Expressions of this hope and even several ineffectual attempts to realize it since Chekhov's first literary success have already been chronicled. During all of 1891 and the early months of 1892 he pursued the hope, and its fulfillment became an essential condition of his peace of mind. At the end of October, 1891, he wrote Suvorin that he was reading War and Peace with the same interest and naive wonder that he had experienced on first reading it. He disliked only the portrayal of Napoleon, in which forced explanations and tricks of all sorts made him appear stupider than he was. And he continued: "When I live in the provinces (about which I dream now day and night) I shall practice medicine and read novels." He had taken Suvorin entirely into his confidence about all the details of his plan of buying a place in the country, one aspect of which was the desire that his friend would purchase a house nearby.
Chekhov's interest still centered on the Ukraine, and in November he definitely commissioned his old friend there, A. I. Smagin, to search out a suitable place in the area of the Psyol. At first he had in mind a small farm which would be easily within reach of his slender means.
Toward the end of that month a letter from Smagin electrified him; his friend had turned up a house that would cost only five thousand roubles! The overjoyed Chekhov at once wrote for details and sent his sister, who relished the opportunity to see Alexander Smagin, to look over the farm. "Ah, if it should only come off! he added. "My soul yearns to escape from Moscow. . . . Every night spring smiles on me in my sleep." (November 21, 1891.) And the next day he hurried off a letter to Suvorin to tell him the good news and the wonderful plans he was building 011 it. "Ah, freedom, freedom!" he exclaimed. "If I can live on no more than two thousand a year, which is only possible in the country, I shall be absolutely free from all anxieties about the amount of money coming in and going out. Then I shall work and read, read. In a word, it will be marmalade and not just life."
As the days passed and the slow-moving Smagin failed to answer his several letters for information about the details of the house, the rooms and land, and a sketch of the place, Chekhov's fears mounted about the reality of this possible purchase. To hurry Smagin he warned him that he had already begun to collect furniture for the farm. Finally, before he left for Petersburg in late December on the business of raising money for the famine, he impatiently wrote Smagin: "If I don't move into the country this year, and if the purchase of the farm fails to go through for some reason, I shall be in the position of playing the part of a great villain in relation to my health. It seems to me that I'm dried up like an old cupboard, and that if I go on living in Moscow next season, and give myself up to scribbling excesses, Gilyarovsky will read an excellent poem to welcome my entrance into that farmstead where there is neither sitting nor standing nor sneezing, but only lying down and nothing more. It is absolutely essential for me to leave Moscow." (December 16, i8gi.)
Chekhov's fears about the availability of the farm turned out to be well-founded. He learned first from Masha and then from Smagin, at the beginning of January, 1892, that the owner of the place had decided not to sell it. And several other prospects which Smagin proposed in the same area were found, upon inquiry, to be unsuitable. "How sad this is!" he wrote his friend. "If you only knew what an unhappy disillusionment it is! Well, where am I to spend the summer? What am I to do? Where am I to search?" (January 4,1892.)
Shortly after this disappointment, and no doubt prompted now by a feeling of urgency, Chekhov asked his sister to inquire about an estate advertised for sale in the newspaper. Since it was in the Moscow province, far from the preferred Ukraine in the sunny south, Masha and also Misha demurred at what seemed like sheer foolhardiness. Besides, it was winter, the worst possible time to inspect the attractions or failings of an estate in the country. But Chekhov insisted, and his threat to go abroad in the spring if he did not buy a house settled the matter. Misha and his sister went to look over the place, and though they could not form a very clear idea of it, since it was buried under snow, their first tentative impression was favorable.
On the day Chekhov left for Voronezh to aid victims of the famine — February 2, 1892 — he wrote Lazarev-Gruzinsky to inform him that he had started negotiations to buy an estate which could be reached by third-class trains from Moscow for only one rouble and one kopeck. The purpose of the letter was to ask his friend to sound out a wealthy acquaintance on the possibility of a loan of fifteen hundred roubles, a request which was eventually turned down.
Chekhov actually committed himself to buying the estate, Meli- khovo, before seeing it. lie did not visit it until shortly after he returned from Voronezh on February 12. Melikhovo, truly an estate and not a mere farm, was two and one half hours by train from Moseow, near a little village of the same name, six miles from the Lopasnya station, and about fifteen from Serpukhov. There were 675 acres, about half of it poor woodland, an orchard, a "mangy stream," two ponds, and fruit trees. The house, like the auxiliary buildings on the estate, had been recently built, but its relative smallness disappointed him and it had no toilet. The room selected for his study pleased him because of its view and its three huge French windows. With a touch of humor he listed the effects that came with the estate: a piano, three horses, a cow, four geese, two dogs, ten wornout hens, a carriage, carts, sleighs, and seed beds. All this could be bought for thirteen thousand roubles, much more than he had ever intended to spend on a farmstead. Though he had no firm intention of farming the land, he eagerly listened to an account that he might obtain an income from produce that would run annually from one to two thousand roubles. In any event, his first view of Melikhovo that winter satisfied him, and the prospect of fishing from the window of his room — one of the ponds was only a few paces away from the house — delighted him.
The next few days, in which he became absorbed with notaries, banks, insurance companies, and "similar parasitical establishments," threw him into a frenzy. Everywhere he turned he had to pay for this or that service he had never anticipated. lie wrote V. A. Tikhonov: "I'm like a person who has entered an inn with the sole purpose of eating ehopped beef and onions, but, having met some fine pals, has gone to work on the bottle, got as drunk as a pig, and then has to settle an aeeount for 142 roubles and 75 kopeeks." (February 22, 1892.) Aetually, before the purchase was completed, he estimated that he had spent close to a thousand roubles for these extra expenses. And the owner of Melikhovo, a shaved-headed artist, N. P. Sorokhtin, infuriated Chekhov by his repeated lies about various details connected with land boundaries and the condition of the buildings.