Chekhov : scenes from a life

When it turned out that the Romerbad would not accommodate people with lung diseases for fear of contagion (the emphasis was already changing from convalescence to leisure pursuits), the Chekhovs took a room in the much smaller Villa Friederike on the opposite side of the Kurpark. After being awakened each morning at seven by music being played in the garden and a cup of tea brougnt to his bed, Chekhov spent his days here lying on a chaise-longue in che sun, reading the Russian newspapers that were sent to Lm. Reading the issues of the Russian Gazette that his fr :nd the editor sent him in Badenweiler was one of the few pleasures left to h. n during his last weeks alive. An inveterate newspaper reader to the very end, Chekhov wrote to Sobolevsky shortly before he died to tell him how grateful he was to receive the issues which had been arriving regularly since he arrived in the Black Forest; they warmed him, he said, like the sun.⁴

Chekhov also enjoyed simply gazing at the views of the undulating wooded mountains that surround Badenweiler. As an avid gardener, he was admirng of the horticultural display in the hotel garden, but found it difficult to acclimatize to the quiet orderliness of German village life, and aimosc immediately started straining to go to Italy. He would have been disgruntled therefore to read a poem written 'n 1851 by Just. ius Kerner, eulogizing Badenweiler as a 'piece of Italy on German soil',⁵ yet probaoly interested ifl the scientific discoveries of ts late author who, like himself, had combined the careers of doctor and writer. It was Kerner who wrote the first clinical descriptions of botulism earlier in the century, suspecting a biologica¹ toxin was behind a spat-; of sausage poisoning in the Stuttgart area, known as 'Kerner's disease' because of his reports on the deaths it caused through muscle paralysis. These reports paved the way for the discovery of Bacillus botulinus (from the Latin 'botulus', meaning sausage) in 1897 by a Belgian bacteriologist. Kerner also first suggested the use of small amounts of this most lethal toy n in the treatment of nervous system disorders, which has led in recent times to the development of rejuvenating 'botox' njections to relax the muscles that cause wrinkles. Kerner had loved staying in Badenweiler, Chekhov did not.

Anxi )us to protect his mother to the end, however, he wrote his last heroically upbeat letter to her from the Villa Friedenke a couple of weeks before he died:

Dearest Mama, I send you greetings. My health is improving and I should think that I will be completely better in a week. I like't here. It's quiet and warm, there is a lot of sunshine, but it's not too hot. Olga bows to you and sends her love. My respects to Masha, Vanya and everyone else. I bow deeply before you and kisl your hand. I wrote to Masha yesterday.

Your Anton⁶

On 22 June, after ten days at the Villa Friedenke, Chekhov's restless spirit got the better of him and he and Olga moved again, this time to the imposing five-storey Hotel Sommer, where Josef Schwoerer was doctor-in-residence. Initially, because it was high season, the only room they could obtain overlooked the main road, but eventually they were able to move to a larger and quieter first-floor room with a balcony, on the side which looked out to the busy village post office and the Kurpark across the road. Chekhov was too ill to take the waters or go to hear the band play in the park, but he did manage brief walks in its magnificent arboretum, which had been cultivated since 1825. Alongside native trees, conifers, pines, laurels, yews and cedars of Lebanon, he would have enjoyed seeing fi: trees from Chile and tulip trees from Japan. G^and Duke Friedrich I's Russian sister-in-law had even helped to bring two Paulownla tomentosa from north China. The giant Californian redwoods were planted at the time of Chekhov's stay in Badenweiler. Olga also tooK her husband out on carriage rides to neighbouring villages, where he delighted in seeing cherry trees, well- cared for fields and streams, and lilies and roses blooming in small gardens.⁷ But then suddenly it became very hot, and Chekhov became even moie uncomfortable. Apart from the breathlessness caused by his condition, he had no summer clothes, and on 29 June, three days before he died, Olga travelled to nearby Freiburg to order him some flannel suits (ore wh ;e with a blue stiipe and one blue with a white stripe). She took along for company Lev Rabenek, a young Russian student who had arrived in the hotel. Rabenek and his brother were Moscow University students, and were already acquainted with Chekhov and Oiga through their friendsh.p with Stan'slavsky's family. They had been sent by their mother to Switzerland to attend lectures on French literature, but had detoured to Badenweiler when the younger brother fell ill. He was also put under the care of Dr Schwoerer.⁸

The next morning Chekhov almost collapsed n the hotel corridor and had to retreat back to bed, where Olga propped him up w^:.th five pillows to enable him to breathe more easJy. Lev Rabenek had been coming to visit almost every day and now realized that Chekhov's suntanned face was a deceptive mask for the precarious state of his health. During his vis ts to Chekhov's room, he would read aloud from the Russian newspapers, and later recalled the writer's intense interest in everything going on in the Far East and his distress at heaimg reports of the dismal progress of the Russo-Japanese War. When it had first begun, in February 1904, Chekhov had declared an intention to go to the Far East himself that summer and contribute to the war effort by working as a doctor. He now asked his wife to translate the articles in German newspapers about Russia's humiliating losses. Chekhov not only followed the events of the war closely because h.s wife's beloved Uncle Sasha was on active duty w^;th his regiment (Olga's mother thought her brother was probably the prototype for Chebutykin, the army doctor in Three Sisters), but because of his own travels in the Far East; everything must have seemed particularly vivid to him. The Berlin correspondent of the Russian Gazette, to whom Olga recounted the events of Chekhov's last days a ive, recorded that he started talking about a sailor and the Japanese in the last hours of delirium before he died.⁹

Chekhov spent his last day playing patience, and died in the early hours of a warm July nighi in the presence of his wife, Dr Schwoerer, and the student Lev Rabenek. It had been the first time he had actually asked for a doctor, and Olga had dispatched Rabenek to run down the road to Schwoerer's house and ask him to come. Events then moved rapidly and Chekhov died immediately after downing the glass of champagne prescribed by Schwoerer. It seems fitting that the self-effacing Chekhov died in this more modest resort, and not in the grander spas visited by the likes of Paganmi, Queen Victoria, Bismarck, Wagner and Dostoevsky

Lev Rabenek was sent off to start writing telegrams. In the hours after Chekhov's death, with the smell of hay wafting in through the open window,¹¹ Olga was left alone to gii ^ve w'th the body of her dead husband. At dawn the silence was broken by birdsong and then by the sound of the organ playing at the nearby church in preparation for the morning's services. Dmitry von Eichler, the Russian Consul to the state of Baden, who happened to be stay ng in Badenweiler at the time, arrved at the Hotel Sommer at seven, and was instrumental in cancelling official procedures and ensuring a minimum of fuss. It was agreed that Chekhov's body would remain at the Hotel Sommer for the duration of the next day, and then (in a faint echo of events following Pushkin's death) be removed under.cover of darkness. Before being persuaded to move to the house of Dr Schwoerer and his Russian wife, Olga sat for a wh^:' e on the balcony with Rabenek, and conimented di liy that the suits which had been made for her husband had turned out to be funeral shrouds. Towards evening later that day, Rabenek escorted Olga back to the hotel, where Chekhov's body now lay surrounded by flowers. Rabenek had earner been involved in the unpleasant task of straightening out Chekhov's corpse (he had died on his s^;de), and after nightfall was distressed to observe the und gnified way in which it was put into a laundry basket that proved to be too small. He and his brother then accompan ed the procession to the Catholic chapel a quarter of a mile down the road, with two people carrying lanterns to light the way.¹²