OCTOBER 1896
dantes, merging a drunken Don Juan with the saintly conservationist doctor, 'The Wood Demon', to produce a flawed Doctor Astrov. He took out virtually all the music from Tchaikovsky and cut the melodrama; in the new play the lovesick uncle no longer kills himself. Uncle Vania, unlike Uncle Georges, cannot even hit a target at point-blank range. The last act of The Wood Demon with its sentimental reconciliations alfresco is thrown out altogether. Chekhov had finally found 'a new ending'. Idyllic comedy (despite the suicide) is trans formed into bitter 'scenes from country life': the city dwellers leave their country relatives devastated by their wrecked lives. Anton added just one new character, the nanny Marina, the one religious believer in the household, the keeper of its awful secrets. Why was Chekhov so secretive about his new play, a work of genius that he had created out of a work he had disowned? When publishers or actors appealed to Chekhov to let them have The Wood Demon, the very mention ol which was painful to him, Anton told nobody that he was revising it In late autumn he baldly announced to Suvorin the existence ol '/ hnlr Vania, which nobody knows about'.22
On 1 October Anton set off for Petersburg in an even more cynical frame of mind about the city's theatres after reading the August issue of The Theatregoer, where a certain S. T. pointed out that the dire tOI '?• mistress was always a lead actress in productions. 'From this contri bution, written frankly and in detail, I learnt that Karpov is living with Kholmskaia,' Chekhov told Suvorin.
First Anton had a week's work in Moscow. A new project, encouraged by Suvorin, preoccupied him. He wanted to take advantage of new press laws to become joint editor, with Viktor Goltsev, of a liberal newspaper. It says much for Goltsev that Anton took this, his last collaboration, so far. Anton's room at the Great Moscow was a rallying point for all his contacts. He had a loyal ally, the young corridor footman Semion Bychkov: I'd been a factory worker, a yard man, worked in a puppet theatre, in pantomime and done everything… Of all the people staying at the hotel only Anton Chekhov spoke to me simply, man-to-man, without pride, with none of that looking down on you. And he gave me his writings, I started reading and that minute a new light illuminated me… 'Why,' I said, 'Mr Chekhov, do you live alone? You ought to get married.' 'How could I, much as I'd like to, Wi
THE FLIGHT OF THE SEAGULL
Semion,' he laughed, 'I never get any time! My public wears me out.'… I loved him fervently with all my soul.23 Semion Bychkov had his work cut out as Anton's social secretary. A number of women - Tania, Lika, Shavrova, Kundasova - wanted to be sure of seeing Anton alone in his room. Anton begged Kundasova 'meet me on very urgent business' there. Tania, packing her bags for exile, asked to see Anton before she left. There is until mid October no record of Lika's whereabouts.
Arriving in Petersburg, on Wednesday 9 October, after two days, presumably full of discussions of which we know nothing, Anton fell into the arms of the Suvorins. He handed over the manuscript of his Plays, including Uncle Vania, for Suvorin's printers and, as in January, began a round of theatrical visits. To the cast's dismay, Anton missed their first reading of The Seagull, just nine days before the first performance. Neither did Savina, who was to play Nina the 'Seagull', turn up to that reading. The first night was just nine days off. Lev-keeva, whose benefit night it would be, came to listen, glad that she would not be acting in so glum a piece. For a while Levkeeva had thought she might play Masha. The cast was horrified and she withdrew. On the 9th Anton missed the first rehearsal (he had gone instead with Suvorin to watch Vera Komissarzhevskaia act).24 'Never had there been such a shambles in our ant hill,' recalled Maria Chitau, who now played Masha.25
Anton, anxious to prepare the audience, not the cast, contacted Potapenko: 'I need to see you. We have business [Chekhov's code for anything embarrassing]… Would you like to come and see me around midnight? We need to talk in confidence.' The business in hand is clear from Chekhov's note to Masha, due to arrive for the first performance: I've been to see Potapenko. He's in a new flat, which he pays 1900 roubles a year for. He has a fine photo of Maria [his second wife] on his desk. This person never leaves his side; she is happy, brazenly so. He has aged, he doesn't sing or drink and is boring. He will be at The Seagull with his whole family and he may happen to have a box next to our box, and then Lika will have a very bad time… The play will not be a sensation, it will be dismal. Generally my mood is bad. I'll send you the money for the journey today or
OCTOBER 1896
tomorrow, but I advise you not to come. If you decide to come alone without Lika, then telegraph Coming… Anton felt as diffident about the play as about Lika, but Lika came under her own steam, a day before Masha. Anton succeeded in keeping the Potapenkos away until the second performance, to lower the tension in the Chekhovs' and Suvorins' box, where Lika would have to endure sitting with Suvorin.
Anton was ill, and confessed to Suvorin that he had coughed blood again. Nevertheless, he went to examine Grigorovich, for whom he still felt reverence and gratitude. Grigorovich, the last survivor of the first 'realists', was mortally ill. Suvorin recorded: 'He is a dying man, no doubt. Chekhov talked to him about his illness and, to judge by the medicines he is taking, thinks he has cancer and that he will soon die… Actually, I have the same trouble in my mouth.'
As in 1889 after Kolia's death, Anton's sexual desire surged after contact with the grave. Intriguing fragments from Potapenko to Anion survive. The first runs: 'Thanks, but alas! I can't [àäà/ñ?)! hmoir, dictation from home.' The second includes the line: 'I stiririidn.1 certain actress to you in her entirety.' Potapenko was formally ï.UP. ferring to Anton Liudmila Ozerova; Anton showed interest not only in Liudmila Ozerova, but in the actress Daria Musina-Pushkina, with whom he had been close five years before: she responded eagerly. I lc attended the second rehearsal of The Seagull, distressed after seeing (Irigorovich, uneasy after a dream that he was being forcibly married to a woman he disliked, a dream natural enough after all the attempts friends in Petersburg had made over the years to marry him off.
Just six days before the first night, the forty-two-year-old Savina refused to act the eighteen-year-old 'Seagull'; the next day the role was given to Vera Komissarzhevskaia, at thirty-two a more plausible /eune naive. Actresses argued over whether Savina could now play Masha. Savina withdrew in a huff. Anton was unhappy with Karpov's staging, which was using sets meant for bourgeois farces and quite unsuited to Chekhov's scenes in a dilapidated country estate.
Bad omens did not spoil the rehearsal Anton attended with Potapenko on 14 October in the theatre. Anton began to trust the cast, and was impressed by Komissarzhevskaia. (Suvorin had thought her dreadful as Klarchen in Sodom's End and neither he nor Chekhov had
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at first shared Karpov's infatuation with her genius.) Komissarzhev-skaia hit on a solution to the play's most intractable monologue, Treplev's symbolist play-within-a-play which Karpov feared would make the audience laugh. Her fine voice hypnotized the listener, as she worked from her lowest alto to a climax and then lowered to inaudibility as 'all lives, completing their sad cycle, perish'. She decided (and Anton was won over by her musicality) to render Treplev's piece not as parody, but as poetry.