The path of individual initiative along Tolstoy's lines naturally appealed to Chekhov. He knew that educated and wealthy groups in Moscow, disturbed over rumors of malfeasance in the local Red Cross office and the waste and shameless theft of funds, had vainly requested permission from the government to send their own agents into the famine- ridden provinces, to investigate on the spot and to open food kitchens if necessary. With the example in mind of his successful circumvention of top government officials in conducting his Sakhalin investigation, Chekhov saw no reason why he should not go directly to one of the stricken areas and by his own efforts, or in co-operation with a local agency, organize aid for the peasants. He recalled his old friend of Voskresensk days, the artillery officer E. P. Yegorov, who was now head of a Zems- tvo, or County Council, in Nizhny Novgorod, a province that had been badly hit by the famine, and he wrote him early in October to request an interview.
Shortly thereafter Chekhov was laid up for weeks with a severe attack of influenza, involving lung complications. The days of eonvaleseence dragged on wearily, saddened by an unusual series of deaths —his beloved Aunt Fedosiya; such elose friends as the poet Palmin and A. D. Kurepin, prominent Moscow journalist; V. P. Begichev, the distinguished father of Mariya Kiseleva; and Dr. Zinaida Lintvareva, for whom he wrote a moving obituary. Visits from Korolenko and old Grigorovich cheered him a bit, and he was pleased to receive a letter from Tschaikovsky with rather belated thanks for the dedication to him of Gloomy People, in whieh he wrote about how difficult it was for a musician to explain in words his feelings concerning art "and precisely how those attributes of your talent act so fascinatingly and captivat- ingly on me." And it was during this time, often while lying in bed, that Chekhov corrected the proofs for a separate edition of The Duel in book form, and put the finishing touches on The Grasshopper and The Wife, which concerned the theme of the famine and his conviction that the inspiration for human aid should come from the heart as well as from the head. In December, about the time he had fully recovered, Chekhov wrote another one-act play, The Jubilee, based partly on his short story, A Helpless Creature (1887). He revised it the next year, and though the comic elements in it are quite hilarious, there is a dark undercurrent of savage satire against some of the practices of private banks.
His old fear of facing the truth about his health probably had something to do with the slowness of Chekhov's recovery. "Medical treatment and anxiety about one's physical existence," he wrote Suvorin, "arouse in me something close to revulsion. I will not be doctored. I'll take water and quinine, but I'll not permit myself to be sounded." (November 18, 1891.) It was the family disease of tuberculosis that only a month before this letter had carried off Aunt Fedosiya.
As he regained strength Chekhov returned to his hope of participating in famine relief. He had warmly praised a piece on the subject by Suvorin in New Times that objected to the tendency of officials to blame the crop failure on the laziness and drunkenness of the peasants. "There is always a certain element of insolence," Chekhov wrote, "in being well-fed, as in every aspect of power, and that element expresses itself chiefly in the well-fed preaching to the hungry. If consolation is revolting at a time of real grief, what must be the effect of preaching morality, and how stupid and offensive such moralizing must seem." (October 19, 1891.) He wrote again to Yegorov, who had answered Chekhov's earlier letter by conveying a plan to buy up the cattle and the horses of the peasants in his Nizhny Novgorod district. For the peasants, unable to feed themselves or their stock, had to slaughter or sell it. This situation would virtually guarantee a repetition of the famine condition the following year since the peasants would be unable to run their farming operations effectively without their animals. Yegorov's intention was to buy the animals, feed them through the winter, and redistribute them to the peasants in the early spring.
Chekhov enthusiastically embraced this plan and he at once set to work to raise money to purchase the animals. With some practicality he decided that the best device would be an appeal in the press aimed at the rouble or half-rouble of the middle-class man, for rich donors, he reasoned, had already made their contributions to famine relief and would be unlikely to give more. Begging letters to friends also went out; personal visits were made. He had turned into one of the "philanthropic ladies," he wrote the architect Shekhtel, in asking him to make a plea for funds at any dinner or meeting he attended. And in making the same request of his Ukrainian friend A. I. Smagin, he informed him that he was out to raise 100,000 roubles. Ivanenko was asked to give a concert on behalf of the fund and Natalya Lintvareva for grain if there were any surplus on the family estate. And he interviewed the rich Varvara Morozova (not related to his mother's family) to persuade her to interest her favorite charity, the Committee on Literacy, to make a donation — he was unwilling to ask the millionairess herself for money, since he was her guest. Small sums began to dribble in. He kept a record of all who gave and the amounts, so he could publish the list in the press. Soon he was sending money to Yegorov, rather pitiful sums — now 116 roubles, then 17, next 11. To make matters worse, he kept sending this money to the wrong address in Nizhny Novgorod and valuable time was lost before he and Yegorov straightened the matter out.
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Disappointed but not discouraged, Chekhov went to Petersburg toward the end of December to try his luck at raising money among his friends there. He also wanted to talk to Suvorin, with whom he stayed, about a joint project on famine relief. The festivities at the beginning of the new year, however, seemed to have driven the hungry peasants out of his mind. At the Khudekovs' on New Year's Day, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Petersburg Gazette, Chekhov saw Lidiya Avilova again. In the three years since their first meeting, she had acquired two more children. Their conversation, as she recalls it in her memoirs, took a fanciful turn on an old-fashioned romantic theme that Chekhov would have ordinarily detested — that they had known each other in some life long forgotten. Lidiya represented herself as having "waited" for him in Moscow even before her marriage. " 'Why did you wait?' Anton Pavlovich asked in suq^rise," she quotes him as saying. " 'Because I wanted to know you so badly, and my brother's friend Popov told me that he often saw you and that you were a fine fellow and would not refuse his request to visit us. But you did not come.'" And she has Chekhov replying to this: "'Tell that Popov of yours, whom I don't recall at all, that he is my worst enemy.' " Tbough she appears to attribute a serious significance to this reply, it could also be entirely in keeping with the flirtatious manner he had adopted in this resumption of an acquaintance with a woman whose marriage name he had failed to take the trouble to ascertain three years before and therefore had not answered her letter. At this party she introduced him to her husband, and according to her both men behaved to each other with frigid politeness.