the mongooses

Reading notes

• To A. S. Suvorin, 13 October 1891. Moscow. §16 the mongoose keeps jumping about

  The mongoose (or mongooses) Chekhov brought back from Ceylon on his return from Sakhalin in December 1890, kept afterward as a household pet and a recurring comic note in his letters of this period (see, and later and in the same autumn); here folded into a closing list of domestic complaints -- bad weather, no money, interrupted work -- as one more minor household nuisance.

• To N. M. Lintvareva, 25 October 1891. Moscow. §5 I am selling the mongoose at auction

  One of the mongooses Chekhov brought back from Ceylon on his return from Sakhalin in December 1890, kept afterward as a household pet and a recurring comic note in his letters of this period; the mock threat to auction it off here in the same breath as a joking offer to sell Gilyarovsky is characteristic deadpan escalation.

• To A. I. Smagin, 14 January 1892. Moscow. §8 I am donating the mongoose to the Zoological Garden. It bites, the scoundrel.

  The mongoose Chekhov brought back from Ceylon on his return from Sakhalin (.), here given away in a companion letter to the Moscow Zoological Garden's Board (same date, same city, same addressee institution) as Chekhov leaves that day for Nizhny Novgorod. That letter -- a formal note to the Board -- explains the donation is prompted by "being about to leave Moscow for a long time and having no way to take it with me," describing a single male mongoose (\foreignlanguage{russian}{самца-мангуса}) as healthy, tame, and fed on meat, fish, and eggs; this postscript's blunt, affectionate complaint that it "bites, the scoundrel" (\foreignlanguage{russian}{Кусается, сволочь}) supplies the private, comic coda to the same event the formal letter announces. "Сволочь" here is coarse household slang applied good-humoredly to the animal, not a slur.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 5 January 1891. Moscow. §10 What a shame you didn't see my mongoose!

  The mongooses Chekhov brought back from his Sakhalin-return voyage; he had offered, in the earlier letter to Suvorin of 24 December 1890, to bring one to Petersburg for him to keep, an offer evidently still unfulfilled by the time of Chekhov's actual January visit, prompting this rueful postscript.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 9–10 January 1891. Petersburg. §10 How is my mongoose getting on?

  One of the mongooses Chekhov brought back from Ceylon/India on his return voyage from Sakhalin the previous month, left in Moscow with the family while he was away in Petersburg; the same running joke of mock-serious instructions and complaints about the animal recurs across several letters of this period (cf., and later, after Chekhov learns of its illness).

• To M. P. Chekhova, 16 January 1891. Petersburg. §3 the mongoose not break the crockery or strip the wallpaper

  One of the mongooses Chekhov brought back from Ceylon/India on his return voyage from Sakhalin the previous month, left in Moscow with the family; the same running joke of mock-serious complaint about the animal's destructiveness recurs across several letters of this period.

• To the Chekhovs, 18 January 1891. Petersburg. §4 will stop in to see the mongooses

  The household's pet mongooses, brought back from Chekhov's journey through Ceylon/India on the way home from Sakhalin the previous month, and left in Moscow with the family while Chekhov was in Petersburg -- a recurring figure in this period's letters.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 31 January 1891. Moscow. §4 My cleverest and most likable mongoose has fallen ill

  The mongoose Chekhov brought back from his Sakhalin-return voyage; this darker turn -- the animal genuinely unwell in the Moscow winter -- follows directly on Suvorin's mock-serious care instructions in his own hand three weeks earlier (\S10: "How is my mongoose getting on? Don't forget to give him food and drink..."), which this letter answers, in effect, with bad news.

• To I. P. Chekhov, 1891. Moscow. §7 The mongoose

  One of the mongooses Chekhov brought back to Moscow via Ceylon on his return voyage from Sakhalin, kept afterward as a household pet and a recurring comic figure in letters of this period; this postscript reports its recovery from a recent illness.

• To M. Ye. Chekhov, 13 March 1891. Petersburg. §10 What an interesting country India is! ... I brought back some interesting animals from India ... In India I saw wild elephants and spectacled cobras

  This entire passage is best read as a genial, knowing exaggeration rather than a literal account of Indian travel. Chekhov never set foot on the Indian mainland: on his return sea voyage from Sakhalin in December 1890 he called at Colombo, Ceylon, where he in fact acquired the mongooses (see the fuller documentation at's glossary and), not at any Indian port. Chekhov himself elsewhere uses "from India" loosely alongside the more precise "from Ceylon" (compare, where the same slippage occurs within a single letter), so this is not a fabrication invented for this letter but a recurring, half-conscious compression of "the East" into "India" for a correspondent who would enjoy the exoticism without checking an atlas. The wild elephants, spectacled cobras, and conjurers are stock elements of a traveler's-tale register rather than a first-hand itinerary claim, and are not silently corrected here to "Ceylon" -- the letter's own wording is preserved, with this note flagging the discrepancy honestly rather than resolving it for the reader.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 17 March 1891. Petersburg. §6 the mongoose

  One of the mongooses Chekhov brought back from his journey through Asia on the way home from Sakhalin, kept as a household pet and a recurring figure of affectionate mock-complaint in his letters of this period.

• To the Chekhovs, 1891. Venice. §5 Signor Mangus

  "Синьор Мангус" -- a mock-Italian honorific, in keeping with the letter's Venetian setting, for the household mongoose (мангус/mangus, punning on "mongoose") Chekhov had brought back from Ceylon at the end of his Sakhalin journey; see the same affectionate worry over its health ("боюсь получить известие, что он околел" / "afraid of getting the news that he's croaked") echoed from, where it had been ill and recovered. Not the family dog.

• To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Nice. §6 the harness for the mongoose

  A joking practical instruction about fitting the household mongoose with a harness, presumably so it can be walked or restrained; part of the same running mongoose material as the mock-serious question that follows in the same section.

• To I. P. Chekhov, 4 May 1891. Aleksin. §5 Mangus

  The household's pet mongoose, brought back from the Sakhalin return voyage. its recurring appearances as "Signor Mangus" in and. Here reported briefly as having made the move to the dacha along with the rest of the family and in good health.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 4–15 May 1891. Aleksin. §4 the mongoose

  The household's pet mongoose (Mangus), brought back from the Sakhalin return voyage; here referred to only generically as "the beast"/"the creature" ("зверь") rather than by name, but matching the pet's established comic business elsewhere in this run of Aleksin letters -- pulling corks from bottles and breaking crockery (cf., \S5;;).

• To L. S. Mizinova, 17 May 1891. Aleksin. §3 Mangus ran off the day before yesterday and will never come back. He's dead.

  "Мангус" is Chekhov's household mongoose, brought back from Ceylon at the end of his Sakhalin voyage (see; corrected here from an earlier draft-headnote guess of "a family dog" -- the same correction already made at, \S5, "Signor Mangus," and consistent with the mongoose's recurring appearances and health scares across roughly twenty other letters in this corpus, e.g.). The deadpan announcement of its death, in the letter's opening mock-tragic register ("Издох. Это раз" / "He's dead. That's one thing"), sets up the second, equally deadpan piece of news that follows -- the move to a new house.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 18 May 1891. Aleksin. §6 My mongoose

  One of the mongooses Chekhov brought back from Ceylon on his return from Sakhalin; already reported as having run off two days earlier in his 17 May letter to Lika Mizinova (\S3: "Mangus ran off the day before yesterday and will never come back. He's dead"), and here repeated to Suvorin the next day in the same terms.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 27 May 1891. Bogimovo. §3 Mangus ran off into the woods

  The household's pet mongoose, brought back from the Sakhalin return voyage, here reported missing rather than performing his usual comic business (cf., \S5, where he is "in good health";, \S4;).

• To A. S. Suvorin, 4 June 1891. Bogimovo. §6 Mangus has turned up

  The household's pet mongoose, brought back from the Sakhalin return voyage, previously reported missing (cf., \S6, and, \S3, "Mangus ran off into the woods and never came back"); found here after eighteen days at large near the Oka, thinner ordeal notwithstanding fattened by his stretch of freedom.

• To L. S. Mizinova, 12 June 1891. Bogimovo. §10 The mongoose has turned up

  \textit{Мангус нашелся} -- one of the household mongooses Chekhov had brought back from his Sakhalin journey, reported here as having gone missing and now recovered; a brief domestic aside dropped into the letter's run of short news items, typical of Chekhov's habit of folding pet-news in among more pointed banter.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 5 July 1891. Bogimovo. §3 Mangus

  One of the mongooses Chekhov brought back from Ceylon on his return from Sakhalin, kept as a household pet at Bogimovo through summer 1891; here credited with a smashed jam jar, and in \S8 below with eating a captured frog -- the same running comic-destructive role the animal plays in Chekhov's other homecoming letters.