Bromide, Quinine and Croquet

 So there I was, strolling through the garden in front of Heene Terrace in Worthing – a fine sea-facing terrace of 1865 – when I spotted a smallish yellow-orange butterfly dashing about in a tearing hurry to be somewhere else. There was only one thing it could be – and, sure enough, it was: a male Clouded Yellow! This was a glorious late-season surprise, the first Clouded Yellow I've seen in several years. Of course it didn't settle so that I could have a proper look – they never do. 
   Other than that... Well, the rail journey gave me ample time to progress with my reading of Rosamund Bartlett's Chekhov: Scenes from a Life, a biography that tells the story of his life and art through the places he lived in and the places and landscapes (natural and man-made) that most inspired and moved him.  Thus we follow him from his boyhood in provincial Taganrog, on the edge of the southern steppe, to Moscow and St Petersburg, Siberia and Sakhalin Island, the French Riviera and Yalta – and his beloved country estate, Melikhovo. There, I was interested to learn, he had two 'assistants' in the form of his pet black-and-tan dachshunds, Bromide and Quinine (named by his sister Masha). These arrived as puppies, a gift from his friend Nikolai Leikin, and on arrival at Melikhovo they 'were fantastically happy to get here. They raced around all the rooms jumping up affectionately on everyone and barking at the servants ... In the morning, when I was walking them in the garden, they caused panic in the breasts of the yard dogs, who had never in all their lives seen such monstrous creatures...' Quinine was especially affectionate, and in the evenings would put her front paws on Chekhov's lap and gaze at him adoringly. The feeling was mutual, and Chekhov was equally fond of Bromide (known as Brom). 
   The dachshunds, like the yard dogs, led a free and easy life, fathering and giving birth to litters of puppies, one of them the result of an incestuous union. Chekhov wrote of Quinine giving birth three times a year to 'puppies who were a strange mixture of crocodile and mongrel'. Sadly, both dogs were to die, probably from rabies, six years later, during the last summer Chekhov spent at Melikhovo.

  I was also interested to learn that, at Melihkovo, Chekhov was a keen player of croquet, a game I'd always thought of as quintessentially English. It was, in fact, hugely popular in Russia towards the end of the 19th century, and remained so, even into Soviet times. Chekhov became such an enthusiastic player that he would insist on continuing games even as night fell and matches had to be lit to see where the balls were. Scenes from a Life is full of such fascinating and unexpected details, and particularly illuminating about Chekhov's relationship with the landscapes he loved, especially the steppe (his first 'literary' story was 'In the Steppe'). 'Chekhov was a landscape painter,' Bartlett writes, '– in prose.'