There were uproarious parties in Petersburg. Nobody slept much. After a party on 5/6 January which broke up at six in the morning, Anton was led on foot by his fellow guests all over the freezing city from one cathedral to another to celebrate Epiphany. On 10 January, exhausted, he arrived in Moscow. Four days later, just before the man from the zoo came for Sod, Anton was off in one of the worst winters ever to the wilds of Nizhni Novgorod. He drove through starving villages and was received by the provincial governor. The governor retracted his blame of the peasants for their own misfortune and drove Chekhov to the station on his own horses. A week later Anton was in Moscow, ill with pleurisy, and sick at heart at his discovery that so much of the famine relief was being embezzled.
Masha had failed to find a country estate. What she dared not at first tell her brother of was a marriage proposal from Aleksandr Smagin on 10 January 1892: My desire to be your husband is so strong that neither your love for George Lintvariov nor your negligible affection for me would stop me from fulfilling this desire, assuming you agree to it. The insurmountable obstacle to this desire is my disease [unknown D.R.]… If you don't believe me I shall write to Anton about my health… And I shall send you his answer. Anyway, sooner or later, I shall tell him about my. feelings for you… I am not afraid either of Anton's judgement - I want it.'8 Anton's only overt objection to Smagin had been his 'tragic' hand
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ANN/is DI I'I:I.I:KINAGE writing, no trivial matter to a man who often joked 'the main thing in life is good handwriting.' Covertly, however, using arguments that none of the victims ever divulged, Anton took aside every one of Masha's suitors and dissuaded them. To Masha Anton had only to give a silent look signifying dismay or disapproval for her to reject any man's proposal.
Anton was desperate to quit Moscow; he instructed Masha with the help of Misha, now in Moscow, to buy an estate advertised in the Moscow newspapers for sale. It was not in the warm Ukraine but just forty-five miles south of Moscow, six miles over rough roads from a railway station. Too ill to inspect it, Chekhov nevertheless left on I February for another famine area. He met Suvorin at the Slav Bazaar. To kill two birds with one stone, he invited Elena Shavrova to join them: she thought Anton 'in the nicest, most amiable mood, so young and full of the joys of life.'59
Suvorin was grim and out of his depth in any enterprise so radical as famine relief. Anton was dragging him off to Voronezh, to make the governor adopt Egorov's horse-buying scheme. They found matters no better than in Nizhni: bread ovens, wheat and fuel were being distributed, but there was no fodder for the horses that were being bought up in order to give the peasants money for seed corn. Suvorin's sister Zinaida still lived there, and was helping with famine relief, but Suvorin saw no point in his visit. For the first time, he annoyed Anton. Suvorin, Anton told Masha, talked rubbish. (In Petersburg Anton had complained to Shcheglov of 'the senselessness of Suvorin's charitable work'.) After a week visiting Suvorin's (but not Chekhov's) ancestral villages, they returned north. Suvorin went back to Petersburg.
By mid February starvation and cold had killed perhaps a million Russian peasants: it was too late for charity. Previously, Anton had played the role of public-spirited landowner, as well as journalist. Now the role was real. Misha had bought on his behalf the estate of Melikhovo. Nearly 600 acres of birch woods and pasture, with a small wooden house and outbuildings in some dilapidation, Melikhovo was priced at 13,000 roubles, of which 5000 had to be paid outright, the rest over ten years. Misha mortgaged the property with the Land Bank, and after his machinations the Chekhovs owed only annual repayments of 300 roubles and 5000 roubles to Suvorin, which new editions of Anton's books were to pay off. Sullen People was into its
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third edition, In the Twilight its fifth: Anton's income reached 1000 roubles a month. Naively, the Chekhovs believed that farming 600 acres would be cheaper than renting a flat in Moscow. Pavel expressed his approval to Anton: 'Your mother wishes her children to buy a country house… God will help in this matter… His holy Will be done.'60 Aleksandr was fired with envy. He proposed settling nearby, for he had new-found prosperity. Prince Sheremetiev had appointed him editor of the fire brigade's journal The Fireman and installed a telephone in his flat. Anton joked that Aleksandr, as an inveterate bed-wetter, would be good at putting out fires, but Aleksandr was sacked after only three issues of the magazine and his telephone was removed.
Anton visited his estate - on which rested all his hopes for privacy, inspiration, health, and contact with 'the people' - only after contracts had been exchanged, on 26 February. A blanket of snow concealed the boundaries, the untilled soil and neglected woodlands. The vendor was unprepossessing: the artist Sorokhtin lived there with his wife, mistress and their ragged children, in what was more like an Australian squatter's shack than a Russian gentleman's manor. It crawled with bedbugs and cockroaches. Sorokhtin had put up outbuildings and fences, but farming bored him. He wanted his 5000 roubles in cash, to leave for the warmth of the Crimea and paint. The Chekhovs had signed the papers. On 1 March Pavel, Misha and the baggage moved to Melikhovo. Anton came a few days later.
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Cincinnatus They would wake to the song of the lark, to follow the plough, they would take a basket to gather apples, watch butter being made, grain threshed, sheep shorn; they would look after the beehives, would take delight in the lowing of the cows and the smell of new-mown hay. No more writing! No more bosses! No more rent to pay! Flaubert, Bouvard and Pecuchet
THIRTY-SIX Ô
Sowing and Ploughing March-June 1892 EIGHTEEN MILES from a post office, six miles from the station over rutted ice, Anton felt, on 4 March 1892, like the Roman dictator Cincinnatus who left Rome to till the soil. Until the snow melted, while the family scrubbed floors, papered walls, bought horses, tack, seed and saplings and hired workmen and servants, he was aghast at his decision.1
The Chekhovs' 'manor house' was a single-storeyed L-shaped wooden building with no bathroom or privy. An outbuilding served as a kitchen. The best room, open to the south and the west, was designated as Anton's study: Pavel and Masha decorated it in time for Anton's arrival. Across the drawing room was Masha's room. A narrow corridor ran one side of the L, leading to Anton's and Pavel's bedrooms, the dining room, and Evgenia's room. When guests tarried, the layout would prove awkward. The largest rooms, Anton's study and the drawing room, with its balcony, were crowded when more than five - including family, guests and servants - were there. In a few weeks the house was habitable, if sparsely furnished. Pavel's room was crammed with icons and ledgers and smelt of incense and of medicinal herbs; Masha's room was like a nun's, dominated by her brother's portrait; Evgenia's bedroom was filled with a trunk, a wardrobe and a sewing machine. The drawing room was furnished with Sorokhtin's unplayable piano.
Sorokhtin had left no hay, and the three horses starved on straw. One was unruly, one moribund; an elderly mare was the sole transport. The cow gave no milk. The farm dogs, Sharik and Arapka (Ball and Nigger), had two puppies, which Anton named Muir and Mirrielees, after the Moscow department store. When the ice melted, the pond turned out to be a cesspit and Anton's carp fingerlings all died. The river Liutorka was two miles away, so that water came from a