Although one of Chekhov's friends nicknamed him 'Antoine Potemkin', this is not an indication that he had any interest in the Crimea's recent past. He actually had little in common with Catherine the Great's favourite, Grigory Potemkin, who in 1783 was put in charge of the newly conquered province of the Crimea, or Tauris as it was known in ancient times. It had been Potemkin, anointed Prince of the new province of Taurida, who organized Catherine's triumphant tour of the 'New Russian' realm four years later, erecting film-set villages along the way, according to the legend, and a spectacular show of fireworks in Sevastopol. It was the British who bu)1.t the military harbour for Russia's Black Sea fleet and, ironically, it was the Briti ;h who were responsible for its total decimation in the Crimean War some seventy years later when Sevastopol was almost 'wiped from the face of the earth', as an early Russian guide book put it.9 The town was still recovering when Chekhov first visited it in the late 1880s, and then had a population of about 2,500. Yalta, on the other hand, universally regarded as the most attractive point on the coast, was already entering its most fashionable phase as a watering place, and its permanent population of 5,000 was swelled annually during the season by hordes of well-heeled holidaymakers thronging to take advantage of its gentle climate and picturesque situation. By the nme Chekhov settled in Yalta in 1898 it was the top resort in Russia.
Like the British royal famil/'s development of Brighton, the Russian imperial family played the most important role in the transformation of Yalta from a small fishing village, with just a handful of inhabitants, at the beginning of the nineteenth century into the most populated area in the Crimea a century later. But it was Count Vorontsov who championed it first: no Russian considered living on the southern Crimean coast before him. Catherine had handed out parcels of land to her favourites after conquering the Crimea, and among the palaces which sprang up along the coast in ensuing decades, Count Vorontsov's in Alupka and Massandra were by far the grandest. With an English education behind him (his father was appointed ambassador to London when he was three years old), a distinguished recora in the Napoleonic wars (after which he was appointed head of the Russian occupying forces in Paris), and an immense fortune, Mikhail Vorontsov was one of the most prominent statesmen of his time. In 1823 he was appemted by Alexander I to be the governor of the new southern province of 'New Russia'. While he was officially based in Odessa, he chose the area around Yalta as the location for his private residence, and it was here that Alexander I came to visit in 1825 with his ailing wife. The sar was so taken with nearby Oreanda that he decided to acquire a plot of land and retire there. He managed to plant a vineyard and olive trees round the modest house that he had built, but his retirement plans were thwarted by his unexpected death in Taganrog later in the year.10
When A'exander's successor, Nicholas I, first visited the Crimea in 1837, he stayed in Vorontsov's new palace in Alupka, situated 150 feet above the sea. Its opulence aroused his envy. The enormous Gothic fantasy designed by Edward Blore, the British court architect who completed Buckingham Palace, was constructed by Blore's assistant, William Hunt, using stone hewn from an extinct volcano at the back of the property. Blore never set eyes on his whimsical creation, which mixed the Elizabethan and the Moorish, with a dash of mediaeval castle thrown in for good measure. Nor did he ever see the terraces, marble lions, founta;ns and rare plants in Vorontsov's immense park, which Winston Churchill was to enjoy during the Yalta Conference in 1945.
When he lived in Yalta, Chekhov made many visits to Alupka to admire the fine trees and subtropical plants in its sumptuous park (two cypresses had been planted by Potemkin), and on one occasion took a walk through the grounds \vitn Tolstoy, who was staying nearby. He also attended the charity concerts that were held on the terrace in aid of the nearby sanatorium for children v ith tuberculosis.11 His acquaintance with the Russ;an-Jewish pianist Semyon Samuelson, who was one of the regular performers, was probably helped along by their having a common friend n Rachmai dnov, whom Chekhov had recently got to know in Yalta. Samuelson had graduated from the Moscow Conservatoire with the Gold Medal the year after Racnmanmov and was a frequent visitor to Yalta, not least because his brother owned a pharmacy down the road from Chekhov's house. An upright piano was one of Chekhov's f ist Yalta acquisitons for his house, and he must have been filled with nostalgic memories of listening to his brother Nikolai at the keyboard when Samuelson came and played Cnopin nocturnes to him. Samuelson later related to Olga Knipper that Chekhov particularly iked 'Chopin's Nocturne in С Ma or', a probable transcription mistake which has been repeated in all subsequent Chekhov literature. Chopin never actually wrote a Nocturne in С Major. It is tempting to think that Samuelson was actually talk ng about Chopin's Nocturne in G Мцог (op. 37, no. 2),12 whose straightforward simplicity and absence of dramatic effects, when compared to the others, could be described as Chekhov.an qualities.
Due to Vorontsov's energetic ministrations, it was during Nicholas I's stay in Alupka in 1837 that Yalta was designated a town for the first time. It was then still a very small settlement, v 'th around thirty households and an overall populat on of about 200.13 The Austrian cartographer and travel writer Johann Kohl, who visited the Crimea the following year, was not persuaded that the mountains on the south coast were comparable to the Italian Alps or the French Pyrenees when viewed from the sea, but he was more impressed when he disembarked, and he particularly liked Yalta: 'The houses are all new, and the whole town has such a pretty toy-like appearance, that it looks just if it were to be given for a plaything to a child at Christmas. There are three inns, a custom-house, a post-house, a little church, a little quay, a harbour about two ells long, two little streets and a little apothecary's shop.' 4