The weather here at the dacha is foul. Endless rain and dampness. The landscape looks so foul I can't bear to look at it. I envy you if it's dry, warm and quiet where you are. I've got a cold, the members of my family all have colds and bronchitis, the cab drivers charge a fortune, I'm not catching any fish. . . there is no one to drink with and I can't drink anyway . . time to shoot myself really!
Some boys have just brought me a pair of woodpeckers and asked twenty kopecks for them; I gave them five and let the birds go. They obviously got a taste for it though and brought me another pair. I took the birds and slapped them round the ears There's an example for you of my amusements at the dacha.46
It was clearly time for the family to look further afield for then summer retreat; Chekhov was growing restless. ..
CHEKHOV II
Luka
Venice is incredibly reminiscent of Luka.
Letter to N. Lintvaryova, Genoa, 1 October 1894
Soon after 'The Steppe' was, published in March 1888, the family started wondering where they should spend the summer. After his travels to the steppe the previous spring, Chekhov wanted to go south again: to the region around the Svyatogorsk Monastery or to the leafy area on the sea outside Taganrog where there were dachas to rent. He needed fresh nspiration now, and did not want to return to Babkmo.47 He had also begun to cough a great deal, which made a dacha in the south an even more attractive proposition. Through the recommendation of a friend, Chekhov eventually settled, sight unseen, on a dacha near the town of Sumy in the eastern part of the Ukra le (since he was the one paying, he had the right of veto). The dacha was once again a Fltigel on the estate of an impoverished gentry family called Lintvaryov, but in a considerably worse state of repair than Babkino. Misha was commissioned to make a detour on his journey to Taganrog at the end of April to inspect the property. After the carefully tended flowerbeds of Babkino, Misha was dismayed to find a garden that looked more like an abandoned wood, complete with the graves of the owners' ancestors, not to mention an enormous puddle in the middle of the central courtyard in which there were ducks and pigs splashing about. And the liberal-minded Lintvaryovs took a dim view, according to Misha, of his student uniform with its shiny buttons, which to them proclaimed conservative tendencies.48 Chekhov was not put off, however, and he left on 4 May with his sister and mother on the train from Moscow. He would be away from home for the next four months.
Chekhov took to the new dacha straightaway and wrote to his brother in a state of exultation:
Ivan! We
've arrived. The dacha is splendid. Misha lied. The location is poetic, the annexe is spacious and clean, the furniture is comfortable, and
there is lots of it. The rooms are bright and attractive and the landlords seem very nice.
he lake is huge, about a kilometre long. From the look of it, there is a ton of fish in it.
Tell Papa that we look forward to seeing him, and that it will be quiet for him here. Babkino can't hold a candle to this dacha. The noise at night alone is enough to drive you wild! Everything smells glorious, the garden is completely ancient, the Ukrainians are very amusing, and the courtyard is sDick and span. There is not even a trace of a puddle.
It's incredibly hot. I don't have the energy to go around in a starched shirt.
Greetings to everyone; hope you are well. Travelling to Sumy is boring and very tiring. Bring a bottle of vodka with you. The vodka here stinks of the WC.
I'll keep Papa here for 3 weeks. That will be pretty good!
Yours, A. Chekhov
The rivei is wider than the Moscow vei. There are lots of boats and islands. Details to follow tomorrow or the day after tomorrow.49
The dacha may have been convenient, as Chekhov wrote in his follow- up letter, but it d;d not have any conveniences, and he wondered what it would be like beetling into the bushes when the weather was not so warm and dry.50 But having one's posterior bitten all over by mosquitoes51 was a small price to pay for being able to sit by an open window and hear nightingales, cuckoos and hoopoes singing in the garden, and horses whinnying as villagers rode past on their way to the river to fish.
The river was a major attraction. The Lintvaryovs' estate was situated on the steep southern bank of the River Psyol, a beautiful deep tributary of the mighty Dnieper, fringed with oaks and wi'lows. The opposite bank was gently sloping, and dotted with white cottages and gardens. The previous year Chekhov had watched an icon procession by boat on the feast of St Nikolai during his visit to the Svyatogorsk Monastery; in 1888 on 'Spring Nikola', as it was popularly referred to ('Winter Nikola' being celebrated in December), he en oyed watching villagers wafting down the river in boats, playing violins. Every day, he went by boat to the watermill to fish, and he decided that rowing was extremely good exercise.52 The locals were also passionace fishermen and Chekhov reported to his brother Ivan that he had got to know many of them, was learning all their secrets, and had already caught a pike and a perch. He had brought with him a rod and floats, but he asked Ivan to bring from Moscow an assortment of hooks of various sizes necessary for catching cat-fish, plus a selection of novels and lives of saints to give away to the lads who dug worms for him.53 He went fishing all night wifh the local fishing enthusiasts on the eve of Tr nity Sunday (the feast celebrated fifty days after Easter, which traditionally marks tKe transition from spring to summer in the Russian calendar). 'But what is most important,' Chekhov wrote revealingly in another early letter that summer, 'is that it s so spac ous here that I feel I have received for my hundred roubles the right to live in a space which has no visible end to it.'
Despite, or because of, his adventures in the steppe the previous spring, Chekhov's deep-seated need to experience a sense of physical freedom had become, if anything, more intense. He was also utterly intoxicated by the beauty of his surroundings, the sounds, the sights and smells of which became a rich reservoir of memories to draw on in the coming years for the stories and plays he would write. The way of life in Sumy seemed to fit the sort of cliche long ago rejected by editors, and included:
. . . nightingales that sing day and night, the sound of dogs barking far away, old, overgrown gardens, very poetic, sad estates, totally run-down, in which live the souls of beautifu1 women, not to mention old servants, former serfs w'th one foot in the grave, and young girls thirsting for the most cliched kind of romance; not far from me there is even the trite cliche of a watermi'l (with 16 wheels), with a miller and his daughter who always sits at the window obviously waiting for something. Every single thing I see and hear seems familiar to me from ancient lore and fairy tales.54
The Chekhovs joined a well-established community when they arrived at Luka, as the Lintvaryovs' estate was called, and Ivan was sent a diagram showing who lived where; this even included the little cottage that was home to Panas, one of the young boys who dug for worms. Ъе Chekhovs' annexe was a building with a porch and columns, facing on to a little garden with an olive tree in it. Next door to them was another holidaymaker, and the kitchen where the Polish cook Anna (wife of the local postman) prepared meals for the family: lunch was served at one, tea at four and dinner at ten, although Chekhov liked to eat eanier - he disliked going to bed on a full stomach, and was proud to report that he was not drinking vodka at all. Further along was the house rented by Gi^ory Artemenko, who had a job at the local factory and an ability to reel in huge cat-fish every night. The widowed Alexandra Lintvaryova, mistress of the estate, lived with her three grown-up daughters and younger son in the unpretentious white manor house surrounded by trees, and the eldest son, Pavel, lived in a separate annexe with his pregnant wife (Chekhov helped with the birth of their baby son in early July).55 The garden was full of tulips and lilac when the Chekhovs arrived, and the white acacia was just about to come into blossom.