Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
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.
For God’s sake write what you are doing, whether you are all well and how
things are in regard to mushrooms and gudgeon.
We are living at Bogimovo in the province of Kaluga.... It’s a huge house,
a fine park, the inevitable views, at the sight of which I am for some
reason expected to say “Ach!” A river, a pond with hungry carp who love to
get on to the hook, a mass of sick people, a smell of iodoform, and walks
in the evenings. I am busy with my Sahalin; and in the intervals, that I
may not let my family starve, I cherish the muse and write stories.
Everything goes on in the old way, there is nothing new. I get up every day
at five o’clock, and prepare my coffee with my own hands--a sign that I
have already got into old bachelor habits and am resigned to them. Masha is
painting, Misha wears his cockade creditably, father talks about bishops,
mother bustles about the house, Ivan fishes. On the same estate with us
there is living a zoologist called Wagner and his family, and some
Kisilyovs--not the Kisilyovs, but others, not the real ones.
Wagner catches ladybirds and spiders, and Kisilyov the father sketches, as
he is an artist. We get up performances, _tableaux-vivants_, and picnics.
It is very gay and amusing, but I have only to catch a perch or find a
mushroom for my head to droop, and my thoughts to be carried back to the
past, and my brain and soul begin in a funereal voice to sing the duet “We
are parted.” The “deposed idol and the deserted temple” rise up before my
imagination, and I think devoutly: “I would exchange all the zoologists and
great artists in the world for one little Idiotik.” [Footnote: Madame
Kisilyov’s son.] The weather has all the while been hot and dry, and only
to-day there has been a crash of thunder and the gates of heaven are open.
One longs to get away somewhere--for instance, to America, or Norway.... Be
well and happy, and may the good spirits, of whom there are so many at
Babkino, have you in their keeping.
TO HIS BROTHER ALEXANDR.
ALEXIN,
July, 1891.
MY PHOTOGRAPHIC AND PROLIFIC BROTHER!
I got a letter from you a long time ago with the photographs of Semashko,
but I haven’t answered till now, because I have been all the time trying to
formulate the great thoughts befitting my answer. All our people are alive
and well, we often talk of you, and regret that your prolificness prevents
you from coming to us here where you would be very welcome. Father, as I
have written to you already, has thrown up Ivanygortch, and is living with
us. Suvorin has been here twice; he talked about you, and caught fish. I am
up to my neck in work with Sahalin, and other things no less wearisome and
hard labour. I dream of winning forty thousand, so as to cut myself off
completely from writing, which I am sick of, to buy a little bit of land
and live like a hermit in idle seclusion, with you and Ivan in the
neighbourhood--I dream of presenting you with fifteen acres each as poor
relations. Altogether I have a dreary existence, I am sick of toiling over
lines and halfpence, and old age is creeping nearer and nearer.
Your last story, in my opinion, shared by Suvorin, is good. Why do you
write so little?
The zoologist V. A. Wagner, who took his degree with you, is staying in the
same courtyard. He is writing a very solid dissertation. Kisilyov, the
artist, is living in the same yard too. We go walks together in the
evenings and discuss philosophy....
TO A. S. SUVORIN.
BOGIMOVO,
July 24, 1891.
... Thanks for the five kopecks addition. Alas, it will not settle my
difficulties! To save up a reserve, as you write, and extricate myself from
the abyss of halfpenny anxieties and petty terrors, there is only one
resource left me--an immoral one. To marry a rich woman or give out Anna
Karenin as my work. And as that is impossible I dismiss my difficulties in
despair and let things go as they please.
You once praised Rod, a French writer, and told me Tolstoy liked him. The
other day I happened to read a novel of his and flung up my hands in
amazement. He is equivalent to our Matchtet, only a little more
intelligent. There is a terrible deal of affectation, dreariness, straining
after originality, and as little of anything artistic as there was salt in
that porridge we cooked in the evening at Bogimovo. In the preface this Rod
regrets that he was in the past a “naturalist,” and rejoices that the
spiritualism of the latest recruits of literature has replaced materialism.
Boyish boastfulness which is at the same time coarse and clumsy.... “If we
are not as talented as you, Monsieur Zola, to make up for it we believe in
God.” ...
July 29.
Well, thank God! To-day I have received from the bookshop notice that there
is 690 roubles 6 kopecks coming to me. I have written in answer that they
are to send five hundred roubles to Feodosia and the other one hundred and
ninety to me. And so I am left owing you only one hundred and seventy. That
is comforting, it’s an advance anyway. To meet the debt to the newspaper I
am arming myself with an immense story which I shall finish in a day or two
and send. I ought to knock three hundred roubles off the debt, and get as
much for myself. Ough! ...
August 6.
... The death of a servant in the house makes a strange impression, doesn’t
it? The man while he was alive attracted attention only so far as he was
one’s “man”; but when he is dead he suddenly engrosses the attention of
all, lies like a weight on the whole house, and becomes the despotic master
who is talked of to the exclusion of everything.
... I shall finish my story to-morrow or the day after, but not to-day, for
it has exhausted me fiendishly towards the end. Thanks to the haste with
which I have worked at it, I have wasted a pound of nerves over it. The
composition of it is a little complicated. I got into difficulties and
often tore up what I had written, and for days at a time was dissatisfied
with my work--that is why I have not finished it till now. How awful it is!
I must rewrite it! It’s impossible to leave it, for it is in a devil of a
mess. My God! if the public likes my works as little as I do those of other
people which I am reading, what an ass I am! There is something asinine
about our writing....
To my great pleasure the amazing astronomer has arrived. She is angry with
you, and calls you for some reason an “eloquent gossip.” To begin with, she
is free and independent; and then she has a poor opinion of men; and
further, according to her, everyone is a savage or a ninny--and you dared
to give her my address with the words “the being you adore lives at ...,”
and so on. Upon my word, as though one could suspect earthly feelings in
astronomers who soar among the clouds! She talks and laughs all day, is a
capital mushroom-gatherer, and dreams of the Caucasus to which she is
departing today.
August 18.
At last I have finished my long, wearisome story [Footnote: “The Duel.”]
and am sending it to you in Feodosia. Please read it. It is too long for
the paper, and not suitable for dividing into parts. Do as you think best,
however....
There are more than four signatures of print in the story. It’s awful. I am
exhausted, and dragged the end, like a train of waggons on a muddy night in
autumn, at a walking pace with halts--that is why I am late with it....
August 18.
Speaking of Nikolay and the doctor who attends him, you emphasize that
“all that is done without love, without self-sacrifice, even in regard
to trifling conveniences.” You are right, speaking of people generally,
but what would you have the doctors do? If, as your old nurse says, “The
bowel has burst,” what’s one to do, even if one is ready to give one’s
life to the sufferer? As a rule, while the family, the relations, and
the servants are doing “everything they can” and are straining every
nerve, the doctor sits and looks like a fool, with his hands folded,
disconsolately ashamed of himself and his science, and trying to preserve
external tranquillity....
Doctors have loathsome days and hours, such as I would not wish my worst
enemy. It is true that ignoramuses and coarse louts are no rarity among
doctors, nor are they among writers, engineers, people in general; but
those loathsome days and hours of which I speak fall to the lot of doctors
only, and for that, truly, much may be forgiven them....
The amazing astronomer is at Batum now. As I told her I should go to Batum
too, she will send her address to Feodosia. She has grown cleverer than
ever of late. One day I overheard a learned discussion between her and the
zoologist Wagner, whom you know. It seemed to me that in comparison with
her the learned professor was simply a schoolboy. She has excellent logic
and plenty of good common sense, but no rudder, ... so that she drifts and
drifts, and doesn’t know where she is going....
A woman was carting rye, and she fell off the waggon head downwards. She
was terribly injured: concussion of the brain, straining of the vertebrae
of the neck, sickness, fearful pains, and so on. She was brought to me. She
was moaning and groaning and praying for death, and yet she looked at the
man who brought her and muttered: “Let the lentils go, Kirila, you can
thresh them later, but thresh the oats now.” I told her that she could talk
about oats afterwards, that there was something more serious to talk about,
but she said to me: “His oats are ever so good!” A managing, vigilant
woman. Death comes easy to such people....
August 28.
I send you Mihailovsky’s article on Tolstoy. Read it and grow perfect. It’s
a good article, but it’s strange; one might write a thousand such articles
and things would not be one step forwarder, and it would still remain
unintelligible why such articles are written....
I am writing my Sahalin, and I am bored, I am bored.... I am utterly sick
of life.
Judging from your telegram I have not satisfied you with my story. You
should not have hesitated to send it back to me.
Oh, how weary I am of sick people! A neighbouring landowner had a nervous
stroke and they trundled me off to him in a scurvy jolting britchka. Most
of all I am sick of peasant women with babies, and of powders which it is
so tedious to weigh out.
There is a famine year coming. I suppose there will be epidemics of all
sorts and risings on a small scale....
August 28.
So you like my story? [Footnote: “The Duel.”] Well, thank God! Of late I
have become devilishly suspicious and uneasy. I am constantly fancying that
my trousers are horrid, and that I am writing not as I want to, and that I
am giving my patients the wrong powders. It must be a special neurosis.
If Ladzievsky’s surname is really horrible, you can call him something
else. Let him be Lagievsky, let von Koren remain von Koren. The multitude
of Wagners, Brandts, and so on, in all the scientific world, make a Russian
name out of the question for a zoologist--though there is Kovalevsky. And
by the way, Russian life is so mixed up nowadays that any surnames will do.
Sahalin is progressing. There are times when I long to sit over it from
three to five years, and work at it furiously; but at times, in moments of