Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
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