Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends

TO A. I. SMAGIN.

MOSCOW, December 16, 1891.

... Alas! if I don’t move into the country this year, and if the purchase of the house and land for some reason does not come off, I shall be playing the part of a great villain in regard to my health. It seems to me that I am dried and warped like an old cupboard, and that if I go on living in Moscow next season, and give myself up to scribbling excesses, Gilyarovsky will read an excellent poem to welcome my entrance into that country place where there is neither sitting nor standing nor sneezing, but only lying down and nothing more. Do you know why you have no success with women? Because you have the most hideous, heathenish, desperate, tragic handwriting....