Letter to Lidia Avilova, 1 March 1893
We played croquet and lawn-tennis, then when it grew dark, spent a long time over supper
The House with the Mezzanine
Not many people know about Chekhov's passion for croquet, an ideally democratic game of precision and latent aggression that, foi good reasons, became most popular in England, the country with which it is still most strongly associated. By the time of the foundation of the All- England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club in 1869, however, people were playing croquet all over the world - ncluding n Russia. Obviously, in a country where there is winter for nine months and bad weather for three (as Voltaire famously put it),65 opportunities for getting out one's mallet are not as abundant as in foggy Albion, as Russians still like to refer to England,1 but the game immediately became wildly popular after it was imported by expatriate Britons at the end of the nineteenth century. The extent of its popularity can be gauged by the fact that Soviet citizens were enthusiastically playing kroket well into the 1920s and 1930s: as many as 20,000 copies of Cbesnokov's Description and Rules of the Game were printed in 1930. The notion of this decorous game being played agamst a background of collectivization and five- year plans does seem incongruous - until one studies the admonitions of a pre-revolutionary guide to croquet playing. The player must never forget that he is just a member of a team, exhorts the author: 'if every player only ever thinks about getting his ball through the hoops and hitting the post, never thinking about his comrades, croquet will become pointless and boring'.66
Chekhov's interest m croquet was therefore far from unusual. Indeed croquet was embraced by all sections of Russian society, from the imperial family and celebrities Lke the opera singer Chaliapin and the ballerina Anna Pavlova to the most humble dachnik. After moving to Melikhovo, Chekhov bought a croquet set in Moscow at the first opportunity, and the game was offered as an entertainment to his many house guests from the first summer there onwards. Chekhov started learning the technique of the krokirovka when he became a dachnik in the mid-1880s. He was apparently such an ardent player that he would insist on games continuing well after the sun had set. Sometimes it became so dark that he and his opponents would have to light matches in order to see the balls.67 Sadly, we have no chronicle of historic croquet matches played at Melikhovo: this was an occupation chat was far too frivolous to be recorded in Pavel Egorovich's annals. A single photograph of a game in progress suggests croquet was taken serously, however.68 It is safe to assume that it was Russian croquet which was played at Melikhovo. Like so many other cultural imports over the centuries, croquet was Russianized, with changes made to the layout of hoops (there was the 'Eagle' and the 'Andreyev Cross' style, for example), the number used (nine or ten), and the size of the court. Ironically, though, it is only in Russia where traditions of playing croquet with wooden balls have been preserved to this day at international level.
Chekhov was probably glad to have something with which to distract his guests. He was besieged by visitors at Melikhovo anc it was often difficult for bim to f'nd time to write. 'If you only knew how worn out I was!' he wrote to Suvorin in December 1892. 'I'm unbelievably worn out. Visitors, visitors, visitors ... My estate stands right on the highway to Kashira, and every passing educated person considers it necessary and obligatory to come and warm themselves up at my place, and sometimes even to stay the night. There's a whole legion of doctors alone! It's mce to be hospitable, of course, but there are limits. It was to get away from visitors that I left Moscow, after all.'6^ Like all human beings, Chekhov was a contradictory creature. He was miserable when no one came to visit him, and miserable when too many of his frends showed up. He both wanted and did not want to show off Melikhovo to Suvorin, his closest friend, who was one of the estate's very first visitors. Sensing that Suvorin would be expecting something much grander, Chekhov tried to lower his expectations, writing just after Easter in 1892:
You won't like Melikhovo, at least not at first. Everything is in miniature here; the lime tree avenue is small, the pond is the size of an aquarium, the garden and the park are small, the trees are small, but after a while, when you look around again, the feeling of smallness disappears.70
Chekhov's misgivings were well founded. Suvorin did not like Meliknovo when he came that April, and only stayed two nights before going back to his life of comfort, where he could travel on proper roads in sprung carriages. He took care to meet up with Chekhov in Moscow after that, but he certainly did not see Melikhovo at its best. The trees had only started to come out, the snow had not completely melted and it was still cold.
March and April were, in fact, always the worst months of the year for people who lived in the country. As soon as the snows began to melt, effortless travel by troika gave way to agonizingly slow journeys plodding through deep mud. Russians refer to this brief but dreadful season as the rasputitsa, a glorious word conveying a sense of roads literally coming undone - and i i autumn t all would all begin agam. Compared to many country estates, Melikhovo was relatively accessible. Several trains a day made the two- to three-hour journey from Moscow to the local station, but during the raspuritsa it often took far longer to travel the last few miles to the estate on the unpaved road. And to begin with the Chekhovs had to rely on the ancient Anna Petrovna as their only means of transport. Chekhov vividly conveyed what it was like to travel during the rasputitsa in his story 'In the Cart The local landowner in his four-horse carriage is being followed by the school teacher, travel ing in a cart driven by the peasant Semyon:
They turned off the highway on to the road leading to the \ illage, Khanov in front and Semyon following behind. The four horses were moving along at a walk ng pace, stra ning to drag the heavy carnage through the mud. Semyon was trying to manoeuvre by going over hillocks and througn the field :n order to avo'd the road, and he kept having to get off the cart to help the horses ... Marya Vasi .evna was still thinking about school and whether the exam would be difficult or easy ... The road was getting worse and worse . . . They had entered a forest. There was nowhere to turn off here, the ruts were very deep and gurgling water was streaming along them. And prickly branches were hitting her face.
When the mud hardened, journey times decreased, but comfort often dl I not. In November 1894. Chekhov complained to a friend that he had been jolted about so painfully the last time he had made the journey from the station that his heart had been torn out and he could no longer love.72 Heavy rain meant having to travel through water so deep it might come up to the horse's belly. Whatever the weather, trios were made from Melikhovo to the station almost dany to pick up the mail and provisions, with the three farm dogs usually following the cart there and back. And horses would be sent along the tree-lined road to pick up guests, who would sit drinking cognac with the French waitress in the station buffet while they waited.
During the rasputitsa, Chekhov relied more than ever on being able to remain in contact with people by letter, particularlysince there was no telephone at Melikhovo. The sheer volume of mail generated by his correspondence during the Melikhovo years with friends like Lika, Suvorin and the various literary editors, other writers and theatrical figures, as well as his numerous subscriptions to newspapers and periodicals, ;n fact, created a problem. In the six and a half years he lived at Melikhovo, Chekhov sent about 2,500 letters, but there was no post office at Lopasnya. The nearest post oifice was fifteen miles away, and anything other than ordinary letters sometimes incurred long delays before they were delivered. Chekhov depended on letters, so he renewed the appeal for a post office to be establ shed at Lopasnya after he moved to Melikhovo, and then helped gather donations when permission was granted in 1894. When the post office opened, on 1 January 1896, next to the railway station, the station master was finally abie to relinquish the task of keeping letters in his cupboard. In order to support its meagre ;ncome, Chekhov continued to buy stamps from the Lopasnya post office even after he left Melikhovo.