Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchTO N. A. LEIKIN.MOSCOW, December 2, 1891.I am writing to ask you a great favour, dear Nikolay Alexandrovitch.This is what it is. Until last year I have always lived with my universitydiploma, which by land and by sea has served me for a passport;but every time it has been vise the police have warned me that onecannot live with a diploma, and that I ought to get a passport from“the proper department.” I have asked everyone what this “properdepartment” means, and no one has given me an answer. A year agothe Moscow head police officer gave me a passport on the conditionthat within a year I should get a passport from “the proper department.”I can’t make head or tail of it! The other day I learned that asI have never been in the government service and by education am adoctor, I ought to be registered in the class of professional citizens,and that a certain department, I believe the heraldic, will furnishme with a certificate which will serve me as a passport for all thedays of my life. I remembered that you had lately received the gradeof professional citizen, and with it a certificate, and that thereforeyou must have applied somewhere and to someone and so, in asense, are an old campaigner. For God’s sake advise me to whatdepartment I ought to apply. What petition ought I to write, andhow many stamps ought I to put on it? What documents must beenclosed with the petition? and so on, and so on. In the town hallthere is a “passport bureau.” Could not that bureau reveal the mysteryif it is not sufficiently clear to you?Forgive me for troubling you, but I really don’t know to whom toapply, and I am a very poor lawyer myself ….Your “Medal” is often given at Korsh’s Theatre, and with success.It is played together with Myasnitsky’s “Hare.” I haven’t seen them,but friends tell me that a great difference is felt between the twoplays: that “The Medal” in comparison with “The Hare” seems somethingclean, artistic, and having form and semblance. There youhave it! Literary men are swept out of the theatre, and plays arewritten by nondescript people, old and young, while the journalsand newspapers are edited by tradesmen, government clerks, and280