their house,37 and 'An Evil Business' (1887), in which a similarly remote church is burgled at night while the watchman's attention is distracted.38
The Chekhovs so enjoyed staying at Babkino in 1885 that they rented their dacha from the Kiselyovs for the following two years as well. It was a good arrangement; they paid a modest sum for the annexe in the grounds, but were free to enjoy the estate's amenities -the landscaped park, the river, and the stimulating society of their new friends, who subscribed to all the literary journals.39 After eight o'clock supper, the Chekhovs would usually walk over to the main house to spend convivial evenings with the Kiselyovs and their summer guests, who included the retired tenor Mikhail Vladislavlev who, back in 1863, had performed Siegfried's forging song in Moscow in front of Wagner, and was still capable of hitting a top D. A permanent summer guest was Alexei Kiselyov's father-in-law, the former Moscow Imperial Theatres
Director Vladimir Begichev, a talented and cultured man now in his late fifties who had co-written the scenario for Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake. While he played patience, his daughter Maria, Vladislavlev, and other guests would sing or play the piano. It seems Chekhov learned a lot about music while he was staying at Babkino, and was regaled with stories about the celebrated musicians, including Tchaikovsky, who were family friends.
The months spent in the Moscow countryside were fundamental to Chekhov's creativity in the middle of the 1880s, inspiring an increasing number of poetic stories in among the more frivolous pieces that were hastily scribbled to pay the rent and satisfy the demands of a reading public clamouring for cheap laughs. On 6 May 1885, the day Chekhov set off with his family to stay at Babkino, his first story for a national newspaper was published.40 He was still signing his work 'Chekhonte', but writing for The Petersburg Newspaper, with its higher circulation and greater prestige, gave him the confidence not only to start taking his writing more seriously, but also to write serious stories. Among the most lyrical pieces of prose written under the direct impact of the forests and the fields was a story called 'The Huntsman', set on a hot July day at the beginning of the shooting season:
A sweltering, muggy midday. Not a cloud in the sky .. . The scorched grass looks dejected and hopeless: even if there were to be rain, it is too late for it to turn green now.. . The forest stands motionless and silent, as if the tops of the trees are looking somewhere or waiting for something.
A tall, narrow-shouldered man of about forty, wearing a red shirt, high boots and patched trousers handed down from his boss, is sauntering with a lazy swagger along the edge of the clearing. Now he is sauntering down the road. On the right is a mass of greenery, and on the left a gold ocean of ripened rye stretches as far as the eye can see. He is red-faced and sweating. A white cap with a straight jockey's peak, obviously a charitable gift from some gentleman, sits rakishly on his handsome head of fair hair. There is a game-bag swung across his shoulder in which there is a squashed black grouse. The man is holding a cocked double-barrelled gun in his hands and looking through narrowed eyes at his scraggy old dog which has run on ahead and is sniffing around in the bushes. Everything alive has hidden from the heat. . .41
It was this story that prompted the venerable Dmitry Grigorovich to write his famous fan letter to Chekhov on 25 March 1886:
About a year ago I happened to read a story by you in the Petersburg Newspaper; I don't remember what it was called now; I just remember that I was struck by qualities of particular originality, but mainly by the remarkable authenticity and truth in the depiction of the characters and the descriptions of nature. Since then I have read everything signed by Chekhonte.42
Chekhov claimed that he never spent longer than a day writing his stories, and revealed that 'The Huntsman' was written down by the river.43
It was very hot at the end of May 1886 when Chekhov came back with his family to the dacha at Babkino for the second time. Desperate for rain, the peasants had even started walking round the fields with icons.44 Although he had his hands full with sick villagers seeking his care, and then both his unruly elder brothers to keep an eye on when they came to stay, the heat made Chekhov feel listless. Finally the weather changed, the Istra burst its banks after weeks of incessant rain, and the year's harvest was ruined. It seemed to Chekhov as if the whole summer was ruined too.45 He felt rather the same way the following summer, when his family returned for a third stay at Babkino. Bad weather made Chekhov miserable, and the letters he sent in 1887 conveyed his low spirits:
The weather here at the dacha is foul. Endless rain and dampness. The landscape looks so foul I can't bear to look at it. I envy you if it's dry, warm and quiet where you are. I've got a cold, the members of my family all have colds and bronchitis, the cab drivers charge a fortune, I'm not catching any fish . .. there is no one to drink with and I can't drink anyway . . . time to shoot myself really!
Some boys have just brought me a pair of woodpeckers and asked twenty kopecks for them; I gave them five and let the birds go. They obviously got a taste for it though and brought me another pair. I took the birds and slapped them round the ears. There's an example for you of my amusements at the dacha.46
It was clearly time for the family to look further afield for their summer retreat; Chekhov was growing restless.
II
Luka
Venice is incredibly reminiscent of Luka.
Letter to N. Lintvaryova, Genoa, 1 October 1894
Soon after 'The Steppe' was published in March 1888, the family started wondering where they should spend the summer. After his travels to the steppe the previous spring, Chekhov wanted to go south again: to the region around the Svyatogorsk Monastery or to the leafy area on the sea outside Taganrog where there were dachas to rent. He needed fresh inspiration now, and did not want to return to Babkino.47 He had also begun to cough a great deal, which made a dacha in the south an even more attractive proposition. Through the recommendation of a friend, Chekhov eventually settled, sight unseen, on a dacha near the town of Sumy in the eastern part of the Ukraine (since he was the one paying, he had the right of veto). The dacha was once again a Fliigel on the estate of an impoverished gentry family called Lintvaryov, but in a considerably worse state of repair than Babkino. Misha was commissioned to make a detour on his journey to Taganrog at the end of April to inspect the property. After the carefully tended flowerbeds of Babkino, Misha was dismayed to find a garden that looked more like an abandoned wood, complete with the graves of the owners' ancestors, not to mention an enormous puddle in the middle of the central courtyard in which there were ducks and pigs splashing about. And the liberal-minded Lintvaryovs took a dim view, according to Misha, of his student uniform with its shiny buttons, which to them proclaimed conservative tendencies.48 Chekhov was not put off, however, and he left on 4 May with his sister and mother on the train from Moscow. He would be away from home for the next four months.
Chekhov took to the new dacha straightaway and wrote to his brother in a state of exultation:
Ivan! We've arrived. The dacha is splendid. Misha lied. The location is poetic, the annexe is spacious and clean, the furniture is comfortable, and
there is lots of it. The rooms are bright and attractive and the landlords seem very nice.
