Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Anton ChekhovTO A. S. KISELYOV.MELIHOVO, STATION LOPASNYA, MOSCOW-KURSKLINE. March 7, 1892.This is our new address. And here are the details for you. If apeasant woman has no troubles she buys a pig. We have bought apig, too, a big cumbersome estate, the owner of which would inGermany infallibly be made a herzog. Six hundred and thirty-nineacres in two parts with land not ours in between. Three hundredacres of young copse, which in twenty years will look like a wood, atpresent is a thicket of bushes. They call it “shaft wood,” but to mymind the name of “switch wood” would be more appropriate, sinceone could make nothing of it at present but switches. There is afruit-garden, a park, big trees, long avenues of limes. The barns andsheds have been recently built, and have a fairly presentable appearance.The poultry house is made in accordance with the latest deductionsof science, the well has an iron pump. The whole place isshut off from the world by a fence in the style of a palisade. Theyard, the garden, the park, and the threshing-floor are shut off fromeach other in the same way. The house is good and bad. It’s moreroomy than our Moscow flat, it’s light and warm, roofed with iron,and stands in a fine position, has a verandah into the garden, Frenchwindows, and so on, but it is bad in not being lofty, not sufficientlynew, having outside a very stupid and naive appearance, and insideswarms with bugs and beetles which could only be got rid of by onemeans—a fire: nothing else would do for them.There are flower-beds. In the garden fifteen paces from the houseis a pond (thirty-five yards long, and thirty-five feet wide), withcarp and tench in it, so that you can catch fish from the window.Beyond the yard there is another pond, which I have not yet seen.In the other part of the estate there is a river, probably a nasty one.Two miles away there is a broad river full of fish. We shall sow oatsand clover. We have bought clover seed at ten roubles a pood, butwe have no money left for oats. The estate has been bought forthirteen thousand. The legal formalities cost about seven hundredand fifty roubles, total fourteen thousand. The artist who sold it293