Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

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,