intolerable, had left the family and was living around the city with any friend who would take him in. He had completely surrendered to his weaknesses, which were aggravated, in his case also, by the dread signs of tuberculosis. Yet Chekhov's concern for this wayward brother never faltered. He continued to seek out artistic commissions for Nikolai and would bring him home to nurse hifii in his periods of illness.
Nikolai never demanded anything of his brother Anton, but Alexander's importunings went on ceaselessly. After leaving his position in Taganrog, he had worked for only a short time in St. Petersburg in the customs service before being transferred to Southern Russia to the post of secretary in the Novorossiisk customs office. Wherever he was or whatever he did, he moved in a self-created atmosphere of frustration and discontent; he complained constantly of living conditions, of his superiors on the job, or the people he worked with. The birth of another child added to his family burden, but he hopefully christened him "Anton." He accepted the honor, Chekhov wrote, and would give the baby a copy of his book and free medical service. More practically, Chekhov continued his efforts to increase his brother's income by giving him literary advice, arranging editorial contacts, and helping to place his manuscripts. Alexander had not been long in Novorossiisk • when he wrote: "You haven't got married; well don't. Let life be an example to you. . . . I'm always in debt." He had eight persons tafeed, he explained, himself and his wife, three children, and three servants. Chekhov found it hard to understand why his brother could not live in the provinces on 120-150 roubles a month when, a couple of years back, he himself had supported the whole Chekhov family in expensive Moscow on 100-120 roubles a month. Soon Alexander was pleading with him to borrow enough money to pay his debts and transport him and his family to Moscow or Petersburg from Novorossiisk, which he could no longer tolerate.
A touch of Alexander's improvidence existed in Chekhov's nature, and one form in which it manifested itself was his compulsive tendency to give rather than to receive. If he were unlikely to get rich soon in medicine, as he remarked to Uncle Mitrofan, one reason was his philanthropic attitude toward the practice of it. At first he worked hard, receiving patients from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon, and thereafter making calls. The calls often took him long distances and transportation expenses sometimes canceled the small fees he received.
On one occasion the inexperienced young physician, upon returning home from seeing a patient on the other side of the city, suddenly realized that the dosage of one of the ingredients he had prescribed would turn the remedy into a poison. He rushed back to his patient and arrived in time to prevent a catastrophe, but the cabby and not the doctor got the fee. Patients were numerous enough, but not paying ones. "My signature," he wrote to Leikin, "begins to take on a definite and fixed character which I attribute to the enormous number of prescriptions I write —of course, nearly all of them gratis." (November 17, 1885.) He became the favorite doctor of the indigent fraternity of newspaper and magazine writers, who constantly took advantage of his kindness. As a gesture of good will to the merchant Gavrilov, who employed his father, Chekhov readily agreed to provide free medical service to the firm's workers. And free advice to numerous friends of the family and to his own friends, in letters or in personal visits, made him wonder why had he not become a lawyer instead of a doctor. After many such visits to the home of his friend, the budding artist A. S. Yanov, where he treated Yanov's mother and three sisters for typhus, Chekhov left with the disturbing feeling that it might be wiser to drop his medical career. For their illness took a bad turn: the mother died, and then one of the daughters passed away while Chekhov, overwhelmed with a sense of futility, sat at the bedside holding her cold hand.
Nor did Chekhov's assurance to Uncle Mitrofan — that he lived well enough and wanted for nothing — bear much relation to his actual material situation. The main treat for his guests was still the cheap jellied- fish dish which his mother prepared so well. Knives and forks and a large teapot often had to be borrowed, and the dress coat in Alexander's jingle really belonged to a kind friend who loaned it to Chekhov when he attended the marriage of his colleague Dr. Rozanov. Pitifully small sums of money had to be borrowed. On February 17, 1886, he applied to the economics teacher, M. M. Dyukovsky, a close friend of the family: "I write so that you'll have still another manuscript of a great author. In ten to twenty years this letter may sell for 500-1000 roubles. I envy you." And then he asked for a loan of twenty-five roubles — "for I now have nothing but inspiration and an author's glory, but without firewood it gets cold." Hardly a week passed when he had to turn to him again for ten roubles more: "There's not a shadow of money in my pocket," he wrote. "Expenses are terrible." A summons to court by a creditor to discharge a hundred-and-five-rouble debt of Alexander and Nikolai reduced him almost to despair. In the facc of Leikin's repeated urging to visit Petersburg, he finally answered with unaccustomed sharpness: "Owing to the fact that I live with a numerous family, I never have a spare two roubles in my pocket, and a minimum of fifty roubles would be required to make this trip even in the most uncomfortable and cheapest manner. And where am I to get the money? I find it impossible to squeeze this out of family expenses. To cut their dishes down from two to one would cause me twinges of remorse and conscicnce. . . . To write more than I do now is out of the question, for medicine is not like the law profession: if you do not work, you fall behind. Hence, my literary earnings are a fixed quantity. They may become less, but not more." (October 12, 1885.)
Actually Chekhov combined practicality in money matters with a wastefulness that resulted from an expansive nature which compelled him to seek the happiness of all around him whatever the cost. To meet him meant to receive an invitation to his house, and these invitations were made with such charm, humor, and persuasiveness that they were well-nigh irresistible. "I hope, now that we are almost neighbors," he wrote to his cousin Mikhail at this time, "you will not be an infrequent guest, at least every week. Except for Tuesday, Thursday, and sometimes on Saturdays, I'm always at home in the evenings. Come early so you can stay longer. P.S.: On Tuesdays I'm home after nine, on Thursday only until nine, so that there is not a single day when you risk not seeing me." (October 12, 1885.) And guests came in numbers and often, attracted by his magnetic charm; but such hospitality added considerably to the family expenses.
Indeed, Chekhov's world of personal contacts began to expand rapidly as soon as he embarked on his medical career. Heedless of the cost, he believed it essential to provide a more appropriate setting for his work and for the family and their many friends. To expunge the memory of the philistine drabness of their old Taganrog milieu and the impoverished haunts of the early Moscow years seemed progress of sorts. He rented a house in a residential section across the Moscow River but soon left it for one nearby the first but larger and pleasanter to live in. Here they could all lead a fuller life, with adequate room to entertain in style. For the first time he had a study to himself, which also served as a medical office. Tuesday evenings were devoted to music. Guests from the conservatory performed, and his own literary and artistic friends came as well as those of Misha and Masha, who was being courted at the time. Without compunction Chekhov would drop his work for any gay gathering. He loved to attend the regimental balls at the Alexandrovsky barracks. A week of carousing as best man at the wedding of Dr. Rozanov and celebrating both Saint Tatyana's Day — the annual student festival at the university — as well as his own twenty- sixth birthday, left him with "a heavy head, spots in the eyes, and despairing pessimism." Apropos of this he wrote a friend, "The holidays cost me about three hundred roubles. Now, isn't that insane?" (January 18, 1886.)