Chekhov had already stepped into his absent father's shoes by this time: Alexander was living in student lodgings on his own, and Nikolai was unreliable. Both brothers had problems with alcoholism, but in their sober moments they enjoyed some success contributing to the comic journals that were published in Moscow and Petersburg. Such publications were to become increasingly popular with the burgeoning literate population of Moscow's lower classes. As soon as he had settled into h s student routine, Chekhov followed his brothers' example, and started sending off stories to various editorial offices in the hope of supplementing the family income. It is possible Chekhov had at least one publication already behind him. His Russian biographer Pavel Gromov provides compelling evidence for ascribing The Dragonfly's inclusion of some humorous verse and a comic dialogue between two young men called Sasha and Kolya (the names of the eldest Chekhov brothers) in November 1878 to Anton Pavlovich.14 That piece, like almost everything else Chekhov wrote for the next five years, was published under a pseudonym. If Gromov's supposition is correct, we need to revise our dating of the beginning of Chekhov's literary career by over two years.
Editors responded to submissions in 'post boxes' on their back pages, and Chekhov was probably crestfallen to see the first piece he submitted after moving to Moscow rejected by The Alarm Clock in November 1879. Two weeks after sending in his next story to the Petersburg weekly The Dragonfly, however, he received the good news that his story was 'not bad at all' and would be published. In his follow- up letter, the editor offered Chekhov a rate of five kopecks a line. That would mean quite a few minnows if he was interested in buying fish, but not much else. The story was published two months later, in March 1880, along with another piece submitted at the same time, о make any money, writers had to be prolific, and they often adopted an arrayof pseudonyms to disguise che fact that there was only one author hiding behind them. Chekhov, in adaition, had his future reputation as a doctor to think about, and he was to publish under a variety of different names in his ;irst years as a writer. While his brother Nikolai signed his drawings with his own name, he himself usually opted for Antosha Chekhonte', a nickname given him back :n Taganrog.
Stretenka Street, Moscow
In the autumn of 1880, the Chekhovs upped sticks and moved again, to a first-floor flat in a brick building on nearby Golovin Lane, three houses in from Sretenka Street; it would remain their home for the next five years. Pavel Egorovich was still being chased for debts incurred back in Taganrog, and on one occasion he was threatened with arrest,15 but the taraily had slowly begun to return to normality. For the first time since moving to Moscow they could manage v, thout lodgers, and could take on a serving girl, Anna, to help with cleaning and cooking. Ivan soon moved out of Moscow to nearby Voskresensk to take up his first teaching job; the youngest Chekhovs, Masha and Misha, were completing their schooling and going on to college, Nikolai seemed set to do well as a painter, and Anton began to work harder than ever as more of his stories were accepted for publication. Over the years the family acquired a second servant, a dog (a wl ppet called Korbo), a cat (Fyodor
Timofeyich), and a piano, and the new friends they made in Moscow were invited round for meals. Although the scale of the entertainment was modest (no dancing, no cards), guests later remembered evenings spent at Golovin Lane as being particularly convivial. The Chekhovs were nostalgic for southern cooking in Moscow, and so the dishes Evgenia Yakovlevna served were a reminder of the life they had left. Supper almost invariably :ncluded the famous Taganrog potato salad with Olives and spring onions, and it is telling that the family immediately started growing aubergines, tomatoes and peppers in greenhouses as soon as they acquired their own garden at Melikhovo a decade later.
Chekhov particularly took to Moscow. In May 1881, as he neared the end of his second year as a medical student, a school friend in Kharkov received an ecstatic letter from him. 'Come to Moscow!!!' Chekhov wrote. 'I really love Moscow. No one who gets used to it can ever leave. I am always going to be a Muscovite. Come and work as a writer. You can't do tnat in Kharkov, but it pays 150 roubles a year in Moscow - that's what I get at any rate.'16 It was later in 1881 that a new journal called The Spectator was founded. Chekhov and his older brothers had soon virtually taken it over, and the The Spectator editorial offices became more like their own private club. Chekhov published eleven pieces in The Spectator before it began to fizzle out; insufficient financial backing meant it was unable to compete with other publications at that stage. The general style and quality of these pieces can be gauged from a frivolous little story he published in one of its last numbers that December under the title 'This and That':
A lovely frosty afternoon. The sun sparkles in every snowflake. Not a cloud or a gust of wind.
A couple are sitting on a bench on the boulevard.
'I love you!' he whispers.
Pink cupids play on her pretty cheeks.
'I love you!' he continues ... As soon as I saw you, I realized what I was living for, and what the goal of my existence was! It is life with you or complete non-existence! My dear! Marya Ivanovna! Is it yes or no? Marya! Marya Ivanovna ... I love you ... Manechka ... Answer me or I will die! Yes or no?'
She lifts her large eyes up to him. She wants to tell him 'yes'. She opens her little mouth wide.
'Aagh!' she shrieks.
Racing across his snow-white collar are two big bedbugs, trying со outpace each other . . . Oh, what horror!!17
In 1883 the proprietor of The Spectator could afford to start the journal up again, but again it only survived for a few months. However, Chekhov was its main contributor during its second ;ncatnation. By this time its former secretary, Chekhov's eldest brother Alexander, had left Moscow. He initially moved back down to Taganrog w^h his common- law wife Anna Ivanovna on what would be ust one of the many stops on his peripatetic career, and in November 1882 Chekhov sent Lm an update on family affairs:
Nikolka [Nikolai] has gone to Voskresensk with Maria, it's Misha's name-day, Father is sleeping, Mother is pra/ing, Auntie's thinking about herbs, Anna is washing d'-hes and is about to bring down the chamberpot, I am writing and wondering how many times tonight my whole body will start twitching for darng to try to be a writer. I'm getting on with my medical studies . . . There's an operation every day. Tell Anna Ivanovna that the old paper-boy who sold the Spectator has died in hospital from prostate cancer. We're just carrying on quietly as usual, reau. ng, writing, hanging around ы the evenings, drinking the odd glass of vodka, listening to music and singing, et cetera . . ,18
Chekhov was certainly kept busy by his medical studies during the day, while the need to earn money meant that much of his spare time was spent sitting at his desk scribbling diverse stories and sketches, without any guarantee that they would be published. In the autumn of 1881 he had started writing the occasional review and proved to be a strident critic. Unlike swooning audiences everywhere else in Europe, he was not very impressed with the doyenne of the French stage Sarah Bernhardt ('la grande Sarah') who came to Russia on tour with the Comedie Frangaise. Her Adrienne Lecouvreur (in Scribe and Legouve's play) was moving, Chekhov argued, but too mannered and narcissistic to bring the emotional Russian audience to tears. A Russian production of Hamlet at the first private theatre in Moscow in 1882 met with greater approval from Chekhov the critic.