Did you know that Chekhov wrote animal stories? Me neither! But he did!
“Whitebrow” is an adventure story set deep in the woods. A hungry wolf raids a local farm, but in the noise and confusion she mistakenly grabs a puppy rather than her intended prey, a lamb. Disgusted (she’s a wolf, dammit, not a cannibal!) she spits out the puppy and tries to abandon it in the woods, but it trails after her and, for a day or two, it lives with her and her pups. When she makes another raid on the farm, the puppy trails after her and ends up back at the farm again. All’s well that ends well.
If you like animal stories, this isn’t a bad one. The she-wolf is given quite a distinct personality and back story (she’s getting on in years, she no longer hunts for larger animals, etc. etc.) The descriptions of the farm, the woods, and particularly the chase scenes are evocative and clear. The one human character, Ignat, is memorably sketched: Now living in a hut in the woods, he must have worked on a railroad at some point, for he is always talking to himself and saying things like, “Full speed!” and “Run off the rails!” and whistling like a steam engine.
When I first read this story, I assumed that Chekhov must have come across the work of Jack London and decided to try his hand at something similar. But no: London would not have been known to Chekhov at this early date. And London’s best known animal stories, “White Fang” and “The Call of The Wild” would not appear for another 10 years or so.
Looking into it a little further, it seems like animal stories were “in the air” in that day and age. Of course there were always animal tales (fables and the like), but starting in the last quarter of the 19th century, writers began to portray animals with interiority. As far as I can tell, “Black Beauty,” published in 1877, was the first. “The Jungle Book” appeared in 1894. “The Call of the Wild” in 1903.
So Chekhov, publishing “Whitebrow” in 1895, was in the thick of things. (In fact, he was quite early: Another animal story, “Kashtanka,” was published in 1887.)
A biographical note: Chekhov owned a dog named Whitebrow around the time he wrote this story.
And another biographical note: Some five years after “Whitebrow” was published, Chekhov wrote in a letter: “I don’t know how to write for children; I write for them once in ten years, and so-called children’s books I don’t like and don’t believe in. Children ought only to be given what is suitable also for grown-up people.”
READ THIS? READ THAT!
I think Chekhov may have been exaggerating when he said he wrote one story for children every ten years. In fact I think it was more like one story every 20 years – aside from some fable-like tales dashed off when he was very young, he really only wrote two children’s stories: “Whitebrow” and “Kashtanka.” They are essentially unlike anything else he wrote in his life.
A Chekhov Circus 