Ivanov: A naive man is a fool. But you women are clever enough to be naive so that it comes out in you as engaging and healthy and warm, and not so silly as it might seem. Only why do you all behave like this? While a man is healthy and strong and in good spirits, you pay him no attention, but as soon as he rolls down the slippery slope and starts complaining about his woes, you hang on his neck.

"It's nice to be a lord" he joked to his friend Ivan Leontyev (who wrote humorous pieces under the pseudonym Shcheglov) but he took his responsibilities as a landlord seriously and soon made himself useful to the local peasants. As well as organising relief for victims of the famine and cholera outbreaks of 1892 he went on to build three schools a fire station and a clinic and to donate his medical services to peasants for miles around despite frequent recurrences of his tuberculosis. Suvorin was to become a lifelong friend perhaps Chekhov's closest.

His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. "
Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896 but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard.