Chekhov’s sister Maria was his true assistant and adviser at all stages, from the preliminary discussion to furnishing the new Yalta house. In the center of the display panel there is their joint picture at the front porch of the new house. 

In order to finalize the construction of the expensive house in Yalta, Chekhov had to sell the copyright to all his works to the publisher Adolf Marx. The writer’s friends including MaxIm Gorky, tried to persuade him into cancelling the unprofitable contract but Chekhov refused. From Chekhov’s letters we get to understand that if the sale took place earlier, the house in Yalta would have been more spacious. In one of the letters Chekhov wrote that in Yalta he had “a dacha (country house) under construction. A small cramp dacha like an empty box for sardines packing. The trouble is that it was designed before the negotiations with Marx, and afterwards it was too late to redesign it”.