
nothing else, I live for nothing else; every morning I see the sunrise from
beginning to end. I’ve grown so used to it that it seems as though all my life
I had been driving and struggling with the muddy roads. When it does not
rain, and there are no pits of mud on the road, one feels queer and even a

little bored. And how filthy I am, what a rapscallion I look! What a state my
luckless clothes are in!
... For mother’s information: I have still a jar and a half of coffee; I feed
on locusts and wild honey; I shall dine to-day at Irkutsk. The further east
one gets the dearer everything is. Rye flour is seventy kopecks a pood,
while on the other side of Tomsk it was twenty-five and twenty-seven
kopecks per pood, and wheaten flour thirty kopecks. The tobacco sold in
Siberia is vile and loathsome; I tremble because mine is nearly done.
... I am travelling with two lieutenants and an army doctor who are all on
their way to the Amur. So my revolver is after all quite superfluous. In such
company hell would have no terrors. We are just having tea at the station,
and after tea we are going to have a look at the town.
I should have no objection to living in Krasnoyarsk. I can’t think why
this is a favourite place for sending exiles to.

Your Homo Sachaliensis,
A. CHEKHOV.

TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
IRKUTSK, June 5, 1890.

MY EUROPEAN BROTHER,

It is, of course, unpleasant to live in Siberia; but better to live in Siberia
and feel oneself a man of moral worth, than to live in Petersburg with the
reputation of a drunkard and a scoundrel. No reference to present company.

Siberia is a cold and long country. I drive on and on and see no end to it.
I see little that is new or of interest, but I feel and experience a great deal. I
have contended with flooded rivers, with cold, with impassable mud,
hunger and sleepiness: such sensations as you could not get for a million in
Moscow! You ought to come to Siberia. Ask the authorities to exile you.
The best of all Siberian towns is Irkutsk. Tomskis not worth a brass
farthing, and the district towns are no better than the Kryepkaya in which
you were so heedlessly born. What is most provoking, there is nothing to
eat in the district towns, and oh dear, how conscious one is of that on the
journey! You get to a town and feel ready to eat a mountain; you arrive and
—alack!—no sausage, no cheese, no meat, no herring even, but the same
insipid eggs and milk as in the villages.
On the whole I am satisfied with my expedition, and don’t regret having
come. The travelling is hard, but the resting after it is delightful. I rest with
enjoyment.
From Irkutsk I shall make for Baikal, which I shall cross by steamer; it’s
a thousand versts from the Baikal to the Amur, and thence I shall go by
steamer to the Pacific, where the first thing I shall do is to have a bath and
eat oysters.
I got here yesterday and went first of all to have a bath, then to bed. Oh,
how I slept! I never understood what sleep meant till now.

I bless you with both hands.

Your Asiatic brother,
A. CHEKHOV.

TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
IRKUTSK, June 5, 1890.
A thousand greetings to you, dear Alexey Nikolaevitch. At last I have
vanquished the most difficult three thousand versts; I am sitting in a decent
hotel and can write. I have rigged myself out all in new things and, as far as
possible, smart ones, for you cannot imagine how sick I was of my big
muddy boots, of my sheepskin smelling of tar, of my overcoat covered with
bits of hay, of dust and crumbs in my pockets, and of my extremely dirty
linen. I looked such a ragamuffin on the journey that even the tramps eyed
me askance; and then, as ill luck would have it, the cold winds and rain
chapped my face and made it scaly like a fish. Now at last I am a European
again, and I am conscious of it all over.
Well, what am I to write to you? It’s all so long and so vast that one
doesn’t know where to begin. All my experiences in Siberia I divide into
three periods. (1) From Tyumen to Tomsk, fifteen hundred versts, terrible
cold, day and night, sheepskin, felt boots, cold rains, winds and a desperate
life-and-death struggle with the flooded rivers. The rivers had flooded the
meadows and roads, and I was constantly exchanging my trap for a boat
and floating like a Venetian on a gondola; the boats, the waiting on the bank
for them, the rowing across, etc., all that took up so much time that during
the last two days before reaching Tomsk, in spite of all my efforts, I only
did seventy versts instead of four or five hundred. There were, moreover,
some very uneasy and unpleasant moments, especially when the wind rose
and began to buffet the boat. (2) From Tomsk to Krasnoyarsk, five hundred
versts, impassable mud, my chaise and I stuck in the mud like flies in thick
jam. How many times I broke my chaise (it’s my own property!) how many
versts I walked! how bespattered my countenance and my clothes were! It
was not driving but wading through mud. How I swore at it all! My brain
would not work, I could do nothing but swear. I was utterly exhausted, and
was very glad to reach the posting station at Krasnoyarsk. (3) From
Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, fifteen hundred and sixty-six versts, heat, smoke
from the burning woods, and dust—dust in one’s mouth, in one’s nose, in
one’s pockets; when you look at yourself in the glass, you think your face

has been painted. When, on reaching Irkutsk, I washed at the baths, the
soapsuds off my head were not white but of an ashen brown colour, as
though I were washing a horse.
When I get home I will tell you about the Yenissey and the Taiga—very
interesting and curious, for it is something quite new to a European;
everything else is ordinary and monotonous. Roughly speaking, the scenery
of Siberia is not very different from that of European Russia; there are
differences, but they are not very noticeable. Travelling is perfectly safe.
Robbers and highwaymen are all nonsense and fairy tales. A revolver is
utterly unnecessary, and you are as safe at night in the forest as you are by
day on the Nevsky Prospect. It’s different for anyone travelling on foot....

TO N. A. LEIKIN.
IRKUTSK, June 5, 1890.
Greetings, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch!
I send you heartfelt good wishes from Irkutsk, from the depths of Siberia.
I reached Irkutsk last night and was very glad to have arrived, as I was
exhausted by the journey and missed friends and relations, to whom I had
not written for ages. Well, what is there of interest to write to you? I will
begin by telling you that the journey is extraordinarily long. From Tyumen
to Irkutsk I have driven more than three thousand versts. From Tyumen to
Tomsk I had cold and flooded rivers to contend with. The cold was awful;
on Ascension Day there was frost and snow, so that I could not take off my
sheepskin and felt boots until I reached the hotel at Tomsk. As for the
floods, they were a veritable plague of Egypt. The rivers rose above their
banks and overflowed the meadows, and with them the roads, for dozens of
versts around. I was continually having to exchange my chaise for a boat,
and one could not get a boat for nothing—for a good boat one had to pay
with one’s heart’s blood, for one had to sit waiting on the bank for twenty-
four hours at a stretch in the cold wind and the rain.... From Tomsk to
Krasnoyarsk was a desperate struggle through impassable mud. My
goodness, it frightens me to think of it! How often I had to mend my chaise,
to walk, to swear, to get out of my chaise and get into it again, and so on! It
sometimes happened that I was from six to ten hours getting from one
station to another, and every time the chaise had to be mended it took from
ten to fifteen hours. From Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk was fearfully hot and
dusty. Add to all that hunger, dust in one’s nose, one’s eyes glued together
with sleep, the continual dread that something would get broken in the
chaise (it is my own), and boredom.... Nevertheless I am well content, and I
thank God that He has given me the strength and opportunity to make this
journey. I have seen and experienced a great deal, and it has all been very
new and interesting to me not as a literary man, but as a human being. The
Yenissey, the Taiga, the stations, the drivers, the wild scenery, the wild life,
the physical agonies caused by the discomforts of the journey, the
enjoyment I got from rest—all taken together is so delightful that I can’t

describe it. The mere fact that I have been for more than a month in the
open air is interesting and healthy; every day for a month I have seen the
sunrise....

TO HIS SISTER.
IRKUTSK, June 6, 1890.
Greetings to you, dear mother, Ivan, Masha and Misha, and all of you!
In my last long letter I wrote to you that the mountains near Krasnoyarsk
are like the Donets Ridge, but that’s not true; when I looked at them from
the street I saw they were like high walls surrounding the city, and I was
vividly reminded of the Caucasus. And when towards evening I left the
town and was crossing the Yenissey, I saw on the other bank mountains that
were exactly like the Caucasus, as misty and dreamy. The Yenissey is a
broad, swift, winding river, beautiful, finer than the Volga. And the ferry
across it is wonderful, ingeniously constructed, moving against the current;
I will tell you when I am home about the construction of it. And so the
mountains and the Yenissey are the first things original and new that I have
met in Siberia. The mountains and the Yenissey have given me sensations
which have made up to me a hundredfold for all the trials and troubles of
the journey, and which have made me call Levitan a fool for being so stupid
as not to come with me.
The Taiga stretches unbroken from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk. The trees are
not bigger than in Sokolniki, but not one driver knows how far it goes.
There is no end to be seen to it. It stretches for hundreds of versts. No one
knows who or what is in the Taiga, and it only happens in winter that people
come through the Taiga from the far north with reindeer for bread. When
you get to the top of a mountain and look down, you see a mountain before
you, then another, mountains at the sides too—and all thickly covered with
forest. It makes one feel almost frightened. That’s the second thing original
and new.
From Krasnoyarsk it began to be hot and dusty. The heat was terrible. My
sheepskin and cap lie buried away. The dust is in my mouth, in my nose,
down my neck—tfoo! We were approaching Irkutsk—we had to cross the
Angara by ferry. As though to mock us a high wind sprang up. My military
companions and I, after dreaming for ten days of a bath, dinner, and sleep,
stood on the bank and turned pale at the thought that we should have to

spend the night not at Irkutsk, but in the village. The ferry could not
succeed in reaching the bank. We stood an hour, a second, and—oh
Heavens!—the ferry made an effort and reached the bank. Bravo, we shall
have a bath, we shall have supper and sleep! Oh, how sweet to steam
oneself, to eat, to sleep!
Irkutsk is a fine town. Quite a cultured town. There is a theatre, a
museum, a town garden with a band, a good hotel.... No hideous fences, no
absurd shop-signs, and no waste places with warming placards. There is a
tavern called “Taganrog”; sugar costs twenty-four kopecks a pound, pine
kernels six kopecks a pound.

I am quite well. My money is safe. I am saving up my coffee for Sahalin.
I have splendid tea here, after which I am aware of an agreeable excitement.
I see Chinamen. They are a good-natured and intelligent people. At the
Siberian bank they gave me money at once, received me cordially, regaled
me with cigarettes, and invited me to their summer villa. There is a
magnificent confectioner’s but everything is fiendishly dear. The pavements
are of wood.
Last night I drove with the officers about the town. We heard someone
cry “help” six times. It must have been someone being murdered. We went
to look, but could not find anyone.
The cabs in Irkutsk have springs. It is a better town than Ekaterinburg or
Tomsk. Quite European.
Have a Mass celebrated on June 17th, [Footnote: The anniversary of the
death of his brother Nikolay.] and keep the 29th [Footnote: His father’s
name-day.] as festively as you can; I shall be with you in thought and you
must drink my health.

Everything I have is crumpled, dirty, torn! I look like a pickpocket.
I shall not bring you any furs most likely. I do not know where they are
sold, and I am too lazy to ask.
One must take at least two big pillows for a journey and dark pillow
cases are essential.
What is Ivan doing? Where has he been? Has he been to the south? I am
going from Irkutsk to Baikal. My companions are preparing for sea-

sickness.
My big boots have grown looser with wearing, and don’t hurt my heels
now.
I have ordered buckwheat porridge for to-morrow. On the journey here I
thought of curds and began having them with milk at the stations.
Did you get my postcards from the little towns? Keep them: I shall be
able to judge from them how long the post takes. The post here is in no
hurry.

IRKUTSK,
June 7, 1890.
... The steamer from Sryetensk leaves on June 20th. Good Christians,
what am I to do till the 20th? How am I to dispose of myself? The journey
to Sryetensk will only take five or six days. I have greatly altered the route
of my journey. From Habarovsk (look at the map [Footnote: Chekhov’s
family had, during his absence, a map of Siberia on the wall by means of
which they followed his progress.]) I am going not to Nikolaevsk, but by
the Ussuri to Vladivostok, and from there to Sahalin. I must have a look at
the Ussuri region. At Vladivostok I shall bathe in the sea and eat oysters.
It was cold till I reached Kansk; from Kansk (see map) I began to go
down to the south. Everything is as green as with you, even the oaks are
out. The birches here are darker than in Russia, the green is not so
sentimental. There are masses of the Russian white service-tree, which here
takes the place of both the lilac and the cherry. They say they make an
excellent jam from the service-tree. I tasted some of the fruit pickled; it was
not bad.
Two lieutenants and an army doctor are travelling with me. They have
received their travelling expenses three times over, but have spent all the
money, though they are travelling in one carriage. They are sitting without a
farthing, waiting for the pay department to send them some money. They
are nice fellows. They have had from fifteen hundred to two thousand
roubles each for travelling expenses, and the journey will cost them next to
nothing (excluding, of course, the cost of the stopping places). They do
nothing but pitch into everybody at hotels and stations so that people are
positively afraid to present their bills. In their company I pay less than
usual.... To-day for the first time in my life I saw a Siberian cat. It has long
soft fur, and a gentle disposition.
... I felt homesick and sent you a telegram today asking you to subscribe
together and send me a long telegram. It would be nothing to all of you,
inhabitants of Luka, to fling away five roubles.

... With whom is Mishka in love? To what happy woman is Ivanenko
telling stories of his uncle? ... I must be in love with Jamais as I dreamed of
her yesterday. In comparison with all the “jeunes Siberiennes” with their
Yakut-Buriat physiognomies, who do not know how to dress, to sing, and to
laugh, our Jamais, Drishka, and Gundassiha are simply queens. The
Siberian girls and women are like frozen fish; one would have to be a
walrus or a seal to get up a flirtation with them.
I am tired of my companions. It is much nicer travelling alone. I like
silence better than anything on the journey and my companions talk and
sing without stopping, and they talk of nothing but women. They borrowed
a hundred and thirty-six roubles from me till to-morrow and have already
spent it. They are regular sieves.
... The stations are sometimes thirty to thirty-five versts apart. You drive
by night, you drive and drive, till you feel silly and light-headed, and if you
venture to ask the driver how far it is to the next station, he will never say
less than seventeen versts. That’s particularly agonizing when you have to
go at a walking pace along a muddy road full of holes, and when you are
thirsty. I have learned to do without sleep; I don’t mind a bit when they
wake me. As a rule one does not sleep for one day and night, and then the
next day at dinner-time there is a strained feeling in one’s eyelids; in the
evening and in the night towards daybreak of the third day, one dozes in the
chaise and sometimes falls asleep for a minute as one sits; at dinner and
after dinner at the stations, while the horses are being harnessed, one lolls
on the sofa, and the real torture only begins at night. In the evening, after
drinking five glasses of tea, one’s face begins to burn, one’s body feels limp
all over and longs to bend backwards; one’s eyes close, one’s feet ache in
one’s big boots, one’s brain is in a tangle. If I allow myself to put up for the
night I fall into a dead sleep at once; if I have strength of will to go on, I
drop asleep in the chaise, however violent the jolting may be; at the stations
the drivers wake one up, as one has to get out of the chaise and pay for the
journey. They wake one not so much by shouting and tugging at one’s
sleeve, as by the stink of garlic that issues from their lips; they smell of
garlic and onion till they make me sick. I only learned to sleep in the chaise
after Krasnoyarsk. On the way to Irkutsk I slept for fifty-eight versts, and
was only once woken up. But the sleep one gets as one drives makes one
feel no better. It’s not real sleep, but a sort of unconscious condition, after
which one’s head is muddled and there’s a bad taste in one’s mouth.

Chinamen are like those decrepit old gentlemen dear Nikolay [Footnote:
Chekhov’s brother.] used to like drawing. Some of them have splendid
pigtails.
The police came to see me at Tomsk. Towards eleven o’clock the waiter
suddenly announced to me that the assistant police-master wanted to see
me. What was this for? Could it be politics? Could they suspect me of being
a Voltairian? I said to the waiter, “Ask him in.” A gentleman with long
moustaches walks in and introduces himself. It appears he is devoted to
literature, writes himself, and has come to me in my hotel room as though
to Mahomed at Mecca to worship. I’ll tell you why I thought of him. Late in
the autumn he is going to Petersburg, and I have foisted my trunk upon him
and asked him to leave it at the Novoye Vremya office. You might keep that
in mind in case any one of us or our friends goes to Petersburg.
You might, by the way, look out for a place in the country. When I get
back to Russia I shall take five years’ rest—that is, stay in one place and
twiddle my thumbs. A place in the country will come in very handy. I think
the money will be found, for things don’t look bad. If I work off the money
I have had in advance (half of it is worked off already) I shall certainly
borrow two or three thousand in the spring, to be paid off over a period of
five years. That will not be against my conscience, as I have already let the
publishing department of the Novoye Vremya make two or three thousand
out of my books, and I shall let them make more.
I think I shall not begin on any serious work till I am five and thirty.... I
want to try personal life, of which I have had some before, but have not
noticed it owing to various circumstances.
To-day I rubbed my leather coat with grease. It’s a splendid coat. It has
saved me from catching cold. My sheepskin is a capital thing, too: it serves
me as a coat and a mattress, both. One is as warm in it as on a stove. It’s
wretched without pillows. Hay does not take the place of them, and with the
continual friction there’s a lot of dust from it which tickles one’s face and
prevents one from dozing. I haven’t a single sheet. That’s horrid too. And I
ought to have taken some more trousers. The more luggage one has the
better—there’s less jolting and more comfort.
Good-bye, though. I have got nothing more to write about. My greetings
to all.

STATION LISTVENITCHNAYA,
ON LAKE BAIKAL, June 13.
I am having an idiotic time. On the evening of the 11th of June, the day
before yesterday, we set off from Irkutsk, in the fond hope of catching the
Baikal steamer, which leaves at four o’clock in the morning. From Irkutsk
to Baikal there are only three stations. At the first station they informed us
that all the horses were exhausted and that it was therefore impossible to go.
We had to put up for the night. Yesterday morning we set off from that
station, and by midday we reached Baikal. We went to the harbour, and in
answer to our inquiries were told that the steamer did not go till Friday the
fifteenth. This meant that we should have to sit on the bank and look at the
water and wait. As there is nothing that does not end in time, I have no
objection to waiting, and always wait patiently; but the point is the steamer
leaves Sryetensk on the 20th and sails down the Amur: if we don’t catch it
we must wait for the next steamer, which does not go till the 30th. Merciful
Heavens, when shall I get to Sahalin!
We drove to Baikal along the bank of the Angara, which rises out of Lake
Baikal and flows into the Yenissey. Look at the map. The banks are
picturesque. Mountains and mountains, and dense forests on the mountains.
The weather was exquisite still, sunny and warm; as I drove I felt I was
exceptionally well; I felt so happy that I cannot describe it. It was perhaps
the contrast after the stay at Irkutsk, and because the scenery on the Angara
is like Switzerland. It is something new and original. We drove along the
river bank, came to the mouth of the river, and turned to the left; then we
came upon the bank of Lake Baikal, which in Siberia is called the sea. It is
like a mirror. The other side, of course, is out of sight; it is ninety versts
away. The banks are high, steep, stony, and covered with forest, to right and
to left there are promontories which jut into the sea like Au-dag or the
Tohtebel at Feodosia. It’s like the Crimea. The station of Listvenitchnaya
lies at the water’s edge, and is strikingly like Yalta: if the houses were white
it would be exactly like Yalta. Only there are no buildings on the mountains,
as they are too overhanging and it is impossible to build on them.

We have taken a little barn of a lodging that reminds one of any of the
Kraskovsky summer villas. Just outside the window, two or three yards
from the wall, is Lake Baikal. We pay a rouble a day. The mountains, the
forests, the mirror-like Baikal are all poisoned for me by the thought that we
shall have to stay here till the fifteenth. What are we to do here? What is
more, we don’t know what there is for us to eat. The inhabitants feed upon
nothing but garlic. There is neither meat nor fish. They have given us no
milk, but have promised it. For a little white loaf they demanded sixteen
kopecks. I bought some buckwheat and a piece of smoked pork, and asked
them to make a thin porridge of it: it was not nice, but there was nothing to
be done, I had to eat it. All the evening we hunted about the village to find
someone who would sell us a hen, and found no one.... But there is vodka.
The Russian is a great pig. If you ask him why he doesn’t eat meat and fish
he justifies himself by the absence of transport, ways and communications,
and so on, and yet vodka is to be found in the remotest villages and as much
of it as you please. And yet one would have supposed that it would have
been much easier to obtain meat and fish than vodka, which is more
expensive and more difficult to transport.... Yes, drinking vodka must be
much more interesting than fishing in Lake Baikal or rearing cattle.
At midnight a little steamer arrived; we went to look at it, and seized the
opportunity to ask if there was anything to eat. We were told that to-morrow
we should be able to get dinner, but that now it was late, the kitchen fire
was out, and so on. We thanked them for “to-morrow”—it was something to
look forward to anyway! But alas! the captain came in and told us that at
four o’clock in the morning the steamer was setting off for Kultuk. We
thanked him. In the refreshment bar, where there was not room to turn
round, we drank a bottle of sour beer (thirty-five kopecks), and saw on a
plate some amber beads—it was salmon caviare. We returned home, and to
sleep. I am sick of sleeping. Every day one has to put down one’s sheepskin
with the wool upwards, under one’s head one puts a folded greatcoat and a
pillow, and one sleeps on this heap in one’s waistcoat and trousers....
Civilization, where art thou?
To-day there is rain and Lake Baikal is plunged in mist. “Interesting,”
Semaskho would say. It’s dull. One ought to sit down and write, but one can
never work in bad weather. One has a foreboding of merciless boredom; if I
were alone I should not mind but there are two lieutenants and an army
doctor with me, who are fond of talking and arguing. They don’t understand

much but they talk about everything. One of the lieutenants, moreover, is a
bit of a Hlestakov and a braggart. When one is travelling one absolutely
must be alone. To sit in a chaise or in a room alone with one’s thoughts is
much more interesting than being with people.

Congratulate me: I sold my own carriage at Irkutsk. How much I gained
on it I won’t say, or mother would fall into a faint and not sleep for five
nights.

Your Homo Sachaliensis,
A. CHEKHOV.

TO HIS MOTHER.
STEAMER “YERMAK,” June 20, 1890.
Greeting, dear ones at home!
At last I can take off my heavy muddy boots, my shabby breeches, and
my blue shirt which is shiny with dust and sweat; I can wash and dress like
a human being. I am not sitting in a chaise but in a first-class cabin of the
steamer Yermak. This change took place ten days ago, and this is how it
happened. I wrote to you from Listvenitchnaya that I was late for the Baikal
steamer, that I had to cross Lake Baikal on Friday instead of Tuesday, and
that owing to this I should only be able to catch the Amur steamer on the
30th. But fate is capricious, and often plays us tricks we do not expect. On
Thursday morning I went out for a walk on the shores of Lake Baikal;
behold—the funnel of one of the little steamers is smoking. I inquire where
the steamer is going. They tell me, “Across the sea” to Klyuevo; some
merchant had hired it to take his waggons of goods across the Lake. We,
too, wanted to cross “the sea” and to go to Boyarskaya station. I inquire
how many versts from Klyuevo to Boyarskaya. They tell me twenty-seven.
I run back to my companions and beg them to take the risk of going to
Klyuevo. I say the “risk” because, going to Klyuevo where there is nothing
but a harbour and a watchman’s hut, we ran the risk of not finding horses,
having to stay on at Klyuevo, and being late for Friday’s steamer, which for
us would be worse than Igor’s death, as we should have to wait till Tuesday.
My companions consented. We gathered together our belongings, with
cheerful legs stepped on to the steamer and straight to the refreshment bar:
soup, for the love of God! Half my kingdom for a plate of soup! The
refreshment bar was very nasty and cramped; but the cook, Grigory
Ivanitch, who had been a house-serf at Voronezh, turned out to be at the tip-
top of his profession. He fed us magnificently. The weather was still and
sunny. The water of Lake Baikal is the colour of turquoise, more transparent
than the Black Sea. They say that in deep places you can see the bottom
over a verst below; and I myself have seen to such a depth, with rocks and
mountains plunged in the turquoise-blue, that it sent a shiver all over me.
Our journey over Lake Baikal was wonderful. I shall never forget it as long

as I live. But I will tell you what was not nice. We travelled third class, and
the whole deck was occupied by the waggon-horses, which were wild as
mad things. These horses gave a special character to our crossing: it seemed
as though we were in a brigand’s steamer. At Klyuevo the watchman
undertook to convey our luggage to the station; he drove the cart while we
walked along the very picturesque shore. Levitan was an ass not to come
with me. The way was through woods: on the right, woods running uphill;
on the left, woods running down to the Lake. Such ravines, such crags! The
colouring of Lake Baikal is soft and warm. It was, by the way, very warm.
After walking eight versts we reached the station of Myskan, where a
Kyahtan official, who was also on his travels, regaled us with excellent tea,
and where we got the horses for Boyarskaya; and so we set off on Thursday
instead of Friday; what is more, we got twenty-four hours in advance of the
post, which usually takes all the horses at the station. We began driving as
fast as we could, cherishing a faint hope of reaching Sryetensk by the 20th.
I will tell you when we meet about my journey along the bank of the
Selenga and across Transbaikalia. Now I will only say that Selenga is one
continuous loneliness, and in Transbaikalia I found everything I wanted: the
Caucasus, and the valley of the Psyol, and the Zvenigorod district, and the
Don. By day you gallop through the Caucasus, at night along the steppe of
the Don; in the morning, rousing yourself from slumber, behold the
province of Poltava—and so for the whole thousand versts. Verhneudinsk is
a nice little town. Tchita is a wretched place, in the style of Sumy. I need
hardly say that we had no time to think of sleep or dinner. One gallops on
thinking of nothing but the chance that at the next station we might not get
horses, and might be kept five or six hours. We did two hundred versts in
twenty-four hours—one can’t do more than that in the summer. We were
stupefied. The heat was fearful by day, while at night it was so cold that I
had to put on my leather coat over my cloth one. One night I even wore my
sheepskin. Well, we drove on and on, and reached Sryetensk this morning
just an hour before the steamer left, giving the drivers from the last two
stations a rouble each for themselves.
And so my horse-journey is over. It has lasted two months (I set out on
the 21st of April). If we exclude the time spent on the railway and the
steamer, the three days spent in Ekaterinburg, the week in Tomsk, the day in
Krasnoyarsk, the week in Irkutsk, the two days on the shores of Lake
Baikal, and the days wasted in waiting for boats to cross the floods, you can

judge of the rate at which I have driven. My journey has been most
successful, I wish nothing better for anyone. I have not once been ill, and of
the mass of things I had with me I have lost nothing but a penknife, the
strap off my trunk, and a little jar of carbolic ointment. My money is safe. It
is not often that anyone succeeds in travelling a thousand versts so well.
I have grown so used to driving that now I don’t feel like myself, and
cannot believe that I am not in a chaise and that I don’t hear the rattling and
the jingling of the bells. It seems strange that when I go to bed I can stretch
out my legs full length, and that my face is not covered with dust. But what
is stranger still is that the bottle of brandy Kuvshinnikov gave me has not
been broken, and that the brandy is still in it, every drop of it. I have vowed
not to uncork it except on the shore of the Pacific.
I am sailing down the Shilka, which runs into the Amur at the
Pokrovskaya Stanitsa. The river is not broader than the Psyol, it is even
narrower. The shores are stony: there are crags and forests. It is absolutely
wild.... We tack about to avoid foundering on a sandbank, or running our
helm into the banks: steamers and barges often do so in the rapids. It’s
stifling. We have just stopped at Ust-Kara, where we have landed five or six
convicts. There are mines here and a convict prison.
Yesterday we were at Nertchinsk. The little town is nothing to boast of,
but one could live there.
And how are you, messieurs and mesdames? I know positively nothing
about you. You might subscribe twopence each and send me a full telegram.
The steamer will stay the night at Gorbitsa. The nights here are foggy,
sailing is dangerous, I shall send off this letter at Gorbitsa.
... I am going first class because my companions are in the second. I have
got away from them. We have driven together (three in one chaise), we have
slept together and are sick of each other, especially I of them.

My handwriting is very bad, shaky. That is because the steamer rocks.
It’s difficult to write.
I broke off here. I went to my lieutenants and had tea. They have both
had a long sleep and were in a very cordial mood. One of them, Lieutenant
N. (the surname jars upon my ear), is in the infantry; he is a tall, well-fed,
loud-voiced Courlander, a great braggart and Hlestakov, who sings songs
from every opera, but has no more ear than a smoked herring, an unlucky

fellow who has squandered all the money for his travelling expenses, knows
all Mickiewicz by heart, is ill-bred, far too unreserved, and babbles till it
makes you sick. Like me, he is fond of talking about his uncles and aunts.
The other lieutenant, M., a geographer, is a quiet, modest, thoroughly well-
educated fellow. If it were not for N., I could travel with the other for a
million versts without being bored. But with N., who intrudes into every
conversation, the other bores me too.... I believe we are reaching Gorbitsa.
To-morrow I will make up the form of a telegram which you must send
me to Sahalin. I will try to put all I want to know in thirty words, and you
must try and keep strictly to the pattern.
The gad-flies bite.

TO N. A. LEIKIN.
GORBITSA, June 20, 1890.
Greetings, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch!
I wrote you this as I approached Gorbitsa, one of the Cossack settlements
on the banks of the Shilka, a tributary of the Amur. This is where I have got
to. I am sailing down the Amur.
I sent you a letter from Irkutsk. Did you get it? Since then more than a
week has passed, in the course of which I have crossed Lake Baikal and
driven through Transbaikalia. Lake Baikal is wonderful, and the Siberians
may well call it a sea instead of a lake. The water is extraordinarily
transparent, so that one can see through it as through air; the colour is a soft
turquoise very agreeable to the eye. The banks are mountainous, and
covered with forests; it is all impenetrable wildness without a break
anywhere.
There are great numbers of bears, wild goats, and wild creatures of all
sorts, who spend their time living in the Taiga and eating one another. I
spent two days and nights on the shore of Lake Baikal.
It was still and hot when I was sailing.
Transbaikalia is splendid. It is a mixture of Switzerland, the Don, and
Finland.
I have driven with horses more than four thousand versts. My journey
was entirely successful. I was in good health all the time, and lost nothing
of my luggage but a penknife. I can wish no one a better journey. The
journey is absolutely free from danger, and all the tales of escaped convicts,
of night attacks, and so on are nothing but legends, traditions of the remote
past. A revolver is an entirely superfluous article. Now I am sitting in a
first-class cabin, and feel as though I were in Europe. I feel in the mood one
is in after passing an examination. A whistle!—that’s Gorbitsa.

The banks of the Shilka are picturesque like stage scenes but, alas! there
is something oppressive in this complete absence of human beings. It is like
a cage without a bird.

TO HIS SISTER.
June 21, 1890.

6 o’clock in the evening, not far from the Stanitsa Pokrovskaya.
We ran upon a rock, stove a hole in the steamer, and are now undergoing
repairs. We are aground on a sandbank and pumping out water. On the left
is the Russian bank, on the right the Chinese. If I were back at home now I
should have the right to boast: “Though I have not been in China I have
seen China only twenty feet off.” We are to stay the night in Pokrovskaya.
We shall make up a party to see the place.
If I were a millionaire I should certainly have a steamer of my own on the
Amur. It is a fine, interesting country. I advise Yegor Mihailovitch not to go
to Tuapse but here; there are here by the way neither tarantulas nor
phalangas. On the Chinese side there is a sentry post—a small hut; sacks of
flour are piled up on the bank, ragged Chinamen are dragging the sacks on
barrows to the hut. And beyond is the dense, endless forest.
Some schoolgirls are travelling with us from Irkutsk—Russian faces, but
not good-looking.

POKROVSKAYA STANITSA,
June 23, 1890.
I have told you already we are aground on a sandbank. At Ust-Stryelka,
where the Shilka joins the Argun (see map), the steamer went aground in
two and a half feet of water, struck a rock, and stove in several holes in its
side and, the hold filling with water, the steamer sank to the bottom. They
began pumping out water and putting on patches; a naked sailor crawled
into the hold, stood up to his neck in water, and tried the holes with his
heels. Each hole was covered on the inside with cloth smeared with grease:
they lay a board on the top, and stuck a support upon the latter which
pressed against the ceiling like a column. Such is the repairing. They were
pumping from five o’clock in the evening till night, but still the water did
not abate: they had to put off the work till morning. In the morning they
discovered some more holes, and began patching and pumping again. The
sailors pump while we, the general public, pace up and down the decks,
criticize, eat, drink, and sleep; the captain and his mate do the same as the
general public, and seem in no hurry. On the right is the Chinese bank, on
the left is the stanitsa, Pokrovskaya, with the Cossacks of the Amur; if one
likes one can stay in Russia, if one likes one can go into China, there is
nothing to hinder one. It is insufferably hot in the daytime, so that one has
to put on a silk shirt. They give us dinner at twelve o’clock, supper at seven.
Unluckily the steamer Vyestnik coming the other way with a crowd of
passengers is approaching the stanitsa. The Vyestnik cannot go on either,
and both steamers stay stock-still. There is a military band on the Vyestnik,
consequently there has been a regular festival. All yesterday the band was
playing on deck to the entertainment of the captain and sailors, and
consequently to the delay of the repairing. The feminine half of the public
were highly delighted; a band, officers, naval men ... oh! The schoolgirls
were particularly pleased. Yesterday evening we walked about the Cossack
settlement, where the same band, hired by the Cossacks, was playing.
Today we are continuing the repairs.
The captain promises that we shall start after dinner, but he promises it
listlessly, gazing away into space—obviously he does not mean it. We are in

no haste. When I asked a passenger, “Whenever are we going on?” he
asked, “Why, aren’t you all right here!”
And that’s true. Why not stay, as long as we are not bored?
The captain, his mate, and his agent are the acme of politeness. The
Chinese in the third class are good-natured and funny. Yesterday a
Chinaman sat on the deck and sang something very mournful in a falsetto
voice; as he did so his profile was funnier than any caricature. Everybody
looked at him and laughed, while he took not the slightest notice. He sang
falsetto and then began singing tenor. My God, what a voice! It was like the
bleat of a sheep or a calf. The Chinese remind me of good-natured tame
animals, their pigtails are long and black like Natalya Mihailovna’s.
Apropos of tame animals, there’s a tame fox cub living in the toilet-room. It
sits and looks on as one washes. If it sees no one for a long time it begins to
whine.
What strange conversations one hears! They talk of nothing but gold, the
mines, the Volunteer Fleet and Japan. In Pokrovskaya all the peasants and
even the priests mine for gold. The exiles follow the same occupation and
grow rich as quickly as they grow poor. There are people who look like
artizans and who never drink anything but champagne, and walk to the
tavern on red baize which is laid down from their hut to the tavern.

The Amur country is exceedingly interesting. Highly original. The life
here is such as people have no conception of in Europe. It reminds me of
American stories. The shores of the Amur are so wild, original, and
luxuriant that one longs to live there all one’s life. I am writing these last
few lines on the 25th of June. The steamer rocks and prevents my writing
properly. We are moving again. I have come a thousand versts down the
Amur already, and have seen a million gorgeous landscapes; I feel giddy
with ecstasy.... It’s marvellous scenery, and how hot! What warm nights!
There is a mist in the mornings but it is warm.
I look through an opera-glass at the shore and see a prodigious number of
ducks, geese, grebes, herons and all sorts of creatures with long beaks. This
would be the place to take a summer villa in! At a little place called Reinov
a goldminer asked me to see his sick wife. As I was leaving him he thrust
into my hands a roll of notes. I felt ashamed. I was beginning to refuse and
thrust it back, saying that I was very rich myself; we talked together for a

long time trying to persuade each other, and yet in the end fifteen roubles
remained in my hands. Yesterday a goldminer with the face of Petya
Polevaev dined in my cabin; at dinner he drank champagne instead of water,
and treated us to it.
The villages here are like those on the Don. There is a difference in the
buildings but nothing to speak of. The inhabitants don’t keep the fasts, and
eat meat even in Holy Week; the girls smoke cigarettes, and old women
smoke pipes—it is the correct thing. It’s strange to see peasants with
cigarettes! And what liberalism! Oh, what liberalism!
The air on the steamer is positively red-hot with the talk that goes on.
People are not afraid to talk aloud here. There’s no one to arrest them and
nowhere to exile them to, so you can be as liberal as you like. The people
for the most part are independent, self-reliant, and logical. If there is any
misunderstanding at Ust-Kara, where the convicts work (among them many
politicals who don’t work), all the Amur region is in revolt. It is not the
thing to tell tales. An escaped convict can travel freely on the steamer to the
ocean, without any fear of the captain’s giving him up. This is partly due to
the absolute indifference to everything that is done in Russia. Everybody
says: “What is it to do with me?”
I forgot to tell you that in Transbaikalia the drivers are not Russians but
Buriats. A funny people! Their horses are regular vipers; they could never
be harnessed without trouble—more furious than fire-brigade horses. While
the trace-horse is being harnessed, its legs are hobbled; as soon as they are
set free the chaise goes flying to the devil, so that one holds one’s breath. If
one does not hobble a horse while it is being harnessed, it kicks, knocks bits
out of the shaft with its hoofs, tears the harness, and behaves like a young
devil that has been caught by the horns.

June 26.
We are getting near Blagoveshtchensk. Be well and merry, and don’t get
used to being without me. No doubt you have already? Respectful greetings
to all, and a friendly kiss.
I am perfectly well.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
BLAGOVESHTCHENSK, June 27, 1890.
The Amur is a very fine river; I have gained more from it than I could
have expected, and I have been wishing for a long time to share my
transports with you, but the rascally steamer has been rocking all the seven
days I have been on it, and prevents me writing properly. Moreover, I am
quite incapable of describing anything so beautiful as the shores of the
Amur; I am at a complete loss before them, and recognise my bankruptcy.
How is one to describe them? ... Rocks, crags, forests, thousands of ducks,
herons and all sorts of beaked gentry, and absolute wilderness. On the left
the Russian shore, on the right the Chinese. I can look at Russia or China as
I please. China is as deserted and wild as Russia: villages and sentinels’ huts
are rare. Everything in my head is muddled; and no wonder, your
Excellency! I have come more than a thousand versts down the Amur and
seen a million landscapes, and you know before the Amur there was Lake
Baikal, Transbaikalia.... Truly I have seen such riches and had so much
enjoyment that death would have no terrors now. The people on the Amur
are original, their life is interesting, unlike ours. They talk of gold, gold,
gold, and nothing else. I am in a stupid state, I feel no inclination to write,
and I write shortly, piggishly; to-day I sent you four papers about Yenissey
and the Taiga, later on I will send you something about Lake Baikal,
Transbaikalia, and the Amur. Don’t throw away these sheets; I will collect
them, and they will serve as notes from which I can tell you what I don’t
know how to put on paper.
To-day I changed into the steamer Muravyov, which they say does not
rock; maybe I shall write.
I am in love with the Amur; I should be glad to spend a couple of years
on it. There is beauty, space, freedom and warmth. Switzerland and France
have never known such freedom. The lowest convict breathes more freely
on the Amur than the highest general in Russia. If you lived here, you
would write a great deal of good stuff and delight the public, but I am not
equal to it.

One begins to meet Chinamen at Irkutsk, and here they are common as
flies. They are the most good-natured people. If Nastya and Borya made the
acquaintance of the Chinese, they would leave donkeys alone, and transfer
their affection to the Chinese. They are charming tame animals.
... When I invited a Chinaman to the refreshment bar to treat him to
vodka, before drinking it he held out the glass to me, the bar-keeper, the
waiters, and said: “Taste.” That’s the Chinese ceremonial. He did not drink
it off as we do, but drank it in sips, eating something between each sip, and
then, to express his gratitude, gave me several Chinese coins. An awfully
polite people. They are dressed poorly, but beautifully; they eat daintily,
with ceremony....

TO HIS SISTER.
THE STEAMER “MURAVYOV,” June 29, 1890.
Meteors are flying in my cabin—these are luminous beetles that look like
electric sparks. Wild goats swim across the Amur in the day-time. The flies
here are huge. I am sharing my cabin with a Chinaman—Son-Luli—who is
constantly telling me how in China for the merest trifle it is “off with his
head.” Last night he got drunk with opium, and was talking in his sleep all
night and preventing me from sleeping. On the 27th I walked about the
Chinese town Aigun. Little by little I seem gradually to be stepping into a
fantastic world. The steamer rocks, it is hard to write.
To-morrow I shall reach Habarovsk. The Chinaman began to sing from
music written on his fan.

TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.
SAHALIN, July 11, 1890.
Arrived well, telegraph Sahalin.—CHEKHOV.

TELEGRAM TO HIS MOTHER.
SAHALIN, September 27, 1890.
Well. Shall arrive shortly.—CHEKHOV.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
THE STEAMER “BAIKAL,” September 11, 1890.
Greetings! I am sailing on the Gulf of Tartary from the north of Sahalin
to the south. I am writing; and don’t know when this letter will reach you. I
am well, though I see on all sides glaring at me the green eyes of cholera
which has laid a trap for me. In Vladivostok, in Japan, in Shanghai, Tchifu,
Suez, and even in the moon, I fancy—everywhere there is cholera,
everywhere quarantine and terror.... They expect the cholera in Sahalin and
keep all vessels in quarantine. In short, it is a bad lookout. Europeans are
dying at Vladivostok, among others the wife of a general has died.
I have spent just two months in the north of Sahalin. I was received by
the local administration very amicably, though Galkin had not written a
single word about me. Neither Galkin nor the Baroness V., nor any of the
other genii I was so foolish as to appeal to for help, turned out of the
slightest use to me; I had to act on my own initiative.
The Sahalin general, Kononovitch, is a cultivated and gentlemanly man.
We soon got on together, and everything went off well. I am bringing some
papers with me from which you will see that I was put on the most
agreeable footing from the first. I have seen everything, so that the question
is not now what I have seen, but how I have seen it.
I don’t know what will come of it, but I have done a good deal. I have got
enough material for three dissertations. I got up every morning at five
o’clock and went to bed late; and all day long was on the strain from the
thought that there was still so much I hadn’t done; and now that I have done
with the convict system, I have the feeling that I have seen everything but
have not noticed the elephants.
By the way, I had the patience to make a census of the whole Sahalin
population. I made the round of all the settlements, went into every hut and
talked to everyone; I made use of the card system in making the census, and
I have already registered about ten thousand convicts and settlers. In other
words, there is not in Sahalin one convict or settler who has not talked with

me. I was particularly successful with the census of the children, on which I
am building great hopes.
I dined at Landsberg’s; I sat in the kitchen of the former Baroness
Gembruk.... I visited all the celebrities. I was present at a flogging, after
which I dreamed for three or four nights of the executioner and the
revolting accessories. I have talked to men who were chained to trucks.
Once when I was drinking tea in a mine, Borodavkin, once a Petersburg
merchant who was convicted of arson, took a teaspoon out of his pocket
and gave it to me, and the long and the short of it is that I have upset my
nerves and have vowed not to come to Sahalin again.
I should write more to you, but there is a lady in the cabin who giggles
and chatters unceasingly. I haven’t the strength to write. She has been
laughing and cackling ever since yesterday evening.
This letter will go across America, but I shall go probably not across
America. Everyone says that the American way is duller and more
expensive.
To-morrow I shall see Japan, the Island of Matsmai. Now it is twelve
o’clock at night. It is dark on the sea, the wind is blowing. I don’t
understand how the steamer can go on and find its direction when one can’t
see a thing, and above all in such wild, little-known waters as those in the
Gulf of Tartary.
When I remember that I am ten thousand versts away from my world I
am overcome with apathy. It seems I shall not be home for a hundred
years.... God give you health and all blessings. I feel dreary.

TO HIS MOTHER.
SAHALIN, October 6, 1890.
My greetings, dear mother!
I write you this letter almost on the eve of my departure for Russia. Every
day we expect a steamer of the Volunteer Fleet, and cherish hopes that it
will not come later than the 10th of October. I send this letter to Japan,
whence it will go by Shanghai or America. I am living at the station of
Korsakovo, where there is neither telegraph nor post, and which is not
visited by ships oftener than once a fortnight. Yesterday a steamer arrived
and brought me from the north a pile of letters and telegrams. From the
letters I learn that Masha likes the Crimea, I believe she will like the
Caucasus better still....

Strange, with you it has been cold and rainy, while in Sahalin from the
day of my arrival till to-day it has been bright warm weather: there is slight
cold with hoar-frost in the mornings, the snow is white on one of the
mountains, but the earth is still green, the leaves have not fallen, and all the
vegetation is still as flourishing as at a summer villa in May. There you
have Sahalin!

At midnight yesterday I heard the roar of a steamer. Everybody jumped
out of bed: hurrah! the steamer has arrived! We dressed and went out with
lanterns to the harbour; we gazed into the distance; there really was a
steamer.... The majority of voices decided that it was the Petersburg, on
which I am to go to Russia. I was overjoyed. We got into a boat and rowed
to the steamer. We went on and on, till at last we saw in the mist the dark
hulk of a steamer. One of us shouted in a hoarse voice asking the name of
the vessel. And we received the answer “the Baikal.” Tfoo! anathema! what
a disappointment! I am I homesick, and weary of Sahalin. Here for the last
three months I have seen no one but convicts or people who can talk of
nothing but penal servitude, the lash, and the convicts. A depressing
existence. One longs to get quickly to Japan and from there to India.

I am quite well, except for flashes in my eye from which I often suffer
now, after which I always have a bad headache. I had the flashes in my eye
yesterday and to-day, and so I am writing this with a headache and
heaviness all over.
At the station the Japanese General Kuse-San lives with his two
secretaries, good friends of mine. They live like Europeans. To-day the
local authorities visited them in state to present decorations that had been
conferred on them; and I, too, went with my headache and had to drink
champagne.
Since I have been in the south I have three times driven to Nay Race
where the real ocean waves break. Look at the map and you will see at once
on the south coast that poor dismal Nay Race. The waves cast up a boat
with six American whalefishers, who had been shipwrecked off the coast of
Sahalin; they are living now at the station and solemnly walk about the
streets. They are waiting for the Petersburg and will sail with me.
I am not bringing you furs, there are none in Sahalin. Keep well and
Heaven guard you all.
I am bringing you all presents. The cholera in Vladivostok and Japan is
over.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MALAYA DMITROVKA, MOSCOW, December 9.
... Hurrah! Here at last I am sitting at my table at home! I pray to my
faded penates and write to you. I have now a happy feeling as though I had
not been away from home at all. I am well and thriving to the marrow of my
bones. Here’s a very brief report for you. I was in Sahalin not two months,
as you have printed, but three months plus two days. I worked at high
pressure. I made a full and minute census of the whole of Sahalin’s
population, and saw everything except the death penalty. When we see each
other I will show you a whole trunkful of stuff about the convicts which is
very valuable as raw material. I know a very great deal now, but I have
brought away a horrid feeling. While I was staying in Sahalin, I only had a
bitter feeling in my inside as though from rancid butter; and now, as I
remember it, Sahalin seems to me a perfect hell. For two months I worked
intensely, putting my back into it; in the third month I began to feel ill from
the bitterness I have spoken of, from boredom, and the thought that the
cholera would come from Vladivostok to Sahalin, and that so I was in
danger of having to winter in the convict settlement. But, thank God! the
cholera ceased, and on the 13th of October the steamer bore me away from
Sahalin. I have been in Vladivostok. About the Primorsky Region and our
Eastern sea-coast with its fleets, its problems, and its Pacific dreams
altogether, I have only one thing to tell of: its crying poverty! Poverty,
ignorance, and worthlessness, that might drive one to despair. One honest
man for ninety-nine thieves, that are blackening the name of Russia.... We
passed Japan because the cholera was there, and so I have not bought you
anything Japanese, and the five hundred you gave me for your purchases I
have spent on my own needs, for which you have, by law, the right to send
me to a settlement in Siberia. The first foreign port we reached was Hong
Kong. It is an exquisite bay. The traffic on the sea was such as I had never
seen before even in pictures; excellent roads, trams, a railway to the
mountains, a museum, botanical gardens; wherever you look you see the
tenderest solicitude on the part of the English for the men in their service;
there is even a club for the sailors. I went about in a jinrickshaw—that is,

carried by men—bought all sorts of rubbish of the Chinese, and was moved
to indignation at hearing my Russian fellow-travellers abuse the English for
exploiting the natives. I thought: Yes, the English exploit the Chinese, the
Sepoys, the Hindoos, but they do give them roads, aqueducts, museums,
Christianity, and what do you give them?
When we left Hong Kong the boat began to rock. The steamer was empty
and lurched through an angle of thirty-eight degrees, so that we were afraid
it would upset. I am not subject to sea-sickness: that discovery was very
agreeable to me. On the way to Singapore we threw two corpses into the
sea. When one sees a dead man, wrapped in sailcloth, fly, turning
somersaults in the water, and remembers that it is several miles to the
bottom, one feels frightened, and for some reason begins to fancy that one
will die oneself and will be thrown into the sea. Our horned cattle have
fallen sick. Through the united verdict of Dr. Stcherbak and your humble
servant, the cattle have been killed and thrown into the sea.
I have no clear memory of Singapore as, for some reason, I felt very sad
while I was driving about it, and was almost weeping. Next after it comes
Ceylon—an earthly Paradise. There in that Paradise I went more than a
hundred versts on the railway and gazed at palm forests and bronze women
to my heart’s content.... After Ceylon we sailed for thirteen days and nights
without stopping and were all stupid from boredom. I bear the heat well.
The Red Sea is depressing; I felt touched as I gazed at Sinai.
God’s world is a good place. The one thing not good in it is we. How
little justice and humility there is in us. How little we understand true
patriotism! A drunken, broken-down debauchee of a husband loves his wife
and children, but of what use is that love? We, so we are told in our own
newspapers, love our great motherland, but how does that love express
itself? Instead of knowledge—insolence and immeasurable conceit; instead
of work—sloth and swinishness; there is no justice, the conception of
honour does not go beyond “the honour of the uniform”—the uniform
which is so commonly seen adorning the prisoner’s dock in our courts.
Work is what is wanted, and the rest can go to the devil. First of all we must
be just, and all the rest will be added unto us,
I have a passionate desire to talk to you. My soul is in a ferment. I want
no one else but you, for it is only with you I can talk.

How glad I am that everything was managed without Galkin-Vrasskoy’s
help. He didn’t write one line about me, and I turned up in Sahalin utterly
unknown.

MOSCOW,
December 24, 1890.
I believe in Koch and in spermine and praise God for it. All that—that is
the kochines, spermines, and so on—seem to the public a kind of miracle
that leaped forth from some brain, after the fashion of Pallas Athene; but
people who have a closer acquaintance with the facts know that they are
only the natural sequel of what has been done during the last twenty years.
A great deal has been done, my dear fellow! Surgery alone has done so
much that one is fairly dumbfoundered at it. To one who is studying
medicine now, the time before twenty years ago seems simply pitiable. My
dear friend, if I were offered the choice between the “ideals” of the
renowned “sixties,” or the very poorest Zemstvo hospital of to-day, I
should, without a moment’s hesitation, choose the second.
Will kochine cure syphilis? It’s possible. But as for cancer, you must
allow me to have my doubts. Cancer is not a microbe; it’s a tissue, growing
in the wrong place, and like a noxious weed smothering all the
neighbouring tissues. If N.‘s uncle feels better, that is, because the microbes
of erysipelas—that is, the elements that produce the disease of erysipelas—
form a component part of kochine. It was observed long ago that with the
development of erysipelas, the growth of malignant tumours is temporarily
checked.

It’s a strange business—while I was travelling to Sahalin and back I felt
perfectly well, but now, at home, the devil knows what is happening to me.
My head is continually aching, I have a feeling of languor all over, I am
quickly exhausted, apathetic, and worst of all, my heart is not beating
regularly. My heart is continually stopping for a few seconds....

MOSCOW,
January, 1891.
I shall probably come to Petersburg on the 8th of January.... Since by
February I shall not have a farthing, I must make haste and finish the novel
[Footnote: “The Duel.”] I’ve begun. There is something in the novel about
which I must talk to you and ask your advice.
I spent Christmas in a horrible way. To begin with, I had palpitations of
the heart; secondly, my brother Ivan came to stay and was ill with typhoid,
poor fellow; thirdly, after my Sahalin labours and the tropics, my Moscow
life seems to me now so petty, so bourgeois, and so dull, that I feel ready to
bite; fourthly, working for my daily bread prevents my giving up my time to
Sahalin; fifthly, my acquaintances bother me, and so on.
The poet Merezhkovsky has been to see me twice; he is a very intelligent
man.
How sorry I am you did not see my mongoose. It is a wonderful creature.

TO HIS SISTER.
ST. PETERSBURG, January 14, 1891.
Unforeseen circumstances have kept me a few days longer. I am alive
and well. There is no news. I saw Tolstoy’s “The Power of Darkness” the
other day, though. I have been to Ryepin’s studio. What else? Nothing else.
It’s dull, in fact.
I went to-day to a dog-show; I went there with Suvorin, who at the
moment I am writing these lines is standing by the table and asking me to
write and tell you that I have been to the dog-show with the famous dog
Suvorin....

January, later.
I am alive and well, I have no palpitations, I’ve no money either, and
everything is going well.
I am paying visits and seeing acquaintances. I have to talk about Sahalin
and India. It’s horribly boring.
... Anna Ivanovna is as nice as ever, Suvorin talks as incessantly as ever.
I receive the most boring invitations to the most boring dinners. It seems
I must make haste and get back to Moscow, as they won’t let me work here.
Hurrah, we are avenged! To make up for our being so bored, the cotton
ball has yielded 1,500 roubles clear profit, in confirmation of which I
enclose a cutting from a newspaper.
If anything is collected for the benefit of the Sahalin schools, let me
know at once.
How is my mongoose? Don’t forget to give him food and drink, and beat
him without mercy when he jumps on the table. Does he eat people?
[Footnote: A naive question asked by a lady of Chekhov’s acquaintance.]
Write how Ivan is....

January, later.
I am tired as a ballet dancer after five acts and eight tableaux. Dinners,
letters which I am too lazy to answer, conversations and imbecilities of all
sorts. I have to go immediately to dine in Vassilyevsky Ostrov, and I am
bored and ought to work.
I’ll stay another three days and see whether the ballet will go on the
same, then I shall go home, or to see Ivan.
I am surrounded by a thick atmosphere of ill-feeling, extremely vague
and to me incomprehensible. They feed me with dinners and pay me the
vulgarest compliments, and at the same time they are ready to devour me.
What for? The devil only knows. If I were to shoot myself I should thereby
provide the greatest gratification to nine-tenths of my friends and admirers.
And how pettily they express their petty feelings!
... My greetings to Lydia Yegorovna Mizinov. I expect a programme from
her. Tell her not to eat farinaceous food and to avoid Levitan. A better
admirer than me she will not find in her Town Council nor in higher society.

January 16, 1891.
I have the honour to congratulate you and the hero of the name-day;
[Footnote: It was the name-day of Chekhov himself.] I wish you and him
health and prosperity, and above all that the mongoose should not break the
crockery or tear the wall-paper. I shall celebrate my name-day at the Maly
Yaroslavets restaurant, from the restaurant to the benefit performance, from
the benefit performance to the restaurant again.
I am working, but with very great difficulty. No sooner have I written a
line than the bell rings and someone comes in to talk to me about Sahalin.
It’s simply awful! ...
I have found Drishka. It appears that she is living in the same house as I
am. She ran away from Moscow to Petersburg under romantic
circumstances: she meant to marry a lawyer, plighted her troth to him, but
an army captain turned up, and so on; she had to run away or the lawyer
would have shot both Drishka and the captain with a pistol loaded with
cranberries. She is prospering and is the same lively rogue as ever. I went to
Svobodin’s name-day party with her yesterday. She sang gipsy songs, and
created such a sensation that all the great men kissed her hand.
Rumours have reached me that Lidia Stahievna is going to be married
par depit. Is it true? Tell her that I shall carry her off from her husband par
depit. I am a violent man.
Has not anything been collected for the benefit of the Sahalin schools?
Let me know....

TO A. F. KONI.
PETERSBURG, January 16, 1891.

DEAR SIR, ANATOLY FYODOROVITCH,

I did not hasten to answer your letter because I am not leaving Petersburg
before next Saturday. I am sorry I have not been to see Madame Naryshkin,
but I think I had better defer my visit till my book has come out, when I
shall be able to turn more freely to the material I have. My brief Sahalin
past looms so immense in my imagination that when I want to speak about
it I don’t know where to begin, and it always seems to me that I have not
said what was wanted.
I will try and describe minutely the position of the children and young
people in Sahalin. It is exceptional. I saw starving children, I saw girls of
thirteen prostitutes, girls of fifteen with child. Girls begin to live by
prostitution from twelve years old, sometimes before menstruation has
begun. Church and school exist only on paper, the children are educated by
their environment and the convict surroundings. Among other things I have
noted down a conversation with a boy of ten years old. I was making the
census of the settlement of Upper Armudano; all the inhabitants are
poverty-stricken, every one of them, and have the reputation of being
desperate gamblers at the game of shtoss. I go into a hut; the people are not
at home; on a bench sits a white-haired, round-shouldered, bare-footed boy;
he seems lost in thought. We begin to talk.
I. “What is your father’s second name?”
He. “I don’t know.”
I. “How is that? You live with your father and don’t know what his name
is? Shame!”
He. “He is not my real father.”
I. “How is that?”
He. “He is living with mother.”

I. “Is your mother married or a widow?”
He. “A widow. She followed her husband here.”
I. “What has become of her husband, then?”
He. “She killed him.”
I. “Do you remember your father?”
He. “No, I don’t, I am illegitimate. I was born when mother was at Kara.”
On the Amur steamer going to Sahalin, there was a convict with fetters
on his legs who had murdered his wife. His daughter, a little girl of six, was
with him. I noticed wherever the convict moved the little girl scrambled
after him, holding on to his fetters. At night the child slept with the convicts
and soldiers all in a heap together. I remember I was at a funeral in Sahalin.
Beside the newly dug grave stood four convict bearers ex officio; the
treasury clerk and I, in the capacity of Hamlet and Horatio, wandering
about the cemetery; the dead woman’s lodger, a Circassian, who had come
because he had nothing better to do; and a convict woman who had come
out of pity and had brought the dead woman’s two children, one a baby, and
the other, Alyoshka, a boy of four, wearing a woman’s jacket and blue
breeches with bright-coloured patches on the knees. It was cold and damp,
there was water in the grave, the convicts were laughing. The sea was in
sight. Alyoshka looked into the grave with curiosity; he tried to wipe his
chilly nose, but the long sleeve of his jacket got into his way. When they
began to fill in the grave I asked him: “Alyoshka, where is your mother?”
He waved his hand with the air of a gentleman who has lost at cards,
laughed, and said: “They have buried her!”
The convicts laughed, the Circassian turned and asked what he was to do
with the children, saying it was not his duty to feed them.
Infectious diseases I did not meet with in Sahalin. There is very little
congenital syphilis, but I saw blind children, filthy, covered with eruptions
—all diseases that are evidence of neglect. Of course I am not going to
settle the problem of the children. I don’t know what ought to be done. But
it seems to me that one will do nothing by means of philanthropy and what
little is left of prison and other funds. To my thinking, to make something of
great importance dependent upon charity, which in Russia always has a
casual character, and on funds which do not exist, is pernicious. I should
prefer it to be financed out of the government treasury.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, January 31, 1891.
At home I found depression. My nicest and most intelligent mongoose
had fallen ill and was lying very quietly under a quilt. The little beast eats
and drinks nothing. The climate has already laid its cold claw on it and
means to kill it. What for?
We have received a dismal letter. In Taganrog we were on friendly terms
with a well-to-do Polish family. The cakes and jam I ate in their house when
I was a boy at school arouse in me now the most touching reminiscences;
there used to be music, young ladies, home-made liqueurs, and catching
goldfinches in the immense courtyard. The father had a post in the Taganrog
customs and got into trouble. The investigation and trial ruined the family.
There were two daughters and a son. When the elder daughter married a
rascal of a Greek, the family took an orphan girl into the house to bring up.
This little girl was attacked by disease of the knee and they amputated the
leg. Then the son died of consumption, a medical student in his fourth year,
an excellent fellow, a perfect Hercules, the hope of the family.... Then came
terrible poverty.... The father took to wandering about the cemetery, longed
to take to drink but could not: vodka simply made his head ache cruelly
while his thoughts remained the same, just as sober and revolting. Now they
write that the younger daughter, a beautiful, plump young girl, is
consumptive.... The father writes to me of that and writes to me for a loan
of ten roubles.... Ach!
I felt awfully unwilling to leave you, but still I am glad I did not remain
another day—I went away and showed that I had strength of will. I am
writing already. By the time you come to Moscow my novel [Footnote:
“The Duel.”] will be finished, and I will go back with you to Petersburg.
Tell Borya, Mitya, and Andrushka that I vituperate them. In the pocket of
my greatcoat I found some notes on which was scrawled: “Anton
Pavlovitch, for shame, for shame, for shame!” O pessimi discipuli! Utinam
vos lupus devoret!

Last night I did not sleep, and I read through my “Motley Tales” for the
second edition. I threw out about twenty stories.

MOSCOW,
February 5, 1891.
My mongoose has recovered and breaks crockery again with unfailing
regularity.
I am writing and writing! I must own I was afraid that my Sahalin
expedition would have put me out of the way of writing, but now I see that
it is all right. I have written a great deal. I am writing diffusely a la
Yasinsky. I want to get hold of a thousand roubles.
I shall soon begin to expect you. Are we going to Italy or not? We ought
to.
In Petersburg I don’t sleep at night, I drink and loaf about, but I feel
immeasurably better than in Moscow. The devil only knows why it is so.
I am not depressed, because in the first place I am writing, and in the
second, one feels that summer, which I love more than anything, is close at
hand. I long to prepare my fishing tackle....

February 23.
Greetings, my dear friend.
Your telegram about the Tormidor upset me. I felt dreadfully attracted to
Petersburg: now for the sake of Sardou and the Parisian visitors. But
practical considerations pulled me up. I reflected that I must hurry on with
my novel; that I don’t know French, and so should only be taking up
someone else’s place in the box; that I have very little money, and so on. In
short, as it seems to me now, I am a poor comrade, though apparently I
acted sensibly.
My novel is progressing. It’s all smooth, even, there is scarcely anything
that is too long. But do you know what is very bad? There is no movement
in my novel, and that frightens me. I am afraid it will be difficult to read to
the middle, to say nothing of reading to the end. Anyway, I shall finish it. I
shall bring Anna Pavlovna a copy on vellum paper to read in the bathroom.
I should like something to sting her in the water, so that she would run out
of the bathroom sobbing.
I was melancholy when you went away....
Send me some money. I have none and seem to have nowhere to borrow.
By my reckoning I cannot under favourable circumstances get more than a
thousand roubles from you before September. But don’t send the money by
post, as I can’t bear going to post offices....

March 5.
We are going!!! I agree to go, where you like and when you like. My soul
is leaping with delight. It would be stupid on my part not to go, for when
would an opportunity come again? But, my dear friend, I leave you to
weigh the following circumstances.
(1) My work is still far from being finished; if I put it by till May, I shall
not be able to begin my Sahalin work before July, and that is risky. For my
Sahalin impressions are already evaporating, and I run the risk of forgetting
a great deal.
(2) I have absolutely no money. If without finishing my novel I take
another thousand roubles for the tour abroad, and then for living after the
tour, I shall get into such a tangle that the devil himself could not pull me
out by the ears. I am not in a tangle yet because I am up to all sorts of
dodges, and live more frugally than a mouse; but if I go abroad everything
will go to the devil. My accounts will be in a mess and I shall get myself
hopelessly in debt. The very thought of a debt of two thousand makes my
heart sink.
There are other considerations, but they are all of small account beside
that of money and work. And so, thoroughly digest my objections, put
yourself into my skin for a moment, and decide, wouldn’t it be better for me
to stay at home? You will say all this is unimportant. But lay aside your
point of view? and look at it from mine.
I await a speedy answer.
My novel [Footnote: “The Duel.”] is progressing, but I have not got far.
I have been to the Kiselyovs’. The rooks are already arriving.

TO MADAME KISELYOV.
MOSCOW, March 11, 1891.
As I depart for France, Spain, and Italy, I beseech you, oh, Heavens, keep
Babkino in good health and prosperity!
Yes, Marya Vladimirovna! As it is written in the scripture: he had not
time to cry out, before a bear devoured him. So I had not time to cry out
before an unseen power has drawn me again to the mysterious distance. To-
day I am going to Petersburg, from there to Berlin, and so further. Whether
I climb Vesuvius or watch a bull-fight in Spain, I shall remember you in my
holiest prayers. Good-bye.
I have been to a seminary and picked out a seminarist for Vassilisa. There
were plenty with delicate feelings and responsive natures, but not one
would consent. At first, especially when I told them that you sometimes had
peas and radishes on your table, they consented; but when I accidentally let
out that in the district captain’s room there was a bedstead on which people
were flogged, they scratched their heads and muttered that they must think
it over. One, however, a pockmarked fellow called Gerasim Ivanovitch,
with very delicate feelings and a responsive nature, is coming to see you in
a day or two. I hope that Vassilisa and you will make him welcome. Snatch
the chance: it’s a brilliant match. You can flog Gerasim Ivanovitch, for he
told me: “I am immensely fond of violent sensations;” when he is with you
you had better lock the cupboard where the vodka is kept and keep the
windows open, as the seminary inspiration and responsiveness is
perceptible at every minute.
“What a happy girl is Vassilisa!”
Idiotik has not been to see me yet.
The hens peck the cock. They must be keeping Lent, or perhaps the
virtuous widows don’t care for their new suitor.
They have brought me a new overcoat with check lining.
Well, be in Heaven’s keeping, happy, healthy and peaceful. God give you
all everything good. I shall come back in Holy Week. Don’t forget your
truly devoted,

ANTON CHEKHOV.

TO HIS SISTER.
PETERSBURG, March 16. Midnight.
I have just seen the Italian actress Duse in Shakespeare’s Cleopatra. I
don’t know Italian, but she acted so well that it seemed to me I understood
every word. A remarkable actress! I have never seen anything like it before.
I gazed at that Duse and felt overcome with misery at the thought that we
have to educate our temperaments and tastes on such wooden actresses as
N. and her like, whom we call great because we have seen nothing better.
Looking at Duse I understood why it is that the Russian theatre is so dull.
I sent three hundred roubles to-day, did you get them?
After Duse it was amusing to read the address I enclose. [Footnote: A
newspaper cutting containing an address: From the Students of the
Technological Institute of Harkov to M. M. Solovtsov, was enclosed.] My
God, how low taste and a sense of justice have sunk! And these are the
students—the devil take them! Whether it is Solovtsov or whether it is
Salvini, it’s all the same to them, both equally “stir a warm response in the
hearts of the young.” They are worth a farthing, all those hearts.
We set off for Warsaw at half-past one to-morrow. My greetings to all,
even the mongooses, though they don’t deserve it. I will write.

VIENNA,
March 20, 1891.

MY DEAR CZECHS,

I write to you from Vienna, which I reached yesterday at four o’clock in
the afternoon. Everything went well on the journey. From Warsaw to
Vienna I travelled like a railway Nana in a luxurious compartment of the
“Societe Internationale des Wagons-Lits.” Beds, looking-glasses, huge
windows, rugs, and so on.
Ah, my dears, if you only knew how nice Vienna is! It can’t be compared
with any of the towns I have seen in my life. The streets are broad and
elegantly paved, there are numbers of boulevards and squares, the houses
have always six or seven storeys, and shops—they are not shops, but a
perfect delirium, a dream! There are myriads of neckties alone in the
windows! Such amazing things made of bronze, china, and leather! The
churches are huge, but they do not oppress one by their hugeness; they
caress the eye, for it seems as though they are woven of lace. St. Stephen
and the Votiv-Kirche are particularly fine. They are not like buildings, but
like cakes for tea. The parliament, the town hall, and the university are
magnificent. It is all magnificent, and I have for the first time realized,
yesterday and to-day, that architecture is really an art. And here the art is not
seen in little bits, as with us, but stretches over several versts. There are
numbers of monuments. In every side street there is sure to be a bookshop.
In the windows of the bookshops there are Russian books to be seen—not,
alas, the works of Albov, of Barantsevitch, and of Chekhov, but of all sorts
of anonymous authors who write and publish abroad. I saw “Renan,” “The
Mysteries of the Winter Palace,” and so on. It is strange that here one is free
to read anything and to say what one likes. Understand, O ye peoples, what
the cabs are like here! The devil take them! There are no droshkys, but they
are all new, pretty carriages with one and often two horses. The horses are
splendid. On the box sit dandies in top-hats and reefer jackets, reading the
newspaper, all politeness and readiness to oblige.

The dinners are good. There is no vodka; they drink beer and fairly good
wine. There is one thing that is nasty: they make you pay for bread. When
they bring the bill they ask, Wie viel brodchen?—that is, how many rolls
have you devoured? And you have to pay for every little roll.
The women are beautiful and elegant. Indeed, everything is diabolically
elegant.
I have not quite forgotten German. I understand, and am understood.
When we crossed the frontier it was snowing. In Vienna there is no snow,
but it is cold all the same.
I am homesick and miss you all, and indeed I am conscience-stricken,
too, at deserting you all again. But there, never mind! I shall come back and
stay at home for a whole year. I send my greetings to everyone, everyone.
I wish you all things good; don’t forget me with my many transgressions.
I embrace you, I bless you, send my greetings and remain,

Your loving
A. CHEKHOV.

Everyone who meets us recognises that we are Russians, and stares not at
my face, but at my grizzled cap. Looking at my cap they probably think I
am a very rich Russian Count.

TO HIS BROTHER IVAN.
VENICE, March 24, 1891.
I am now in Venice. I arrived here two days ago from Vienna. One thing I
can say: I have never in my life seen a town more marvellous than Venice.
It is perfectly enchanting, brilliance, joy, life. Instead of streets and roads
there are canals; instead of cabs, gondolas. The architecture is amazing, and
there is not a single spot that does not excite some historical or artistic
interest. You float in a gondola and see the palace of the Doges, the house
where Desdemona lived, homes of various painters, churches. And in the
churches there are sculptures and paintings such as we have never dreamed
of. In fact it is enchantment.
All day from morning till night I sit in a gondola and glide along the
streets, or I saunter about the famous St. Mark’s Square. The square is as
level and clean as a parquet floor. Here there is St. Mark’s—something
impossible to describe—the Palace of the Doges, and other buildings which
make me feel as I do listening to part singing—I feel the amazing beauty
and revel in it.
And the evenings! My God! One might almost die of the strangeness of
it. One goes in a gondola ... warmth, stillness, stars.... There are no horses in
Venice, and so there is a silence here as in the open country. Gondolas flit to
and fro, ... then a gondola glides by, hung with lanterns. In it are a double-
bass, violins, a guitar, a mandolin and cornet, two or three ladies, several
men, and one hears singing and music. They sing from operas. What
voices! One goes on a little further and again meets a boat with singers, and
then again, and the air is full, till midnight, of the mingled strains of violins
and tenor voices, and all sorts of heart-stirring sounds.
Merezhkovsky, whom I have met here, is off his head with ecstasy. For
us poor and oppressed Russians it is easy to go out of our minds here in a
world of beauty, wealth, and freedom. One longs to remain here for ever,
and when one stands in the churches and listens to the organ one longs to
become a Catholic.

The tombs of Canova and Titian are magnificent. Here they bury great
artists like kings in churches; here they do not despise art as with us; the
churches provide a shelter for pictures and statues however naked they may
be.
In the Palace of the Doges there is a picture in which there are about ten
thousand human figures.
To-day is Sunday. There will be a band playing in St. Mark’s Square....
If you ever happen to come to Venice it will be the best thing in your life.
You ought to see the glass here! Your bottles [Footnote: His brother Ivan
was teaching in a school attached to a glass factory.] are so hideous
compared with the things here, that it makes one sick to think of them.
I will write again; meanwhile, good-bye.

TO MADAME KISELYOV.
VENICE, March 25.
I am in Venice. You may put me in a madhouse. Gondolas, St. Mark’s
Square, water, stars, Italian women, serenades, mandolins, Falernian wine
—in fact all is lost!
Don’t remember evil against me.
The shade of the lovely Desdemona sends a smile to the District Captain.
Greetings to all. ANTONIO.
The Jesuits send their love to you.

TO HIS SISTER,
VENICE, March 25, 1891.
Bewitching blue-eyed Venice sends her greetings to all of you. Oh,
signori and signorine, what an exquisite town this Venice is! Imagine a
town consisting of houses and churches such as you have never seen; an
intoxicating architecture, everything as graceful and light as the birdlike
gondola. Such houses and churches can only be built by people possessed
of immense artistic and musical taste and endowed with a lion-like
temperament. Now imagine in the streets and alleys, instead of pavement,
water; imagine that there is not one horse in the town; that instead of
cabmen you see gondoliers on their wonderful boats, light, delicate long-
beaked birds which scarcely seem to touch the water and tremble at the
tiniest wave. And all from earth to sky bathed in sunshine.
There are streets as broad as the Nevsky, and others in which you can bar
the way by stretching out your arms. The centre of the town is St. Mark’s
Square with the celebrated cathedral of the same name. The cathedral is
magnificent, especially on the outside. Beside it is the Palace of the Doges
where Othello made his confession before the senators.
In short, there is not a spot that does not call up memories and touch the
heart. For instance, the little house where Desdemona lived makes an
impression that is difficult to shake off. The very best time in Venice is the
evening. First the stars; secondly, the long canals in which the lights and
stars are reflected; thirdly, gondolas, gondolas, and gondolas; when it is
dark they seem to be alive. Fourthly, one wants to cry because on all sides
one hears music and superb singing. A gondola glides up hung with many-
coloured lanterns; there is light enough for one to distinguish a double-bass,
a guitar, a mandolin, a violin.... Then another gondola like it.... Men and
women sing, and how they sing! It’s quite an opera.
Fifthly, it’s warm.
In short, the man’s a fool who does not go to Venice. Living is cheap
here. Board and lodging costs eighteen francs a week—that is, six roubles
each or twenty-five roubles a month. A gondolier asks a franc for an hour-

that is, thirty kopecks. Admission to the academies, museums, and so on, is
free. The Crimea is ten times as expensive, and the Crimea beside Venice is
a cuttle-fish beside a whale.
I am afraid Father is angry with me for not having said good-bye to him.
I ask his forgiveness.
What glass there is here! what mirrors! Why am I not a millionaire! ...
Next year let us all take a summer cottage in Venice.
The air is full of the vibration of church bells: my dear Tunguses, let us
all embrace Catholicism. If only you knew how lovely the organs are in the
churches, what sculptures there are here, what Italian women on their knees
with prayer-books!
Keep well and don’t forget me, a sinner.
A picturesque railway line, of which I have been told a great deal, runs
from Vienna to Venice. But I was disappointed in the journey. The
mountains, the precipices, and the snowy crests I have seen in the Caucasus
and Ceylon are far more impressive than here. Addio.

VENICE,
March 26, 1891.
It is pelting cats and dogs. Venetia bella has ceased to be bella. The water
excites a feeling of dejected dreariness, and one longs to hasten somewhere
where there is sun.
The rain has reminded me of my raincoat (the leather one); I believe the
rats have gnawed it a little. If they have, send it to be mended as soon as
you can....
How is Signor Mongoose? I am afraid every day of hearing that he is
dead.
In describing the cheapness of Venetian life yesterday, I overdid it a bit. It
is Madame Merezhkovsky’s fault; she told me that she and her husband
paid only six francs per week each. But instead of per week, read per day.
Anyway, it is cheap. The franc here goes as far as a rouble.
We are going to Florence.
May the Holy Mother bless you.
I have seen Titian’s Madonna. It’s very fine. But it is a pity that here fine
works are mixed up side by side with worthless things, that have been
preserved and not flung away simply from the spirit of conservatism all-
present in such creatures of habit as messieurs les hommes. There are many
pictures the long life of which is quite incomprehensible.
The house where Desdemona used to live is to let.

BOLOGNA,
March 28, 1891.
I am in Bologna, a town remarkable for its arcades, slanting towers, and
Raphael’s pictures of “Cecilia.” We are going on to-day to Florence.

FLORENCE,
March 29, 1891.
I am in Florence. I am worn out with racing about to museums and
churches. I have seen the Venus of Medici, and I think that if she were
dressed in modern clothes she would be hideous, especially about the waist.
The sky is overcast, and Italy without sun is like a face in a mask.
P. S.—Dante’s monument is fine.

FLORENCE,
March 30, 1891.
I am in Florence. To-morrow we are going to Rome. It’s cold. We have
the spleen. You can’t take a step in Florence without coming to a picture-
shop or a statue-shop.
P. S.—Send my watch to be mended.

TO MADAME KISELYOV.
ROME, April 1, 1891.
The Pope of Rome charges me to congratulate you on your name-day and
wish you as much money as he has rooms. He has eleven thousand!
Strolling about the Vatican I was nearly dead with exhaustion, and when I
got home I felt that my legs were made of cotton-wool.
I am dining at the table d’hote. Can you imagine just opposite me are
sitting two Dutch girls: one of them is like Pushkin’s Tatyana, and the other
like her sister Olga. I watch them all through dinner, and imagine a neat,
clean little house with a turret, excellent butter, superb Dutch cheese, Dutch
herrings, a benevolent-looking pastor, a sedate teacher, ... and I feel I should
like to marry a Dutch girl and be depicted with her on a tea-tray beside the
little white house.
I have seen everything and dragged myself everywhere I was told to go.
What was offered me to sniff at, I sniffed at. But meanwhile I feel nothing
but exhaustion and a craving for cabbage-soup and buckwheat porridge. I
was enchanted by Venice, beside myself; but since I have left it, it has been
nothing but Baedeker and bad weather.
Good-bye for now, Marya Vladimirovna, and the Lord God keep you.
Humble respects from me and the other Pope to his Honour, Vassilisa and
Elizaveta Alexandrovna.
Neckties are marvellously cheap here. I think I may take to eating them.
They are a franc a pair.
To-morrow I am going to Naples. Pray that I may meet there a beautiful
Russian lady, if possible a widow or a divorced wife.
In the guide-books it says that a love affair is an essential condition for a
tour in Italy. Well, hang them all! I am ready for anything. If there must be a
love affair, so be it.
Don’t forget your sinful, but sincerely devoted,

ANTON CHEKHOV,
My respects to the starlings.

TO HIS SISTER.
ROME, April 1, 1891.
When I got to Rome I went to the post-office and did not find a single
letter. Suvorin has got several letters. I made up my mind to pay you out,
not to write to you at all—but there, God bless you! I am not so very fond
of letters, but when one is travelling nothing is so bad as uncertainty. How
have you settled the summer villa question? Is the mongoose alive? And so
on and so on.
I have been in St. Peter’s, in the Capitol, in the Coliseum, in the Forum—
I have even been in a cafe’-chantant, but did not derive from it the
gratification I had expected. The weather is a drawback, it is raining. I am
hot in my autumn overcoat, and cold in my summer one.
Travelling is very cheap. One may pay a visit to Italy with only four
hundred roubles and go back with purchases. If I were travelling alone or
with Ivan, I should have brought away the conviction that travelling in Italy
was much cheaper than travelling in the Caucasus. But alas! I am with the
Suvorins.... In Venice we lived in the best of hotels like Doges; here in
Rome we live like Cardinals, for we have taken a salon of what was once
the palace of Cardinal Conti, now the Hotel Minerva; two huge drawing-
rooms, chandeliers, carpets, open fireplaces, and all sorts of useless rubbish,
costing us forty francs a day.
My back aches, and the soles of my feet burn from tramping about. It’s
awful how we walk!
It seems odd to me that Levitan did not like Italy. It’s a fascinating
country. If I were a solitary person, an artist, and had money, I should live
here in the winter. You see, Italy, apart from its natural scenery and warmth,
is the one country in which you feel convinced that art is really supreme
over everything, and that conviction gives one courage.

NAPLES,
April 4, 1891.
I arrived in Naples, went to the post-office and found there five letters
from home, for which I am very grateful to you all. Well done, relations!
Even Vesuvius is so touched it has gone out.
Vesuvius hides its top in clouds and can only be seen well in the evening.
By day the sky is overcast. We are staying on the sea-front and have a view
of everything: the sea, Vesuvius, Capri, Sorrento.... We drove in the daytime
up to the monastery of St. Martini: the view from here is such as I have
never seen before, a marvellous panorama. I saw something like it at Hong
Kong when I went up the mountain in the railway.
In Naples there is a magnificent arcade. And the shops!! The shops make
me quite giddy. What brilliance! You, Masha, and you, Lika, would be rabid
with delight.

There is a wonderful aquarium in Naples. There are even sharks and
squids. When a squid (an octopus) devours some animals it’s a revolting
sight.
I have been to a barber’s and watched a young man having his beard
clipped for a whole hour. He was probably engaged to be married or else a
cardsharper. At the barber’s the ceiling and all the four walls were made of
looking-glass, so that you feel that you are not at a hairdresser’s but at the
Vatican where there are eleven thousand rooms. They cut your hair
wonderfully.
I shan’t bring you any presents, as you don’t write to me about the
summer villa and the mongoose. I bought you a watch, Masha, but I have
cast it to the swine. But there, God forgive you!
P.S.—I shall be back by Easter, come and meet me at the station.

NAPLES,
April 7, 1891.
Yesterday I went to Pompeii and went over it. As you know, it is a
Roman town buried under the lava and ashes of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. I
walked about the streets of the town and saw the houses, the temples, the
theatre, the squares.... I saw and marvelled at the faculty of the Romans for
combining simplicity with convenience and beauty. After viewing Pompeii,
I lunched at a restaurant and then decided to go to Vesuvius. The excellent
red wine I had drunk had a great deal to do with this decision. I had to ride
on horseback to the foot of Vesuvius. I have in consequence to-day a
sensation in some parts of my mortal frame as though I had been in the
Third Division, and had there been flogged. What an agonising business it
is climbing up Vesuvius! Ashes, mountains of lava, solid waves of molten
minerals, mounds of earth, and every sort of abomination. You take one step
forward and fall half a step back, the soles of your feet hurt you, your
breathing is oppressed.... You go on and on and on, and it is still a long way
to the top. You wonder whether to turn back, but you are ashamed to turn
back, you would be laughed at. The ascent began at half-past two, and
ended at six. The crater of Vesuvius is a great many yards in diameter. I
stood on its edge and looked down as into a cup. The soil around, covered
by a layer of sulphur, was smoking vigorously. From the crater rose white
stinking smoke; spurts of hot water and red-hot stones fly out while Satan
lies snoring under cover of the smoke. The noise is rather mixed, you hear
in it the beating of breakers and the roar of thunder, and the rumble of the
railway line and the falling of planks. It is very terrible, and at the same
time one has an impulse to jump right into the crater. I believe in hell now.
The lava has such a high temperature that copper coins melt in it.
Coming down was as horrid as going up. You sink up to your knees in
ashes. I was fearfully tired. I went back on horseback through a little village
and by houses; there was a glorious fragrance and the moon was shining. I
sniffed, gazed at the moon, and thought of her—that is, of Lika L.
All the summer, noble gentlemen, we shall have no money, and the
thought of that spoils my appetite. I have got into debt for a thousand for a

tour, which I could have made solo for three hundred roubles. All my hopes
now are in the fools of amateurs who are going to act my “Bear.”
Have you taken a house for the holidays, signori? You treat me piggishly,
you write nothing to me, and I don’t know what’s going on, and how things
are at home.
Humble respects to you all. Take care of yourselves, and don’t
completely forget me.

MONTE CARLO,
April 13, 1891.
I am writing to you from Monte Carlo, from the very place where they
play roulette. I can’t tell you how thrilling the game is. First of all I won
eighty francs, then I lost, then I won again, and in the end was left with a
loss of forty francs. I have twenty francs left, I shall go and try my luck
again. I have been here since the morning, and it is twelve o’clock at night.
If I had money to spare I believe I should spend the whole year gambling
and walking about the magnificent halls of the casino. It is interesting to
watch the ladies who lose thousands. This morning a young lady lost 5000
francs. The tables with piles of gold are interesting too. In fact it is beyond
all words. This charming Monte Carlo is extremely like a fine ... den of
thieves. The suicide of losers is quite a regular thing.
Suvorin fils lost 300 francs.
We shall soon see each other. I am weary of wandering over the face of
the earth. One must draw the line. My heels are sore as it is.

TO HIS BROTHER MIHAIL.
NICE, Monday in Holy Week, April, 1891.
We are staying in Nice, on the sea-front. The sun is shining, it is warm,
green and fragrant, but windy. An hour’s journey from Nice is the famous
Monaco. There is Monte Carlo, where roulette is played. Imagine the rooms
of the Hall of Nobility but handsomer, loftier and larger. There are big
tables, and on the tables roulette—which I will describe to you when I get
home. The day before yesterday I went over there, played and lost. The
game is fearfully fascinating. After losing, Suvorin fils and I fell to thinking
it over, and thought out a system which would ensure one’s winning. We
went yesterday, taking five hundred francs each; at the first staking I won
two gold pieces, then again and again; my waistcoat pockets bulged with
gold. I had in hand French money even of the year 1808, as well as Belgian,
Italian, Greek, and Austrian coins.... I have never before seen so much gold
and silver. I began playing at five o’clock and by ten I had not a single franc
in my pocket, and the only thing left me was the satisfaction of knowing
that I had my return ticket to Nice. So there it is, my friends! You will say,
of course: “What a mean thing to do! We are so poor, while he out there
plays roulette.” Perfectly just, and I give you permission to slay me. But I
personally am much pleased with myself. Anyway, now I can tell my
grandchildren that I have played roulette, and know the feeling which is
excited by gambling.
Beside the Casino where roulette is played there is another swindle—the
restaurants. They fleece one frightfully and feed one magnificently. Every
dish is a regular work of art, before which one is expected to bow one’s
knee in homage and to be too awe-stricken to eat it. Every morsel is rigged
out with lots of artichokes, truffles, and nightingales’ tongues of all sorts.
And, good Lord! how contemptible and loathsome this life is with its
artichokes, its palms, and its smell of orange blossoms! I love wealth and
luxury, but the luxury here, the luxury of the gambling saloon, reminds one
of a luxurious water-closet. There is something in the atmosphere that
offends one’s sense of decency and vulgarizes the scenery, the sound of the
sea, the moon.

Yesterday—Sunday—I went to the Russian church here. What was
peculiar was the use of palm-branches instead of willows; and instead of
boy choristers a choir of ladies, which gives the singing an operatic effect.
They put foreign money in the plate; the verger and beadle speak French,
and so on....
Of all the places I have been in hitherto Venice has left me the loveliest
memories. Rome on the whole is rather like Harkov, and Naples is filthy.
And the sea does not attract me, as I got tired of it last November and
December.
I feel as though I have been travelling for a whole year. I had scarcely got
back from Sahalin when I went to Petersburg, and then to Petersburg again,
and to Italy....
If I don’t manage to get home by Easter, when you break the fast,
remember me in your prayers, and receive my congratulations from a
distance, and my assurance that I shall miss you all horribly on Easter night.

TO HIS SISTER.
PARIS, April 21, 1891.
To-day is Easter. So Christ is risen! It’s my first Easter away from home.
I arrived in Paris on Friday morning and at once went to the Exhibition.
Yes, the Eiffel Tower is very very high. The other exhibition buildings I saw
only from the outside, as they were occupied by cavalry brought there in
anticipation of disorders. On Friday they expected riots. The people flocked
in crowds about the streets, shouting and whistling, greatly excited, while
the police kept dispersing them. To disperse a big crowd a dozen policemen
are sufficient here. The police make a combined attack, and the crowd runs
like mad. In one of these attacks the honour was vouchsafed to me—a
policeman caught hold of me under my shoulder, and pushed me in front of
him.
There was a great deal of movement, the streets were swarming and
surging. Noise, hubbub. The pavements are filled with little tables, and at
the tables sit Frenchmen who feel as though they were at home in the street.
A magnificent people. There is no describing Paris, though; I will put off
the description of it till I get home.
I heard the midnight service in the Church of the Embassy....
I am afraid you have no money.
Misha, get my pince-nez mended, for the salvation of your soul! I am
simply a martyr without spectacles. I went to the Salon and couldn’t see
half the pictures, thanks to my short sight. By the way, the Russian artists
are far more serious than the French.... In comparison with the landscape
painters I saw here yesterday Levitan is a king....

PARIS,
April 24.
A change again. One of the Russian sculptors living in Paris has
undertaken to do a bust of Suvorin, and this will keep us till Saturday.
... How are you managing without money? Bear it till Thursday.
Imagine my delight. I was in the Chamber of Deputies just at the time of
the sitting when the Minister for Internal Affairs was called to account for
the irregularities which the government had ventured upon in putting down
the riots in Fourmis (there were many killed and wounded). It was a stormy
and extremely interesting sitting.
Men who tie boa-constrictors round their bodies, ladies who kick up to
the ceiling, flying people, lions, cafe’-chantants, dinners and lunches begin
to sicken me. It is time I was home. I am longing to work.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
ALEXIN, May 7, 1891.
The summer villa is all right. There are woods and the Oka: it is far away
in the wilds, it is warm, nightingales sing, and so on. It is quiet and
peaceful, and in bad weather it will be dull and depressing here. After
travelling abroad, life at a summer villa seems a little mawkish. I feel as
though I had been taken prisoner and put into a fortress. But I am contented
all the same. In Moscow I received from the Society of Dramatic Authors
not two hundred roubles, as I expected, but three hundred. It’s very kind on
the part of fortune.
Well, my dear sir, I owe you, even if we adopt your reckoning, not less
than eight hundred roubles. In June or July, when my money will be at the
shop, I will write to Zandrok to send all that comes to me to you in
Feodosia, and do not try and prevent me. I give you my word of honour that
when I have paid my debts and settled with you, I’ll accept a loan of 2,000
from you. Do not imagine that it is disagreeable to me to be in your debt. I
lend other people money, and so I feel I have the right to borrow money, but
I am afraid of getting into difficulties and the habit of being in debt. You
know I owe your firm a devilish lot.
There is a fine view from my window. Trains are continually passing.
There is a bridge across the Oka.

ALEXIN,
May 10, 1891.
Yes, you are right, my soul needs balsam. I should read now with
pleasure, even with joy, something serious, not merely about myself but
things in general. I pine for serious reading, and recent Russian criticism
does not nourish but simply irritates me. I could read with enthusiasm
something new about Pushkin or Tolstoy. That would be balsam for my idle
mind.
I am homesick for Venice and Florence too, and am ready to climb
Vesuvius again; Bologna has been effaced from my memory and grown
dim. As for Nice and Paris, when I recall them “I look on my life with
loathing.”
In the last number of The Messenger of Foreign Literature there is a story
by Ouida, translated from the English by our Mihail. Why don’t I know
foreign languages? It seems to me I could translate magnificently. When I
read anyone else’s translation I keep altering and transposing the words in
my brain, and the result is something light, ethereal, like lacework.
On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays I write my Sahalin book, on the
other days, except Sunday, my novel, and on Sundays, short stories. I work
with zest. The weather has been superb every day; the site of our summer
villa is dry and healthy. There is a lot of woodland. There are a lot of fish
and crayfish in the Oka. I see the trains and the steamers. Altogether if it
were not for being somewhat cramped I should be very very much pleased
with it.

I don’t intend to get married. I should like to be a little bald old man
sitting at a big table in a fine study....

ALEXIN,
May 13, 1891.
I am going to write you a Christmas story—that’s certain. Two, indeed, if
you like. I sit and write and write ...; at last I have set to work. I am only
sorry that my cursed teeth are aching and my stomach is out of order.
I am a dilatory but productive author. By the time I am forty I shall have
hundreds of volumes, so that I can open a bookshop with nothing but my
own works. To have a lot of books and to have nothing else is a horrible
disgrace.
My dear friend, haven’t you in your library Tagantsev’s “Criminal Law”?
If you have, couldn’t you send it me? I would buy it, but I am now “a poor
relation”—a beggar and as poor as Sidor’s goat. Would you telephone to
your shop, too, to send me, on account of favours to come, two books: “The
Laws relating to Exiles,” and “The Laws relating to Persons under Police
Control.” Don’t imagine that I want to become a procurator; I want these
works for my Sahalin book. I am going to direct my attack chiefly against
life sentences, in which I see the root of all the evils; and against the laws
dealing with exiles, which are fearfully out of date and contradictory.

TO L. S. MIZINOV.
ALEXIN, May 17, 1891.
Golden, mother-of-pearl, and fil d’Ecosse Lika! The mongoose ran away
the day before yesterday, and will never come back again. It is dead. That is
the first thing.
The second thing is, that we are moving our residence to the upper storey
of the house of B.K.—the man who gave you milk to drink and forgot to
give you strawberries. We will let you know the day we move in due time.
Come to smell the flowers, to walk, to fish, and to blubber. Ah, lovely Lika!
When you bedewed my right shoulder with your tears (I have taken out the
spots with benzine), and when slice after slice you ate our bread and meat,
we greedily devoured your face and head with our eyes. Ah, Lika, Lika,
diabolical beauty! ...
When you are at the Alhambra with Trofimov I hope you may
accidentally jab out his eye with your fork.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
ALEXIN, May 18, 1891.
... I get up at five o’clock in the morning; evidently when I am old I shall
get up at four. My forefathers all got up very early, before the cock. And I
notice people who get up very early are horribly fussy. So I suppose I shall
be a fussy, restless old man....

BOGIMOVO,
May 20.
... The carp bite capitally. I forgot all my sorrows yesterday; first I sat by
the pond and caught carp, and then by the old mill and caught perch.
... The last two proclamations—about the Siberian railway and the exiles
—pleased me very much. The Siberian railway is called a national concern,
and the tone of the proclamation guarantees its speedy completion; and
convicts who have completed such and such terms as settlers are allowed to
return to Russia without the right to live in the provinces of Petersburg and
Moscow. The newspapers have let this pass unnoticed, and yet it is
something which has never been in Russia before—it is the first step
towards abolishing the life sentence which has so long weighed on the
public conscience as unjust and cruel in the extreme....

BOGIMOVO,
May 27, 4 o’clock in the Morning.
The mongoose has run away into the woods and has not come back. It is
cold. I have no money. But nevertheless, I don’t envy you. One cannot live
in town now, it is both dreary and unwholesome. I should like you to be
sitting from morning till dinner-time in this verandah, drinking tea and
writing something artistic, a play or something; and after dinner till
evening, fishing and thinking peaceful thoughts. You have long ago earned
the right which is denied you now by all sorts of chance circumstances, and
it seems to me shameful and unjust that I should live more peacefully than
you. Is it possible that you will stay all June in town? It’s really terrible....
... By the way, read Grigorovitch’s letter to my enemy Anna Ivanovna.
Let her soul rejoice. “Chekhov belongs to the generation which has
perceptibly begun to turn away from the West and concentrate more closely
on their own world....” “Venice and Florence are nothing else than dull
towns for a man of any intelligence....” Merci, but I don’t understand
persons of such intelligence. One would have to be a bull to “turn away
from the West” on arriving for the first time in Venice or Florence. There is
very little intelligence in doing so. But I should like to know who is taking
the trouble to announce to the whole universe that I did not like foreign
parts. Good Lord! I never let drop one word about it. I liked even Bologna.
Whatever ought I to have done? Howled with rapture? Broken the
windows? Embraced Frenchmen? Do they say I gained no ideas? But I
fancy I did....
We must see each other—or more correctly, I must see you. I am missing
you already, although to-day I caught two hundred and fifty-two carp and
one crayfish.

BOGIMOVO,
June 4, 1891.
Why did you go away so soon? I was very dull, and could not get back
into my usual petty routine very quickly afterwards. As luck would have it,
after you went away the weather became warm and magnificent, and the
fish began to bite.
... The mongoose has been found. A sportsman with dogs found him on
this side of the Oka in a quarry; if there had not been a crevice in the quarry
the dogs would have torn the mongoose to pieces. It had been astray in the
woods for eighteen days. In spite of the climatic conditions, which are
awful for it, it had grown fat—such is the effect of freedom. Yes, my dear
sir, freedom is a grand thing.
I advise you again to go to Feodosia by the Volga. Anna Ivanovna and
you will enjoy it, and it will be new and interesting for the children. If I
were free I would come with you. It’s snug now on those Volga steamers,
they feed you well and the passengers are interesting.
Forgive me for your having been so uncomfortable with us. When I am
grown up and order furniture from Venice, as I certainly shall do, you won’t
have such a cold and rough time with me.

TO L. S. MIZINOV.
BOGIMOVO, June 12, 1891.
Enchanting, amazing Lika!
Captivated by the Circassian Levitan, you have completely forgotten that
you promised my brother Ivan you would come on the 1st of June, and you
do not answer my sister’s letter at all. I wrote to you from Moscow to invite
you, but my letter, too, remained a voice crying in the wilderness. Though
you are received in aristocratic society, you have been badly brought up all
the same, and I don’t regret having once chastised you with a switch. You
must understand that expecting your arrival from day to day not only
wearies us, but puts us to expense. In an ordinary way we only have for
dinner what is left of yesterday’s soup, but when we expect visitors we have
also a dish of boiled beef, which we buy from the neighbouring cooks.
We have a magnificent garden, dark avenues, snug corners, a river, a
mill, a boat, moonlight, nightingales, turkeys. In the pond and river there
are very intelligent frogs. We often go for walks, during which I usually
close my eyes and crook my right arm in the shape of a bread-ring,
imagining that you are walking by my side.
... Give my greetings to Levitan. Please ask him not to write about you in
every letter. In the first place it is not magnanimous on his part, and in the
second, I have no interest whatever in his happiness.
Be well and happy and don’t forget us. I have just received your letter, it
is filled from top to bottom with such charming expressions as: “The devil
choke you!” “The devil flay you!” “Anathema!” “A good smack,” “rabble,”
“overeaten myself.” Your friends—such as Trophim—with their cabmen’s
talk certainly have an improving influence on you.
You may bathe and go for evening walks. That’s all nonsense. All my
inside is full of coughs, wet and dry, but I bathe and walk about, and yet I
am alive....

TO L. S. MIZINOV.
(Enclosing a photograph of a young man inscribed “To Lida
from Petya.”)

PRECIOUS LIDA!

Why these reproaches! I send you my portrait. To-morrow we shall meet.
Do not forget your Petya. A thousand kisses!!!
I have bought Chekhov’s stories. How delightful! Mind you buy them.
Remember me to Masha Chekhov. What a darling you are!

TO THE SAME.
I love you passionately like a tiger, and I offer you my hand.

Marshal of Nobility,
GOLOVIN RTISHTCHEV.

P.S.—Answer me by signs. You do squint.

TO HIS SISTER.
BOGIMOVO, June, 1891.
Masha! Make haste and come home, as without you our intensive culture
is going to complete ruin. There is nothing to eat, the flies are sickening.
The mongoose has broken a jar of jam, and so on, and so on.
All the summer visitors sigh and lament over your absence. There is no
news.... The spiderman is busy from morning to night with his spiders. He
has already described five of the spider’s legs, and has only three left to do.
When he has finished with spiders he will begin upon fleas, which he will
catch on his aunt. The K’s sit every evening at the club, and no hints from
me will prevail on them to move from the spot.
It is hot, there are no mushrooms. Suvorin has not come yet....
Come soon for it is devilishly dull. We have just caught a frog and given
it to the mongoose. It has eaten it.

TO MADAME KISELYOV.
ALEXIN, July 20, 1891.
Greetings, honoured Marya Vladimirovna.
For God’s sake write what you are doing, whether you are all well and
how things are in regard to mushrooms and gudgeon.
We are living at Bogimovo in the province of Kaluga.... It’s a huge house,
a fine park, the inevitable views, at the sight of which I am for some reason
expected to say “Ach!” A river, a pond with hungry carp who love to get on
to the hook, a mass of sick people, a smell of iodoform, and walks in the
evenings. I am busy with my Sahalin; and in the intervals, that I may not let
my family starve, I cherish the muse and write stories. Everything goes on
in the old way, there is nothing new. I get up every day at five o’clock, and
prepare my coffee with my own hands—a sign that I have already got into
old bachelor habits and am resigned to them. Masha is painting, Misha
wears his cockade creditably, father talks about bishops, mother bustles
about the house, Ivan fishes. On the same estate with us there is living a
zoologist called Wagner and his family, and some Kisilyovs—not the
Kisilyovs, but others, not the real ones.
Wagner catches ladybirds and spiders, and Kisilyov the father sketches,
as he is an artist. We get up performances, tableaux-vivants, and picnics. It
is very gay and amusing, but I have only to catch a perch or find a
mushroom for my head to droop, and my thoughts to be carried back to the
past, and my brain and soul begin in a funereal voice to sing the duet “We
are parted.” The “deposed idol and the deserted temple” rise up before my
imagination, and I think devoutly: “I would exchange all the zoologists and
great artists in the world for one little Idiotik.” [Footnote: Madame
Kisilyov’s son.] The weather has all the while been hot and dry, and only to-
day there has been a crash of thunder and the gates of heaven are open. One
longs to get away somewhere—for instance, to America, or Norway.... Be
well and happy, and may the good spirits, of whom there are so many at
Babkino, have you in their keeping.

TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
ALEXIN, July, 1891.

MY PHOTOGRAPHIC AND PROLIFIC BROTHER!

I got a letter from you a long time ago with the photographs of
Semashko, but I haven’t answered till now, because I have been all the time
trying to formulate the great thoughts befitting my answer. All our people
are alive and well, we often talk of you, and regret that your prolificness
prevents you from coming to us here where you would be very welcome.
Father, as I have written to you already, has thrown up Ivanygortch, and is
living with us. Suvorin has been here twice; he talked about you, and caught
fish. I am up to my neck in work with Sahalin, and other things no less
wearisome and hard labour. I dream of winning forty thousand, so as to cut
myself off completely from writing, which I am sick of, to buy a little bit of
land and live like a hermit in idle seclusion, with you and Ivan in the
neighbourhood—I dream of presenting you with fifteen acres each as poor
relations. Altogether I have a dreary existence, I am sick of toiling over
lines and halfpence, and old age is creeping nearer and nearer.
Your last story, in my opinion, shared by Suvorin, is good. Why do you
write so little?
The zoologist V. A. Wagner, who took his degree with you, is staying in
the same courtyard. He is writing a very solid dissertation. Kisilyov, the
artist, is living in the same yard too. We go walks together in the evenings
and discuss philosophy....

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
BOGIMOVO, July 24, 1891.
... Thanks for the five kopecks addition. Alas, it will not settle my
difficulties! To save up a reserve, as you write, and extricate myself from
the abyss of halfpenny anxieties and petty terrors, there is only one resource
left me—an immoral one. To marry a rich woman or give out Anna Karenin
as my work. And as that is impossible I dismiss my difficulties in despair
and let things go as they please.
You once praised Rod, a French writer, and told me Tolstoy liked him.
The other day I happened to read a novel of his and flung up my hands in
amazement. He is equivalent to our Matchtet, only a little more intelligent.
There is a terrible deal of affectation, dreariness, straining after originality,
and as little of anything artistic as there was salt in that porridge we cooked
in the evening at Bogimovo. In the preface this Rod regrets that he was in
the past a “naturalist,” and rejoices that the spiritualism of the latest recruits
of literature has replaced materialism. Boyish boastfulness which is at the
same time coarse and clumsy.... “If we are not as talented as you, Monsieur
Zola, to make up for it we believe in God.” ...

July 29.
Well, thank God! To-day I have received from the bookshop notice that
there is 690 roubles 6 kopecks coming to me. I have written in answer that
they are to send five hundred roubles to Feodosia and the other one hundred
and ninety to me. And so I am left owing you only one hundred and
seventy. That is comforting, it’s an advance anyway. To meet the debt to the
newspaper I am arming myself with an immense story which I shall finish
in a day or two and send. I ought to knock three hundred roubles off the
debt, and get as much for myself. Ough! ...

August 6.
... The death of a servant in the house makes a strange impression,
doesn’t it? The man while he was alive attracted attention only so far as he
was one’s “man”; but when he is dead he suddenly engrosses the attention
of all, lies like a weight on the whole house, and becomes the despotic
master who is talked of to the exclusion of everything.
... I shall finish my story to-morrow or the day after, but not to-day, for it
has exhausted me fiendishly towards the end. Thanks to the haste with
which I have worked at it, I have wasted a pound of nerves over it. The
composition of it is a little complicated. I got into difficulties and often tore
up what I had written, and for days at a time was dissatisfied with my work
—that is why I have not finished it till now. How awful it is! I must rewrite
it! It’s impossible to leave it, for it is in a devil of a mess. My God! if the
public likes my works as little as I do those of other people which I am
reading, what an ass I am! There is something asinine about our writing....
To my great pleasure the amazing astronomer has arrived. She is angry
with you, and calls you for some reason an “eloquent gossip.” To begin
with, she is free and independent; and then she has a poor opinion of men;
and further, according to her, everyone is a savage or a ninny—and you
dared to give her my address with the words “the being you adore lives at
...,” and so on. Upon my word, as though one could suspect earthly feelings
in astronomers who soar among the clouds! She talks and laughs all day, is
a capital mushroom-gatherer, and dreams of the Caucasus to which she is
departing today.

August 18.
At last I have finished my long, wearisome story [Footnote: “The Duel.”]
and am sending it to you in Feodosia. Please read it. It is too long for the
paper, and not suitable for dividing into parts. Do as you think best,
however....
There are more than four signatures of print in the story. It’s awful. I am
exhausted, and dragged the end, like a train of waggons on a muddy night
in autumn, at a walking pace with halts—that is why I am late with it....

August 18.
Speaking of Nikolay and the doctor who attends him, you emphasize that
“all that is done without love, without self-sacrifice, even in regard to
trifling conveniences.” You are right, speaking of people generally, but what
would you have the doctors do? If, as your old nurse says, “The bowel has
burst,” what’s one to do, even if one is ready to give one’s life to the
sufferer? As a rule, while the family, the relations, and the servants are
doing “everything they can” and are straining every nerve, the doctor sits
and looks like a fool, with his hands folded, disconsolately ashamed of
himself and his science, and trying to preserve external tranquillity....
Doctors have loathsome days and hours, such as I would not wish my
worst enemy. It is true that ignoramuses and coarse louts are no rarity
among doctors, nor are they among writers, engineers, people in general;
but those loathsome days and hours of which I speak fall to the lot of
doctors only, and for that, truly, much may be forgiven them....
The amazing astronomer is at Batum now. As I told her I should go to
Batum too, she will send her address to Feodosia. She has grown cleverer
than ever of late. One day I overheard a learned discussion between her and
the zoologist Wagner, whom you know. It seemed to me that in comparison
with her the learned professor was simply a schoolboy. She has excellent
logic and plenty of good common sense, but no rudder, ... so that she drifts
and drifts, and doesn’t know where she is going....
A woman was carting rye, and she fell off the waggon head downwards.
She was terribly injured: concussion of the brain, straining of the vertebrae
of the neck, sickness, fearful pains, and so on. She was brought to me. She
was moaning and groaning and praying for death, and yet she looked at the
man who brought her and muttered: “Let the lentils go, Kirila, you can
thresh them later, but thresh the oats now.” I told her that she could talk
about oats afterwards, that there was something more serious to talk about,
but she said to me: “His oats are ever so good!” A managing, vigilant
woman. Death comes easy to such people....

August 28.
I send you Mihailovsky’s article on Tolstoy. Read it and grow perfect. It’s
a good article, but it’s strange; one might write a thousand such articles and
things would not be one step forwarder, and it would still remain
unintelligible why such articles are written....
I am writing my Sahalin, and I am bored, I am bored.... I am utterly sick
of life.
Judging from your telegram I have not satisfied you with my story. You
should not have hesitated to send it back to me.
Oh, how weary I am of sick people! A neighbouring landowner had a
nervous stroke and they trundled me off to him in a scurvy jolting britchka.
Most of all I am sick of peasant women with babies, and of powders which
it is so tedious to weigh out.
There is a famine year coming. I suppose there will be epidemics of all
sorts and risings on a small scale....

August 28.
So you like my story? [Footnote: “The Duel.”] Well, thank God! Of late I
have become devilishly suspicious and uneasy. I am constantly fancying
that my trousers are horrid, and that I am writing not as I want to, and that I
am giving my patients the wrong powders. It must be a special neurosis.
If Ladzievsky’s surname is really horrible, you can call him something
else. Let him be Lagievsky, let von Koren remain von Koren. The multitude
of Wagners, Brandts, and so on, in all the scientific world, make a Russian
name out of the question for a zoologist—though there is Kovalevsky. And
by the way, Russian life is so mixed up nowadays that any surnames will
do.
Sahalin is progressing. There are times when I long to sit over it from
three to five years, and work at it furiously; but at times, in moments of
doubt, I could spit on it. It would be a good thing, by God! to devote three
years to it. I shall write a great deal of rubbish, because I am not a
specialist, but really I shall write something sensible too. It is such a good
subject, because it would live for a hundred years after me, as it would be
the literary source and aid for all who are studying prison organization, or
are interested in it.
You are right, your Excellency, I have done a great deal this summer.
Another such summer and I may perhaps have written a novel and bought
an estate. I have not only paid my way, but even paid off a thousand roubles
of debt.
... Tell your son that I envy him. And I envy you too, and not because
your wives have gone away, but because you are bathing in the sea and
living in a warm house. I am cold in my barn. I should like new carpets, an
open fireplace, bronzes, and learned conversations. Alas! I shall never be a
Tolstoyan. In women I love beauty above all things; and in the history of
mankind, culture, expressed in carpets, carriages with springs, and keenness
of wit. Ach! To make haste and become an old man and sit at a big table! ...
P.S.—If we were to cut the zoological conversations out of “The Duel”
wouldn’t it make it more living? ...

MOSCOW,
September 8.
I have returned to Moscow and am keeping indoors. My family is busy
trying to find a new flat but I say nothing because I am too lazy to turn
round. They want to move to Devitchye Polye for the sake of cheapness.
The title you recommend for my novel—“Deception”—will not do: it
would only be appropriate if it were a question of conscious lying.
Unconscious lying is not deception but a mistake. Tolstoy calls our having
money and eating meat lying—that’s too much....
Death gathers men little by little, he knows what he is about. One might
write a play: an old chemist invents the elixir of life—take fifteen drops and
you live for ever; but he breaks the phial from terror, lest such carrion as
himself and his wife might live for ever. Tolstoy denies mankind
immortality, but my God! how much that is personal there is in it! The day
before yesterday I read his “Afterword.” Strike me dead! but it is stupider
and stuffier than “Letters to a Governor’s Wife,” which I despise. The devil
take the philosophy of the great ones of this world! All the great sages are
as despotic as generals, and as ignorant and as indelicate as generals,
because they feel secure of impunity. Diogenes spat in people’s faces,
knowing that he would not suffer for it. Tolstoy abuses doctors as
scoundrels, and displays his ignorance in great questions because he’s just
such a Diogenes who won’t be locked up or abused in the newspapers. And
so to the devil with the philosophy of all the great ones of this world! The
whole of it with its fanatical “Afterwords” and “Letters to a Governor’s
Wife” is not worth one little mare in his “Story of a Horse....”

TO E. M. S.
MOSCOW, September 16.
So we old bachelors smell of dogs? So be it. But as for specialists in
feminine diseases being at heart rakes and cynics, allow me to differ.
Gynaecologists have to do with deadly prose such as you have never
dreamed of, and to which perhaps, if you knew it, you would, with the
ferocity characteristic of your imagination, attribute a worse smell than that
of dogs. One who is always swimming in the sea loves dry land; one who
for ever is plunged in prose passionately longs for poetry. All
gynaecologists are idealists. Your doctor reads poems, your instinct
prompted you right; I would add that he is a great liberal, a bit of a mystic,
and that he dreams of a wife in the style of the Nekrassov Russian woman.
The famous Snyegirev cannot speak of the “Russian woman” without a
quiver in his voice. Another gynaecologist whom I know is in love with a
mysterious lady in a veil whom he has only seen from a distance. Another
one goes to all the first performances at the theatre and then is loud in his
abuse, declaring that authors ought to represent only ideal women, and so
on. You have omitted to consider also that a good gynaecologist cannot be a
stupid man or a mediocrity. Intellect has a brighter lustre than baldness, but
you have noticed the baldness and emphasized it—and have flung the
intellect overboard. You have noticed, too, and emphasized that a fat man—
brrr!—exudes a sort of greasiness, but you completely lose sight of the fact
that he is a professor—that is, that he has spent several years in thinking
and doing something which sets him high above millions of men, high
above all the Verotchkas and Taganrog Greek girls, high above dinners and
wines of all sorts. Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham only
noticed that his father was a drunkard, and completely lost sight of the fact
that he was a genius, that he had built an ark and saved the world.
Writers must not imitate Ham, bear that in mind.
I do not venture to ask you to love the gynaecologist and the professor,
but I venture to remind you of the justice which for an objective writer is
more precious than the air he breathes.

The girl of the merchant class is admirably drawn. That is a good passage
in the doctor’s speech in which he speaks of his lack of faith in medicine,
but there is no need to make him drink after every sentence....
Then from the particular to the general! Let me warn you. This is not a
story and not a novel and not a work of art, but a long row of heavy, gloomy
barrack buildings. Where is your construction which at first so enchanted
your humble servant? Where is the lightness, the freshness, the grace? Read
your story through: a description of a dinner, then a description of passing
ladies and girls, then a description of a company, then a description of a
dinner, ... and so on endlessly. Descriptions and descriptions and no action
at all. You ought to begin straight away with the merchant’s daughter, and
keep to her, and chuck out Verotchka and the Greek girls and all the rest,
except the doctor and the merchant family.
Excuse this long letter.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, October 16, 1891.
I congratulate you on your new cook, and wish you an excellent appetite.
Wish me the same, for I am coming to see you soon—sooner than I had
intended—and shall eat for three. I simply must get away from home, if
only for a fortnight. From morning till night I am unpleasantly irritable, I
feel as though someone were drawing a blunt knife over my soul, and this
irritability finds external expression in my hurrying off to bed early and
avoiding conversation. Nothing I do succeeds. I began a story for the
Sbornik; I wrote half and threw it up, and then began another; I have been
struggling for more than a week with this story, and the time when I shall
finish it and when I shall set to work and finish the first story, for which I
am to be paid, seems to me far away. I have not been to the province of
Nizhni Novgorod yet, for reasons not under my control, and I don’t know
when I shall go. In fact it’s a hopeless mess—a silly muddle and not life.
And I desire nothing now so much as to win two hundred thousand....
Ah, I have such a subject for a novel! If I were in a tolerable humour I
could begin it on the first of November and finish it on the first of
December. I would make five signatures of print. And I long to write as I
did at Bogimovo—i.e., from morning till night and in my sleep.
Don’t tell anyone I am coming to Petersburg. I shall live incognito. In my
letters I write vaguely that I am coming in November....
Shall I remind you of Kashtanka, or forget about her? Won’t she lose her
childhood and youth if we don’t print her? However, you know best....
P. S.—If you see my brother Alexandr, tell him that our aunt is dying of
consumption. Her days are numbered. She was a splendid woman, a saint.
If you want to visit the famine-stricken provinces, let us go together in
January, it will be more conspicuous then....

MOSCOW,
October 19, 1891.
What a splendid little letter has come from you! It is warmly and
eloquently written, and every thought in it is true. To talk now of laziness
and drunkenness, and so on, is as strange and tactless as to lecture a man on
the conduct of life at a moment when he is being sick or lying ill of typhus.
There is always a certain element of insolence in being well-fed, as in every
kind of force, and that element finds expression chiefly in the well-fed man
preaching to the hungry. If consolation is revolting at a time of real sorrow,
what must be the effect of preaching morality; and how stupid and insulting
that preaching must seem. These moral people imagine that if a man is
fifteen roubles in arrears with his taxes he must be a wastrel, and ought not
to drink; but they ought to reckon up how much states are in debt, and
prime ministers, and what the debts of all the marshals of nobility and all
the bishops taken together come to. What do the Guards owe! Only their
tailors could tell us that....
You have told them to send me four hundred? Vivat dominus Suvorin! So
I have already received from your firm 400 + 100 + 400. Altogether I shall
get for “The Duel” as I calculated, about fourteen hundred, so five hundred
will go towards my debt. Well, and for that thank God! By the spring I must
pay off all my debt or I shall go into a decline, for in the spring I want
another advance from all my editors. I shall take it and escape to Java....
Ah, my friends, how bored I am! If I am a doctor I ought to have patients
and a hospital; if I am a literary man I ought to live among people instead of
in a flat with a mongoose, I ought to have at least a scrap of social and
political life—but this life between four walls, without nature, without
people, without a country, without health and appetite, is not life, but some
sort of ... and nothing more.
For the sake of all the perch and pike you are going to catch on your
Zaraish estate, I entreat you to publish the English humorist Bernard.
[Translator’s Note: ? Bernard Shaw.] ...

TO MADAME LINTVARYOV.
MOSCOW, October 25, 1891.

HONOURED NATALYA MIHAILOVNA,

I have not gone to Nizhni as I meant to, but am sitting at home, writing
and sneezing. Madame Morozov has seen the Minister, he has absolutely
prohibited private initiative in the work of famine relief, and actually waved
her out of his presence. This has reduced me to apathy at once. Add to that,
complete lack of money, sneezing, a mass of work, the illness of my aunt
who died to-day, the indefiniteness, the uncertainty in fact—everything has
come together to hinder a lazy person like me. I have put off my going
away till the first of December.
We felt dull without you for a long time, and when the Shah of Persia
[Footnote: A. I. Smagin.] went away it was duller still. I have given orders
that no one is to be admitted, and sit in my room like a heron in the reeds; I
see no one, and no one sees me. And it is better so, or the public would pull
the bell off, and my study would be turned into a smoking and talking room.
It’s dull to live like this, but what am I to do? I shall wait till the summer
and then let myself go.
I shall sell the mongoose by auction. I should be glad to sell N. and his
poems too, but no one would buy him. He dashes in to see me almost every
evening as he used to do, and bores me with his doubts, his struggles, his
volcanoes, slit nostrils, atamans, the life of the free, and such tosh, for
which God forgive him.
Russkiya Vyedomosti is printing a Sbornik for the famine fund. With
your permission, I shall send you a copy.
Well, good health and happiness to you; respects and greetings to all
yours from

the Geographer,
A. CHEKHOV.

P. S.—All my family send their regards.
We are all well but sorrowful. Our aunt was a general favourite, and was
considered among us the incarnation of goodness, kindness, and justice, if
only all that can be incarnated. Of course we shall all die, but still it is sad.
In April I shall be in your parts. By the spring I hope I shall have heaps of
money. I judge by the omen: no money is a sign of money coming.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, October 25, 1891.
Print “The Duel” not twice a week but only once. To print it twice is
breaking a long-established custom of the paper, and it would seem as
though I were robbing the other contributors of one day a week; and
meanwhile it makes no difference to me or my novel whether it is printed
once a week or twice. The literary brotherhood in Petersburg seems to talk
of nothing but the uncleanness of my motives. I have just received the good
news that I am to be married to the rich Madame Sibiryakov. I get a lot of
agreeable news altogether.
I wake up every night and read “War and Peace.” One reads it with the
same interest and naive wonder as though one had never read it before. It’s
amazingly good. Only I don’t like the passages in which Napoleon appears.
As soon as Napoleon comes on the scene there are forced explanations and
tricks of all sorts to prove that he was stupider than he really was.
Everything that is said and done by Pierre, Prince Andrey, or the absolutely
insignificant Nikolay Rostov—all that is good, clever, natural, and
touching; everything that is thought and done by Napoleon is not natural,
not clever, inflated and worthless.
When I live in the provinces (of which I dream now day and night), I
shall practice as a doctor and read novels.
I am not coming to Petersburg.
If I had been by Prince Andrey I should have saved him. It is strange to
read that the wound of a prince, a rich man spending his days and nights
with a doctor and being nursed by Natasha and Sonya, should have smelt
like a corpse. What a scurvy affair medicine was in those days! Tolstoy
could not help getting soaked through with hatred for medicine while he
was writing his thick novel....

MOSCOW,
November 18, 1891.
... I have read your letter about the influenza and Solovyov. I was
unexpectedly aware of a dash of cruelty in it. The phrase “I hate” does not
suit you at all; and a public confession “I am a sinner, a sinner, a sinner,” is
such pride that it made me feel uncomfortable. When the pope took the title
“holiness,” the head of the Eastern church, in pique, called himself “The
servant of God’s servants.” So you publicly expatiate on your sinfulness
from pique of Solovyov, who has the impudence to call himself orthodox.
But does a word like orthodoxy, Judaism, or Catholicism contain any
implication of exceptional personal merit or virtue? To my thinking
everybody is bound to call himself orthodox if he has that word inscribed
on his passport. Whether you believe or not, whether you are a prince of
this world or an exile in penal servitude, you are, for practical purposes,
orthodox. And Solovyov made no sort of pretension when he said he was no
Jew or Chaldean but orthodox....
I still feel dull, blighted, foolish, and indifferent, and I am still sneezing
and coughing, and I am beginning to think I shall not get back to my former
health. But that’s all in God’s hands. Medical treatment and anxiety about
one’s physical existence arouse in me a feeling not far from loathing. I am
not going to be doctored. I will take water and quinine, but I am not going
to let myself be sounded....
I had only just finished this letter when I received yours. You say that if I
go into the wilds I shall be quite cut off from you. But I am going to live in
the country in order to be nearer Petersburg. If I have no flat in Moscow
you must understand, my dear sir, I shall spend November, December, and
January in Petersburg: that will be possible then. I shall be able to be idle all
the summer too; I shall look out for a house in the country for you, but you
are wrong in disliking Little Russians, they are not children or actors in the
province of Poltava, but genuine people, and cheerful and well-fed into the
bargain.

Do you know what relieves my cough? When I am working I sprinkle the
edge of the table with turpentine with a sprayer and inhale its vapour. When
I go to bed I spray my little table and other objects near me. The fine drops
evaporate sooner than the liquid itself. And the smell of turpentine is
pleasant. I drink Obersalzbrunnen, avoid hot things, talk little, and blame
myself for smoking so much. I repeat, dress as warmly as possible, even at
home. Avoid draughts at the theatre. Treat yourself like a hothouse plant or
you will not soon be rid of your cough. If you want to try turpentine, buy
the French kind. Take quinine once a day, and be careful to avoid
constipation. Influenza has completely taken away from me any desire to
drink spirituous liquors. They are disgusting to my taste. I don’t drink my
two glasses at night, and so it is a long time before I can get to sleep. I want
to take ether.
I await your story. In the summer let us each write a play. Yes, by God!
why the devil should we waste our time....

TO E. M. S.
MOSCOW, November 19, 1891.

HONOURED ELENA MIHAILOVNA,

I am at home to all commencing, continuing, and concluding authors—
that is my rule, and apart from your authorship and mine, I regard a visit
from you as a great honour to me. Even if it were not so, even if for some
reason I did not desire your visit, even then I should have received you, as I
have enjoyed the greatest hospitality from your family. I did not receive
you, and at once asked my brother to go to you and explain the cause. At
the moment your card was handed me I was ill and undressed—forgive
these homely details—I was in my bedroom, while there were persons in
my study whose presence would not have been welcome to you. And so—to
see you was physically impossible, and this my brother was to have
explained to you, and you, a decent and good-hearted person, ought to have
understood it; but you were offended. Well, I can’t help it....
But can you really have written only fifteen stories?—at this rate you
won’t learn to write till you are fifty.
I am in bad health; for over a month I have had to keep indoors—
influenza and cough.
All good wishes.
Write another twenty stories and send them. I shall always read them
with pleasure, and practice is essential for you.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, November 22, 1891.
My health is on the road to improvement. My cough is less, my strength
is greater. My mood is livelier, and there is sunrise in my head. I wake up in
the morning in good spirits, go to bed without gloomy thoughts, and at
dinner I am not ill-humoured and don’t say nasty things to my mother.
I don’t know when I shall come to you. I have heaps of work pour
manger. Till the spring I must work—that is, at senseless grind. A ray of
liberty has beamed upon my horizon. There has come a whiff of freedom.
Yesterday I got a letter from the province of Poltava. They write they have
found me a suitable place. A brick house of seven rooms with an iron roof,
lately built and needing no repairs, a stable, a cellar, an icehouse, eighteen
acres of land, an excellent meadow for hay, an old shady garden on the bank
of the river Psyol. The river bank is mine; on that side there is a marvellous
view over a wide expanse. The price is merciful. Three thousand, and two
thousand deferred payment over several years. Five in all. If heaven has
mercy upon me, and the purchase comes off, I shall move there in March
for good, to live quietly in the lap of nature for nine months and the rest of
the year in Petersburg. I am sending my sister to look at the place.
Ach! liberty, liberty! If I can live on not more than two thousand a year,
which is only possible in the country, I shall be absolutely free from all
anxieties over money coming in and going out. Then I shall work and read,
read ... in a word it will be marmelad. [Translator’s Note: A kind of
sweetmeat made by boiling down fruit to the consistency of damson
cheese.] ...

MOSCOW,
November 30, 1891.
I return you the two manuscripts you sent me. One story is an Indian
Legend—The Lotus Flower, Wreaths of Laurel, A Summer Night, The
Humming Bird—that in India! He begins with Faust thirsting for youth and
ends with “the bliss of the true life,” in the style of Tolstoy. I have cut out
parts, polished it up, and the result is a legend of no great value, indeed, but
light, and it may be read with interest. The other story is illiterate, clumsy,
and womanish in structure, but there is a story and a certain raciness. I have
cut it down to half as you see. Both stories could be printed....
I keep dreaming and dreaming. I dream of moving from Moscow into the
country in March, and in the autumn coming to Petersburg to stay till the
spring. I long to spend at least one winter in Petersburg, and that’s only
possible on condition I have no perch in Moscow. And I dream of how I
shall spend five months talking to you about literature, and do as I think
best in the Novoye Vremya, while in the country I shall go in for medicine
heart and soul.
Boborykin has been to see me. He is dreaming too. He told me that he
wants to write something in the way of the physiology of the Russian novel,
its origin among us, and the natural course of its development. While he
was talking I could not get rid of the feeling that I had a maniac before me,
but a literary maniac who put literature far above everything in life. I so
rarely see genuine literary people at home in Moscow that a conversation
with Boborykin seemed like heavenly manna, though I don’t believe in the
physiology of the novel and the natural course of its development—that is,
there may exist such a physiology in nature, but I don’t believe with
existing methods it can be detected. Boborykin dismisses Gogol absolutely
and refuses to recognize him as a forerunner of Turgenev, Gontcharov, and
Tolstoy.... He puts him apart, outside the current in which the Russian novel
has flowed. Well, I don’t understand that. If one takes the standpoint of
natural development, it’s impossible to put not only Gogol, but even a dog
barking, outside the current, for all things in nature influence one another,

and even the fact that I have just sneezed is not without its influence on
surrounding nature....
Good health to you! I am reading Shtchedrin’s “Diary of a Provincial.”
How long and boring it is! And at the same time how like real life!

TO N. A. LEIKIN.
MOSCOW, December 2, 1891.
I am writing to ask you a great favour, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch. This
is what it is. Until last year I have always lived with my university diploma,
which by land and by sea has served me for a passport; but every time it has
been vise the police have warned me that one cannot live with a diploma,
and that I ought to get a passport from “the proper department.” I have
asked everyone what this “proper department” means, and no one has given
me an answer. A year ago the Moscow head police officer gave me a
passport on the condition that within a year I should get a passport from
“the proper department.” I can’t make head or tail of it! The other day I
learned that as I have never been in the government service and by
education am a doctor, I ought to be registered in the class of professional
citizens, and that a certain department, I believe the heraldic, will furnish
me with a certificate which will serve me as a passport for all the days of
my life. I remembered that you had lately received the grade of professional
citizen, and with it a certificate, and that therefore you must have applied
somewhere and to someone and so, in a sense, are an old campaigner. For
God’s sake advise me to what department I ought to apply. What petition
ought I to write, and how many stamps ought I to put on it? What
documents must be enclosed with the petition? and so on, and so on. In the
town hall there is a “passport bureau.” Could not that bureau reveal the
mystery if it is not sufficiently clear to you?
Forgive me for troubling you, but I really don’t know to whom to apply,
and I am a very poor lawyer myself....
Your “Medal” is often given at Korsh’s Theatre, and with success. It is
played together with Myasnitsky’s “Hare.” I haven’t seen them, but friends
tell me that a great difference is felt between the two plays: that “The
Medal” in comparison with “The Hare” seems something clean, artistic, and
having form and semblance. There you have it! Literary men are swept out
of the theatre, and plays are written by nondescript people, old and young,
while the journals and newspapers are edited by tradesmen, government
clerks, and young ladies. But there, the devil take them! ...

TO E. P. YEGOROV.
MOSCOW, December 11, 1891.

HONOURED EVGRAF PETROVITCH,

I write to explain why my journey to you did not come off. I was
intending to come to you not as a special correspondent, but on a
commission from, or more correctly by agreement with, a small circle of
people who want to do something for the famine-stricken peasants. The
point is that the public does not trust the administration and so is deterred
from subscribing. There are a thousand legends and fables about the waste,
the shameless theft, and so on. People hold aloof from the Episcopal
department and are indignant with the Red Cross. The owner of our beloved
Babkino, the Zemsky Natchalnik, rapped out to me, bluntly and definitely:
“The Red Cross in Moscow are thieves.” Such being the state of feeling, the
government can scarcely expect serious help from the public. And yet the
public wants to help and its conscience is uneasy. In September the
educated and wealthy classes of Moscow formed themselves into circles,
thought, talked, and applied for advice to leading persons; everyone was
talking of how to get round the government and organize independently.
They decided to send to the famine-stricken provinces their own agents,
who should make acquaintance with the position on the spot, open feeding
centres, and so on. Some of the leaders of these circles, persons of weight,
went to Durnovo to ask permission, and Durnovo refused it, declaring that
the organization of relief must be left to the Episcopal department and the
Red Cross. In short, private initiative was suppressed at its first efforts.
Everyone was cast down and dispirited; some were furious, some simply
washed their hands of the whole business. One must have the courage and
authority of Tolstoy to act in opposition to all prohibitions and prevailing
sentiments, and to follow the dictates of duty.
Well, now about myself. I am in complete sympathy with individual
initiative, for every man has the right to do good in the way he thinks best;
but all the discussion concerning the government, the Red Cross, and so on,

seemed to me inopportune and impractical. I imagined that with coolness
and good humour, one might get round all the terrors and delicacy of the
position, and that there was no need to go to the Minister about it. I went to
Sahalin without a single letter of recommendation, and yet I did everything
I wanted to. Why cannot I go to the famine-stricken provinces? I
remembered, too, such representatives of the government as you, Kiselyov,
and all the Zemsky Natchalniks and tax inspectors of my acquaintance—all
extremely decent people, worthy of complete confidence. And I resolved—
if only for a small region—to combine the two elements of officialdom and
private initiative. I want to come and consult you as soon as I can. The
public trusts me; it would trust you, too, and I might reckon on succeeding.
Do you remember I wrote to you? Suvorin came to Moscow at the time; I
complained to him that I did not know your address. He telegraphed to
Baranov, and Baranov was so kind as to send it to me. Suvorin was ill with
influenza; as a rule when he comes to Moscow we spend whole days
together discussing literature, of which he has a wide knowledge; we did
the same on this occasion, and in consequence I caught his influenza, was
laid up, and had a raging cough. Korolenko was in Moscow, and he found
me ill. Lung complications kept me ill for a whole month, confined to the
house and unable to do anything. Now I am on the way to recovery, though
I still cough and am thin. There is the whole story for you. If it had not been
for the influenza we might together perhaps have succeeded in extracting
two or three thousand or more from the public.
Your exasperation with the press I can quite understand. The lucubrations
of the journalists annoy you who know the true position of affairs, in the
same way as the lucubrations of the profane about diphtheria annoy me as a
doctor. But what would you have? Russia is not England and is not France.
Our newspapers are not rich and they have very few men at their disposal.
To send to the Volga a professor of the Petrovsky Academy or an
Engelhardt is expensive: to send a talented and business-like member of the
staff is impossible too—he is wanted at home. The Times could organize a
census in the famine-stricken provinces at its own expense, could settle a
Kennan in every district, paying him forty roubles a day, and then
something sensible could be done; but what can the Russkiya Vyedomosti or
the Novoye Vremya do, who consider an income of a hundred thousand as
the wealth of Croesus? As for the correspondents themselves, they are
townsmen who know the country only from Glyeb Uspensky. Their position

is an utterly false one, they must fly into a district, sniff about, write, and
dash on further. The Russian correspondent has neither material resources,
nor freedom, nor authority. For two hundred roubles a month he gallops on
and on, and only prays they may not be angry with him for his involuntary
and inevitable misrepresentations. He feels guilty—though it is not he that
is to blame but Russian darkness. The newspaper correspondents of the
west have excellent maps, encyclopaedias, and statistics; in the west they
could write their reports, sitting at home, but among us a correspondent can
extract information only from talk and rumour. Among us in Russia only
three districts have been investigated: the Tcherepov district, the Tambov
district, and one other. That is all in the whole of Russia. The newspapers
tell lies, the correspondents are duffers, but what’s to be done? If our press
said nothing the position would be still more awful, you’ll admit that.
Your letter and your scheme for buying the cattle from the peasants has
stirred me up. I am ready with all my heart and all my strength to follow
your lead and do whatever you think best. I have thought it over for a long
time, and this is my opinion: it is no use to reckon upon the rich. It is too
late. Every wealthy man has by now forked out as many thousands as he is
destined to. Our one resource now is the middle-class man who subscribes
by the rouble and the half-rouble. Those who in September were talking
about private initiative will by now have found themselves a niche in
various boards and committees and are already at work. So only the middle-
class man is left. Let us open a subscription list. You shall write a letter to
the editors, and I will get it printed in Russkiya Vyedomosti and Novoye
Vremya. To combine the two elements above mentioned, we might both
sign the letter. If that is inconvenient to you from an official point of view,
one might write in the third person as a communication that in the fifth
section of the Nizhni Novgorod district this and that had been organized,
that things were, thank God! going successfully and that subscriptions could
be sent to the Zemsky Natchalnik, E. P. Yegorov, or to A. P. Chekhov, or to
the editor of such and such papers. We need only to write at some length.
Write in full detail, I will add something, and the thing will be done. We
must ask for subscriptions and not for loans. No one will come forward
with a loan; it is uncomfortable. It is hard to give, but it is harder still to
take back.
I have only one rich acquaintance in Moscow, V. A. Morozov, a lady
well-known for her philanthropy. I went to see her yesterday with your

letter. I talked with her and dined with her. She is absorbed now in the
committee of education, which is organizing relief centres for the school-
children, and is giving everything to that. As education and horses are
incommensurables, V. A. promised me the co-operation of the committee if
we would start centres for feeding the school-children and send detailed
information about it. I felt it awkward to ask her for money on the spot, for
people beg and beg of her and fleece her like a fox. I only asked her when
she had any committees and board meetings not to forget us, and she
promised she would not....
If any roubles or half-roubles come in I will send them on to you without
delay. Dispose of me and believe me that it would be a real happiness to me
to do at least something, for so far I have done absolutely nothing for the
famine-stricken peasants and for those who are helping them.

TO A. I. SMAGIN.
MOSCOW, December 11, 1891.
... Well, now I have something to tell you, my good sir. I am sitting at
home in Moscow, but meantime my enterprise in the Nizhni Novgorod
province is in full swing already! Together with my friend the Zemsky
Natchalnik, an excellent man, we are hatching a little scheme, on which we
expect to spend a hundred thousand or so, in the most remote section of the
province, where there are no landowners nor doctors, nor even well-
educated young ladies who are now to be found in numbers even in hell.
Apart from famine relief of all sorts, we are making it our chief object to
save the crops of next year. Owing to the fact that the peasants are selling
their horses for next to nothing, there is a grave danger that the fields will
not be ploughed for the spring corn, so that the famine will be repeated next
year. So we are going to buy up the horses and feed them, and in spring
give them back to their owners; our work is already firmly established, and
in January I am going there to behold its fruits. Here is my object in writing
to you. If in the course of some noisy banquet you or anyone else should
chance to collect, if only half a rouble, for the famine fund, or if some
Korobotchka bequeaths a rouble for that object, or if you yourself should
win a hundred roubles, remember us sinners in your prayers, and spare us a
part of your wealth! Not at once but when you like, only not later than in
the spring....

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MOSCOW, December 11, 1891.
... I am coming to you. My lying is unintentional. I have no money at all.
I shall come when I get the various sums owing to me. Yesterday I got one
hundred and fifty roubles, I shall soon get more, then I shall fly to you.
In January I am going to Nizhni Novgorod province: there my scheme is
working already. I am very, very glad. I am going to write to Anna
Pavlovna.
Ah, if you knew how agonizingly my head aches to-day! I want to come
to Petersburg if only to lie motionless indoors for two days and only go out
to dinner. For some reason I feel utterly exhausted. It’s all this cursed
influenza.
How many persons could you and would you undertake to feed? Tolstoy!
ah, Tolstoy! In these days he is not a man but a super-man, a Jupiter. In the
Sbornik he has published an article about the relief centres, and the article
consists of advice and practical instructions. So business-like, simple, and
sensible that, as the editor of Russkiya Vyedomosti said, it ought to be
printed in the Government Gazette, instead of in the Sbornik....

December 13, 1891.
Now I understand why you don’t sleep well at night. If I had written a
story like that I should not have slept for ten nights in succession. The most
terrible passage is where Varya strangles the hero and initiates him into the
mysteries of the life beyond the grave. It’s terrifying and consistent with
spiritualism. You mustn’t cut out a single word from Varya’s speeches,
especially where they are both riding on horseback. Don’t touch it. The idea
of the story is good, and the incidents are fantastic and interesting....
But why do you talk of our “nervous age”? There really is no nervous
age. As people lived in the past so they live now, and the nerves of to-day
are no worse than the nerves of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Since you have
already written the ending I shall not put you out by sending you mine. I
was inspired and could not resist writing it. You can read it if you like.
Stories are good in this way, that one can sit over them, pen in hand, for
days together, and not notice how time passes, and at the same time be
conscious of life of a sort. That’s from the hygienic point of view. And from
the point of view of usefulness and so on, to write a fairly good story and
give the reader ten to twenty interesting minutes—that, as Gilyarovsky
says, is not a sheep sneezing....
I have a horrible headache again to-day. I don’t know what to do. Yes, I
suppose it’s old age, or if it’s not that it’s something worse.
A little old gentleman brought me one hundred roubles to-day for the
famine.

TO A. I. SMAGIN.
MOSCOW, December 16, 1891.
... Alas! if I don’t move into the country this year, and if the purchase of
the house and land for some reason does not come off, I shall be playing the
part of a great villain in regard to my health. It seems to me that I am dried
and warped like an old cupboard, and that if I go on living in Moscow next
season, and give myself up to scribbling excesses, Gilyarovsky will read an
excellent poem to welcome my entrance into that country place where there
is neither sitting nor standing nor sneezing, but only lying down and
nothing more. Do you know why you have no success with women?
Because you have the most hideous, heathenish, desperate, tragic
handwriting....

TO A. N. PLESHTCHEYEV.
MOSCOW, December 25, 1891.

DEAR ALEXEY NIKOLAEVITCH,

Yesterday I chanced to learn your address, and I write to you. If you have
a free minute please write to me how you are in health, and how you are
getting on altogether. Write, if only a couple of lines.
I have had influenza for the last six weeks. There has been a complication
of the lungs and I have a cruel cough. In March I am going south to the
province of Poltava, and shall stay there till my cough is gone. My sister
has gone down there to buy a house and garden.
Literary doings here are quiet but life is bustling. There is a great deal of
talk about the famine, and a great deal of work resulting from the said talk.
The theatres are empty, the weather is wretched, there are no frosts at all.
Jean Shteheglov is captivated by the Tolstoyans. Merezhkovsky sits at
home as of old, lost in a labyrinth of deep researches, and as of old is very
nice; of Chekhov they say he has married the heiress Sibiryakov and got
five millions dowry—all Petersburg is talking of it. For whose benefit and
for what object this slander, I am utterly unable to imagine. It’s positively
sickening to read letters from Petersburg.
I have not seen Ostrovsky this year....
We shall probably not meet very soon, as I am going away in March and
shall not return to the North before November. I shall not keep a flat in
Moscow, as that pleasure is beyond my means. I shall stay in Petersburg.
I embrace you warmly. By the way, a little explanation in private. One
day at dinner in Paris, persuading me to remain there, you offered to lend
me money. I refused, and it seemed to me my refusal hurt and vexed you,
and I fancied that when we parted there was a touch of coldness on your
side. Possibly I am mistaken, but if I am right I assure you, my dear friend,
on my word of honour, that I refused not because I did not care to be under
an obligation to you, but simply from a feeling of self-preservation; I was

behaving stupidly in Paris, and an extra thousand francs would only have
been bad for my health. Believe me that if I had needed it, I would have
asked you for a loan as readily as Suvorin.
God keep you.

TO V. A. TIHONOV.
MOSCOW, February 22, 1892.
... You are mistaken in thinking you were drunk at Shtcheglov’s name-
day party. You had had a drop, that was all. You danced when they all
danced, and your jigitivka on the cabman’s box excited nothing but general
delight. As for your criticism, it was most likely far from severe, as I don’t
remember it. I only remember that Vvedensky and I for some reason roared
with laughter as we listened to you.
Do you want my biography? Here it is. I was born in Taganrog in 1860. I
finished the course at Taganrog high school in 1879. In 1884 I took my
degree in medicine at the University of Moscow. In 1888 I gained the
Pushkin prize. In 1890 I made a journey to Sahalin across Siberia and back
by sea. In 1891 I made a tour in Europe, where I drank excellent wine and
ate oysters. In 1892 I took part in an orgy in the company of V. A. Tihonov
at a name-day party. I began writing in 1879. The published collections of
my works are: “Motley Tales,” “In the Twilight,” “Stories,” “Surly People,”
and a novel, “The Duel.” I have sinned in the dramatic line too, though with
moderation. I have been translated into all the languages with the exception
of the foreign ones, though I have indeed long ago been translated by the
Germans. The Czechs and the Serbs approve of me also, and the French are
not indifferent. The mysteries of love I fathomed at the age of thirteen. With
my colleagues, doctors, and literary men alike, I am on the best of terms. I
am a bachelor. I should like to receive a pension. I practice medicine, and so
much so that sometimes in the summer I perform post-mortems, though I
have not done so for two or three years. Of authors my favourite is Tolstoy,
of doctors Zaharin.
All that is nonsense though. Write what you like. If you haven’t facts
make up with lyricism.

TO A. S. KISELYOV.
MELIHOVO, STATION LOPASNYA, MOSCOW-KURSK LINE.
March 7, 1892.
This is our new address. And here are the details for you. If a peasant
woman has no troubles she buys a pig. We have bought a pig, too, a big
cumbersome estate, the owner of which would in Germany infallibly be
made a herzog. Six hundred and thirty-nine acres in two parts with land not
ours in between. Three hundred acres of young copse, which in twenty
years will look like a wood, at present is a thicket of bushes. They call it
“shaft wood,” but to my mind the name of “switch wood” would be more
appropriate, since one could make nothing of it at present but switches.
There is a fruit-garden, a park, big trees, long avenues of limes. The barns
and sheds have been recently built, and have a fairly presentable
appearance. The poultry house is made in accordance with the latest
deductions of science, the well has an iron pump. The whole place is shut
off from the world by a fence in the style of a palisade. The yard, the
garden, the park, and the threshing-floor are shut off from each other in the
same way. The house is good and bad. It’s more roomy than our Moscow
flat, it’s light and warm, roofed with iron, and stands in a fine position, has
a verandah into the garden, French windows, and so on, but it is bad in not
being lofty, not sufficiently new, having outside a very stupid and naive
appearance, and inside swarms with bugs and beetles which could only be
got rid of by one means—a fire: nothing else would do for them.
There are flower-beds. In the garden fifteen paces from the house is a
pond (thirty-five yards long, and thirty-five feet wide), with carp and tench
in it, so that you can catch fish from the window. Beyond the yard there is
another pond, which I have not yet seen. In the other part of the estate there
is a river, probably a nasty one. Two miles away there is a broad river full of
fish. We shall sow oats and clover. We have bought clover seed at ten
roubles a pood, but we have no money left for oats. The estate has been
bought for thirteen thousand. The legal formalities cost about seven
hundred and fifty roubles, total fourteen thousand. The artist who sold it
was paid four thousand down, and received a mortgage for five thousand at

five per cent, for five years. The remaining four thousand the artist will
receive from the Land Bank when in the spring I mortgage the estate to a
bank. You see what a good arrangement. In two or three years I shall have
five thousand, and shall pay off the mortgage, and shall be left with only the
four thousand debt to the bank; but I have got to live those two of three
years, hang it all! What matters is not the interest—that is small, not more
than five hundred roubles a year—but that I shall be obliged all the time to
think about quarter-days and all sorts of horrors attendant on being in debt.
Moreover, your honour, as long as I am alive and earning four or five
thousand a year, the debts will seem a trifle, and even a convenience, for to
pay four hundred and seventy interest is much easier than to pay a thousand
for a flat in Moscow; that is all true. But what if I depart from you sinners
to another world—that is, give up the ghost? Then the ducal estate with the
debts would seem to my parents in their green old age and to my sister such
a burden that they would raise a wail to heaven.
I was completely cleaned out over the move.
Ah, if you could come and see us! In the first place it would be very
delightful and interesting to see you; and in the second, your advice would
save us from a thousand idiocies. You know we don’t understand a thing
about it. Like Raspluev, all I know about agriculture is that the earth is
black, and nothing more. Write. How is it best to sow clover?—among the
rye, or among the spring wheat? ...

TO I. L. SHTCHEGLOV.
MELIHOVO, March 9, 1892.
... Yes, such men as Ratchinsky are very rare in this world. I understand
your enthusiasm, my dear fellow. After the suffocation one feels in the
proximity of A. and B.—and the world is full of them—Ratchinsky with his
ideas, his humanity, and his purity, seems like a breath of spring. I am ready
to lay down my life for Ratchinsky; but, dear friend,—allow me that “but”
and don’t be vexed—I would not send my children to his school. Why? I
received a religious education in my childhood—with church singing, with
reading of the “apostles” and the psalms in church, with regular attendance
at matins, with obligation to assist at the altar and ring the bells. And, do
you know, when I think now of my childhood, it seems to me rather
gloomy. I have no religion now. Do you know, when my brothers and I used
to stand in the middle of the church and sing the trio “May my prayer be
exalted,” or “The Archangel’s Voice,” everyone looked at us with emotion
and envied our parents, but we at that moment felt like little convicts. Yes,
dear boy! Ratchinsky I understand, but the children who are trained by him
I don’t know. Their souls are dark for me. If there is joy in their souls, then
they are happier than I and my brothers, whose childhood was suffering.
It is nice to be a lord. There is plenty of room, it’s warm, people are not
continually pulling at the bell; and it is easy to descend from one’s lordship
and serve as concierge or porter. My estate, sir, cost thirteen thousand, and I
have only paid a third, the rest is a debt which will keep me long years on
the chain.
Come and see me, Jean, together with Suvorin. Make a plan with him. I
have such a garden! Such a naive courtyard, such geese! Write a little
oftener.

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MELIHOVO, March 17, 1892.
... Ah, my dear fellow, if only you could take a holiday! Living in the
country is inconvenient. The insufferable time of thaw and mud is
beginning, but something marvellous and moving is taking place in nature,
the poetry and novelty of which makes up for all the discomforts of life.
Every day there are surprises, one better than another. The starlings have
returned, everywhere there is the gurgling of water, in places where the
snow has thawed the grass is already green. The day drags on like eternity.
One lives as though in Australia, somewhere at the ends of the earth; one’s
mood is calm, contemplative, and animal, in the sense that one does not
regret yesterday or look forward to tomorrow. From here, far away, people
seem very good, and that is natural, for in going away into the country we
are not hiding from people but from our vanity, which in town among
people is unjust and active beyond measure. Looking at the spring, I have a
dreadful longing that there should be paradise in the other world. In fact, at
moments I am so happy that I superstitiously pull myself up and remind
myself of my creditors, who will one day drive me out of the Australia I
have so happily won....

TO MADAME AVILOV.
MELIHOVO, March 19, 1892.

HONOURED LIDYA ALEXYEVNA,

I have read your story “On the Road.” If I were the editor of an illustrated
magazine, I should publish the story with great pleasure; but here is my
advice as a reader: when you depict sad or unlucky people, and want to
touch the reader’s heart, try to be colder—it gives their grief as it were a
background, against which it stands out in greater relief. As it is, your
heroes weep and you sigh. Yes, you must be cold.
But don’t listen to me, I am a bad critic. I have not the faculty of forming
my critical ideas clearly. Sometimes I make a regular hash of it....

TO A. S. SUVORIN.
MELIHOVO, March, 1892.
The cost of labour is almost nil, and so I am very well off. I begin to see
the charms of capitalism. To pull down the stove in the servants’ quarters
and build up there a kitchen stove with all its accessories, then to pull down
the kitchen stove in the house arid put up a Dutch stove instead, costs
twenty roubles altogether. The price of two men to dig, twenty-five
kopecks. To fill the ice cellar it costs thirty kopecks a day to the workmen.
A young labourer who does not drink or smoke, and can read and write,
whose duties are to work the land and clean the boots and look after the
flower-garden, costs five roubles a month. Floors, partitions, papering walls
—all that is cheaper than mushrooms. And I am at ease. But if I were to pay
for labour a quarter of what I get for my leisure I should be ruined in a
month, as the number of stove-builders, carpenters, joiners, and so on,
threatens to go for ever after the fashion of a recurring decimal. A spacious
life not cramped within four walls requires a spacious pocket too. I have
bored you already, but I must tell you one thing more: the clover seed costs
one hundred roubles a pood, and the oats needed for seed cost more than a
hundred. Think of that! They prophesy a harvest and wealth for me, but
what is that to me! Better five kopecks in the present than a rouble in the
future. I must sit and work. I must earn at least five hundred roubles for all
these trifles. I have earned half already. And the snow is melting, it is warm,
the birds are singing, the sky is bright and spring-like.
I am reading a mass of things. I have read Lyeskov’s “Legendary
Characters,” religious and piquant—a combination of virtue, piety, and
lewdness, but very interesting. Read it if you haven’t read it. I have read
again Pisarev’s “Criticism of Pushkin.” Awfully naive. The man pulls
Onyegin and Tatyana down from their pedestals, but Pushkin remains
unhurt. Pisarev is the grandfather and father of all the critics of to-day,
including Burenin—the same pettiness in disparagement, the same cold and
conceited wit, and the same coarseness and indelicacy in their attitude to
people. It is not Pisarev’s ideas that are brutalizing, for he has none, but his
coarse tone. His attitude to Tatyana, especially to her charming letter, which

I love tenderly, seems to me simply abominable. The critic has the foul
aroma of an insolent captious procurator.
We have almost finished furnishing; only the shelves for my books are
not done yet. When we take out the double windows we shall begin painting
everything afresh, and then the house will have a very presentable
appearance.
There are avenues of lime-trees, apple-trees, cherries, plums, and
raspberries in the garden....

MELIHOVO,
April 6, 1892.
It is Easter. There is a church here, but no clergy. We collected eleven
roubles from the whole parish and got a priest from the Davydov
Monastery, who began celebrating the service on Friday. The church is very
old and chilly, with lattice windows. We sang the Easter service—that is,
my family and my visitors, young people. The effect was very good and
harmonious, particularly the mass. The peasants were very much pleased,
and they say they have never had such a grand service. Yesterday the sun
shone all day, it was warm. In the morning I went into the fields, from
which the snow has gone already, and spent half an hour in the happiest
frame of mind: it was amazingly nice! The winter corn is green already, and
there is grass in the copse.
You will not like Melihovo, at least at first. Here everything is in
miniature; a little avenue of lime-trees, a pond the size of an aquarium, a
little garden and park, little trees; but when you have walked about it once
or twice the impression of littleness goes off. There is great feeling of space
in spite of the village being so near. There is a great deal of forest around.
There are numbers of starlings, and the starling has the right to say of itself:
“I sing to my God all the days of my life.” It sings all day long without
stopping....

MELIHOVO,
April 8, 1892.
If Shapiro were to present me with the gigantic photograph of which you
write, I should not know what to do with it. A cumbersome present. You say
that I used to be younger. Yes, imagine! Strange as it may seem, I have
passed thirty some time ago, and I already feel forty close at hand. I have
grown old not in body only, but in spirit. I have become stupidly indifferent
to everything in the world, and for some reason or other the beginning of
this indifference coincided with my tour abroad. I get up and go to bed
feeling as though interest in life had dried up in me. This is either the illness
called in the newspapers nervous exhaustion, or some working of the spirit
not clear to the consciousness, which is called in novels a spiritual
revulsion. If it is the latter it is all for the best, I suppose.

The artist Levitan is staying with me. Yesterday evening I went out with
him shooting. He shot at a snipe; the bird, shot in the wing, fell into a pool.
I picked it up: a long beak, big black eyes, and beautiful plumage. It looked
at me with surprise. What was I to do with it? Levitan scowled, shut his
eyes, and begged me, with a quiver in his voice: “My dear fellow, hit him
on the head with the butt-end of your gun.” I said: “I can’t.” He went on
nervously, shrugging his shoulders, twitching his head and begging me to;
and the snipe went on looking at me in wonder. I had to obey Levitan and
kill it. One beautiful creature in love the less, while two fools went home
and sat down to supper.
Jean Shtcheglov, in whose company you were so bored for a whole
evening, is a great opponent of every sort of heresy, and amongst others of
feminine intellect; and yet if one compares him with K., for instance, beside
her he seems like a foolish little monk. By the way, if you see K., give her
my greetings, and tell her that we are expecting her here. She is very
interesting in the open air and far more intelligent than in town....