Anton Chekhov

by Donald Rayfield

  Anton was in no hurry even to reply. He merely told his French translator (while ordering 100 bottles of best Bordeaux) to look up Potapenko and ‘a plump blonde Mlle Mizinova’ in Paris. Anton slept till eleven in the morning, and in the evenings chatted to the intellectuals who, hoping for an early spring, were in Yalta for the good of their lungs. They offered no stimulation, although Miroliubov, an opera singer,2 and an actress adopted Anton and took him over the mountains. Through Miroliubov Chekhov met a medical colleague, Dr Sredin, as consumptive as his patients. Only a few officials fostered culture in Yalta, a seaside town too small to support more than a bookshop, amateur theatricals and a three-form girl’s grammar school.

  Lika had jumped from one ménage-à-trois into another. Potapenko’s wife was waiting in Paris. Lika told ‘Granny’ that she was settled in a pleasant house with a life on Rue Hamelin, seeking a singing teacher. To Masha she was frank: ‘Ignati said that he found his spouse very ill and thinks that she has consumption, but I think that she is faking again.’3

  Lidia Iavorskaia was happier in her new love life, but in Milan she received a letter which her spurned lover, a customs official, had written to her father, Chief of Police Hübbenett. It ran:

  Your daughter has left for Italy with Madame Shchepkina-Kupernik, this departure naturally forces me to burn my boats and I shall not direct a single word of reproach at your daughter. Her liaison with Shchepkina-Kupernik has become a vile legend in Moscow, and no wonder … nobody can pass undefiled by contact with her.4

  On 23 March Lidia scrawled a letter to Anton, asking him to protect Tania’s name. She was proud to be loved by Tania and wanted Anton to use his connections in Petersburg to silence her former lover in the Customs department.

  Far from friends, Anton could write again. He was preoccupied with his shortest mature story, ‘The Student’ – a work which he himself singled out for its concise perfection, as Beethoven did his Eighth Symphony. A student priest crossing a valley before Easter awkwardly retells the betrayal of Christ to two peasant widows, mother and daughter. The women cry, and he intuits a connection between their misery, the tragedy around Christ, the human condition and history. The priest once again represents the creative writer, communicating a force he cannot comprehend to others even more helpless. Poetic economy and subtle symbolic detail distinguish ‘The Student’. This is ‘late Chekhov’, where the protagonist’s and the author’s eyes become one, and where all is evoked, not stated. Solitude had sprung an inner lock. His friends and mistresses scattered, Anton found an affinity in his fictional characters, and his prose develops an intimate warmth.

  Anton had shaken off ideological constraints, too. He told Suvorin:

  Perhaps because I’ve stopped smoking, Tolstoy’s morality has stopped moving me, in the depth of my soul I am hostile to it, and that of course is unjust. Peasant blood flows in me, and you can’t astound me with peasant virtues. Since I was a child I have believed in progress and could not do otherwise, since the difference between the time when I was thrashed and the times when thrashing stopped has been enormous. I love clever people, sensitivity, politeness, wit … I was affected not by the basic propositions, which were known earlier, but the Tolstoyan way of expressing oneself, the didacticism and probably a sort of hypnotism. Now something in me protests; calculation and justice tell me that electricity and steam show more love for humanity than chastity and vegetarianism.

  Sleeping better (and alone), not smoking, drinking little, Anton was bored in Yalta. His heart showed only physical symptoms, arrhythmia. On 27 March 1894 he wrote curtly to Lika: he was not coming to Paris, he told her, and Potapenko should buy her a ticket home. Irony drowns affection:

  Dear Lika, when you are a big singer and have a good salary, give me alms: make me your husband and feed me at your expense, so that I can be idle. But if you are dying, then let Varia Eberle, whom as you know I love, do it.

  We hear the first hints of The Seagull, to which Lika was to contribute so much. As Trigorin tells Nina in the play, Anton tells Lika:

  Not for a minute am I free of the thought that I must, am obliged to write. Write, write and write.’

  To write and write was not easy in a hotel room: visitors were importunate. One even removed the manuscript of The Island of Sakhalin to read at leisure.

  Money was running out. Yalta was dearer than Nice. Anton sold his moulting fox-fur coat, and told Masha to send horses to Lopasnia station for the 10, 12 and 15 April. He arrived a week earlier, to a Melikhovo baking in the sunshine that had eluded the Crimea.

  In Anton’s absence, Pavel had bustled. He supervised confession, communion, christenings and shrivings among the servants, had the priest for dinner and tea, visited the nearby churches and the monastery. Pavel travelled to Moscow to see his sons, Vania and Misha, his nephews Aliosha Dolzhenko and Misha Chokhov, and the clerks at Gavrilov’s warehouse. He visited the public baths, bought ‘very broad’ underpants and attended all the church services he could.

  Anton was pleased to find Melikhovo free of guests, but, like Masha, he was upset by Lika’s fate. When Anton had encouraged, and Masha condoned, Lika’s flight with Potapenko, they had not known that Potapenko’s second wife Maria was in Paris. Lika’s next letter (3/15 April) said that she was crying, coughing blood, drinking creosote and cod liver oil; her doctor was ordering her to Switzerland. She hated her lodgings, fall of foreign girls who wanted to be singers. Potapenko was the cause of her misery:

  I virtually don’t see Potapenko, there’s no question of coming to Russia with him. Sometimes he comes for half an hour in the morning and, presumably, without his wife knowing. Every day she stages scenes with hysterics and tears every half hour. He attributes it all to her illnesses but I think that it’s all pretence and acting! They are off to Italy soon … To everyone here I am a married lady – Varia has shown your picture to the landlady as that of my husband! The landlady told her to show her, so she had to. So write to me as Mme not Mlle and don’t be angry.

  Anton wrote and told Potapenko he was a pig. Potapenko replied disarmingly on 10 May:

  What fantasies, dear Antonio, make you think that I am a pig? Suffice it to admit that I am a human being to expect greater piggery than from the very lowest pig…5

  Masha hit out harder. She was going to slaughter Ignasha, the lamb that they had named after Potapenko. Potapenko was abject to Masha in June: ‘Dear Masha … I am an all-round scoundrel and what’s more a bastard and a cad. People like that are either ostracized or forgiven everything. I advise you to choose the latter. Oh, if only you knew, Masha.’6

  Anton’s disbanded squadron was regrouping in Paris. Iavorskaia and Tania (in a ménage-à-trois with the theatre-owner Korsh) introduced themselves to Alexandre Dumas fils and Edmond Rostand. Tania would translate them, Korsh stage them, and Iavorskaia act their heroines. Levitan, too, was in Paris. Nevertheless, Lika, Tania and Iavorskaia all acclaimed Anton as the man they loved. From Naples on 11 April Tania flirted in verse and prose:

  ‘You have been with him, stay with us, and when you return to the south of our homeland, tell him about us … all the wondrous sounds that sing in our hearts, all the kisses that burn on our lips we shall save for the land of snows.’ That’s what I told the wind … from the Girl in Violet [Tania], The Girl in Green [Iavorskaia] kisses you (so do I, I swear).7

  The friendship that Anton wanted to rebuild was Suvorin’s, and he invited him after Easter to tour the Volga and the Dnepr together. Anton was seeking health and peace, but on Easter Sunday, 17 April, he collapsed. Four days later he described the attack to Suvorin:

  For a minute I thought I was dying: I was walking with my neighbour Prince Shakhovskoi down the avenue, talking – suddenly something tore in my chest, a feeling of warmth and stifling, a buzz in my ears, I remembered that I’d had irregular heart beats for some time – significant, I think; I quickly moved to the terrace and the guests, with one thought: it’s embarrassing to drop dead in front of strangers.


  A glass of water miraculously restored him.

  At about that time Anton had two ideas to improve his life. He needed a proper mail service: driving six miles to Lopasnia, he could collect only ordinary letters; parcels and registered letters were delivered after a delay from Serpukhov. Guests made unreliable postmen: Anton’s letters often lay forgotten in their pockets. Anton made himself an ally of Blagoveshchensky, the mail clerk at Lopasnia station, and lobbied for a full post office. He reactivated his friendship with Bilibin, the secretary of Fragments, whose ‘real job’ was in the Postal Service. Bilibin was not fooled – he wrote to Gruzinsky, ‘had a letter from Chekhov, part pleasantries, part business’8 – but set the machine in motion. Chekhov’s second idea, conceived the previous autumn, was to build in the garden a two-storey cottage in Brothers Grimm style for male guests (female guests would stay in the main house). Anton’s first architectural venture was entrusted to Masha, now that school was closed for the summer, as subcontractor. She ordered timber and hired carpenters. Pavel quarrelled with the workmen; he was kept off site. His diary for 11 May reads: ‘Mid Pentecost. 24° in the shade. A procession with crosses around the village. The Tower of Babel on four legs is being built in the garden.’

  Anton that May was comforted by Aleksandra Liosova, the girl who had been Vania’s fiancée. Seven months ago, on 30 September 1893 Liosova, for the first time since Vania jilted her, had come with Anton and Lika Mizinova from Moscow. Now she wanted books for the factory school where she taught:

  The daughter of Israel comes to you with a request … You haven’t responded to my ardent feelings with feelings, so oblige me. I should very much like to see you, but fate is cruel. What are you doing, abandoned by the cruel Lika? … But Russian women are not like us Israelites. You advised me to call my dog Vomit (it is a lady), but you forgot that I am an old maid and love everything sentimental … Be well and try to find her, but a woman less beautiful and cruel than Lika.9

  Ten days later, 23 May 1894, Liosova was ardent:

  Accept ten passionate kisses from me. But to feel their full ardour, first heat your iron as hot as you can and give it 10 French kisses. But I’m afraid the iron won’t be hot enough! It’s just as well the weather is bad or I’d burn up, a bit of rain puts out a fire … ‘No, I cannot stop loving you.’ But meeting you is impossible …

  Liosova hoped in a year’s time to enter a nunnery 100 miles away; she harped on Lika’s fate. Melikhovo frightened her, but her affection was fired by contact. In autumn 1894 Liosova renounced Anton (but not for a nunnery):

  Do you know, I am now completely happy? … I want nothing more from life. Tell me something about Lika – she interests me … I humbly ask pardon for getting fat and having vulgar red cheeks. By the time we meet I shall try to dry out. Much-respected King David, accept the fiery kiss of your Abishag, as long as you don’t have a cold.

  Anton was little bothered by women. The pianist Aleksandra Pokhlebina appeared just once in Melikhovo, free of infatuation. Olga Kundasova visited on 5 May, attending with Anton a doctors’ conference at Meshcherskoe. She than vanished until the end of the year. Absent women played a more important role in Anton’s fiction than in his life. ‘Three Years’, at first a novel which poured all summer 1894 from his notebooks, incorporates in its two main heroines phrases and traits of both Olga Kundasova and Lika Mizinova: the hero, torn between intelligence that does not arouse and beauty which does not satisfy, embodies Anton’s own dilemma.

  Chekhov kept at bay the unhappiness of others. His Petersburg editor Tikhonov had been dismissed from The North and was destitute. Kumanin of The Performing Artist was facing both his own demise and his journal’s. Anton was unmoved. His brothers, at least, were living peaceably. Easter brought from Moscow Vania and Sonia, and from Uglich Misha. Pavel had bought the replica of Christ’s shroud he wanted. Aleksandr had rented a dacha and no longer perturbed Anton with talk of settling nearby: he brought his two elder sons and left them for a few days at Melikhovo. Only Aleksandr Ivanenko, the Melikhovo court fool, came too often, stayed too long and talked too much.

  On 1 June 1894, the day he left, Ivanenko completed his best composition, An Inventory of Chekhov’s Estate in the Village of Melikhovo:

  Carts, 2; Light droshky, 1; Charabancs 1; Passenger sledges, 2; Flat tops, 1; Broken low sledges 1; Bee-hive carts 1; Wickwork cabs for sledges, 2; Wheels for flat-tops, 17; Riding yokes, 4; ordinary yokes, 4; Swingle-trees 3; Sledge shafts, 2; Cart shafts 3 pairs; … Axes 3; Chisels, 1; … Watering cans, 6; Spouts, 7; …

  Horses: Kirgiz, aged 8, Has overtaken the mail train 100 times and thrown its owner just as often. Has won top prize; Boy, aged 5, A trained horse, dances very elegantly when harnessed up; Anna, aged 98, too old to be fertile, but shows promise every year; bites drivers; Cossack Girl, aged 10, infertile, can’t stand bits, has to be harnessed with a bit of rope or gallops off the road; Head-over-Heels, aged 7, calm and patient.10

  Ivanenko listed five cows, three bullocks, three sheep, a sow and two piglets, three yard dogs. The inventory continues:

  Dachshunds: Quinine, distinguished by immobility and stoutness (idle and irritable); Brom, distinguished by liveliness and hatred of Whitebrow (a yard dog), noble and sincere.

  Pigeons: Brown, pedigree, crested, 1 pair; White with black spots (pedigree) 1 pair. Poultry: Old ducks, 4; Drakes, 1; Ducklings, 70; Old hens, 30; Chicks, 50

  Servants: Mariushka, widow of indeterminate age, excellent cook and lover of livestock, cows, bullocks, hens, chicks etc.; Katerina, the cow girl; Efim, Katerina’s son; Aniuta, chambermaid, spontaneous nature, aged 16. Loves laughing and dances splendidly (suffers, so Mariushka says, from an ‘innard’ disease); Mashutka, Mariushka’s under-cook, covered in freckles, aged 16. Loves bright colours. The workman Roman, has shown punctuality and energy, is polite. Answers briefly: ‘yes sir; no sir’. Has served in the army, no medals. Parents: Pavel Egorovich Chekhov and his spouse Eugenia Iakovlevna Chekhova most happy of mortals! 42 years in lawful wedlock (Hurrah!)

  Children:

  Anton, lawful owner of Melikhovo kingdom, of the 2nd plot, Sazonikha woods, of Struzhkino, King of the Medes etc. etc. Also writer and doctor. Is about to write a tale The Man with the Big Arse.

  Masha, kind, clever, elegant, beautiful, gracious, short-tempered and forgiving, strict but just. Loves sweets and perfume, a good book, good clever people. Not amorous (has been in love only 1700 times) Avoids handsome young men (soon off to Luka …). Recommends to all her friends the theory ‘To hell with it.’ A remarkable woman about the house: kitchen gardener, flower grower etc …

  Notes

  1 See OR, 331 52 2b: Lika’s letters to Anton 1893–4; some in Perepiska II, 1984, 16–59.

  2 Miroliubov was soon to leave the opera and become Chekhov’s last editor.

  3 See OR, 331 93 79: Lika Mizinova’s letters to Masha Chekhova, 1894.

  4 See OR, 331 64 34: Lidia Iavorskaia’s letters to Anton Chekhov, 1893–6.

  5 See OR, 331 56 36a: Potapenko’s letters to Anton, 1893–5. Perepiska II, 1984, 62–76.

  6 See OR, 331 95 2: Potapenko’s letters to Masha, 1894–5.

  7 See OR, 331 64 2: T. L. Shchepkina-Kupernik’s letters to Anton Chekhov, 1893–1900.

  8 Quoted in PSSP, 5, 611.

  9 See OR, 331 50 11: Aleksandra Liosova’s three letters to Anton, 1894.

  10 Quoted from E. M. Sakharova, A. I. Ivanenko – vechnyi drug in Chekhoviana: Melikhovskie trudy i dni, 1995, 327–334.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Potapenko the Bounder

  July–August 1894

  IVANENKO SAW MELIKHOVO AS EDEN. He left it for what he called a tomb: his tyrannical father was paralysed, his mother crippled, his brother dead, he himself had TB of the throat and now would run a farm that even hard work could not make viable. ‘I’ll have to live like a humorous badger,’ he wrote despondently.1 Anton’s Melikhovo seemed a fairy-tale realm for a man who had come to Moscow fifteen years before to
live in two crowded basement rooms.

  Shcheglov’s diary for 8 July 1894 reads: ‘Chekhov on his estate. He is entitled, but how enviably happy his life has turned out.’2 Masha, now that Misha was in distant Uglich, ran the house and estate. Pavel paid tribute to her achievements in the wet summer of 1894: ‘On the farm Masha is invaluable for field work, her arrangements are very remarkably clever and calm. Glory to God, she puts any man to shame. Anton reveres her. We’re just amazed by her intelligence and order.’3

  Anton found a week or two sufficient in his kingdom. Incessant rain spoilt the clover that twenty-five peasants had mown. Only uninvited guests came: not Schechtel, Shcheglov, or Suvorin. Misha and Vania, when the tax office and the school released them, gave Anton no pleasure. Vania could not spend the summer with his pregnant wife: he felt despised by her parents, with whom she was staying, but he missed her and found Melikhovo dreary.

  Anton tried to lure Shcheglov: ‘We are making hay, the perfidious haymaking. The smell of hay makes me drunk and giddy, so that I only have to sit on the stack for an hour or two to imagine I am in the embraces of a naked woman.’ The embraces would remain imaginary. Lika was, despite Anton’s advice and Potapenko’s neglect, not coming home. First she invited her mother, who loathed Potapenko,4 to Paris, then she told Granny Ioganson that she was moving to Switzerland for the summer.5

  In mid June 1894 Anton was in Moscow, avoiding his brother Aleksandr and his two nephews in Melikhovo. In Moscow Anton met Suvorin for the first time since February. Suvorin and the Dauphin had come to Moscow to sack the manager of their stationery shop. Anton and Suvorin passed three days and nights together, and agreed to travel. They talked frankly. Suvorin told Sazonova: