Anton Chekhov

by Donald Rayfield

  Notes

  1 See OR, 331 31 1: Aleksandr’s letters to his parents, 1874–96.

  2 See her memoirs in LN68, 538–41.

  3 To Pavel 10 Aug. 1875. See OR, 331 31 1.

  4 See OR, 331 82 14; Nikolai Chekhov’s letters to his parents, 1875–89.

  5 See OR, 331 33 12a: Evgenia’s letters to Aleksandr and Nikolai include this note (2 Jan. 1875).

  6 See OR, 331 33 12a: Evgenia’s letter to Aleksandr and Nikolai Chekhov.

  SIX

  Destitution

  1876

  THE YEARS FROM 1876 TO 1879 were traumatic in Anton Chekhov’s life. His letters to his father and brothers in Moscow have mostly been lost, but their letters to him, as well as his mother’s and his Uncle Mitrofan’s letters, show unremitting hardship and fear of worse.

  At sixteen Anton became the head of the household, dealing with creditors, debtors, relatives and friends of the family whose sympathy was limited, coping with his mother’s misery and his younger siblings’ dismay. Gavriil Selivanov showed himself a hard-headed businessman as well as a family friend: the grim comedy of The Cherry Orchard with the auction, the transformation of Lopakhin from friend into predator and the dispersal of the household to the four winds originated in Chekhov’s adolescent years in Taganrog. Gavriil Selivanov played Lopakhin to the improvident Chekhovs. Anton, distress forging both his willpower and his reserve, grew strong.

  In this debtor’s hell, surprisingly, Anton’s marks at school improved. The theatre and private concerts continued to occupy him, and he also went to classes with Taganrog’s dancing teacher, Vrondy.1

  Anton had already started a handwritten class-magazine, The Hiccup. Aleksandr, when sent an issue in September 1875 and two issues early in 1876, was encouraging, and he showed them to cousin Misha Chokhov. Everyone in the Gavrilov warehouse, including its owner, Ivan Gavrilov, found them amusing. In 1876 a wider window on the world, in the form of the Taganrog Public Library, opened for Anton. The school authorities were reluctant for pupils to use it: the school library had a restricted range of books, cutting pupils off from radical works, or anything seditious, such as the new satirical weeklies and monthly journals – the staple diet of the Russian intellectual. (In school only Father Pokrovsky subscribed to such ‘subversive’ journals as Notes of the Fatherland.) Anton joined the library in January 1877, sometimes retrieving his two-rouble deposit to buy food.

  The Moscow and Petersburg satirical weeklies influenced all of Taganrog’s youth. Destined for the newly literate of the metropolis, for uninhibited students and new professionals, these journals showed irreverence to received ideas and prominent personalities. They encouraged their readers to submit their own pieces – comic sketches, caricatures, polemical articles – for publication and payment. Anton began to submit his own anecdotes for Aleksandr to edit and market through his university contacts.

  *

  Pavel’s first letters from Moscow are full of pathos. Penniless, dependent on his student sons, he was apparently blind to the irony of the situation. From the day after his arrival he continued to dictate:

  Dear beloved Evochka, Antosha, Vania, Masha and Misha, I arrived safely yesterday in Moscow at 2 in the afternoon. Kolia met me at the station and we got a cab and went to the Flat, where Aleksandr was waiting for us. They were very pleased that I had come. After a talk, we went round Moscow and then to the Dining Rooms for a good dinner. Three dinners cost 60 kopecks and one bottle of kvas 7 kopecks. I saw the college where Kolia is studying, the university, the Post Office, the Telegraph, the ‘Saviour in the Pine Grove’. When we went up there to pray, we were shown the most Sacred relics of St Stefan of Perm … The flat is suitable for three, the landlady is kind, I was only astonished that they never lock their room when they leave, they say there’s no need, but a hired servant does the cleaning and might take something, God grant that it is safe…. Moscow is not like our Taganrog, there’s endless noise, people bustling, the people live the lives they should, there is order in everything, everyone knows their business…. I ask you children to listen to Mama, do not upset her, don’t argue with each other, do your homework properly. Vania, see you make an effort. The exams are soon. Farewell, my dear ones. I am always with you. P. Chekhov.2

  Pavel and his two elder sons now lodged in one room in a house belonging to a Karolina Schwarzkopf and her family, the Polevaevs. The house was on the sleazy Grachiovka (‘Rookery’, also known as the Drachiovka, ‘Rip-off, or Brawl Alley’, but now Trubnaia street); the Polevaevs were considered ‘fast’ and Masha Chekhova later accused them of corrupting both Aleksandr and Kolia.

  Pavel did not yet detect Bohemian influence. He was obsessed with religious pilgrimage: he spent a day and a night at the St Sergei monastery thirty miles north of Moscow and wrote sermons to his wife. He did not hurry to find work: Kolia, he told Evgenia, was copying paintings in the Museum and a shop had offered 25 roubles for one painting. Pavel told Anton to hide furniture from creditors and stave off bailiffs; he was to sell furniture to pay fares to Moscow for other family members. Pavel had signed his goods over to Aunt Fenichka to deflect his creditors. Complacent Father Chekhov told his younger children on 6 May 1876:

  Dear Children … If you go on living a good life, I shall bring you to Moscow. Here there are many Institutions for study, Gimnazias … stay quiet, don’t spread it to anybody, try to take your exams as well as you can and get matriculation, don’t talk to anybody about this.

  Thank you Antosha that you are running the household and collecting what is owed to us … Vania, the rains have started, I’m very glad you have put the barrel under the drainpipe. Misha is a good boy, he will try to write and tell me how he is progressing. And Masha probably hasn’t forgotten what I ordered her to do, when I left for Moscow, to study well in the gimnazia and to play the piano three times a day, according to my method, not hurrying, looking at the music and not leaving a single note out. If she plays well, then I shall bring you to Moscow and buy a good piano and music then she will be a complete Artist and perform in Public.

  To his wife, a week later, Pavel was less sanguine about salvaging anything: he trusted neither his creditors, nor his ‘well-wishers’.

  Pavel still believed that, if need be, he could sell his house for more than he owed. In Taganrog that same day, appropriately the Assumption of the Cross, Evgenia tried to shake Pavel into a sense of reality:

  My darling Pavel Egorych, We received the letter where you write that we must sell the house I wanted to sell it a long time ago only to get rid of the debts but there are no buyers … I said, Antosha go to Tochilovsky, he lends money against security, so Antosha went yesterday … Tochilovsky just shouted, ‘That’s a bog, God forbid, no question, I want nothing to do with Taganrog,’ so Antosha came home and now I don’t know who to turn to … yesterday, the 13th, we were sitting having tea, we hear the bell, we opened the door, there was Grokholsky with papers, the first question was, is Pavel Egorych at home. We say no … I asked Grokholsky whether he would bother Pavel in Moscow and he says, ‘You just warn your husband.’ This is what I advise you to do, my dear, you write an open letter to all of us saying you are leaving for Tambov, write in it ‘I am leaving for Tambov now’ or wherever you like, but write it … Anxiety and worry have finished me and now our old nanny came last Wednesday started crying … I pulled myself together and told her, ‘Nanny I can’t keep you, I haven’t got even a kitchen-maid, I’m alone.’ … fetch us quickly or I could soon go mad. Aleksandr is already listed for military service, I don’t know why, it’s posted on all the fences … I hoped we’d mortgage the house and just be in debt to Kostenko, and now I can’t think what to do. Answer quickly. E Chekhova.3

  A tenant in Moscow had to register with the police. Fortunately, the Polevaevs were not law-observing: Pavel escaped arrest, but could offer no counsel to his stranded family. Anton, a mere boy, could not dun debtors or fight off creditors, even if some, like Grokholsky, were the fathers of school
friends. Mironov and Kostenko, who held the house as security, would not waive the 1000 roubles they were owed. Pavel’s illusions about the Cathedral Brotherhood that he and Mitrofan belonged to were shattered. On 9 June 1876 he complained:

  I’ve lost any desire to even discuss our foul affairs. In my letter I asked you to give 300 roubles’ worth of receipts as payment to Kostenko. Mironov has damaged everything, he called in the loan in a very unChristian way, even a wicked Tatar wouldn’t do that … Evochka, about mortgaging the silver setting of the icon, how can you? …4

  For once, Pavel felt abashed by the distress he had caused and praised his wife and son for coping so well. But he also felt betrayed. Gavriil Selivanov had promised Evgenia: ‘For you, Mama, I’ll do anything.’ He had brought his niece Sasha, as a paying guest, back to the Chekhov house to share Masha’s room. Selivanov knew everything that happened in the civil courts and chose his moment. Before the Chekhov home could be auctioned, he made a deal with Mironov, Kostenko and the court. He paid a mere 500 roubles, and promised Kostenko that the furniture could be sold to meet the interest payments that Pavel had defaulted on. In July, Selivanov, Masha claimed years later, announced to Evgenia: ‘I’ve paid off the bill of exchange and forgive me, Mama, but now this is my house.’ Evgenia’s letter to Anton of 12 March 1877 confirms that rather than an act of betrayal, Selivanov’s purchase was a favour which Anton had asked of him, to protect the family from more predatory creditors.

  For the next eighteen months Selivanov offered to sell back the house to the family at the price he had paid – thus saving them, not robbing them of, 500 roubles. His attitude hardened only after losing patience with his improvident former landlords. He repaired the property and contemplated marrying and living in it. The Chekhovs hoped against hope that he was genuinely their nominee purchaser in a stratagem to save their home. On 1 October 1876, when only Anton and Vania were left in Taganrog, Pavel still showed trust, writing to Selivanov and giving him powers of attorney to rent the house on his behalf.

  Pavel and his family were not cheated: they never did offer Selivanov the price for which he had redeemed their house. Kolia and Antosha sought out Selivanov’s advice and trusted him as much as they did Uncle Mitrofan. Good relations persisted between the Chekhovs and Selivanovs. The friendly correspondence between the Chekhovs and Selivanov’s niece Sasha and brother-in-law and nephews, the Kravtsovs, suggests that Selivanov, though hard-nosed, was no rogue.

  Mitrofan’s lukewarm sympathy hurt Pavel and Evgenia more. Mitrofan wrote effusive sermons (Aleksandr called him and his wife ‘the Holy Fathers’), assuring Pavel that their trials were from God.5 When Pavel asked for money, Mitrofan pleaded poverty (although he had no debts) and limited his support to feeding Anton, hiding Evgenia’s treasures and sending two or three roubles to Pavel in Moscow. Pavel’s fraternal love faltered: in September 1876 Aleksandr reported to Anton:

  He used not to let anyone say anything bad about his brother and his spouse, but now he never misses a chance to besmirch them, which by the way they thoroughly deserve. Once he even went so far as to say about them: ‘Pharisees, sons of bitches.’ … Selivanov in my view is a thousand times right when he warns mother against the Holy Fathers.

  On 3 June 1876, after a grim family conference with Egor and his blind wife, Mitrofan wrote to his brother:

  We can see Evgenia is very unhappy; she has lost weight, and so has Anton, only we do not know how you are living in Moscow, what you are doing how you are feeding yourself. A great Divine Visitation is upon you … Evgenia was with us today to see Papa off and drank a glass of fine wine. She said, ‘For grief.’ We said, ‘For future joy.’ Mironov hopes you can be saved, but you must pray for him.

  Pavel did not remonstrate with Mitrofan, but with Anton for showing his anxiety.

  Antosha! I’m told that you and Mama have supposedly lost weight. How can this be? You write to me, ‘Daddy, be brave and strong, be cheerful and pray.’ … So you are as big a coward and as poor in spirit as your elder Brother … Antosha, take care of Mama, if anything happens, you will have to answer. She could come and join us, perhaps you can gather say 100 roubles for her fare. Life is no bowl of cherries here either …

  Pavel saw his whole life as a great sacrifice; he lectured Anton: ‘we have not had a single peaceful day in our lives, have cared, have laboured, have endured everything, suffered, pleaded, so as to educate you as best we could, to make you cleverer, to make your life easier.’ The other children were told to clean the barrels in the cellar, asked about the latest trials of corrupt merchants in Taganrog, reproached for poor marks at school. Pavel, Aleksandr and Kolia had moved, in the same house, from a 13-rouble room to a 7-rouble room. In the holidays Aleksandr and Kolia went to the country with Mrs Polevaeva, leaving Pavel alone in Moscow. He vented his discontent to Anton:

  Here we don’t know the taste of beef or potatoes or fish or vinegar … Tell Mama not to let anyone into the House and not to let the Creditors see her, say that she’s not at Home … Sell the furniture, the Mirrors and the beds, get the money together and send Mama to Moscow …

  Anton was unhappy at being left behind in Taganrog to fend for himself and his indigent parents. Pavel brushed aside his protests:

  Antosha … I’m amazed that you and Masha want so much to come to Moscow and not to live in Taganrog. The bedbugs in Moscow would eat you in one night, I’ve never seen such enormous insects in my life. Worse than Taganrog creditors, I literally scrape them by hand off my pillow at night. You write that whether I find a job or not, you still have to come, but you don’t consider that it’s impossible to live in Moscow without money … I am definitely going mad with nothing to do, I am weak with idleness, never in my life have I experienced such an agonising situation … Mama writes that she won’t be allowed to leave Taganrog, and that she has debts. I am astounded by such an opinion …

  Kolia desperately wanted his mother to come, together with the youngest children, Masha and Misha. But he agreed with Pavel that Anton and Vania should stay. He took his father’s side and said that it was not worth Pavel working for less than 50 roubles a month. Nobody in Moscow would employ a bankrupt merchant in his fifties for even half that wage. Gavrilov, cousin Misha’s employer, turned Pavel away: ‘Why did you come here?’ Pavel, a debtor on the run, had no permit to settle in Moscow; any creditors who were not staved off by Selivanov or the Taganrog Brotherhood could extradite him to Taganrog. Aleksandr and Kolia had seen fugitive debtors escorted by soldiers to the station; they urged Pavel to face the music, declare himself bankrupt and only then to return to Moscow openly, with a valid passport. A Taganrog police official, Anisim Petrov, much feared as an informer, but a friend of the Chekhovs, assuaged Pavel’s fears. Kolia asked Anton to find out from Selivanov whether the Taganrog authorities were trying to have Pavel extradited. To Kolia’s anxious letter of 9 June, Pavel added an angry note: ‘What’s the point of looking for me when there’s nothing to be got out of me? I escaped empty-handed and Glory to God for that!’

  Glimmers of hope soon eclipsed. In mid June Gavrilov lent Pavel 115 roubles to buy 90 pounds of tea to pack into one-pound bags for 9 roubles profit. Gavrilov even let Pavel take home the tea samples. The Micawber in Pavel came to life. By late June he was painting a rosy future to Evgenia:

  Come to Moscow, bring Masha. Just get 50 roubles together and come. We’ll find a flat or a country cottage. The Moscow air is good, my health is restored. I don’t miss Taganrog any more and don’t want to go there. Who’ll be in the house – just Antosha. Leave him to Fenichka … bring the valuables, the silver frames. Here you can pawn them and get good money, the interest is small, 1½% a month. When we earn some money, we’ll redeem them again. If you can’t let Mitrofan have my fox-fur coat for 50 roubles, bring it with you, we’ll pawn it here and get whatever money we need. Where you are you’re likely to starve to death, but here we have credit. [Ivan] Loboda is here and is nice and respectful to me. He says he’s seen you a
t his family’s house. I suppose the children’s clothes must be worn out, but here we have everything, we live like Lords …

  Mitrofan now claimed that he was rallying support for his brother:

  All the others sympathize and commiserate and nobody thinks that you did anything on purpose. Grigori Bokos … said, ‘Write and tell your brother that I have mortgaged my last property and redeemed the bill, which I shall not call in, but I would like Pavel to renew it …’

  On 29 June 1876 the blind Efrosinia, Pavel and Mitrofan’s mother, broke her leg. She never rose from her bed again. (The bearer of these tidings took Vania and Misha to stay with Egor for a month.) On 11 July Mitrofan’s infant son Ivan died.

  Using Anton’s earnings from selling the household goods and tutoring fellow pupils, Evgenia paid for three fares to Moscow. Vania and Misha returned from their grandparents’ house. On 23 July 1876 Evgenia, taking Masha and Misha with her, caught the train to Moscow. The Chekhov house stood empty.

  Vania moved in with his widowed aunt Marfa Morozova, who, in spite of her Loboda resources, did not pay his school fees. Anton spent a month with Selivanov’s relatives in the country: there he lay ill for a fortnight, apparently with a hernia. In Taganrog he was taken in by Gavriil Selivanov, agreeing, for board, lodging and fees, to coach Selivanov’s Cossack nephew Petia Kravtsov for cadet college, and his lively niece, Sasha Selivanova, for grammar school. Sasha Selivanova wore a red dress with black spots: Anton called her ‘ladybird’ and developed a flirtation with her that endured for decades. On one occasion they were spotted ‘cooing like doves’ on a bench overlooking Taganrog’s great flight of steps to the seashore; when disturbed they slipped away to the nearest courtyard.7