To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Nice.

A brief note of 17 (29) April 1891, written from Nice, part of the famous 1891 European travel series and among the last letters of the trip: Chekhov reports that he will miss Easter in Moscow after all, sketches the homeward route (Milan and the Italian lakes, then Berlin, arriving before Thomas Week is out), and complains about the poor weather. He passes on small household instructions – buy fish-traps if the family’s dacha is near a river, and see that the harness for the mongoose has been bought – and asks, in his usual teasing register, whether the mongoose behaved itself at a meeting of the Society of Natural Scientists. He exchanges the traditional Easter greeting and apologizes for not being home for the holiday, sends regards to the Kuvshinnikovs, and closes with a wry contrast between the tedium of eating and sleeping one’s way through Europe and the weightless freedom of travel in Siberia, where a traveler does neither.