The thought of five years of grueling medical studies in these drab surroundings and unpromising conditions of existence did not discourage Anton. It might have been easier to follow the example of Brother Alexander and hole up in a single room somewhere, free from the cares and expense of a large family. His scholarship assured him of three hundred roubles annually and he was prepared to earn whatever additional money he required. His experiences during the last three years at Taganrog had convinced him of his ability to fend for himself and keep up his studies at the same time.
Young as he was, however, Anton at once sensed the lack of direction in the family affairs, now that Pavel Yegorovich lived apart at his work and visited only on Sundays. The mild mother was used to taking and not giving orders, and she eagerly turned to Anton for the advice and guidance which her two older sons were unable or too unconcerned to offer. The younger children also accepted him as their authority in everything ("Father Antosha," Alexander jokingly dubbed him). With that deep feeling of loyalty and duty which was a part of his developing personality, Chekhov seriously undertook these new responsibilities. Practically, as well as morally, he now became the head of the family.
Soon a brief inner struggle took place between Chekhov and his father when the latter paid his weekly visits. For some time Pavel Yegorovich's iron control over his children had been crumbling. His separation from them, the fact that they were growing older, and his failure in business, all contributed to this loss of parental prestige. Now he felt the challenge in Anton's assumption of family leadership — and he resented it. His son's quiet but firm demeanor was not devoid of filial respect, but Pavel Yegorovich sensed that it was more formal than real, and entirely lacking in any of the old fear. Nor did the ironic attitude which of late Pavel Yegorovich had been adopting toward the excesses of Nikolai and Alexander impress the third son. The father clearly understood that no more lists of "Work Schedules and Duties" were to be tacked on the wall and no more beatings were to be administered. As time wore on, Pavel, like the rest of the family, submitted to Anton's authority; and eventually, under his son's enlightening influence, he actually began to regret his parental harshness of the Taganrog days.
"What does Anton say?" "What does Anton think?" was now heard in the household before any member made an important decision. His will became the dominant one, Misha recalls. "Remarks hitherto unknown to me were the order of the day in our family: 'That's not true,' 'We must be fair,' 'Don't tell lies,' and so forth." Lies and injustice, Chekhov tried to convey, were incompatible with any affirmation of human worth. He demanded that all contribute, however little it might be, to the material well-being of the family, and he set them an example by his willingness to accept the major financial burdens of the household. "His first thought was to pay for everything himself, to earn enough for all," his mother told a friend while reminiscing about her son's early days in Moscow.
Clearly, in starting out upon his career, there arose in Chekhov an irresistible urge to identify his family with himself in his struggle to grow out of the poverty, tawdriness, and unrefincment of the milieu into which he had been born. As "head of the family" he had taken over the old vision of Pavel Yegorovich, but he instinctively realized that success achieved on his father's scale of values would not be worth the effort. His own scale, however, was still imperfect, but then he realized that everything in nature has its price — that gentleness, humane feelings, and a kind disposition are attained only by means of sacrifice. These qualities he himself had to acquire before he could impress them on the members of his family. And toward the end of his life he admitted that as a young man there were elements of harshness and hot temper in his disposition and that he had learned to control these defects only by rigorous self-discipline.
The struggle, no doubt, was a difficult one, for it began at the point where this nineteen-year-old youth took upon himself the support of his family, which he never entirely relinquished for the remainder of his life. Further, as he prepared to enter the university, he had on his mind the need to help pay for the education of his younger brothers and sister, the secret wish to make Alexander and Nikolai realize the true dignity of their talent, and the hope that he would eventually be able to release his father from humiliating employment and improve the sorry material circumstances of his mother's existence.
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On a sunny morning in August 1879 Misha showed his older brother the way to Moscow University on Mokhavaya. Chekhov entered the battered gates of the old building, passed the drowsy caretaker, and sought the registration place for first-year medical students. The small, dirty room with its low ceiling and bare grimy walls, packed with noisy, pushing students and filled with tobacco smoke, made a disagreeable impression on him. He had imagined the university as an elegant temple of learning, and found it a collection of dilapidated, gloomy, and unattractive buildings.
He quickly discovered, however, that the courses of the School of Medicine were regarded as the most difficult ones to pass in the university, and that its staff included many distinguished teachers and scientists. Lectures and laboratory work occupied the first-year students from early morning till three in the afternoon. Chekhov took his new studies very seriously, attended lectures regularly, and faithfully performed all required tasks. But after a few months of application he began to wonder about his chances of succcss. The status and security which he associated with the profession of medicine now seemed a long way off and obviously could be achieved only by the hardest kind of effort.
A good deal of collaborative medical study and social fraternizing went on between Chekhov and the three student lodgers. The unpleasantness of their crampcd, dingy basement, as well as the improved material situation of the family, soon brought about a move, in September, to a slightly larger second-floor apartment in the same Grachevka district. Zembulatov and Korobov now occupied one room and Saveliev another, but Anton, Nikolai and Misha had to crowd into a third. Though their lodgers stayed on only for the remainder of the university term, Chekhov's friendship with them continued years after they had all become physicians. While they were still students, we find Chekhov writing to Saveliev to thank him for the "ravishing frock coat" he had borrowed to attend the marriage of another medical student. On the other hand, with that endless, self-sacrificing generosity which became one of Chekhov's most lovable traits, he responded to Saveliev's request for a small loan, money which he had to scrape together himself: "Don't think you are embarrassing me. That is not a comradely thought. And I'm literally in no sense making a sacrifice in lending you the money." (February 6, 1884.)
Apart from his lodgers, two of them former Taganrog classmates, Chekhov made no other close friends among the numerous medical students. This is all the more surprising in that the majority of them had in common with him not only the same professional studies, but also the same problems of existence — the everlasting search for odd jobs to pay their rent, to replace a threadbare coat, or to mend a pair of boots so they would not have to go to class wearing only leaky galoshes.