To M. V. Kiseleva, April 1891. Rome.

A short, breezy letter of 1 (13) April 1891, from Rome, to Maria Vladimirovna Kiseleva, mistress of the Babkino estate and a longtime family friend – following on from the Venice postcard of 25 March (6 April) (source/headnote) as Chekhov’s party moves south through Italy. Part of the celebrated spring 1891 European travel series (with Suvorin, through Vienna, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, and on to Nice and Paris). dateline, header date, a comic name-day greeting via the Pope, a table d’h\^ote reverie about two Dutch girls, a tired travel recap turning on Venice versus Baedeker-guided sightseeing, closing regards, a joke about cheap neckties, travel plans for Naples with a wished-for romance, a florid sign-off phrase, signature, and a one-line postscript.

Chekhov opens with a mock-solemn conceit – the Pope himself has deputized him to wish Kiseleva a happy name-day and as much money as the Vatican has rooms (eleven thousand of them) – then reports being footsore from touring the Vatican. At the hotel table d’h\^ote he is seated across from two Dutch girls who remind him of Pushkin’s Tatyana and Olga, prompting a comic daydream of settling down in Holland with cheese, herring, and a tidy little house. He sums up the trip so far as sightseeing fatigue and homesick appetite (craving cabbage soup and buckwheat kasha), contrasting Venice, which enchanted him, with the duller Baedeker-and-bad-weather stretch since. He sends his regards, jokes about how cheap neckties are in Rome, and announces he leaves for Naples the next day, wishing aloud for a romantic entanglement with a Russian widow or divorc\’ee there, since the guidebooks apparently insist on one. He signs off with an ironic flourish of self-deprecating devotion, then adds a one-line postscript sending his respects to "the starlings."