On che surface Chekhov maintained a buoyant mood and continued to dash off witty letters, such as to his sister's friend Maria Malkiel, whom he had got to know in Moscow:
Dear Mara Samoilovna
I write to inform you that I have taken the Muslim faith and have already reg'stered with the community in the Tatar village of Autka, near Yalta. Our laws do not permit us to enter into correspondence with such weak creatures as women, and if I am writing to you following the dictates of my heart, I am committing a major sin. I thank you for your letter and send warm greetings to you and your sister who is able to tell people's fortunes, and hope you both end up in the harem of a prominent gentleman, preferably someone handsome like Levitan.
Write again. Wishing you health and good fortune.
Osman Chekhov71
But no amount of his favourite pickled watermelons (specially sent over by his cousin in Taganrog) could mitigate his underlying gloom, accentuated by a cold northern wind in November which tore all the leaves off his newly planted camellia, and forced him to sleep in a nightcap and slippers under two blankets, just like his man in a case.72 Chekhov livened up when the gravely ill Levitan came to visit in December 1899, but the two friends must have known they would never see each other again.
The White Dacha became a Yalta landmark as soon as it was built, and despite ts relatively remote location, people began visiting in droves, which Chekhov mostly found very tedious. Masha had written to Olga during her first stay there that autumn and told her that a string of carriages lined up outside the house every day in the late afternoon, as if it was a theatre.73 But among the people who turned up at Chekhov's door were supplicants he found hard to turn away, and it was the penniless consumptives who affected him most deeply - for obvious reasons. Seeing his own condition reflected in theirs can hardly have lightened his mood, and certainly made him feel guilty about the relative opulence of his own house. The increasing numbers of tuberculosis sufferers drawn to Yalta for its climate were creating a problem because the town was ill-equipped to deal with them, particularly if they were poor. Hotels only took in those who were suffering tuberculosis in its early stages, and charged handsomely for the privilege. Chekhov found it very disturbing, and expressed his disquiet in a letter:
There are so many consumptives here! What poverty, and how difficult it is with them! The hotels and apartments won't take in those who are seriously ill, and so you can imagine the scenes one gets to witness here. People die from emaciation, from the poverty of their surroundings, from complete.neglect, and that's in the celebrated Tauris. It makes you lose all appetite for the sun and for the sea.74
Until Chekhov resolved to do something about a situation he found nightmarish, those without means who were seriously ill had to depend on the slim resources of the Red Cross and the Yalta Charitable Society. Working wiflhl local charities, he launched a widespread appeal for funds, as a result of which it became possible to ooen the Yauzlar Sanatorium, located high up on the hill above Autka where the air was purest.
IV
Marx and the Meadow
This contract now seems to me to be like a kennel which a shagg) old ferocn )us dog . s peeking out of.
Letter to I. Gorbunov-Posaaov, 27 January 1899
Much of Chekhov's time in early 1899 was taken up by protracted negotiations with his new publisher Adolf Marx - not the Adolf Marx who later became better known as Harpo (he was just eleven at the time), but the Adolf Marx who revolutionized the Russian publishing industry and put even Suvorin into the shade. Chekhov had not been at all surprised when, through intermed tries, Marx made it clear that he was interested in acquiring the rights to his works; he had long heard rumours that Marx wanted to 'buy him'. Apparently Tolstoy played a role in persuading Chekhov to give his agreement. On 1 January 1899,
Chekhov made it clear that he was equally well-disposed to the idea, but even he was surprised at the speed w th which he became, as he put it, a Marxist (iust over three weeks). 'It hit me like a flower-pot falling out of the window on to my head,' he said.75 An old schoolfriend in Moscow stepped in to carry out the negotiations on his behalf, liaising between Marx in St Petersburg and Chekhov in Yalta. It was precisely because Chekhov was living in Yalta that he was keen to proceed. He had the building costs of a new house to pay for and was, as usual, running into debt. It was a tricky situation, because Suvorin's publishing company was supposed to be bringing out Chekhov's collected works and, just as he was drawing up the deal with Marx, he received the proofs of the projected first volume.76 But he had long ago lost patience: Suvorin's editors had repeatedly lost his manuscripts and failed to answer Lis letters, and there was the souruig of relations with Suvorin himself.
Meanwhile, he was aware that he had not much longer to live, and was anxious to put his works into final order before he became too mcapac (tated '7 Suvorin rightly thought that Chekhov was worth more than the 75,000 roubles Marx was offering when news of the deal was relayed to him, but, pleading lack of sufficient funds and obligations to his children, he was not prepared to better that figure himself.78 He did send Chekhov a long telegram, however, in which he warned against sign.ng the contract, told him he deserved 50,000 roubles for just one issue of The Meadow's literary supplement, and offered to lend him 20,000 roubles 1 f that would ease his situation 9 Immediately the deal was signed, on 26 January 1899, Chekhov wrote a conciliatory letter to Suvorin, explaining its terms and readily agreeing with his recent suggestion that they should meet.80 In fact, it would be over three years before they saw each other again.
Chekhov was anxious to free himself from financial worries and get on quietly with his work, and this possibility was one of the main attractions of selling himself to Marx. Another was the prospect of seeing his works published well. When the contract was signed, he was initially euphoric, as if the Holy Synod had finally granted him a long awaited divorce. The sensation of having a lot of money for the first time in his life was also intoxicating, and so unfamiliar that he felt as if he had just married someone very rich: he told his friends he would now be able to eat caviar whenever he wanted and could at last play high stakes at the roulette table. He was also relieved at the thought of not having со deal with printers and bookshops any more, or spend time thinking about new titles for books, and about prices and formats.81 But there were disadvantages too. Marxwas indeed a shrewd businessman: 75,000 roubles was an unheard of sum in 1899, but it soon turned out that the deal was far more profitable for the publisher than for the writer. Chekhov had unwisely signed away the rights to all his works follow ng the.: init iai publication, and Marx made a profit on the deal in the first year alone.