Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

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.