In late 1877 and early 1878 Anton tried his hand at drama. (Even è fourteen he is reported dramatizing Gogol's historical tale Taras liulba.) At eighteen, he composed a farce The Scythe Strikes the Stone and a full-length drama, Fatherlessness. Fatherlessness is an appropriate title for his last years in Taganrog, but what the play was about we do not know.44 In October 1878 Aleksandr delivered his judgement on his brother's work: Two scenes in Fatherlessness are handled with genius, even, but on the whole it's an unforgivable, if innocent lie… The Scythe Strikes the Stone is written in excellent language which is very typical for each character developed, but your plot is very shallow. The latter I said (for convenience) was mine and read it to friends… the answer was: 'The writing is fine, it has skill, but little observation and no experience of life.'
What Anton read and saw in the 1870s we know from Taganrog's library and theatre. Presumably, Pavel took to Moscow in 1876 his substantial collection of religious books. Anton's own books give us few hints. Perhaps his books from the 1860s and 1870s were bought later; as a schoolboy he could afford little. Translations of Hamlet and Macbeth (1861 -2) may be the first books Anton acquired. Hamlet looks
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like a schoolboy's possession: the owner's name is written five times, and it has pencil marks in the margins. Ë few books are numbered: a prayer book of 1855 is No. 63, Hamlet is No. 82; Macbeth No. 8 -No. 85, however, is a medical textbook published in 1881. Anton may as a boy have owned from youth Goethe's Faust in a Russian version of 1871 and an 1803 Russian translation of Beccaria's pioneering On Crimes and Punishments^
Medicine, not literature, was the career he contemplated, and he wanted to go straight from Taganrog to Zurich university - the Mecca for Russian medical students. Aleksandr argued against this plan and gave Anton a guide to the universities of Russia, from the distinguished German university of Dorpat to the Armenian academy in Nakhichevan where they taught 'hairdressing, shaving and cutting corns'. Aleksandr himself was happy in the science and mathematics faculty of Moscow university. He focused Anton's ambitions on Moscow.
Anton was set on university; he announced to Aleksandr in June 1877 that he 'sent all young ladies packing'. Aleksandr responded: 'You shouldn't be a skirt-chaser, but there's no need to avoid women.' The Taganrog theatre too lost its appeal, after the excitement of Moscow. Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of its most successful stagings, seemed just a 'tear-jerker'. Although the authorities removed some 300 'seditious' books and journals in 1878, the Public Library was Anton's lifeline, and his reading was now serious. He even advised his elder brothers to read Turgenev's essay Don Quixote and Hamlet, a study of the Russian antihero which has a bearing on Chekhov's own fictional heroes who would be, like Turgenev's, either Quixotic men of action who do not think, or cerebral Hamlets who cannot act.
The pressure to send money to his family - and tobacco and cigarette paper to Aleksandr - did not relent. In return Anton asked for drawing instruments, but Aleksandr claimed that they were too expensive to send. He asked for Aleksandr's chemistry notes, but Aleksandr said that they were beyond his understanding. He asked for logarithm tables, but Pavel could not afford a set.
Hope dawned in Moscow. Konstantin Makarov, a drawing teacher who had taken a liking to Anton in Easter 1877, invited Masha to a ball at the Moscow cadet school where he taught. There she met a pupil of the episcopal Filaret girls' gimnazia. Masha followed her young brother Misha's example. She went to ask the Bishop of
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Moscow for a free place, but the Bishop told her, 'I'm not a millionaire' and refused. A Taganrog colleague of Pavel's, the merchant Sabinin, then took pity and offered to pay. She was quickly tutored for entry into the second year, and in August 1877 was accepted into the Filaret school. Misha, too, had found a benefactor: old Gavrilov paid his fees. Kvgenia pawned her gold bracelets to pay the rent, but Pavel now had hopes of returning south. Another bankrupt merchant had returned to Taganrog, Mitrofan reported, and would start afresh; perhaps Pavel might do the same. Alms arrived: Pavel's sister Aleksandra sent three roubles through Mitrofan; Father Filaret, treasurer of the Brotherhood, sent a rouble; an old colleague sent two. Finally, a member of the Taganrog administration hinted that if Pavel returned, he might have a clerical job at 600 roubles a year. In June 1877 Mitrofan was encouraging: 'have faith that the Lord will not abandon you. Many people are suffering, but not Ivan Loboda and Gavriil Selivanov: those two will probably never be touched by poverty.'
Pavel was offered a clerical job by a church charity. Although he Could compose a lament or a sermon, he could not write a memorandum and was dismissed. In their Moscow flat, at the end of September, he posted up a family roster: Timetable of jobs and household obligations to be carried out in the family house of Pavel Chekhov, resident of Moscow. Where it is stated who is to get up, go to bed, dine, go to church and when, and what jobs to do in their free time, namely… Mikhail Chekhov, aged 11; Maria Chekhova, aged 14: Going to church without delay for all night Vigil at 7 p.m. and early Matins at 6.30 and late Matins at 9.30 on Sundays. Misha had to 'clean boots with a rag', Masha 'to comb her hair carefully'. Those who do not obey this roster are liable first to a severe reprimand and then to punishment, during which crying out is forbidden. Father of the Family Pavel Chekhov. Misha was beaten for oversleeping by eight minutes and not looking at the timetable. He was then instructed: 'Get up and look at the timetable to see if it is time to get up and if it is too early, then go back to bed.' A row blew up between Vania and Pavel over a pair of trousers: Aleksandr described it to Anton (1 November 1877):
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FATHER li) I 111 MAN The father of the family followed him and, m the Taganrog custom, started hitting him round the face. «Xlendcil by such cruel treatment, Member of the Family Ivan Chekhov, aged 17, opened his throat wide and called out as loud as he could. The landlord and landlady and the family members who ran towards the row shamed the Father of the Family and made him release the Member. Then the landlord and landlady made things very clear, pointing to the gate, while the Father of the Family smiled in the most innocent way… Salvation came from old Gavrilov: on 10 November 1877, after seventeen months' idleness, Pavel Chekhov was hired as a clerk. For 30 roubles a month, with free board and lodging, this ex-merchant, aged fifty-two, had to live like the shop boys, working from before dawn well into the night, with the 'right' to board and lodging on the premises (of which he usually availed himself). He could bring home sugar, which the family fed to Misha's puppy, now Korbo the family dog. The roster was taken off the wall. Work in the warehouse stopped the quarrels at home; now the shop boys bore the brunt of Pavel's lectures on how to trade and live. These earned him the name of 'Teacher of Morals'. Pavel was no longer head of the household but a visiting relative, though he never accepted demotion. Evgenia wept less. Kolia worked at home for his gold medal; his best friend, a mortally consumptive artist Khelius (known as Nautilus), came to live with them. Kolia's fame grew: he was now painting theatre sets for a wealthy patron.
In August Anton had written to Misha Chokhov asking him to lobby Gavrilov for Aleksei Dolzhenko. Old Gavrilov not only took on Pavel, but also subsidized Mikhail Chekhov's schooling and promised Pavel's nephew, Aleksei Dolzhenko, a place from February 1878. What had driven Gavrilov to relent towards the Chekhovs? Undoubtedly Misha Chokhov had pleaded Pavel's case. For all the Chokhov hedonism - 'If you drink, you die, if you don't drink, you die, so better drink' - Misha and his siblings were amiable.