alcove in Chekhov's study, above the sofa he used to recline on when friends came to visit, is Levitan's canvas of a tranquil river winding through meadows with a forest in the distance. 'The River Istra' was painted in 1885, and undoubtedly served as the source of many nostalgic memories of the happy times Chekhov had spent with Levitan that summer when they were both staying at dachas nearby. When Levitan learned during his visit in December 1899 that Chekhov missed the gently undulating landscape of Central Russia, he immediately got out his palette and painted a nocturnal scene of haystacks in a field on a piece of card, which was then fitted into the recess in the fireplace across from his friend's desk.
As a young man, Chekhov spent many summers near the banks of the Istra, a tributary of the Moscow River. In 1880, when he was in his second year as a medical student, his brother Ivan obtained a job as the teacher at the village school in Voskresensk, a small town about thirty-five miles west of Moscow.2 Tsurikov, the wealthy factory owner who was the school's governor, generously provided Ivan with spacious living quarters, which meant that the impoverished Chekhov family suddenly had a dacha to go to in the summer months. According to Misha, the youngest
member of the family, it was 'earthly paradise' after the cramped and squalid accommodation they had in Moscow.3 Chekhov came for visits in the early 1880s, and made useful contacts in the local medical fraternity, who gave him some useful work experience before he graduated, but he was initially kept busy during the summer vacation by writing for Moscow journals, which provided his family with some badly needed income. It was only in 1884, the year that he graduated, that Chekhov started coming to Voskresensk for several months at a time. He went fishing for hours in the mornings and cut a dash in his black cape and broad-brimmed hat in the evenings during leisurely walks with other local doctors, the friendly officers of a battalion stationed nearby, and other interesting representatives of the Moscow intelligentsia on vacation.4
Just as the identikit nineteenth-century Russian country estate always contained certain key ingredients – a classical-style house with columns and a mezzanine, an annexe (always known by the German word Flugel), a path lined with linden trees, a landscaped 'English' park and a lake – there were also certain requirements for the ideal dacha. Apart from beautiful scenery, dachniks like Chekhov sought forests to hunt for mushrooms, and a river or a pond in which to fish and contemplate nature. Voskresensk provided ample opportunity for Chekhov to indulge these enthusiasms. It also boasted a magnificent monastery, located high on the banks of the Istra. He went there often, and particularly revelled in what he called the 'velvety' sound of its bells, which carried for miles across the fields.5
The New Jerusalem Monastery was founded in the mid-seventeenti century by the controversial Patriarch of Moscow, Nikon, whosi. liturgical reforms were to lead to the far-reaching schism of the Russian church. To save Russian pilgrims the bother of having to travel all the way to Palestine, Nikon created an exact replica of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in the monastery's cavernous Cathedral of the Resurrection, the Voskresenskii sobor, but it burned down in 1726. The cathedral that Chekhov visited was the Baroque replacement, designed by Rastrelli and built in the 1750s with funds provided by a munificent ancestor of Ivan Chekhov's employer Tsurikov.6 'I'm residing in New Jerusalem and visiting the monks,' Chekhov wrote to his publisher and main correspondent Nikolai Leikin in May 1883.7 The following summer he went back to visit the monks and spent over two months in Voskresensk. He clearly found attending the ornate Easter
The New Jerusalem Monastery, Moscow region
services the monastery held on Sundays an inspiring experience. I am living in New Jerusalem now', he wrote to Leikin in June 1884; 'and I'm living with aplomb because I can feel my doctor's licence in my pocket. The countryside around here is gorgeous. Open spaces and a complete absence of dachniks. Mushrooms, fishing and the local infirmary. The monastery is poetic. I've been thinking of subjects for 'sweet sounds' while standing through Vespers in the shadows of the galleries and arches. I've got lots of ideas but I am really not in the right frame of mind to write . . .'s A year later Chekhov was still inspired:
I have put traps in the river and keep taking them out of the water because I am so impatient… I don't have words to describe the landscape around here. If you are in Moscow in the summer and come to New Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, I can promise you something the likes
of which you have never seen anywhere else . .. The landscape is luxurious! I could pick it up and eat it.. ?
The inspiration was to bear fruit some years later in stories like 'The Princess' (written in 1889), in which Chekhov unleashed the full force of his satire against the genteel but self-serving lady visitors who liked to pay frequent summer visits to monasteries such as New Jerusalem, mistakenly thinking they were welcome guests.
There was another monastery nearby that Chekhov also liked to visit: the much older Savvin-Storozhevsky Monastery, founded at the end of the fourteenth century on the bank of the Moscow River in Zvenigorod. In the summer of 1883, Chekhov and some of his brothers joined a group of young doctors and walked the fifteen miles or so there from Voskresensk in a day, thus reversing the direction of the famous icon procession held annually each summer. The following July, just after graduating, Chekhov spent a couple of weeks working as a locum for the local doctor in Zvenigorod. He lived in the doctor's house. 'Half the day is taken up with seeing patients (30 to 40 people a day),' he wrote to Leikin, 'and I spend the rest of the time resting or getting dreadfull) bored sitting by the window looking out at the gloomy sky which for three days now has been pouring down horrible endless rain… In from of my window there is a hill with pine trees; to the right is the polia chief's house, further to the right there is a rotten little town which wa-once a place of some importance … On the left I can see a run-dov rampart wall, then a little wood and St Sawa peering out of it.'10 In t h evening he often visited the local medical assistant, whose daughter lai recalled him sloping off into the garden to sit with a book under a lis i tree that in 1954 acquired a memorial plaque.11
In 1885, the Chekhov family spent their first summer at a prope; dacha – rented from the charming Kiselyov family whose estate lay oi the banks of the Istra, just up the road from New Jerusalem. Ivan had been given a lift home in Alexei Kiselyov's troika after a winter part) and the Chekhovs had become friends with him and his wife, Maria Early the following May the Chekhov family took up residence in an annexe on the Kiselyovs' estate at Babkino. Cheknov led the advana party with his mother and sister. 'I've rented a dacha ahead) furnished, with vegetables, milk etc.,' Chekhov wrote dreamily to Leikin just before he left, filling his letter with rows of pensive dots
and going on to describe the scene that Levitan would paint later that summer:
. . . the estate is very beautiful, it stands on a steep bank . . . The river is down below, full of fish, beyond the river is an enormous forest and there is also a forest on the other side of the river . . . There are greenhouses near the dacha, flowerbeds and the like … I love being in the countryside in the beginning of May. . . It's fun to watch the leaves coming out, and hear the nightingales begin to sing .. . There is no one living anywhere near the estate and so we will be quite alone . . ?1
A few days later, at six in the morning, he was sitting in front of the large square window of his room at Babkino, at the sewing machine table he used as a makeshift desk, writing a letter to his brother Misha who was still stuck in Moscow. As well as telling him about the dreadful journey from the station (there was no train to Voskresensk at that point – the journey to Babkino entailed taking a train a few stops along the main line to St Petersburg and then travelling along bumpy roads by cart before finally crossing the river), and about running into
