Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and FriendsChekhov, Anton Pavlovich
General
Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich
Authors, Russian -- 19th century -- Correspondence; Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich, 1860-1904 -- Correspondence
My health has improved. I don’t notice now as I go about that I am ill; my
asthma is better, nothing is aching. The only trace left of my illness is
extreme thinness; my legs are thin as they have never been. The German
doctors have turned all my life upside down. At seven o’clock in the
morning I drink tea in bed--for some reason it must be in bed; at half-past
seven a German by way of a masseur comes and rubs me all over with water,
and this seems not at all bad. Then I have to lie still a little, get up at
eight o’clock, drink acorn cocoa and eat an immense quantity of butter. At
ten o’clock, oatmeal porridge, extremely nice to taste and to smell, not
like our Russian. Fresh air and sunshine. Reading the newspaper. At one
o’clock, dinner, at which I must not taste everything but only the things
Olga chooses for me, according to the German doctor’s prescription. At four
o’clock the cocoa again. At seven o’clock supper. At bedtime a cup of
strawberry tea--that is as a sleeping draught. In all this there is a lot
of quackery, but a lot of what is really good and useful--for instance, the
porridge. I shall bring some oatmeal from here with me....
June 21.
Things are going all right with me, only I have begun to get sick of
Badenweiler. There is so much German peace and order here. It was different
in Italy. To-day at dinner they gave us boiled mutton--what a dish! The
whole dinner is magnificent, but the maitres d’hotel look so important that
it makes one uneasy.
June 28.
... It has begun to be terribly hot here. The heat caught me unawares, as I
have only winter suits here. I am gasping and dreaming of getting away. But
where to go? I should like to go to Italy, to Como, but everyone is running
away from the heat there. It is hot everywhere in the south of Europe. I
should like to go from Trieste to Odessa by steamer, but I don’t know how
far it is possible now, in June and July.... If it should be rather hot it
doesn’t matter; I should have a flannel suit. I confess I dread the railway
journey. It is stifling in the train now, particularly with my asthma,
which is made worse by the slightest thing. Besides, there are no sleeping
carriages from Vienna right up to Odessa; it would be uncomfortable. And we
should get home by railway sooner than we need, and I have not had enough
holiday yet. It is so hot one can’t bear one’s clothes, I don’t know what
to do. Olga has gone to Freiburg to order a flannel suit for me, there are
neither tailors nor shoemakers in Badenweiler. She has taken the suit
Dushar made me as a pattern.
I like the food here very much, but it does not seem to suit me; my stomach
is constantly being upset. I can’t eat the butter here. Evidently my
digestion is hopelessly ruined. It is scarcely possible to cure it by
anything but fasting--that is, eating nothing--and that’s the end of it.
And the only remedy for the asthma is not moving.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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