To M. P. Chekhova, 19 March 1891. en route to Ven.

The first dispatch of Chekhov’s celebrated 1891 tour of Western Europe, scribbled from the train and dated only "19 March" – two days after he finally left Petersburg for Vienna with Alexei Suvorin and Suvorin’s son, as announced in the two preceding letters to Maria (16 March) and to his brother Ivan (13 March). It reads like a postcard: a handful of quick sensory notes on crossing the border – cold, snow, coffee served in little milk-jugs, the theatrical drawl of the conductors (a jab at the German actor Ernst von Possart, known for his declamatory style) – an expected arrival time in Vienna, a rueful note about the galoshes he left behind, and a closing complaint about German customs overcharging him for his tobacco. The letter that opens four months of travel correspondence (Vienna, Venice, and on through Italy) that Chekhov kept up throughout the trip.