YALTA,
October 26, 1898.
... I am buying a piece of land in Yalta and am going to build so as to
have a place in which to spend the winters. The prospect of continual
wandering with hotel rooms, hotel porters, chance cooking, and so on, and
so on, alarms my imagination. Mother will spend the winter with me. There
is no winter here; it’s the end of October, but the roses and other flowers
are blooming freely, the trees are green and it is warm.
There is a great deal of water. Nothing will be needed apart from the
house, no outbuildings of any sort; it will all be under one roof. The
coal, wood and everything will be in the basement. The hens lay the whole
year round, and no special house is needed for them, an enclosure is
enough. Close by there is a baker’s shop and the bazaar, so that it will be
very cosy for Mother and very convenient. By the way, there are
chanterelles and boletuses to be gathered all the autumn, and that will be
an amusement for Mother. I am not doing the building myself, the architect
is doing it all. The houses will be ready by April. The grounds, for a town
house, are considerable. There will be a garden and flowerbeds, and a
vegetable garden. The railway will come to Yalta next year....
As for getting married, upon which you are so urgent--what am I to say to
you? To marry is interesting only for love; to marry a girl simply because
she is nice is like buying something one does not want at the bazaar solely
because it is of good quality.
The most important screw in family life is love, sexual attraction, one
flesh, all the rest is dreary and cannot be reckoned upon, however cleverly
we make our calculations. So the point is not in the girl’s being nice but
in her being loved; putting it off as you see counts for little....
My “Uncle Vanya” is being done all over the province, and everywhere with
success. So one never knows where one will gain and where one will lose; I
had not reckoned on that play at all....