On a cold day toward the end of October, Chekhov's friend, the poet Palmin, and the stubby, corpulent, bushy-bearded N. A. Leikin, editor and owner of the well-known Petersburg humorous weekly, Fragments, drove in a carriage along a Moscow street. Leikin was visiting the eity in connection with the sale of his books. He was also in search of writing talent, and sought the aid of Palmin, one of his contributors. Suddenly the poet pointed: "There go two talented brothers; one is a writer, the other an artist. They collaborate in our humorous magazines."1
The businesslike Leikin at once stopped the carriage and was introduced to Chekhov and his brother Nikolai. Chekhov felt flattered. He remembered laughing over Leikin's tales in the humorous magazines he had read in the Taganrog library, and he could actually recall characters and incidents from the stories of this man who was now esteemed as an editor of a highly successful journal. Since it was too eold to talk on the street, Leikin invited them all to a nearby tavern. His mustache,
1 Palmin, in a letter to Chekhov at the end of October 1882, gives a somewhat different account of how Chekhov first began to contribute to Fragments. See N. I. Gitovich, "Iz dnevnika N. A. Leikina" ("From the Diary of N. A. Leikin"), in Literatumoe Nasledstvo (Literary Heritage), Moscow, i960, LXVIII, 499.
beard, gnd even his ears moved rhythmically to ehewing on a piece of sausage whieh he washed down with beer. Leikin quiekly came to the point. Would Chekhov care to send him his stories? They must be short, lively, and amusing. He would pay eight kopeeks a line, considerably more than Chekhov had been receiving. And he would also be interested to see some of Nikolai's illustrations.
Chekhov seeretly rejoieed. Here was an outlet at onee for the best of the rejected tales he had at home. Then there was the increased remuneration and the thought that so solid a magazine would pay on time. Nikolai, and perhaps even Alexander, eould be brought in! He immediately assured Leikin that he would send him manuscripts, and he expressed the hope that he would beeome a regular contributor to Fragments.
Chekhov lost no time. A little more than a week after his meeting with Leikin, he found a letter addressed to him in Fragments. The tale he had submitted was too long. "The form is excellent. Your collaboration has long been desired by us. Write more briefly and we will pay you more generously." Another parcel of manuscript promptly went off, and eight days later (November 14) Chekhov reecived a personal letter from Leikin informing him that of the five stories sent, three would be published and two returned. And Chekhov's first tale in Fragments appeared on November 20, whieh marks the beginning of his extensive association with that journal.
Stories followed eaeh other rapidly. Leikin urged him on and praised his efforts. Payments began to arrive and the delighted Chekhov wrote the editor that he would contribute to Fragments with speeial eagerness. In faet, his unexpected sueeess seems to have gone a bit to his head, for at the turn of the year we find him writing to his medical elassmate Saveliev, who had reeently married: "Darling mine, dear boy! The faet is I put my head in a noose. ... I cantered about all evening yesterday and achieved a drunken condition on five roubles of rum, nor did I eatch . . . I'm off right now to roam. Alas! Do forgive me, but what devil possessed me not to marry the daughter of a rieh merchant!" (January, 1883.)
The few sueh admissions in Chekhov's letters at this time exist as tantalizing reminders that neither his absorption in medieal studies, writing, and family responsibilities, nor his everlasting laek of money prevented him from somehow indulging in the eustomary gaiety and lovemaking of youth. Cryptie references to intimaeies with a ballerina and a French actress in Lentovsky's theater, to his expert knowledge of prostitutes, and to drunken parties with Palmin, army officers, and girls of dubious morality suggest a not inconsiderable devotion to the "science of the tender passions." But Chekhov was persistently evasive in conversation or correspondence about affairs of the heart, preferring always to treat them in a joking tone. To prying friends who wondered about the latest candidate for his affections or whether he was going to marry soon, he would reply with humor or even sarcasm, as in a note at this time to Saveliev's young wife: "I shall come to Taganrog at the end of June in the full hope that I'll find the bride you promised me. My conditions: beauty, gracefulness, and, alas, a little matter of twenty thousand! Nowadays our youth has become horribly mercenary." (February 24, 1884.) In general, Chekhov was extremely secretive about the personal and intimate concerns of his life. His deepest thoughts and feelings he expressed more readily not in letters, but to the readers of his tales. Even those closest to him did not know what went on in his soul. He could be good and kind without loving, helpful and flattering without belonging. Restraint was a characteristic of his personality as well as of his art.
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There was little such restraint in brother Alexander, who had fallen in love with a married woman whose husband refused to give her a divorce. He took her, as his common law wife, and her son to Taganrog, where, having lost his job on Spectator, he had accepted a position in the customs service. Chekhov excitedly wrote him there that he would soon receive Fragments, the best of the humorous magazines, to which he now contributed. And he generously offered to help his brother place his stories in this publication, an opportunity which Alexander badly flubbed by submitting tales entirely unsuited to Fragments. The younger brother, who as a schoolboy had deferred to Alexander's literary ability and advice to restrict the length of his "trifles," now in turn urged Alexander to make his tales "shorter and sharper."
However, his brother's letters from Taganrog over the end of 1882 and the first months of the next year chilled Chekhov's enthusiasm. Alexander always managed to turn good fortune into adversity; human weaknesses undermined the one and an inclination to make himself miserable led him to prefer the other. The post of a customs officer at Taganrog seemed demeaning to him, and life in this provincial town intolerable after Moscow. He was full of complaints on these scores, as well as about the cool treatment Uncle Mitrofan and other Taganrog relatives accorded the married woman with whom he was living. And nearly every letter concluded with some small commission to be performed by his brother.
One of Alexander's letters from Taganrog, in this case addressed to Nikolai, brought forth a lengthy rebuke from Chekhov. After a light beginning, in which he admitted to having read the letter, he took Alexander to task for his weepy complaints about Nikolai not writing him when Alexander knew full well that his brother would not even bother to answer business letters which offered attractive artistic commissions, and with not realizing that Nikolai was in the process of "destroying a fine, powerful Russian talent" by his loose living. Instead of "supporting and encouraging a talented and good-natured man with strong words which would be of inestimable use to him, you write him sad, dull words. ... If, instead of being teary, you had written about his work, then he would have sat down at once to his painting and would no doubt have answered you."