female types—where Turgenev deftly caricatures (Kukshina) or pokes fun (description of balls) —are remarkably drawn and so superbly managed that there isn't a flaw in the fabric, as they say. The descriptions of nature are good, but ... I feel we have outgrown that sort of descriptiveness and something quite dif- ferent is needed.
My sister is getting better, my father also. \Ve are expecting cholera but we do not fear it because we are prepared; not to die, however, but to spend the community's funds. If there is an outbreak of the disease it will take away a great deal of my time.
Keep alive, well and serene. Special regards to Anna Iva- novna.
Yours entirely,
A. Chekhov
\Ve have been sent a lot of Little Russian lard and bologna. Heavenly fare! . ..
To MARIA CHEKHOVA
_ , March 9. 1803. Melikhovo
Tuesday.
Buy a plain copper coffeepot, something like a receptacle for holy water, the kind we used to have, holding six or seven cups. The coffee is always undrinkable in those scientific coffeepots. 1 lb. epsom salts.
I am sending 25 rubles just in case. It is snowing. . . .
A quarter pound of onion and horseradish. \Ve are slaughtering a pig the week before Easter. 5 Ibs. coffee.
Evening: Misha has arrived. He will be back on Thursday and will carry half the baggage for you.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
ApriZ 26, /Bgj, MeZikhovo
Greetings and happy homecoming!
. . . First of all, let me tell you about myself. I'II begin by in- forming you that I am ill. A vile, despicable malady. Not syphilis, but worse—hemorrhoids ... with pain, itching, tension, no sitting or walking and such irritation throughout the entire body that one feels like lying down and dying. It seems to me that nobody wants to understand me and that everybody is stupid and unjust; I am in a bad temper and speak nonsense; I believe my people at home breathe easier when I go out. What a business! My malady cannot be explained either by sedentary living, for I was and am lazy, nor by my depraved be- havior, nor by heredity. I once had peritonitis; in consequence the lumen of the intestines has constricted because of the in- flammation. Sum totaclass="underline" an opcration is necessary. . . .
Well sir, here is a page right out of a novel. This I am telling you in confidence. My brother Misha fell in love with a little countess, wooed her with gentle amours, and before Easter was officially accepted as her fiance. Ardent love, dreams of splen- dor. . . . Eastertime the countess wrote she was leaving to visit her aunt in Kostroma. Up until these last few days there had been no letters from her. The languishing Misha, upon hear- ing that she was in Moscow, went to her home and—will won- ders never cease?—saw people hanging about at the windows and gates of the house. What was happening? Nothing less than that a wedding was taking place within—the countess was marrying a gold-mine owner. How do you like that? Misha came home in despair and has been poking the countess' tender and loving lettcrs under my nose and begging me to solve this psychological problem. A woman can't wear out a pair of shoes without deceiving someone five times over. However, I think Shakespcare has already spoken adequatcly on the subject. . . .
I probably will not go to America, as I have no money. I haven't earned anything since spring, have been ill and exas- perated by the weather. What a good idea it was to put the town behind me! Tell all the Fofanovs, Chermnis and tutti quanti who exist on literature that living in the country is immeasur- ably cheaper than in town. I experience this every day. My family doesn't cost me anything now, since lodgings, bread, vegetables, milk, butter and horses are all my own, not boughten. And there is so much work that time does not suffice. Out of the entire Chekhov family it is only I who may lie down or sit at the table, all the rest toil from morning until night. Drive the poets and fiction writers into the country! \Vhy should they exist as beggars, and on the verge of starvation? Surely city life in the sense of poetry and art cannot offer rich material to the poor man. People live within four walls and only see others in editorial offices and beer houses.
There are many sick people about. For some reason, many consumptives. But keep well, old fellow.
The drought has begun.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
To ALEXEI SUVORIN
March 27, 1894, Yalta
Greetings!
Here I have been living in Yalta for almost a month in super- boring Yalta, at the Hotel Russia, Room No. 39, with your favorite actress, Abarinova, occupying No. 38. The weather is springlike, it is warm and sunny, and the sea is behaving prop- erly; but the people are utterly dull, drab and dismal. I was an ass to have set aside all of March for the Crimea. I should have gone to Kiev and there devoted myself to the contemplation of the holy places and the Little Russian spring.
My cough has not left me, but still I am heading north to my penates on the fifth of April. I cannot remain here longer and besides I haven't any money, as I took only 350 rubles with me.
If you calculate round-trip traveling expenses, you have 250 rubles left, and you can't do anything rash on that kind of money. If I had a thousand or fifteen hundred, I would go to Paris, which would be desirable for many reasons.
I am healthy generally speaking, but am ailing in several particulars. As an example, I have the cough, palpitations of the heart and hemorrhoids. This business with my heart went on for six days without a stop, and the sensation was a vile one. After cutting out smoking I no longer get into a gloomy or anxious mood. Perhaps because of my no longer smoking, the Tolstoyan morality has stopped stirring me, and in the depths of my soul I feel badly disposed toward it, which is, of course, unjust. Peasant blood flows in my veins, and you cannot astound me with the virtues of the peasantry. From childhood I have believed in progress and cannot help believing, as the difference between the time when I got whipped and the time when the whippings ceased was terrific. I liked superior mentality, sen- sibility, courtesy, wit, and was as indifferent to people's picking their corns and having their leg puttees emit a stench as to young ladies who walk around mornings with their hair done up in curl papers. But the Tolstoyan philosophy had a power- ful effect on me, governed my life for a period of six or seven years; it was not the basic premises, of which I had been pre- viously aware, that reacted on me, but the Tolstoyan manner of expression, its good sense and probably a sort of hypnotic qual- ity. :i\ow something within me protests; prudence and justice tell me there is more love in natural phenomena than in chastity and abstinence from meat. \Var is evil and the court system is evil, but it does not therefore follow that I have to walk around in straw slippers and sleep on a stove alongside a workman and his wife, etc., etc. This, howe,er, is not the crux of the matter, not the "pro and contra"; it is that somehow or other Tolstoy has already passed out of my life, is no longer in my heart; he has gone away saying, behold, your house is left unto you desolate. I have freed myself from lodging his ideas in my brain. All these theories have wearied me, and I read such whistlers in the dark as Max Nordau with revulsion. A sick man with a temperature won't feel like eating, but has a vague desire for something or other, which he expresses by asking for "something sort of sour." I want something sort of sour, too. I am not an isolated case, as I have noted just this kind of mood all about me. It is as though everybody had fallen in love, had got over it and was now looking for some new distraction. It is very possible and very likely that Russians are again becoming enthusiastic over the natural sciences and that the materalistic movement will once more be fashionable. The natural sciences are now performing miracles; they can advance upon the public like Mamai, and subject it to their massiveness and grandeur. However, all this is in God's hands. Once you philosophize your brain starts whirling.