Letters of Anton Chekhov to his Family and Friends | Page 3

they were joined
by Anton when he had taken his degree, and the Chekhovs soon had a
large circle of friends in the neighbourhood. Every day the company
met, went long walks, played croquet, discussed politics, read aloud,
and went into raptures over Shtchedrin. Here Chekhov gained an
insight into military society which he afterwards turned to account in
his play "The Three Sisters."
One day a young doctor called Uspensky came in from Zvenigorod, a
small town fourteen miles away. "Look here," he said to Chekhov, "I
am going away for a holiday and can't find anyone to take my place....
You take the job on. My Pelageya will cook for you, and there is a
guitar there...."
Voskresensk and Zvenigorod played an important part in Chekhov's
life as a writer; a whole series of his tales is founded on his experiences
there, besides which it was his first introduction to the society of

literary and artistic people. Three or four miles from Voskresensk was
the estate of a landowner, A. S. Kiselyov, whose wife was the daughter
of Begitchev, the director of the Moscow Imperial Theatre. The
Chekhovs made the acquaintance of the Kiselyovs, and spent three
summers in succession on their estate, Babkino.
The Kiselyovs were musical and cultivated people, and intimate friends
of Dargomyzhsky, Tchaykovsky the composer, and the Italian actor
Salvini. Madame Kiselyov was passionately fond of fishing, and would
spend hours at a time sitting on the river bank with Anton, fishing and
talking about literature. She was herself a writer. Chekhov was always
playing with the Kiselyov children and running about the old park with
them. The people he met, the huntsman, the gardener, the carpenters,
the sick women who came to him for treatment, and the place itself,
river, forests, nightingales--all provided Chekhov with subjects to write
about and put him in the mood for writing. He always got up early and
began writing by seven o'clock in the morning. After lunch the whole
party set off to look for mushrooms in the woods. Anton was fond of
looking for mushrooms, and said it stimulated the imagination. At this
time he was always talking nonsense.
Levitan, the painter, lived in the neighbourhood, and Chekhov and he
dressed up, blacked their faces and put on turbans. Levitan then rode
off on a donkey through the fields, where Anton suddenly sprang out of
the bushes with a gun and began firing blank cartridges at him.
In 1886 Chekhov suffered for the second time from an attack of spitting
blood. There is no doubt that consumption was developing, but
apparently he refused to believe this himself. He went on being as gay
as ever, though he slept badly and often had terrible dreams. It was one
of these dreams that suggested the subject of his story "The Black
Monk."
That year he began to write for the Novoye Vremya, which made a
special feature of his work. Under the influence of letters from
Grigorovitch, who was the first person to appreciate his talent,
Chekhov began to take his writing more seriously.

In 1887 he visited the south of Russia and stayed at the Holy
Mountains, which gave him the subjects of two of his stories, "Easter
Eve" and "Uprooted." In the autumn of that year he was asked by
Korsh, a theatrical manager who knew him as a humorous writer, to
write something for his theatre. Chekhov sat down and wrote "Ivanov"
in a fortnight, sending off every act for rehearsal as it was completed.
By this time he had won a certain amount of recognition, everyone was
talking of him, and there was consequently great curiosity about his
new play. The performance was, however, only partially a success; the
audience, divided into two parties, hissed vigorously and clapped
noisily. For a long time afterwards the newspapers were full of
discussions of the character and personality of the hero, while the
novelty of the dramatic method attracted great attention.
In January, 1889, the play was performed at the Alexandrinsky Theatre
in Petersburg and the controversy broke out again.
"Ivanov" was the turning-point in Chekhov's mental development, and
literary career. He took up his position definitely as a writer, though his
brass plate continued to hang on the door. Shortly after writing
"Ivanov," he wrote a one-act play called "The Bear." The following
season Solovtsev, who had taken the chief character in "The Bear,"
opened a theatre of his own in Moscow, which was not at first a success.
He appealed to Chekhov to save him with a play for Christmas, which
was only ten days off. Chekhov set to work and wrote an act every day.
The play was produced in time, but the author was never satisfied with
it, and after a short, very successful run