Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
elegant.
I have not quite forgotten German. I understand, and am understood.
When we crossed the frontier it was snowing. In Vienna there is no snow,
but it is cold all the same.
I am homesick and miss you all, and indeed I am conscience-stricken, too,
at deserting you all again. But there, never mind! I shall come back and
stay at home for a whole year. I send my greetings to everyone, everyone.
I wish you all things good; don’t forget me with my many transgressions. I
embrace you, I bless you, send my greetings and remain,
Your loving
A. CHEKHOV.
Everyone who meets us recognises that we are Russians, and stares not at my
face, but at my grizzled cap. Looking at my cap they probably think I am a
very rich Russian Count.
TO HIS BROTHER IVAN.
VENICE,
March 24, 1891.
I am now in Venice. I arrived here two days ago from Vienna. One thing I
can say: I have never in my life seen a town more marvellous than Venice.
It is perfectly enchanting, brilliance, joy, life. Instead of streets and
roads there are canals; instead of cabs, gondolas. The architecture is
amazing, and there is not a single spot that does not excite some
historical or artistic interest. You float in a gondola and see the palace
of the Doges, the house where Desdemona lived, homes of various painters,
churches. And in the churches there are sculptures and paintings such as we
have never dreamed of. In fact it is enchantment.
All day from morning till night I sit in a gondola and glide along the
streets, or I saunter about the famous St. Mark’s Square. The square is as
level and clean as a parquet floor. Here there is St. Mark’s--something
impossible to describe--the Palace of the Doges, and other buildings which
make me feel as I do listening to part singing--I feel the amazing beauty
and revel in it.
And the evenings! My God! One might almost die of the strangeness of it.
One goes in a gondola ... warmth, stillness, stars.... There are no
horses in Venice, and so there is a silence here as in the open country.
Gondolas flit to and fro, ... then a gondola glides by, hung with
lanterns. In it are a double-bass, violins, a guitar, a mandolin and
cornet, two or three ladies, several men, and one hears singing and
music. They sing from operas. What voices! One goes on a little further
and again meets a boat with singers, and then again, and the air is
full, till midnight, of the mingled strains of violins and tenor voices,
and all sorts of heart-stirring sounds.
Merezhkovsky, whom I have met here, is off his head with ecstasy. For us
poor and oppressed Russians it is easy to go out of our minds here in a
world of beauty, wealth, and freedom. One longs to remain here for ever,
and when one stands in the churches and listens to the organ one longs to
become a Catholic.
The tombs of Canova and Titian are magnificent. Here they bury great
artists like kings in churches; here they do not despise art as with us;
the churches provide a shelter for pictures and statues however naked they
may be.
In the Palace of the Doges there is a picture in which there are about ten
thousand human figures.
To-day is Sunday. There will be a band playing in St. Mark’s Square....
If you ever happen to come to Venice it will be the best thing in your
life. You ought to see the glass here! Your bottles [Footnote: His brother
Ivan was teaching in a school attached to a glass factory.] are so hideous
compared with the things here, that it makes one sick to think of them.
I will write again; meanwhile, good-bye.
TO MADAME KISELYOV.
VENICE,
March 25.
I am in Venice. You may put me in a madhouse. Gondolas, St. Mark’s Square,
water, stars, Italian women, serenades, mandolins, Falernian wine--in fact
all is lost!
Don’t remember evil against me.
The shade of the lovely Desdemona sends a smile to the District Captain.
Greetings to all. ANTONIO.
The Jesuits send their love to you.
TO HIS SISTER,
VENICE,
March 25, 1891.
Bewitching blue-eyed Venice sends her greetings to all of you. Oh, signori
and signorine, what an exquisite town this Venice is! Imagine a town
consisting of houses and churches such as you have never seen; an
intoxicating architecture, everything as graceful and light as the birdlike
gondola. Such houses and churches can only be built by people possessed of
immense artistic and musical taste and endowed with a lion-like
temperament. Now imagine in the streets and alleys, instead of pavement,
water; imagine that there is not one horse in the town; that instead of
cabmen you see gondoliers on their wonderful boats, light, delicate
long-beaked birds which scarcely seem to touch the water and tremble at the
tiniest wave. And all from earth to sky bathed in sunshine.
There are streets as broad as the Nevsky, and others in which you can bar
the way by stretching out your arms. The centre of the town is St. Mark’s
Square with the celebrated cathedral of the same name. The cathedral is
magnificent, especially on the outside. Beside it is the Palace of the
Doges where Othello made his confession before the senators.
In short, there is not a spot that does not call up memories and touch the
heart. For instance, the little house where Desdemona lived makes an
impression that is difficult to shake off. The very best time in Venice is
the evening. First the stars; secondly, the long canals in which the lights
and stars are reflected; thirdly, gondolas, gondolas, and gondolas; when it
is dark they seem to be alive. Fourthly, one wants to cry because on all
sides one hears music and superb singing. A gondola glides up hung with
many-coloured lanterns; there is light enough for one to distinguish a
double-bass, a guitar, a mandolin, a violin.... Then another gondola like
it.... Men and women sing, and how they sing! It’s quite an opera.
Fifthly, it’s warm.
In short, the man’s a fool who does not go to Venice. Living is cheap here.
Board and lodging costs eighteen francs a week--that is, six roubles each
or twenty-five roubles a month. A gondolier asks a franc for an hour-that
is, thirty kopecks. Admission to the academies, museums, and so on, is
free. The Crimea is ten times as expensive, and the Crimea beside Venice is
a cuttle-fish beside a whale.
I am afraid Father is angry with me for not having said good-bye to him. I
ask his forgiveness.
What glass there is here! what mirrors! Why am I not a millionaire! ...
Next year let us all take a summer cottage in Venice.
The air is full of the vibration of church bells: my dear Tunguses, let us
all embrace Catholicism. If only you knew how lovely the organs are in the
churches, what sculptures there are here, what Italian women on their knees
with prayer-books!
Keep well and don’t forget me, a sinner.
A picturesque railway line, of which I have been told a great deal, runs
from Vienna to Venice. But I was disappointed in the journey. The
mountains, the precipices, and the snowy crests I have seen in the Caucasus
and Ceylon are far more impressive than here. _Addio_.
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