Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchTO A. S. SUVORIN.MELIHOVO, August 15, 1894.Our trip on the Volga turned out rather a queer one in the end.Potapenko and I went to Yaroslav to take a steamer from there toTsaritsyn, then to Kalatch, from there by the Don to Taganrog. Thejourney from Yaroslav to Nizhni is beautiful, but I had seen it before.Moreover, it was very hot in the cabin and the wind lashed inour faces on deck. The passengers were an uneducated set, whosepresence was irritating. At Nizhni we were met by N., Tolstoy’s friend.The heat, the dry wind, the noise of the fair and the conversation ofN. suddenly made me feel so suffocated, so ill at ease, and so sick,that I took my portmanteau and ignominiously fled to the railwaystation …. Potapenko followed me. We took the train for Moscow,but we were ashamed to go home without having done anything,and we decided to go somewhere if it had to be to Lapland. If it hadnot been for his wife our choice would have fallen on Feodosia, but… alas! we have a wife living at Feodosia. We thought it over, wetalked it over, we counted over our money, and came to the Psyol toSuma, which you know …. Well, the Psyol is magnificent. There iswarmth, there is space, an immensity of water and of greenery anddelightful people. We spent six days on the Psyol, ate and drank,walked and did nothing: my ideal of happiness, as you know, isidleness. Now I am at Melihovo again. There is a cold rain, a leadensky, mud.328* * *It sometimes happens that one passes a third-class refreshment roomand sees a cold fish, cooked long before, and wonders carelesslywho wants that unappetising fish. And yet undoubtedly that fish iswanted, and will be eaten, and there are people who will think itnice. One may say the same of the works of N. He is a bourgeoiswriter, writing for the unsophisticated public who travel third class.For that public Tolstoy and Turgenev are too luxurious, too aristocratic,somewhat alien and not easily digested. There is a public