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Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

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<strong>Anton</strong> <strong>Chekhov</strong>TO MADAME KISELYOV.ROME, April 1, 1891.The Pope <strong>of</strong> Rome charges me to congratulate you on your namedayand wish you as much money as he has rooms. He has eleventhousand! Strolling about the Vatican I was nearly dead with exhaustion,and when I got home I felt that my legs were made <strong>of</strong>cotton-wool.I am dining at the table d’hote. Can you imagine just opposite meare sitting two Dutch girls: one <strong>of</strong> 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 girland be depicted with her on a tea-tray beside the little white house.I have seen everything and dragged myself everywhere I was toldto go. What was <strong>of</strong>fered me to sniff at, I sniffed at. But meanwhileI feel nothing but exhaustion and a craving for cabbage-soup andbuckwheat porridge. I was enchanted by Venice, beside myself; butsince I have left it, it has been nothing but Baedeker and bad weather.Good-bye for now, Marya Vladimirovna, and the Lord God keepyou. 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 eatingthem. They are a franc a pair.To-morrow I am going to Naples. Pray that I may meet there abeautiful Russian lady, if possible a widow or a divorced wife.In the guide-books it says that a love affair is an essential conditionfor 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.235

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