Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Anton ChekhovTO L. S. MIZINOV.BOGIMOVO, June 12, 1891.Enchanting, amazing Lika!Captivated by the Circassian Levitan, you have completely forgottenthat you promised my brother Ivan you would come on the1st of June, and you do not answer my sister’s letter at all. I wrote toyou from Moscow to invite you, but my letter, too, remained avoice crying in the wilderness. Though you are received in aristocraticsociety, you have been badly brought up all the same, and Idon’t regret having once chastised you with a switch. You must understandthat expecting your arrival from day to day not only weariesus, but puts us to expense. In an ordinary way we only have fordinner what is left of yesterday’s soup, but when we expect visitorswe have also a dish of boiled beef, which we buy from theneighbouring cooks.We have a magnificent garden, dark avenues, snug corners, a river,a mill, a boat, moonlight, nightingales, turkeys. In the pond andriver there are very intelligent frogs. We often go for walks, duringwhich I usually close my eyes and crook my right arm in the shapeof a bread-ring, imagining that you are walking by my side.… Give my greetings to Levitan. Please ask him not to write aboutyou in every letter. In the first place it is not magnanimous on hispart, and in the second, I have no interest whatever in his happiness.Be well and happy and don’t forget us. I have just received yourletter, it is filled from top to bottom with such charming expressionsas: “The devil choke you!” “The devil flay you!” “Anathema!”“A good smack,” “rabble,” “overeaten myself.” Your friends—suchas Trophim—with their cabmen’s talk certainly have an improvinginfluence on you.You may bathe and go for evening walks. That’s all nonsense. Allmy inside is full of coughs, wet and dry, but I bathe and walk about,and yet I am alive ….253