Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol arrives in Petersburg from Little Russia at the age of 19 after graduating from the Nizhyn Lyceum in December 1828, together with his classmate A. Danilevsky and servant Yakim. With great intentions to settle "in a cheerful little room with windows facing the Neva" and become a famous writer, actor, or, at worst, a government official. However, the first letters from Petersburg home sound in a bitter tone: "Mama, where have I ended up!" First, it’s cold and dark, and he arrives in the empire’s capital right at the end of December, when there is almost no daylight. Secondly, prices are much higher than in Little Russia, and Gogol was not used to economizing. Even as a lyceum student, he dreamed of serving "for the good of the state" in the field of justice, specifically in Petersburg, where he would live "in a cheerful little room with windows facing the Neva." But the young man settled not on the Neva embankment, but on Gorokhovaya Street near the Fontanka. "Petersburg seemed to me not at all as I thought, I imagined it much more beautiful, magnificent, and the rumors spread by others about it are also false," he writes to his mother. "Living here is not exactly shabby, i.e., having cabbage soup and porridge once a day is incomparably more expensive than I thought. We pay eighty rubles a month for the apartment, just for the walls, firewood, and water... Food supplies are also not cheap... All this forces me to live as if in a desert, I am forced to give up my greatest pleasure of going to the theater," he wrote to his mother.

Source: http://literatura5.narod.ru/gogol2.html