This is one of the last photographs of the writer Alexander Ivanovich Ertel, who created the novels “The Gardenins; Their Retainers, Their Friends, and Their Enemies” and “The Change”, the novellas “The Lady of Volkhonsk”, “Two Couples” and “Mineral Waters”, as well as the cycle of short stories “Notes of a Steppe-Dweller”. It was taken in 1907 in the Moscow photo studio owned by the photographer Pyotr Petrovich Pavlov.
By that time, Ertel had already retired from literature and worked as an estate manager. His last novella “Strukov’s Career” was printed for several issues of the Severny Vestnik (The Northern Messenger) magazine from 1895 to 1896. In 1896, the writer moved to the Khludov estate, located in the village of Alexandrovka in the Morshansky Uyezd, Tambov Governorate, and became the estate’s manager.
From 1900, he also managed the estate of Lukutin, from 1901 — the estate of Yelizaveta Ivanovna Chertkova, and from 1903 — the estate of the Pashkovs. Ertel was forced to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather and father, who were also estate agents, because of his difficult financial situation and debts, which accumulated back when he was helping starving peasants from 1891 to 1892.
At first, Ertel thought that he would be able to juggle his new career and writing but soon realized that was impossible. Writing required all of his mental strength, and he began to spend more and more of that on agricultural activities. The writer took his forced retirement from literature very hard. In one of the letters to his wife, written around that time, he shared his thoughts on the situation,
