Don't read the Ufa Province News: you won't find any information about Ufa province in it.
The Russian press has many sources of light at its disposal. It has the Komarovo Light, The Rainbow, Light and Shade, The Ray, The Little Light, Dawn et caet. So why is it still so dark then?
It has The Observer, The Invalid and Siberia.
The press has Entertainment and Little Toy, but it does not follow that it has much fun ...
It has The Voice and its own Echo ... Yes?
Whatever is ephemeral cannot boast about its Century ...
Rus has little in common with Moscow.
Russian Thought is sent... in a strong envelope.
Then there is Health and The Doctor, but meanwhile, how many graves there are!8
The following month The man without a spleen' submitted 'A Lawyer's Novel (A Statement)', following a model that was popular at the time in the weekly comic journals:
In eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, on the tenth of February, in the city of St Petersburg, Moscow district, 2nd quarter, in the house of the merchant of the second gi :ld Zhivotov, on Ligovsky Street, I, the undersigned, met the daughter of a titular counsellor, Maria AJexeyevna Barabanova, 18 years of age, of the Russian Orthodox faith, literate.. Having met che said Miss Barabanova, I experienced feelings of attraction to her. Since on the basis of article 994 of the Legal Code, unlawful cohabitation is punishable not only by repentance in church but also by legal costs, through the provision of the relevant statute (see the case of the merchant Solodovr 'kov, Appeal department decision, 1881), I asked for her hand and her heart. I married, but did not live long vith her. I fell out of love with her. Having signed over all her dowry to my name, I began to frequent inns, eldorados, gardens of delights, and carried on frequenting them for five years. And since, on the basis of statute 54 of vol. 10 of Civil Legal Proceedings, five years of separation without contact provides grounds for divorce, then I have the honour of humbly requesting Your Excellency to petition for divorce from my wife.9
Chekhov, or rather Antosha Chekhonte, soon became a regular, and increasingly popular contributor to Fragments. In addition to the snort stories and paroaies, Leikin commissioned him to start sending in satirical 'Fragments of Moscow L'te', under a new pseudonym to protect his identity. After they had exchanged friendly letters for a while, Leikin then suggested that he visit St Petersburg. In June 1884 Chekhov particularly wanted to be in the capital to promote his first short story collection, Tales of Melpomene (i.e., sell some of the copies he had paid for up front), and attract some critical attention. Coming to Petersburg was his 'most cher shed dream', he averred in a letter to Leikin in May 1884, but since he had to pay 200 roubles to finance the book's publication, on top of supporting 1 us family, paying the rent on the summer dacha, and covering his sister's university fees and so on, he simply did not have the extra hundred roubles he would need to make the trip.10 He was, after all, only making a few kopecks a line for his stories - rather less than the 9,000-rouble retainer paid to Leikin as the star journanst on the The Petersburg Newspaper.n In the event, Chekhov need not have worried about being left with remainders: Tales of Melpomene sold out within a year and made a profit, but it received only two small mentions in the St Petersburg press. Leikin issued another invitation to Petersburg later that summer, which Chekhov was again forced to decline, once more lamenting the fact that he had neither enough money, nor a nice aunt who could hand out long-term loans.12 Plans for a trip that winter also came to naught after Chekhov fell ill and began spitting blood.
In the summer of 1885 the need for Chekhov to start making his presence felt in literary circles in the capital became more pressing. People in the writing world wanted to meet Antosha Chekhonte in the flesh! By now, his work was appearing almost exclusively in Petersburg publications, and his continuing failure to visit the capital the following autumn started to become a joke. Petersburg really was not China, Leikin reasoned; it really was time he made the acquaintance of Sergei Khudekov, the editor of The Petersburg Newspaper. 'I myself know it's not China,' Chekhov replied in October 1885; 'and as you know, I've been feeling the need to make this trip for a long time now, but what am I to do? Thanks to the fact that I live in a large family, I never have a spare ten roubles in my hands, and the ti p will cost a minimum of 50 roubles even if I do it as cheaply as possible. Where am I going to get the money from? I wouldn't know how to extract it from my family, and don't even consider that as a possibility anyway.'13
In the end, it was the wealthy Leikin who made the journey possible by taking Chekhov back with him after his next trip to Moscow, paying for his first-class: ra'l fare and putting him up for two weeks at bis own expense. Even allowing for his understandable wish to embellish a few details, it is clear from the letter Chekhov wrote to his Uncle Mitrofan back in Taganrog the following spring quite how important his first trip to 'Piter' had been:
After you left us, just before Christmas, a St Petersburg editor came to Moscow and took me back to St Petersburg v\ 'th him. He took me first :lass on the express, which must have cost h;m a f?..r bit. I was given such a warm reception there that for the next two months my head was still spinning from all the praise. I had a magv'ficent apartment to stay in, a pair of horses, fabulous food, free tickers to all the theatres. I have never m my life lived in such luxury as I did in Piter. As well as lavishing praise on me and offering me the utmost degree of hospita су, I was presented with 300 roubles and sent home agai». first class ... It turns out I am much better known in St Petersburg than I am in Moscow.14
Neviky Proipekt, St Petersburg
Arriving in St Petersburg for the first time in 1885 was certainly a thrilling experience for Chekhov. As one British aristocrat put it earlier in the century, such was the monumental scale of the streets and buildings that carriages were reduced to nutshells and people to insects.15 The dignity and grandeur of granite-clad St Petersburg w as everywhere apparent. Having heard people in Moscow constantly complaining about St Petersburg, Chekhov could not help but be awed as he stepped off the overnight tra-'n and encountered wide avenues filled with speeding troikas gliding noiselessly over the snow, spacious squares, enormous classical buildings painted in bright colours, imperial ministries, opulent mansions, embassies, and foreign-looking domed cathedrals. Just off Nevsky Prospekt, right in the middle of town, was Nikolaevskaya Street, where the editorial office of Fragments was originally located, and it was one of Chekhov's first ports of call. A few doors down was the unusual Old Believer Church of St Nicholas the Miracle Worker, which Leikin showed him.16 He was also taken to the Hay Market, the setting for much of Crime and Punishment, and to the Field of Mars to see Leifert's famous puppet show. And on Nevsky Prospekt itself, near the Fontanka River, was Palkin, one of the city's top restaurants. Chekhov was taken to dine among the aspidistras of its ornate high-ceilinged dimng room by his new Petersburg acquaintances; he had never been anvwhere so smart.