Suvorin himself must have worried about his young friend when he learned, at the end of 1892, that Chekhov had taken up with the liberal magazine Russian Thought. Before his death the actor Svobodin had intcrccded with Lavrov, who wrote a gracious apology for the offensive remarks he had printed about Chekhov two years previously. Soon Chekhov was having luncheons and dinners in Moscow with Lavrov and Goltsev, that other editorial pundit of Russian Thought, whose fussy professorish ways and academic liberalism had at one time amused him.
1 Here Chekhov refers to the ethnographer and writer, N. M. Astryev, who at this time was accused by the government of causing cholera riots. It is possible, however, that economic factors also played their part in the riots.
Over cigars and wine Chekhov discovered admirable qualities in these men whose liberal views he had been somewhat contemptuous of, and for their part they enjoyed his wit and occasional pranks, and eagerly looked forward to his contributions to their monthly.
This new alliance with a liberal magazine was in keeping with Chekhov's developing views. Yet when he informed Suvorin that he intended to contribute to Russian Thought, he quickly softened the blow by promising to send a story to New Times. His feeling of gratitude to his old friend was still proof against his growing detestation of the reactionary writers of his newspaper. The two of them even projected at this time a new periodical, which, like the several collaborations they planned, never materialized.
However, Chekhov's connection with Russian Thought soon threatened his intimate friendship with Suvorin. A chance occurrence was the immediate cause of hard feelings. In the scandalous bankruptcy of the company which Ferdinand de Lesseps had formed in France to finance the building of the Panama Canal, it was freely rumored that a Paris collaborator of New Times had accepted a bribe of five hundred thousand francs to influence public opinion in the lawsuit that followed. Suvorin's eldest son, Aleksci, who by now played a large role in directing his father's newspaper, went to Paris to investigate the charge and to rehabilitate New Times in public esteem. In his efforts, unfortunately, he represented himself as a champion of the whole Russian press which, he claimed, had been calumniated abroad by the accusation leveled against New Times. At this, Russian Thought ran an article ridiculing his pretensions. To make matters worse, Zhitel, a regular columnist of New Times, wrote a piece, with clear anti-Semitic overtones, damning an exhibition of the eminent Jewish sculptor, M. M. Antokolsky.
In answer to a letter from Suvorin, who harshly belabored Russian Thought for attacking his son, Chekhov in effect called a plague on both publications. He held 110 brief for the article in Russian Thought, he explained, but nevertheless he deplored the maliciousness with which regular contributors to New Times, Suvorin's son and Zhitel and Bur- cnin among them, had been vilifying personalities and causes. And he pleaded with Suvorin not to attempt to answer the attack in Russian Thought.
For some time now the mud-slinging type of criticism, a commonplace in the Russian press, had been positively revolting to Chekhov.
Shortly before this incident he had written Suvorin about D. I. Pisarev, a celebrated critic of the 1860's. Commenting on his well-known article on the poet Pushkin, he declared: "Pisarev is the grandfather and father of all the critics of today, including Burenin: the same pettiness in disparagement, the same cold and conceited wit, the same coarseness and indelicacy in their attitude to people." (March 11,1892.)
Chekhov's own criticism, though often sharp, was free of envy, meanness, or petty personalities. Turgenev, whom he was rereading at this time, he found charming but not nearly as good as Tolstoy, who would "never grow old. His language will age, but he will always be young." However, Turgenev's Fathers and Sons he found "magnificent" and "a work of genius." But he had little praise for the other major novels. Except for his secondary female types, which he felt were remarkably drawn, Chekhov condemned as "trash" Turgenev's heroines, nearly always regarded by other critics as his finest creations. He described them as insufferably artificial, crystal-ball gazers crammed with high-flown notions out of harmony with their place in society. "When you recall Tolstoy's Anna Karenina," he wrote Suvorin, "all these Turgenev ladies with their seductive shoulders are not worth a damn." (February 24, 1893.)
Whatever discretion Suvorin may have practiced in the ineident, his son called on Lavrov in the office of Russian Thought and slapped his face. Chekhov was outraged. "It means," he told his sister, "that all is ended between me and Suvorin, although he writes me sniveling letters. A son of a bitch who insults people daily and is noted for this strikes a man because they have scolded him. This is fine justice. It is vile." (March 11, 1893.) From Petersburg Brother Alexander wrote that both sons of Suvorin, Aleksei and Boris, were making life extremely difficult for him in his work on New Times. In the editorial office, he said, his colleagues were quoting the sons as charging Chekhov "with the blackest ingratitude. You, from beginning to end, are obligated to their old man for everything from money to glory. Without him you would be a nonentity. And as a token of thanks, you poke your nose into their family affairs and stir him up against his children."
Chekhov calmly replied that it was a matter of complete indifference to him what the sons of Suvorin thought, and as for the editorial office of New Times, he held most of its leading contributors in contempt. If he were worried over Suvorin's reactions to this quarrel with his sons, he gave no sign of it. Indeed, he waited for his old friend to take the first step. A penitent letter came, and Chekhov wrote Alexander: "This means that again all is as before." (April 30, 1893.) As yet the ties of self-interest and mutual devotion were too solid to be broken by such an incident, although Chekhov had once again gone on record in very positive terms against some of the journalistic practiccs of Suvorin's newspaper. A few months after this threat to their friendship, their correspondence became as warm and intimate as ever. When, in the summer of 1893, Suvorin announced his intention of going abroad again, Chekhov regretted that he could not travel with him because of his cholera duties at Melikhovo, and added: "In times of stress and dullness, where shall I go? To whom shall I turn? I fall into devilish moods when I long to speak and write, and except for you, I've no one with whom to correspond and to talk to at length. This does not mean you are better than all the people I know, but it does mean that I'm accustomed to you and that I feel myself free only with you." (August 7, 1893.) By the end of 1893 Suvorin's eldest son came to Moscow to make his peace witli Chekhov.