Spring came very late at Melikhovo in 1893, with snow on the ground until well into April. The bad weather, as always, made him irritable, and he assured Alexander that he would turn into a drunkard if the sun did not shine. The house had settled in the winter so that the doors were out of line, the snow prevented the farm animals from grazing which meant extra expense for feed, and for weeks the roads were impassable.
At the beginning of May the weather improved and so did Chekhov's disposition. Again his mind seethed with projects — an apiary, a little house in the woods to get away from the guests, the planting of more trees and flowers, a road through the fields so visitors would not have to approach the house by way of the unsightly village. And again the farming got under way, and once more the harvest turned out to be a bountiful one. Happily he wrote Suvorin: "My family costs me nothing now, since lodgings, bread, vegetables, milk, butter, and the horses are all my own and don't have to be bought. And there is so much work, time does not suffice. Of the entire Chekhov family it is only I who may lie down or sit at a table, all the rest toil from morning until night. Drive the poets and fiction writers into the country! Why should they exist as beggars and live on the verge of starvation? Surely city life, in the sense of poetry and art, cannot offer rich material to the poor man." (April 21, 1893.)
Chekhov had come to believe this by the end of his second summer at Melikhovo. A dream had been realized and a pattern of existence established that might have satisfied him for the rest of his life if fate had not intervened. He had turned this rather rundown estate into a charming oasis, and he came to love it as something he had created. Friends noticed that at Melikhovo he seemed like a different man, free of the distracted look that often came over his fine features among friends in the city. In the country he was never a spectator but always the active person. Close to nature he seemed to be more himself. When he sat on his favorite mound before the gates of Melikhovo and looked directly into the fields, his eyes lost their sadness and were clear and calm. There were the usual periods of restlessness and dissatisfaction, but on the whole his life at Melikhovo was intense and full. He had his trees and flowers to care for. Guests were endless. The practice of medicine occupied him. And soon he became involved in various community problems. Above all, Melikhovo provided him with rich artistic
material and helped to inspire perhaps his greatest creative period.
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"Well, now, let us all gather at the muddy spring, for on its edge grow splendid salted and peppered mushrooms," Chekhov would announce, and with laughter at this sally the family and guests at Melikhovo would sit down to dinner. This was a family joke at the expense of his father, who had told of a sermon he had heard at the village church: A thirsty traveler came upon two springs in a forest, a pure one and a muddy one, and he drank from the muddy spring — that is, vodka at the village tavern, instead of faith at the pure fount of the church. If anything, Father had grown more religious in his old age. He never missed church, went through the house swinging a smoking censer pot on holy days, and when not working in the garden, spent much of this time in his cell-like room poring over thick folios of the lives-of the saints. At night, when all had gone to bed, he could be heard praying before the ikon in his room and softly chanting the psalms and church ritual. The first Easter at Melikhovo he came into his own when asked to direct an improvised choir at the local church. A priest had to be hired from the nearby Davydov Monastery by taking up a collection of eleven roubles from the village parish, since the church did not have its own priest. The family and their guests composed the choir. Chekhov's harmonious baritone rang out loud and clear. The local peasants were immensely pleased with the service and with the musical efforts of this new family in their midst. And the old father, too, was delighted. Later he told one of the guests what a wonderful voice Chekhov had had as a child when he sang in his choir and how angelic all thought him.
It was a subject that Chekhov preferred to forget, as well as the compulsory church attendance and beatings that had darkened his childhood. Even now he could not treat his father with the affection that he showed his mother. In general, all the children respected their father, but it was a respect mingled with a kind of jocularity that evidenced their freedom from the parental authority which had once been so stern. When guests came he always deferred to Chekhov as the head of the household. Sometimes the father annoyed his son by his severity to the peasants, and by his naive philosophizing. He would pose such questions as: "What is the snow doing here?" Or "Why is that tree here and not there?" He could be stubborn in his ignorance, as when he insisted on referring to "Adulteration of Milk," which he had read about in a newspaper article, as "Classification of Milk."1 His preoccupation with recondite religious matters sometimes bored visitors, for he was capable of tiresomely arguing the point of why the Anna Award, First Degree, had been given to a Kostroma church official when an older church official of the same rank at Mozhaisk had received nothing. Chekhov rather unfairly complained to Alexander that the old man, like all Taganrog natives, was incapable of any work around the house except lighting the lamps. Mischievously he parodied his father's humorlessly bare entries of arrivals and departures in the diary which he kept at Melikhovo by inserting such lines as: "May 18, No. 1: It is
1 The father confused the Russian word falsifikatsiya with klassifikatsiya.
snowing. Thank God, all have gone, and only we two, I and Madame Chekhova, remain."
Although his gentle mother could also be exasperating in her provincial habits and uncomprehending mind, she blossomed as mistress of the manor at Melikhovo, delighted that now, unlike the old Tangan- rog days, she did not have to pinch in planning meals. She doted on feeding the family and guests well. Arising before all and going to bed late, her hands were never idle. And at night, for one of Chekhov's favorite woman friends she would slip quietly into the guest's room and place a snack at the bedside: "In case, child, you should suddenly become hungry." Often in her simple manner she would reminisce about Chekhov's childhood and youth, for she reverenced this son who had provided his mother and father with such a "cosy corner" in their old age. She anticipated his desires and every change in his mood was reflected on her face. He had only to emerge from his study and glance at the wall clock for her to jump up from her sewing and bustle off to the kitchen, exclaiming: "Oh dear! Antosha wants his dinner!"
The old hope that Chekhov had often expressed, of obtaining a place in the country which all members of the family could think of as home, was now realized — in the summers, at least. Even Alexander from Petersburg took his vacations with his children at Melikhovo. He had decided to become a vegetarian, and for the thousandth time had sworn off liquor, probably as usual after he got involved in one of his periodic quarrels at New Times. Of late, however, his stories, a few of which Chekhov praised highly, had been getting into the major magazines. He had also written a small technical book and found himself in demand as an editor on periodicals. With the slight improvement of his financial situation, he hinted broadly that he would like to buy a piece of land near his brother and build a dacha, a proposal that Chekhov parried. But their cordial relations, as well as their sparkling correspondence, continued, and Alexander as always was at his brother's call to perform services for him in Petersburg.