Shakhovskoi came from a family v ;th a distinguished lineage. His grandfather had been a Decembrist - one of the liberal-minded nobles who had tried unsuccessfully to stage a coup ;n December 1825 in order to introduce a democratic form o( government - but these were hard times for Russian aristocrats. In the spirit of the times, Shakhovskoi worked conscientiously for the zemstvo, Russia's first form of local government, but this d id not help him pay R>fl his debts. By the spring of 1894, he had become so hard up he had to sell his ancestral home. In an echo of The Cherry Orchard, Vladimir Semenkovich, the engineer who bought Vask.no, started let ing out parts of his new property in the summer to dachniks.16 The way of life of the Russian nobility had truly begun to crumble. When he had sola Melikhovo and was living In Yalta, Chekhov once asked Semenkovich if he had a spare dacha for some of his friends. He had sometimes gone over to Vaskino to visit his new neighbours, with whom his relations were cordial, but often it was because he wanted to hea^ Mrs Semenkovich play the piano. She was a distinguished graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatoire, and a noted interpreter of Beethoven sonatas.17
II
Paterfamilias
Papasha groaned all night. When I asked him why he had been groaning, he replied: 'I saw Beelzebub.'
Letter to Alexander Chekhov, 30 December 1894
Frost 12°. Full Moon. О P. Kundasova and the Girl were taken to the station. Evening frost 16°. We ate fish soup.
Pavel Chekhov, diary entry, 30 December 1894
There were many attractions to buying Melikhovo for Chekhov. It meant no more rent to pay on apartments in Moscow, and no more worries about finding a summer dacha: the estate couid be lived in all year round. The cost of living became cheaper. Menkhovo immediately became a beloved holiday destination for Chekhov's brothers, all of whom had regular nine-to-five jobs and lived in town. Then there were assorted aunts, in-laws and cousins who came to stay as well. Although there was not a huge amount of space left ;.n the house after h 's parents and his sister had taken over rooms, Chekhov now had somewhere quiet to "work. He could at last escape from the literary limelight and start discreetly doing some good works. He also at long last had a garden to cultivate and the space to plant trees. The flatness of the landscape around Melikhovo would not have been to everyone's liking, but it suited Chekhov's unpretent'ous tastes. He found it inspiring, in fact, and was particularly entranced by the areas where there were trees. 'It's wonderful in the forest,' he wrote to Suvorin in May 1892. 'Landowners are very stupid to live In parks and orchards, and not in the forest. In the forest you can feel the presence of divinity.'18 Ever the dutiful son, Chekhov could now provide his parents with a permanent home where they could 1пи to the end of their days in security and comfort.
Chekhov had always lived with his mother n Moscow, but his father became a member of the household again now that he had finally retired from his live-in job at GavJlov's warehouse. Melikhovo was the first property which anyone in the fam ly had owned since the house Pavel Egorovich had built in Taganrog almost two decades earlier. Chekhov's father had to accept that he was not the authority figure at Melikhovo, which was not always easy. The rest of the family lived in Melikhovo on a part-time basis. Masha rented a flat in Moscow to live in during the school year, but came down every weekend and every holiday. With her organizational skills, quiet ndustry and unquestioning devotion to her brother, she immediately became an indispensable presence. Before he got married in 1896 (the wedding took place in the church at Vaskino), Misha spent long periods at Melikhovo working as the estate manager, sometimes setting off before dawn to work in the fields in the summer months. Ivan got married in the little wooden church in MeliKhovo ,n 1893, and frequently came down from Moscow to help out during the school vacations, working in the vegetable garden, for example, or churning butter.19 Alexander made several visits from St Petersburg, often with his two young sons who, on one occasion, he left with his younger brother without even the provision of a change of clothes
The first task which faced the Chekhovs when they moved into Mehkhovo in March 1892 was to make the house habitable. The previous residents had left it in a squalid state, and rooms had to be cleaned and painted, floors repaved, and the kitchen relocated to the building next door, which had previously been used as servants' quarters. Chekhov took over the sunniest room in the house for his study; this had previously served as the artist's studio. Its three large windows looked out over the garden - apple blossom in early spring, and roses later on in the summer. Within the first few weeks he had hung Levitan's painting of the River Istra on his wall (a souvemr of happy days at Babkino), and the photograph of him posing w;th Suvorin, Svobodin and Davydov in St Petersburg. Outside, the garden was tidied up, superfluous fences taken down, nesting boxes attached to tree trunks for starlings (a reminder of life in Taganrog), and work started in the greenhouses n preparation for the cultivation of cucumbers, radishes and other summer vegetables. Carpenters, joiners and stove-builders had to be taken on, as well as farm hands and people to work in the house. It was not easy, and Chekhov readily acknowledged his lack of experience n rural management. As he said to one friend, all he knew was that the earth was black,20 and the family was frequently taken advantage of in the early days by wily peasants. One of their horses was surreptitiously changed overnight for an old nag.
But slowly life settled into a rhythm. Once they became used to their new surroundings, the family began giving nicknames to the constituent pats of their kingdom, calling one of the ponds the 'aquari um' because of its diminutive size. They also augmented their menagerie with a pair of purebred snver-grey Romanov sheep (noted for the'r exceptional fertility), a fine pig. a bull, doves, and several more cows. True Russians, the Chekhovs also soon sniffed out where on their estate to find mushrooms, which were consumed with great relish at the dinner table. Except on the occas;ons when Chekhov's father harangued his w fe or chuntered on interminably about imperial decorations, mealtimes at Melikhovo were usually convivial. Chekhov had bought a bell which was fixed to a post in the garden, and at noon every day it was rung twelve times to call the family in to lunch. The sound of the bell could be heard several miles away, and in became the custom for everyone in the district to stop work and sit down to lunch at noon -1 Chekhov would ait at one end of the table in the dimng room at Melikhovo, so he could quietly slip away and retreat to his study when he wanted. His father was given the place of honour at the other end of the table, where he would drink from his own special carafe. It looked as if it contained a herbal concoction, but it was actually vodka. Sometimes the family dir ed op fish that had been caught in their own pond.
Each member of the family assumed responsibility for a particular task. Misha managed the work in the fields, where rye and oats were planted, and Masha took over the cultivation of vegetables for the family dinner table. When exotic summer produce such as melons, corn, aubergines, artichokes and asparagus started to appear, the family took to jok'ngly referring to the vegetable garden as 'the south of France' and the nam? stuck. Many of the local peasants had never even seen tomatoes before; for the Chekhovs it was a nostalgic nod to their southern roots. Evgenia Yakovlevna took charge of daily meals, along with the devoted family cook Maryusha (shortly to retire), and she supervised the pickling of cucumbers and cabbage and the drying of apples in preparation for the winter months.