Letters of Anton Chekhov to his Family and Friends

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