Letter to Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova, August 26, 1900

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Her Excellency Maria Alexandrovna Ulyanova,

Kedrova’s House,

Podolsk (Moscow Gubernia)

August 26

Dear Maria Alexandrovna,

It is again a long time since I wrote to you, but all I have to write about is myself and that is boring. Nevertheless, I will write. I am keeping perfectly well, so is Mother. It is three weeks now since we moved to a new apartment. It is very convenient, downstairs, two rooms and a kitchen, newly decorated, and a garden under our windows; the owners are nice people. We lived in this apartment once before, but now it has quite a different appearance. Our address is Priyutskaya Street, Kulikova’s House. We seem to have settled down at last. I am now pretty busy; I still retain my summer pupils and winter lessons have also begun. Two lessons will remain for the winter, both quite pleasant and paying quite well (62 rubles). I shall spend about C hours a day on them. Since I like teaching, it will be quite all right, not a bit tiring. The bad thing is the mud in Ufa, you can drown in it, and in the evenings, when there is supposed to be a moon and the streets remain unlit for that reason, you are quite likely to land up in a ditch—and one of my lessons is in the evening. On Sundays I take German lessons from an excellent German. Everything would have been all right except that there has been so much commotion at our place lately that I have not been able to take up a book for a fortnight. And so I have not been busy at my German at all and that is a great pity. Volodya complains of the turmoil of life in Paris, but that is Paris and turmoil is in the nature of things; but when there is turmoil in Ufa it is like nothing on earth. This, of course, is the time when some people are going, some are coming and others are passing through. People passing through say that Zina is very miserable, that she has recently changed very considerably, and grown thin and pale. They also say that Mikh. Al. is having a bad time, and that O,A. could not find any pupils for a long time. Mikh. Al. has been posted to the Krasnoyarsk Regiment, a regiment that was about to set out on a march (it has started by now). The Siberians are lazy correspondents and so I know little about them. I am partly to blame, by the way. Lidya intends moving to Ufa, she has made an application, but I don’t knew whether she will be able to get transferred; I should very much like to see her before I leave here. Yolodya writes very rarely and, has apparently given me the wrong address, since be does not seem to have received my letters. I am now writing to him in Paris. I don’t know where to send the magazine he asks for, Zhizn. In the end I shall probably send it to you, perhaps he has given you his proper address. I gathered from his last letter that he is leaving Paris but he did not say where for. I am returning Manyasha’s French hook together with Zhizn. She wrote that she had to return it in September. Anyuta, by the way, took a Gorky book to read in the train and its owner is asking for it back; if it is not too much trouble, please send it to me. I ask Manyasha to excuse me for not writing to her separately—I should only have to repeat everything. How are you? Are you keeping well? Has Anyuta gone for long? Have you received a reply from St. Petersburg about whether D,I. has been accepted into the University? Are you moving to Moscow soon? Well, good-bye. Many, many kisses for you and Manyasha. Mother sends regards to all.

Yours,

Nadya

P.S. Have just made a discovery—I have not got the issue of Zhizn that Volodya wrote about and so am sending only the French book.