Chekhov was not by any means an implacaole opponent of hunting - 'St Peter's Day', a comic skit about an mruly shooting party, which was the twelfth story he published (in June 1881),29 was 'dedicated with pleasure to gentlemen hunters who are either bad at shooting or cannot shoot'.30 All the same, he himself was never as keen on shooting as his friend Levitan. It would be some time before he fully formulated his own environmental pnilosophy (he had, after all, just turned twentv-two), but his outspoken condemnation of the wolf-baiting certainly contributed to the outcrv that led to it never agam being exhibited to a public audience.31 Chekhov was clearly rather in awe of the Sabaneev family. Apart from Leonid Sabaneev, with his encyclopaedic knowledge ot the natural world (he was apparently able to distinguish individual birds among the hundreds singing in a forest),32 there was his elder brother Alexander, Professor of Chemistry at Moscow University, who was currently teaching Chekhov at medical school. There were five other brothers working in different spheres, and in the summer of 1884 Chekhov published a short art cle about them all.33 In an eerie parallel to the future course of Chekhov's life, Sabaneev was treated for advanced tuberculosis in the summer of 1897 by the famous Prof. Ostroumov, the same doctor who nad treated Chekhov just a few months earlier when he had started haemorrhaging from the lungs. Like Chekhov, Sabaneev was sent against his inc nation to Yalta, where he died at the age of fifty-four in March 1898 - six months before Chekhov moved to the Crimea himself. He was buried in the cemetery in Autka, the Tatar village on the outskirts of Yalta where Chekhov was to build his house.34 Chekhov has left no record of visiting Sabaneev's grave, but he kept, and brought with him all the way to Yalta, the issue of Nature and Hunting in which his story had appeared back in December 1883.35
During his summers at Babkino, when he was not fishing Chekhov went out shooting with Levitan - he reported to Leikin in the middle of July 1885 that his family had just consumed sixteen grouse and duck shot by Levitan.36 He also played croquet, treated patients from the nearby villages, and went for walks to think up ideas for the stores he worked on every morning and afternoon. His favourite walks took him to the woods to hunt for mushrooms and past the lonely little church which held only one service a year. Across the river in ВаЬкто, its ghostly bell could be heard tolling at night when the watchman who lived in the adjacent lodge struck the hour. The church inspired two suitably atmospheric stories: 'The Witch' (1886), about the deacon of a remote church who believes his unhappy wife conjures up snowstorms and bad weather in order to lure male travellers to take refuge in their house,37 and 'An Evil Business' (1887), in which a similarly remote church is burgled at night while the watchman's attention is distracted
The Chekhovs so en;oyed staying at Babkino in 1885 that they rented their dacha from the Kiselyovs for the following two years as well. It was a good arrangement; they paid a modest sum for the annexe in the grounds, but were free to enjoy the estate's amenities - the landscaped park, the r;ver, and the stimulating society of their new friends, who subscribed to all the literary journals.39 After eignt o'clock supper, the Chekhovs would usually walk over to the main house to spend convivial evenings with the Kiselyovs and their summer guests, who included the retired tenor Mikhail Vladislavlev who, back in 1863, had performed Siegfried's forging song in Moscow in front of Wagner, and was still capable of hitting a top D. A permanent summer guest was Alexei Kiselyov's father-in-law, the former Moscow Imperial heatres
Director Vladimir Begichev, a talented and cultured man now in his late fifties who had co-written the scenario for Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake. While he played patience, his daughter Maria, Vladislavlev, and other guests would sing or play the piano. It seems Chekhov learned a lot about music while he was staying at Babkino, and was regaled with stones about the celebrated musicians, including Tchaikovsky, who were family friends.
The months spent in the Moscow countryside were fundamental to Chekhov's creativitysin the noddle of the 1880s, inspiring an increasing number of poetic stories in among the more frivolous pieces that were hastily scribbled to pay the rent and satisfy the demands of a reading public clamouring for cheap laughs. On 6 May 1885, the day Chekhov set off with his family to stay at Babkino, his first story for a national newspaper was published/0 He was still sign'ng 1 s work 'Chekhonte', but writing for The Petersburg Newspaper, with ts higher circulation and greater prestige, gave him the confidence not only to start taking his writing more seriously, but also to write serious stories. Among the most lyrical pieces of prose written under the direct impact of the forests and the fields was a story called 'The Huntsman', set on a hot July day at the beginning of the shooting season:
A sweltering, muggy midday. Not a cloud in the sky. . . The scorched grass looks dejected and hopeless: even if there were to be rain, it is too late for it to turn green now . . . The forest stands motionless and silent, as if the tops of the trees are looking somewhere or waiting for something.
A tall, narrow-shouldered man of about forty, wearing a red shirt, high boots and patched trousers handed down from his boss, is sauntering with a lazy swagger along the edge of the clearing. Now he is sauntering down the road. On the right is a mass of greenery, and on the left a gold ocean of ripened rye stretches as far as the eye can see. He is red-faced, and sweating. A white cap with a straight jockey's peak, obviously a charitable gift from some gentleman, sits rakishly on his handsome head of fair hair. There is a game-bag swung across his shoulder in which there is a squashed black grouse. The man is holding a cocked double-barrelled gun in his hands and looking through narrowed eyes at his scraggy old dog which has run on ahead and is sniffing around in the bushes. Everything awe has hidden from the heat.. .41
It was this story that prompted the venerable Dmitry Grigorovich to write his famous fan letter to Chekhov on 25 March 1886:
About a year ago I happened to read a story by you in the Petersburg Newspaper, I don't remember what it was called now; I just remember that I was struck by qualities of particular originality, but mainly by the remarkable authenticity and truth in the depiction of the characters and the descriptions of nature. Since then I have read everything signed by Chekhonte.42
Chekhov claimed that he never spent longer than a day writing his stories, and revealed that 'The Huntsman' was written down by the river.43
It was very hot at the end of May 1886 when Chekhov came back with his family to the dacha at Babkino for the second time. Desperate for rain, the peasants had even started walking round the fields with icons.44 Although he had his hands full with sick villagers seeking his care, and then both his unruly elder brothers to keep an eye on when they came to stay, the heat made Chekhov feel listless. Finally the weather changed, the Istra burst its banks after weeks of incessant rain, and the year's harvest was ruined. It seemed to Chekhov as if the whole summer was ruined too.45 He felt rather the same way the following summer, when his family returned for a third stay at Babkino. Bad weather made Chekhov miserable, and the letters he sent in 1887 conveyed his low spirits: