The photo was taken in 1898 in the Khludov estate in the village of Alexandrovka, Tambov Governorate. It 1896, Alexander Ivanovich Ertel became the manager of the estate. Next to the writer is his mother Avdotya Petrovna Ertel, née Panova.

Ertel wrote in a letter to Vladimir Grigoryevich Chertkov dated July 13, 1888: “My mother, who grew up in a rich noble house, was the landowner’s illegitimate daughter and, unlike my father, was not averse to sensitivity and dreamy romanticism. She did not receive a proper education but adopted some upper-class habits from her communication with the masters. Apparently, at first after their marriage, the clash of two completely different temperaments made my father even more realistic and sarcastic and my mother even dreamier and more sentimental. Only a long time later, my mother’s girlish behavior was almost extinguished, and she began to agree with my father on many issues, but sometimes — even to this day — there is a spark of her former self that brings a twinkle to her eyes. I must say that we, the children (me and my sister — there were only two of us), especially when we were very young, would have grown very cold from our father’s nonobvious kindness and common sense if it had not been for our mother’s sensitive and sentimental nature.”

The family lived in the Khludov estate until 1906. The lands of the Khludovs, Chertkovs and Pashkovs, managed by Ertel, were located in nine different governorates and, as Ertel’s daughter Natalya later claimed, amounted to an area approximately the size of England.

Natalya Ertel (sitting next to her grandmother in the photograph) emphasized in her memoirs that, to some extent, her father’s brilliant success in managing the estates brightened his life and softened the pain caused by his forced withdrawal from writing.

Alexander Ertel managed to significantly raise the welfare of peasants in the estates under his jurisdiction. When Ertel and his family moved to the large village of Alexandrovka, all but two of the log houses were heated with a stove venting into the room and had no chimney. In 1906, all log houses in the village had a chimney and were heated properly. The decision was made not out of charity but rather common sense and practical housekeeping and was beneficial for both the landowners and the peasants. Ertel primarily focused on the construction of schools, which were later transferred to the zemstvo administration, and medical care.