To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Naples.

A short, cheerful letter of 4 (16) April 1891, from Naples, to the Chekhov family back in Moscow – Chekhov’s party (with Suvorin) having now moved on from Rome (source/headnote) to Naples, the next stop on the celebrated spring 1891 European travel series. dateline, header date, an arrival note about the family’s letters, a description of Vesuvius and the view from a hilltop monastery, a riff on the Naples shops, a joke about a catalogue for Semashko, a note on the aquarium, an anecdote from the barber’s, a mock-grumble about presents withheld, signature, and a one-line postscript about coming home for Easter.

Chekhov reports reaching Naples and finding five letters waiting at the post office, joking that even Vesuvius was touched by such devotion from his relatives. He describes the volcano half-hidden in cloud, visible mainly in the evenings, and the panoramic view from the embankment and from the monastery of St. Martini, which he compares to a view he once had climbing a mountain by rail in Hong Kong. He marvels at the Naples arcade and shops, addressing his sister Masha and Lika Mizinova directly and imagining they would be beside themselves with delight. He asks that Semashko be told no single shop catalogue could be found – a mock dig at his friend’s exacting tastes. He describes the aquarium’s sharks and octopuses (finding an octopus eating its prey disgusting to watch), then an episode at the barber’s, where an elaborate mirrored room recalls the Vatican’s eleven thousand rooms (a callback to the same joke in the Rome letter to Kiseleva, source/headnote) while he watches a young man’s beard trimmed for a full hour. He threatens, in mock retaliation for the family’s silence about the dacha and the mongoose, to withhold presents – including a watch he says he bought for Masha and then discarded – before sending his regards and closing. A brief postscript promises he will be home by Easter and asks them to meet him at the station.