Letters of Anton Chekhov (Tchekhov) - Penn State University

Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends with biographical sketchMOSCOW, February 8, 1897.The census is over. I was pretty sick of the business, as I had bothto enumerate and to write till my fingers ached, and to give lecturesto fifteen numerators. The numerators worked excellently, with apedantic exactitude almost absurd. On the other hand the ZemskyNatchalniks, to whom the census was entrusted in the districts, behaveddisgustingly. They did nothing, understood little, and at themost difficult moments used to report themselves sick. The best ofthem turned out to be a man who drinks and draws the long bow ala Hlestakov* —but was all the same a character, if only from thepoint of view of comedy, while the others were colourless beyondwords, and it was annoying beyond words to have anything to dowith them.I am in Moscow at the Great Moscow Hotel. I am staying a shorttime, ten days, and then going home. The whole of Lent and thewhole of April after it, I shall have to be busy again with carpentersand so on. I am building a school again. A deputation came to mefrom the peasants begging me for it, and I had not the courage torefuse. The Zemstvo is giving a thousand roubles, the peasants havecollected three hundred, and that is all, while the school will notcost less than three thousand. So again I shall have all the summerto be thinking about money, and scraping it together here and there.Altogether life in the country is full of work and care ….The police have made a raid upon Tchertkov, the well-knownTolstoyan, have carried off all that the Tolstoyans had collected relatingto the Duhobors and sectarians—and so all at once as thoughby magic all evidence against Pobyedonostsev and his angels hasvanished. Goremykin called upon Tchertkov’s mother and said:“Your son must make the choice—either the Baltic Province wherePrince Hilkov is already living in exile, or a foreign country.”Tchertkov has chosen London.He is setting off on the thirteenth of February. L. N. Tolstoy hasgone to Petersburg to see him off; and yesterday they sent his winterovercoat after him. A great many are going to see him off, even*Translator’s Note: A character in Gogol’s “Inspector General.”348