There are wonderful pa.s.sages in "Foma." Gorky will make a very great writer if only he does not weary, does not grow cold and lazy.

TO A. S. SUVORIN,

YALTA, March 10, 1900.

No winter has ever dragged on so long for me as this one, and time merely drags and does not move, and now I realize how stupid it was of me to leave Moscow. I have lost touch with the north without getting into touch with the south, and one can think of nothing in my position but to go abroad.

After the spring, winter has begun here again in Yalta--snow, rain, cold, mud--simply disgusting.

The Moscow Art Theatre will be in Yalta in April; it will bring its scenery and decorations. All the tickets for the four days advertised were sold in one day, although the prices have been considerably raised. They will give among other things Hauptmann's "Lonely Lives," a magnificent play in my opinion. I read it with great pleasure, although I am not fond of plays, and the production at the Art Theatre they say is marvellous.

There is no news. There is one great event, though: N.'s "Socrates" is printed in the _Neva_ Supplement. I have read it, but with great effort. It is not Socrates but a dull-witted, captious, opinionated man, the whole of whose wisdom and interest is confined to tripping people up over words.

There is not a trace or vestige of talent in it, but it is quite possible that the play might be successful because there are words in it such as "amphora," and Karpov says it would stage well.

How many consumptives there are here! What poverty, and how worried one is with them! The hotels and lodging-houses here won't take in those who are seriously ill. You can imagine the awful cases that may be seen here.

People are dying from exhaustion, from their surroundings, from complete neglect, and this in blessed Taurida!

One loses all relish for the sun and the sea....

TO O. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA, March 26, 1900.

There is a feeling of black melancholy about your letter, dear actress; you are gloomy, you are fearfully unhappy--but not for long, one may imagine, as soon, very soon, you will be sitting in the train, eating your lunch with a very good appet.i.te. It is very nice that you are coming first with Masha before all the others; we shall at least have time to talk a little, walk a little, see things, drink and eat. But please don't bring with you ...

I haven't a new play, it's a lie of the newspapers. The newspapers never do tell the truth about me. If I did begin a play, of course the first thing I should do would be to inform you of the fact.

There is a great wind here; the spring has not begun properly yet, but we go about without our goloshes and fur caps. The tulips will soon be out. I have a nice garden but it is untidy, moss-grown--a dilettante garden.

Gorky is here. He is warm in his praises of you and your theatre. I will introduce you to him.

Oh dear! Someone has arrived. A visitor has come in. Good-bye for now, actress!

TO HIS SISTER.

YALTA, March 26, 1900.

DEAR MASHA,

... There is no news, there is no water in the pipes either. I am sick to death of visitors. Yesterday, March 25, they came in an incessant stream all day; doctors keep sending people from Moscow and the provinces with letters asking me to find lodgings, to "make arrangements," as though I were a house-agent! Mother is well. Mind you keep well too, and make haste and come home.

TO O. L. KNIPPER.

YALTA, May 20, 1900.

Greetings to you, dear enchanting actress! How are you? How are you feeling? I was very unwell on the way back to Yalta. [Footnote: Chekhov went to Moscow with the Art Theatre Company on their return from Yalta.] I had a bad headache and temperature before I left Moscow. I was wicked enough to conceal it from you, now I am all right.

How is Levitan? I feel dreadfully worried at not knowing. If you have heard, please write to me.

Keep well and be happy. I heard Masha was sending you a letter, and so I hasten to write these few lines. [Footnote: Chekhov's later letters to O.

L. Knipper have not been published.]

TO HIS SISTER.

YALTA, September 9, 1900.

DEAR MASHA,

I answer the letter in which you write about Mother. To my thinking it would be better for her to go to Moscow now in the autumn and not after December. She will be tired of Moscow and pining for Yalta in a month, you know, and if you take her to Moscow in the autumn she will be back in Yalta before Christmas. That's how it seems to me, but possibly I am mistaken; in any case you must take into consideration that it is much drearier in Yalta before Christmas than it is after--infinitely drearier.

Most likely I will be in Moscow after the 20th of September, and then we will decide. From Moscow I shall go I don't know where--first to Paris, and then probably to Nice, from Nice to Africa. I shall hang on somehow to the spring, all April or May, when I shall come to Moscow again.

There is no news. There's no rain either, everything is dried up. At home here it is quiet, peaceful, satisfactory, and of course dull.

"Three Sisters" is very difficult to write, more difficult than my other plays. Oh well, it doesn't matter, perhaps something will come of it, next season if not this. It's very hard to write in Yalta, by the way: I am interrupted, and I feel as though I had no object in writing; what I wrote yesterday I don't like to-day....

Well, take care of yourself.

My humblest greetings to Olga Leonardovna, to Vishnevsky, and all the rest of them too.

If Gorky is in Moscow, tell him that I have sent a letter to him in Nizhni-Novgorod.

TO GORKY.

YALTA, October 16, 1900.