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By the end of September, 1&86, it had become clear that the income necessary to maintain the new house and this kind of hospitality would make a mockery of Grigorovich's stern injunction to Chekhov to write less. He must write more and more. Being a prominent author, he informed his good friend Mariya Kiseleva, was hardly a delight. "To begin with, it's a gloomy life. Work, from morning to night; and not much sense in it." Money was as scarce as hens' teeth, he informed her, he had cigarettes only on holidays, and yet he was writing terribly hard for at least five different publications. Though he had not set up his shingle on the new house, he found that he must still continue his medical practice. Then turning more cheerful, he admits that "the writing business has its good points too." His book was not doing too badly, money would arrive in October, and he was already beginning to reap some laurels: "People point me out in restaurants, pursue me just a wee bit, and treat me to sandwiches. . . . When medical colleagues meet me they sigh, bring the conversation around to literature, and assure me that medicine disgusts them." And to the question she had put to his sister about his marrying: "The reply is no, and I'm proud of it, for I'm above marriage!" And he concludes with the fillip of a man for whom money is as scarce as hens' teeth: "A few days ago I was at the Hermitage and ate oysters for the first time in my life. Not very good. If the Chablis and lemon had been omitted, they'd be absolutely revolting." (September 21, 1886.)
Mariya Kiseleva, who now wished to combine fiction for adults with her children's stories, was making heavy use of - Chekhov as a literary adviser. He had already begun the practice of assisting aspiring authors and the effort increased in volume as his fame grew. Rarely was his study table free of the manuscripts of novices. He undertook this self- imposed obligation with care and assiduity. At times it almost seemed as though he were running a professional literary agency, with several trained assistants at his command. Long letters of detailed criticism would go back to the authors with their manuscripts which were sometimes meticulously edited or even rewritten. A promising author might be urged to send him still more stories to read. Or he would try to place the manuscripts himself or personally talk to a publisher in an effort to interest him in putting out a book for a beginner. And frequently he attempted to use his influence on editors of magazines to publish notices or reviews of the work of some young writer. Chekhov simply could not remain indifferent to an appeal for aid of any kind. If one could not give everything that was asked, he insisted, one must at least give something. In responding to requests for help, he never worried about being deceived by impostors. It was better to be deceived by them, he argued, than fail to answer an appeal for assistance.
Toward the end of November Chekhov took his sister for a visit to Petersburg not very long after he had written the architect Shekhtel (he had drawn in the letter a picture of himself hanging by the neck from a hook): "The fact is that the firm of A. P. Chekhov and Co. now experiences a financial crisis. If you don't lend me twenty-five to fifty roubles to the first of the month, then you are a heartless crocodile." (November 19, 1886.) And he offered brother Nikolai, who already owed hundreds of roubles, mostly to Shekhtel, as surety. In Petersburg Chekhov and his sister were the guests of Leikin, who by now was deeply worried about losing his most popular author as a regular contributor to Fragments. The trip seems to have been largely a brotherly gesture — to introduce Masha to the capital. Chekhov expressed his delight over her raptures and the fact that gay lieutenants pursued her. His only comments on his own activities are in a letter to Mariya Kiseleva. He rushed about town paying calls and listening to compliments "which my soul abhors. Alas and alack! In Petersburg I'm becoming fashionable, like Nana. While Korolenko, who is serious, is hardly known to the editors, all Petersburg is reading my twaddle. Even Senator Golubev [her brother-in-law] reads me. This is flattering, but my literary sensitivity is outraged. I feel ashamed of the public, which runs after literary lapdogs simply because it fails to notice elephants, and I'm deeply convinced that not a single dog will know me when I begin to work in earnest." (December 13, 1886.)
Chekhov, of course, liked success, but as these observations suggest, he had not lost his critical integrity in the face of sudden popular recognition. However, he had hardly returned to Moscow when he began receiving letters from Alexander, who had just taken up his position on New Times, which might easily have convinced him that he was an elephant and not a lapdog. "Your last piece, On the Road, has caused a furor in Petersburg," Alexander wrote. "Everywhere the only recommendation I hear is: 'The person I have the honor to present is the brother of that Chekhov who writes for New Times.' May the devil take you!" Coming out of Suvorin's office, Grigorovich bumped into Alexander and almost kissed him, thinking he was Anton. And when the confusion was straightened out, the old man went into ecstasies over On the Road. Alexander told of attending a meeting of a literary society and hearing a paper read on Chekhov's art. An Article by the established critic L. E. Obolensky, entitled Chekhov and Korolenko, had already appeared in the serious and well-known periodical Russian Wealth, in which Chekhov was praised as a greater literary artist than his eminent rival. In my presence, wrote Alexander, people talk as though they were convinccd that there is "a divine spark in you, and as though they were expecting something from you — just what they do not know." The press, in its customary recapitulations of literary accomplishments at the conclusion of the year, devoted considerable space to the youthful writer Chekhov as a coming new force in Russian literature. And on February 2, 1887, Chekhov was informed that he had been elected a member of the Literary Fund, an old organization to aid needy authors and scholars. It was a distinguished honor, accorded to prominent men of letters.