Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
attracted great attention.
In January, 1889, the play was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in
Petersburg and the controversy broke out again.
“Ivanov” was the turning-point in Chekhov’s mental development, and
literary career. He took up his position definitely as a writer, though his
brass plate continued to hang on the door. Shortly after writing “Ivanov,”
he wrote a one-act play called “The Bear.” The following season Solovtsev,
who had taken the chief character in “The Bear,” opened a theatre of his
own in Moscow, which was not at first a success. He appealed to Chekhov to
save him with a play for Christmas, which was only ten days off. Chekhov
set to work and wrote an act every day. The play was produced in time, but
the author was never satisfied with it, and after a short, very successful
run took it off the stage. Several years later he completely remodelled it
and produced it as “Uncle Vanya” at the Art Theatre in Moscow. At this time
he was writing a long novel, of which he often dreamed aloud, and which he
liked to talk about. He was for several years writing at this novel, but no
doubt finally destroyed it, as no trace of it could be found after his
death. He wanted it to embody his views on life, opinions which he
expressed in a letter to Plestcheyev in these words:
“I am not a Liberal, not a Conservative.... I should have liked to have
been a free artist and nothing more--and I regret that God has not given me
the strength to be one. I hate lying and violence in all their forms--the
most absolute freedom, freedom from force and fraud in whatever form the
two latter may be expressed, that is the programme I would hold to if I
were a great artist.”
At this time he was always gay and insisted on having people round him
while he worked. His little house in Moscow, which “looked like a chest of
drawers,” was a centre to which people, and especially young people,
flocked in swarms. Upstairs they played the piano, a hired one, while
downstairs he sat writing through it all. “I positively can’t live without
visitors,” he wrote to Suvorin; “when I am alone, for some reason I am
frightened.” This gay life which seemed so full of promise was, however,
interrupted by violent fits of coughing. He tried to persuade other people,
and perhaps himself, that it was not serious, and he would not consent to
be properly examined. He was sometimes so weak from haemorrhage that he
could see no one, but as soon as the attack was over his mood changed, the
doors were thrown open, visitors arrived, there was music again, and
Chekhov was once more in the wildest spirits.
The summers of those two years, 1888 and 1889, he spent with his family in
a summer villa at Luka, in the province of Harkov. He was in ecstasies
beforehand over the deep, broad river, full of fish and crayfish, the pond
full of carp, the woods, the old garden, and the abundance of young ladies.
His expectations were fulfilled in every particular, and he had all the
fishing and musical society he could wish for. Soon after his arrival
Plestcheyev came to stay with him on a month’s visit.
He was an old man in feeble health, but attractive to everyone. Young
ladies in particular were immediately fascinated by him. He used to compose
his works aloud, sometimes shouting at the top of his voice, so that
Chekhov would run in and ask him if he wanted anything. Then the old man
would give a sweet and guilty smile and go on with his work. Chekhov was in
constant anxiety about the old man’s health, as he was very fond of cakes
and pastry, and Chekhov’s mother used to regale him on them to such an
extent that Anton was constantly having to give him medicine. Afterwards
Suvorin, the editor of _Novoye Vremya_, came to stay. Chekhov and he used
to paddle in a canoe, hollowed out of a tree, to an old mill, where they
would spend hours fishing and talking about literature.
Both the grandsons of serfs, both cultivated and talented men, they were
greatly attracted by each other. Their friendship lasted for several years,
and on account of Suvorin’s reactionary opinions, exposed Chekhov to a
great deal of criticism in Russia. Chekhov’s feelings for Suvorin began to
change at the time of the Dreyfus case, but he never broke entirely with
him. Suvorin’s feelings for Chekhov remained unchanged.
In the spring of 1889 his brother Nikolay, the artist, fell ill with
consumption, and his illness occupied Anton entirely, and completely
prevented his working. That summer Nikolay died, and it was under the
influence of this, his first great sorrow, that Chekhov wrote “A Dreary
Story.” For several months after the death of his brother he was extremely
restless and depressed.
In 1890 his younger brother Mihail was taking his degree in law at Moscow,
and studying treatises on the management of prisons. Chekhov got hold of
them, became intensely interested in prisons, and resolved to visit the
penal settlement of Sahalin. He made up his mind to go to the Far East so
unexpectedly that it was difficult for his family to believe that he was in
earnest.
He was afraid that after Kennan’s revelations about the penal system in
Siberia, he would, as a writer, be refused permission to visit the prisons
in Sahalin, and therefore tried to get a free pass from the head of the
prison administration, Galkin-Vrasskoy. When this proved fruitless he set
off in April, 1890, with no credentials but his card as a newspaper
correspondent.
The Siberian railway did not then exist, and only after great hardships,
being held up by floods and by the impassable state of the roads, Chekhov
succeeded in reaching Sahalin on the 11th of July, having driven nearly
3,000 miles. He stayed three months on the island, traversed it from north
to south, made a census of the population, talked to every one of the ten
thousand convicts, and made a careful study of the convict system.
Apparently the chief reason for all this was the consciousness that “We
have destroyed millions of men in prisons.... It is not the superintendents
of the prisons who are to blame, but all of us.” In Russia it was not
possible to be a “free artist and nothing more.”
Chekhov left Sahalin in October and returned to Europe by way of India and
the Suez Canal. He wanted to visit Japan, but the steamer was not allowed
to put in at the port on account of cholera.
In the Indian Ocean he used to bathe by diving off the forecastle deck when
the steamer was going at full speed, and catching a rope which was let down
from the stern. Once while he was doing this he saw a shark and a shoal of
pilot fish close to him in the water, as he describes in his story “Gusev.”
The fruits of this journey were a series of articles in _Russkaya Myssl_
on the island of Sahalin, and two short stories, “Gusev” and “In Exile.”
His articles on Sahalin were looked on with a favourable eye in Petersburg,
and, who knows, it is possible that the reforms which followed in regard to
penal servitude and exile would not have taken place but for their
influence.
After about a month in Moscow, Chekhov went to Petersburg to see Suvorin.
The majority of his Petersburg friends and admirers met him with feelings
of envy and ill-will. People gave dinners in his honour and praised him to
the skies, but at the same time they were ready to “tear him to pieces.”
Even in Moscow such people did not give him a moment for work or rest. He
was so prostrated by the feeling of hostility surrounding him that he
accepted an invitation from Suvorin to go abroad with him. When Chekhov had
completed arrangements for equipping the Sahalin schools with the necessary
books, they set off for the South of Europe. Vienna delighted him, and
Venice surpassed all his expectations and threw him into a state of
childlike ecstasy.
Everything fascinated him--and then there was a change in the weather and a
steady downpour of rain. Chekhov’s spirits drooped. Venice was damp and
seemed horrible, and he longed to escape from it.
He had had just such a change of mood in Singapore, which interested him
immensely and suddenly filled him with such misery that he wanted to cry.
After Venice Chekhov did not get the pleasure he expected from any Italian
town. Florence did not attract him; the sun was not shining. Rome gave him
the impression of a provincial town. He was feeling exhausted, and to add
to his depression he had got into debt, and had the prospect of spending
the summer without any money at all.
Travelling with Suvorin, who did not stint himself, drew him into spending
more than he intended, and he owed Suvorin a sum which was further
increased at Monte Carlo by Chekhov’s losing nine hundred roubles at
roulette. But this loss was a blessing to him in so far as, for some
reason, it made him feel satisfied with himself. At the end of April, 1891,
after a stay in Paris, Chekhov returned to Moscow. Except at Vienna and for
the first days in Venice and at Nice, it had rained the whole time. On his
return he had to work extremely hard to pay for his two tours. His brother
Mihail was at this time inspector of taxes at Alexino, and Chekhov and his
household spent the summer not far from that town in the province of
Kaluga, so as to be near him. They took a house dating from the days of
Catherine. Chekhov’s mother had to sit down and rest halfway when she
crossed the hall, the rooms were so large. He liked the place with its
endless avenues of lime-trees and poetical river, while fishing and
gathering mushrooms soothed him and put him in the mood for work. Here he
went on with his story “The Duel,” which he had begun before going abroad.
From the windows there was the view of an old house which Chekhov described
in “An Artist’s Story,” and which he was very eager to buy. Indeed from
this time he began thinking of buying a country place of his own, not in
Little Russia, but in Central Russia. Petersburg seemed to him more and
more idle, cold and egoistic, and he had lost all faith in his Petersburg
acquaintances. On the other hand, Moscow no longer seemed to him as before
“like a cook,” and he grew to love it. He grew fond of its climate, its
people and its bells. He always delighted in bells. Sometimes in earlier
days he had gathered together a party of friends and gone with them to
Kamenny Bridge to listen to the Easter bells. After eagerly listening to
them he would set off to wander from church to church, and with his legs
giving way under him from fatigue would, only when Easter night was over,
make his way homewards. Meanwhile his father, who was fond of staying till
the end of the service, would return from the parish church, and all the
brothers would sing “Christ is risen” in chorus, and then they all sat down
to break their fast. Chekhov never spent an Easter night in bed.
Meanwhile in the spring of 1892 there began to be fears about the crops.
These apprehensions were soon confirmed. An unfortunate summer was followed
by a hard autumn and winter, in which many districts were famine-stricken.
Side by side with the Government relief of the starving population there
was a widespread movement for organizing relief, in which various societies
and private persons took part. Chekhov naturally was drawn into this
movement. The provinces of Nizhni-Novogorod and Voronezh were in the
greatest distress, and in the former of these two provinces, Yegorov, an
old friend of Chekhov’s Voskresensk days, was a district captain (Zemsky
Natchalnik). Chekhov wrote to Yegorov, got up a subscription fund among his
acquaintance, and finally set off himself for Nizhni-Novogorod. As the
starving peasants were selling their horses and cattle for next to nothing,
or even slaughtering them for food, it was feared that as spring came on