To Frau von Meck.
“Kamenka, November 1st (13th), 1883.
“I should feel quite happy and contented here, were it not for the morbid, restless need of hurrying on my work, which tires me dreadfully, without being in the least necessary....
“I had a fancy to renew my study of English. This would be harmless, were I content to devote my leisure hours quietly to the work. But no: here again, I am devoured by impatience to master enough English to read Dickens easily, and I devote so many hours a day to this occupation that, with the exception of breakfast, dinner, and the necessary walk, I literally spend every minute in hurrying madly to the end of something. This is certainly a disease. Happily, this feverish activity will soon come to an end, as my summons to the rehearsals in Moscow will shortly be due.”
XVIII
Towards the end of November Tchaikovsky left Kamenka for Moscow, where, after a lapse of sixteen years, his First Symphony was given at a concert of the Musical Society. He was greatly annoyed to find that the preparations for Mazeppa were proceeding with exasperating slowness. “It is always the way with a State theatre,” he wrote at this time to Nadejda von Meck. “Much promised, little performed.” While at Moscow, he played his new Suite to some of the leading musicians, who highly approved of the work.
A few days later he went to meet Modeste in Petersburg. He left the dry cold of a beautiful Russian winter in Moscow, and found the more northern capital snowless, but windy, chilly, and “so dark in the morning that even near the window I can hardly see to write.”
The journeys to and fro involved by the business connected with Mazeppa, and all the other difficulties he had to encounter in connection with it, were very irksome to Tchaikovsky. At this time he vowed never to write another opera, since it involved the sacrifice of so much time and freedom.
To N. F. von Meck.
“Moscow, December 11th (23rd), 1883.