Letters of Anton Chekhov to His Family and Friends
to bed even earlier than in the summer, but Chekhov would wake up at one in
the morning, sit down to his work and then go back to bed and sleep again.
At six o’clock in the morning all the household was up. Chekhov wrote a
great deal that winter. But as soon as visitors arrived, life was
completely transformed. There was singing, playing on the piano, laughter.
Chekhov’s mother did her utmost to load the tables with dainties; his
father with a mysterious air would produce various specially prepared
cordials and liqueurs from some hidden recess; and then it seemed that
Melihovo had something of its own, peculiar to it, which could be found in
no other country estate. Chekhov was always particularly pleased at the
visits of Miss Mizinov and of Potapenko. He was particularly fond of them,
and his whole family rejoiced at their arrival. They stayed up long after
midnight on such days, and Chekhov wrote only by snatches. And every time
he wrote five or six lines, he would get up again and go back to his
visitors.
“I have written sixty kopecks’ worth,” he would say with a smile.
Braga’s “Serenade” was the fashion at that time, and Chekhov was fond of
hearing Potapenko play it on the violin while Miss Mizinov sang it.
Having been a student at the Moscow University, Chekhov liked to celebrate
St. Tatyana’s Day. He never missed making a holiday of it when he lived in
Moscow. That winter, for the first time, he chanced to be in Petersburg on
the 12th of January. He did not forget “St. Tatyana,” and assembled all his
literary friends on that day in a Petersburg restaurant. They made speeches
and kept the holiday, and this festivity initiated by him was so successful
that the authors went on meeting regularly afterwards.
Though Melihovo was his permanent home, Chekhov often paid visits to Moscow
and Petersburg. He frequently stayed at hotels, and there he sometimes had
difficulties over his passport. As a landowner he had no need of
credentials from the police in the Serpuhov district, and found his
University diploma sufficient. In Petersburg and Moscow, under the old
passport regulations they would not give him a passport because he resided
permanently in the provinces. Misunderstandings arose, sometimes developing
into disagreeable incidents and compelling Chekhov to return home earlier
than he had intended. Someone suggested to Chekhov that he should enter the
Government service and immediately retire from it, as retired officials
used at that time to receive a permanent passport from the department in
which they had served. Chekhov sent a petition to the Department of
Medicine for a post to be assigned to him, and received an appointment as
an extra junior medical clerk in that Department, and soon afterwards sent
in his resignation, after which he had no more trouble.
Chekhov spent the whole spring of 1893 at Melihovo, planted roses, looked
after his fruit-trees, and was enthusiastic over country life. That summer
Melihovo was especially crowded with visitors. Chekhov was visited not only
by his friends, but also by people whose acquaintance he neither sought nor
desired. People were sleeping on sofas and several in a room; some even
spent the night in the passage. Young ladies, authors, local doctors,
members of the Zemstvo, distant relations with their sons--all these people
flitted through Melihovo. Life was a continual whirl, everyone was gay;
this rush of visitors and the everlasting readiness of Chekhov’s mother to
regale them with food and drink seemed like a return to the good old times
of country life in the past. Chekhov was the centre on which all attention
was concentrated. Everyone sought him, lived in him, and caught up every
word he uttered. When he was with friends he liked taking walks or making
expeditions to the neighbouring monastery. The chaise, the cart, and the
racing droshky were brought out. Chekhov put on his white tunic, buckled a
strap round his waist, and got on the racing droshky. A young lady would
sit sideways behind him, holding on to the strap. The white tunic and strap
used to make Chekhov call himself an Hussar. The party would set off; the
“Hussar” in the racing droshky would lead the way, and then came the cart
and the chaise full of visitors.
The numbers of guests necessitated more building, as the house would not
contain them all. Instead of a farm, new buildings close to the house
itself were begun. Some of the farm buildings were pulled down, others were
put up after Chekhov’s own plans. A new cattle yard made its appearance,
and by it a hut with a well and a hurdle fence in the Little Russian style,
a bathhouse, a barn, and finally Chekhov’s dream--a lodge. It was a little
house with three tiny rooms, in one of which a bedstead was put with
difficulty, and in another a writing-table. At first this lodge was
intended only for visitors, but afterwards Chekhov moved into it and there
he wrote his “Seagull.” This little lodge was built among the fruit-bushes,
and to reach it one had to pass through the orchard. In spring, when the
apples and cherries were in blossom, it was pleasant to live in this lodge,
but in winter it was so buried in the snow that pathways had to be cut to
it through drifts as high as a man.
Chekhov suffered terribly about this time from his cough. It troubled him
particularly in the morning. But he made light of it. He was afraid of
worrying his family. His younger brother once saw his handkerchief
spattered with blood, and asked what it meant. Chekhov seemed disconcerted
and said:
“Oh, nothing; it is no matter.... Don’t tell Masha and Mother.”
The cough was the reason for Chekhov’s going in 1894 to the Crimea. He
stayed in Yalta, though he evidently did not like it and longed to be home.
Chekhov’s activity in the campaign against the cholera resulted in his
being elected a member of the Zemstvo. He was keenly interested in
everything to do with the new roads to be constructed, and the new
hospitals and schools it was intended to open. Besides this public work the
neighbourhood was indebted to him for the making of a highroad from the
station of Lopasnya to Melihovo, and for the building of schools at Talezh,
Novoselka, and Melihovo. He made the plans for these schools himself,
bought the material, and superintended the building of them. When he talked
about them his eyes kindled, and it was evident that if he had had the
means he would have built, not three, but a multitude.
At the opening of the school at Novoselka, the peasants brought him the
ikon and offered him bread and salt. Chekhov was much embarrassed in
responding to their gratitude, but his face and his shining eyes showed
that he was pleased. Besides the schools he built a fire-station for the
village and a belfry for the church, and ordered a cross made of
looking-glass for the cupola, the flash of which in the sun or moonlight
was visible more than eight miles away.
Chekhov spent the year 1894 at Melihovo, began writing “The Seagull,” and
did a great deal of work. He paid a visit to Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana,
and returned enchanted with the old man and his family. Chekhov was already
changing; he looked haggard, older, sallower. He coughed, he was tortured
by intestinal trouble. Evidently he was now aware of the gravity of his
illness, but, as before, made no complaint and tried to hide it from
others.
In 1896 “The Seagull” was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre in
Petersburg. It was a fiasco. The actors did not know their parts; in the
theatre there was “a strained condition of boredom and bewilderment.” The
notices in the press were prejudiced and stupid. Not wishing to see or meet
anyone, Chekhov kept out of sight after the performance, and by next
morning was in the train on his way back to Melihovo. The subsequent
performances of “The Seagull,” when the actors understood it, were
successful.
Chekhov had collected a large number of books, and in 1896 he resolved to
present them to the public library in his native town of Taganrog. Whole
bales of books were sent by Chekhov from Petersburg and Moscow, and
Iordanov, the mayor of Taganrog, sent him lists of the books needed. At the
same time, at Chekhov’s suggestion, something like an Information Bureau
was instituted in connection with the Taganrog Library. There were to be
catalogues of all the important commercial firms, all the existing
regulations and government enactments on all current questions, everything,
in fact, which might be of immediate service to a reader in any practical
difficulty. The library at Taganrog has now developed into a fine
educational institution, and is lodged in a special building designed and
equipped for it and dedicated to the memory of Chekhov.
Chekhov took an active interest in the census of the people in 1896. It
will be remembered that he had made a census of the whole convict
population of the island of Sahalin on his own initiative and at his own
expense in 1890. Now he was taking part in a census again. He studied
peasant life in all its aspects; he was on intimate terms with his peasant
neighbours, to whom he was now indispensable as a doctor and a friend
always ready to give them good counsel.
Just before the census was completed Chekhov was taken ill with influenza,
but that did not prevent his carrying out his duties. In spite of headache,
he went from hut to hut and village to village, and then had to work at
putting together his materials. He was absolutely alone in his work. The
Zemsky Natchalniks, upon whom the government relied principally to carry
out the census, were inert, and for the most part the work was left to
private initiative.
In February, 1897, Chekhov was completely engrossed by a project of
building a “People’s Palace” in Moscow. “People’s Palaces” had not been
thought of; the common people spent their leisure in drink-shops. The
“People’s Palace” in Moscow was designed on broad principles; there was to
be a library, a reading-room, lecture-rooms, a museum, a theatre. It was
proposed to run it by a company of shareholders with a capital of half a
million roubles. Owing to various causes in no way connected with Chekhov,
this scheme came to nothing.
In March he paid a visit to Moscow, where Suvorin was expecting him. He had
hardly sat down to dinner at The Hermitage when he had a sudden haemorrhage
from the lungs. He was taken to a private hospital, where he remained till
the 10th of April. When his sister, who knew nothing of his illness,
arrived in Moscow, she was met by her brother Ivany who gave her a card of
admission to visit the invalid at the hospital. On the card were the words:
“Please don’t tell father or mother.” His sister went to the hospital.
There casting a casual glance at a little table, she saw on it a diagram of
the lungs, in which the upper part of the left lung was marked with a red
pencil. She guessed at once that this was what was affected in Chekhov’s
case. This and the sight of her brother alarmed her. Chekhov, who had
always been so gay, so full of spirits and vitality, looked terribly ill;
he was forbidden to move or to talk, and had hardly the strength to do so.
He was declared to be suffering from tuberculosis of the lungs, and it was
essential to try and ward it off at all costs, and to escape the
unwholesome northern spring. He recognized himself that this was essential.
When he left the hospital he returned to Melihovo and prepared to go
abroad. He went first to Biarritz, but there he was met by bad weather. A
fashionable, extravagant way of living did not suit his tastes, and
although he was delighted with the sea and the life led (especially by the
children) on the beach, he soon moved on to Nice. Here he stayed for a
considerable time at the Pension Russe in the Rue Gounod. He seemed to be