Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchTO HIS SISTER.ROME, April 1, 1891.When I got to Rome I went to the post-office and did not find asingle letter. Suvorin has got several letters. I made up my mind topay you out, not to write to you at all—but there, God bless you! Iam not so very fond of letters, but when one is travelling nothing isso 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 theForum—I have even been in a café-chantant, but did not derivefrom 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 summerone.Travelling is very cheap. One may pay a visit to Italy with onlyfour hundred roubles and go back with purchases. If I were travellingalone or with Ivan, I should have brought away the convictionthat travelling in Italy was much cheaper than travelling in theCaucasus. But alas! I am with the Suvorins …. In Venice we lived inthe best of hotels like Doges; here in Rome we live like Cardinals,for we have taken a salon of what was once the palace of CardinalConti, now the Hotel Minerva; two huge drawing-rooms, chandeliers,carpets, open fireplaces, and all sorts of useless rubbish, costingus forty francs a day.My back aches, and the soles of my feet burn from tramping about.It’s awful how we walk!It seems odd to me that Levitan did not like Italy. It’s a fascinatingcountry. If I were a solitary person, an artist, and had money, Ishould live here in the winter. You see, Italy, apart from its naturalscenery and warmth, is the one country in which you feel convincedthat art is really supreme over everything, and that conviction givesone courage.236