This photo was taken by Anton Pavlovich’s elder brother Alexander Chekhov. It shows the writer’s mother Evgeniya Yakovlevna, his father Pavel Yegorovich, and younger brother Mikhail Pavlovich. In March 1892 the Chekhovs just moved to Melikhovo. It was their first house of their own: before that, in Taganrog and Moscow, the Chekhovs had rented accommodation, frequently moving house. The constant relocations and rented apartments only caused frustration, and Anton Pavlovich spoke more and more about having to leave Moscow, to buy their own land and their own house.

Two years before buying the estate in Melikhovo, Anton Chekhov had undertaken an arduous trip across Russia to the Far East, resulting in his book “Sakhalin Island”. The harsh journey was the ultimate reason for the writer’s determination to leave Moscow. Anton Chekhov wrote,

The capital drove him away with its prices and bustle, and the writer’s health, undermined by his hard trip across the country to “a prison island”, left Chekhov with no choice,

Having moved to Melikhovo, the Chekhovs immediately began to settle in their new place. There was a lot of work, everyone tried to do their part: the elderly parents kept bustling about, happy to have their own house and garden; the younger Chekhovs got involved in the household chores,

Subsequently, Melikhovo had a magnificent vegetable garden with exotic vegetables and a real cherry orchard.

Alexander Chekhov noted in his memoirs that, having settled in Melikhovo, Anton Pavlovich “recovered and got immersed into nature and rural life. He had at his disposal a forest, fields, and a vegetable garden, as well as a neglected orchard, horses, farming implements and cows. There was plenty to work on after the stuffy city. He began to plow, sow, plant, and cultivate. In the beginning, his brother, Mikhail Pavlovich, and especially his sister Maria Pavlovna, would help him zealously with household chores.”