Knipper fell ill and two performances of The Seagull were postponed, a loss for Anton, who was to receive 10 per cent of the gross takings. Yet he now equated his bond with the Moscow Arts theatre with marriage to an actress. To Elena Shavrova and to Dunia and Efim Konovitser he used the same image: 'I have no luck with the theatre, such awful luck that if I married an actress we would probably beget an orang utan or a porcupine.' Anton was paying for a Moscow flat, an estate and school at Melikhovo, buildings in Autka and a farmhouse at Kttchuk-Koy. He had indigent relatives and not long to live. Rather than beg, as Levitan advised, from rich patrons, he took decisive action.
SIXTY-EICHT
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7 am a Marxist7 January-April 1899 I low ODD OF ANTON to send Piotr Sergeenko as agent to Petersburg to sell his complete works to Adolf Marx! Sergeenko, Anton's schoolmate, had become a comic writer under the pseudonym 'Navel',.uul he was one of many who had failed to follow Anton into serious literature. Chekhov derided Sergeenko's How Tolstoy Lives and Works and his novel, Daisy: he called him a 'hearse on legs'. A Tolstoyan, Sergeenko hid nothing from his family. Anton's lubricious talk embarrassed him, just as his po-faced tone irritated Anton. Only Sergeenko's pedantry qualified him as an agent.
For five years Anton had been impressed with Marx, who published m Russian and did business in German. Marx's The Cornfield was Russia's best family weekly, offering a literary supplement, and reference books as bonuses to subscribers. He produced standard writers beautifully, and paid well. Tolstoy had advised Marx to secure (Ihekhov. All Petersburg knew that Russia's greatest writer (after Tolstoy) was in financial straits. Sergeenko expected that, despite an opening bid of 50,000 roubles, Marx would pay 75,000 roubles for exclusive rights - enough to keep the Chekhovs secure. Anton offered Suvorin first refusal. Suvorin consulted his heirs: the Dauphin objected violently, and Suvorin wired Anton: '… can't see why hurry when property rights rising look before you leap is your health really bad.' Sergeenko reported Suvorin demurring: 'Chekhov is worth more. And why should he hurry.' 'So you'll give more?' There was a hiss, nothing more. 'I'm not a banker. Everyone thinks I'm rich. That's rubbish. I've a moral responsibility to my children, and I have one foot in the grave.'10 Suvorin offered Chekhov a 20,000 rouble advance: 'Write and tell me
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what made you do it think all the best dear Anton.' Anton wanted no auction. He was breaking not so much with Suvorin as with shoddy printing and accounting. It was a Biblical moment. 'I am being sold into Egypt,' he told Vania; he told Aleksandr that he was parting from Suvorin 'as Jacob parted from Laban'. At the end of 1899 he confessed to Khudekov:'… like Esau I sold my birthright for a mess of pottage'. Sergeenko negotiated for eight hours at a stretch, pushing Marx and his assistant Julius Grtinberg, until 75,000 was agreed as a fee for the right to publish all Chekhov's past and present works. By 31 January a contract was drafted. The contract was, everyone agreed, a coup for Marx and a disaster for Anton. Marx made 100,000 roubles in the first year - much of Chekhov's work had already been typeset by Suvorin. Sergeenko erred by not getting 75,000 as a lump sum. Too late, on 12 February, Suvorin wired: your deal for two years let alone ten is disadvantageous your reputation is just starting to soar to giddy heights and you throw your hand in… I warmly shake your hand Suvorin." Chekhov received 25,000 on signature of the contract and the rest at two eight-month intervals. Marx received the right to everything Chekhov had written and or would write. Anton's name day passed unmarked as telegrams flew, hammering out the contract. Sergeenko secured increments for new work: 250 roubles per printer's sheet (24 pages), rising by 200 roubles every five years. Anton wired an undertaking to die before he was 80. Marx and Grtinberg baulked loudly in German at the thought of what a Chekhov story would cost in 1949: the contract was then set to expire altogether in 1919. Sergeenko won few concessions: Anton could keep fees from periodicals or charitable publications, and, fortunately, his theatre takings. Marx inserted Draconian clauses: he could reject 'unfit' work, and Chekhov would pay a penalty of 5000 roubles per printer's sheet published elsewhere. Worst of all, Anton had to send by July 1899 a fair copy of all publications. 'That will force Mr Chekhov to make an effort,' Marx told Sergeenko.
The contract ruined 1899. Anton had destroyed most manuscripts and had few copies of his early work. He despatched all who loved him to the libraries to make copies. Lidia Avilova, as sister-in-law of the editor of The Petersburg Newspaper, found two copyists for dozens
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liiii llr -Pr ia iifPflaliBS 46, Anton with the Suvorin family at Feodosia, September 1896. He is sitting second from right with Emilie Bijon on his left; Suvorin is standing second from left, between \11nc and Nastia Suvorina 47. The schoolteachers at Talezh and Melikhovo, Aleksandr Mikhailov and Maria Terentieva #~ r ilir
48. Lidia Iavorskaia
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65. Evgenia, Masha, Olga and Anton at Yalta, February 1902 •w. 66. In the garden at Yalta with a tame crane, March 1904
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of stories from the iate 1880s. Nikolai Ezhov traced stories in The Alarm Clock and Amusements: with his usual incompetence he dropped whole paragraphs as he copied. Aleksandr in Petersburg wrote out the New Times stories personally: the Dauphin forbade him to bring in a copyist or to remove volumes from the office. During the winter, spring and summer of 1899, Chekhov revised this material. To Marx's annoyance, he reserved himself extra rights: to reject half of the 400 stories he had retrieved, and radically to rewrite, in proof, those he chose to preserve. From 1899 to 1901 rewriting took more of Anton's energy than new composition. Readers noticed with dismay that each new edition of Chekhov's stories threw out more early pearls. Marx made Suvorin pay 5000 roubles for the right to sell his stock - 16,000 volumes of Chekhov's work. Suvorin nobly offered Anton 70 per cent of the profit from the sales of these. Marx's monopoly made Chekhov's Plays, which included The Seagull and Uncle Vania, unavailable for three years.12
Masha, advised by the lawyer Konovitser, feared that Anton had been cheated: Marx was offering 125,000 roubles for the works of far more lowly writers. Masha consoled herself she could be a helpmate, like Countess Sofia to Tolstoy, and collect, copy and edit. Never had her role as sister given her so much fulfilment. Only Dr Obolonsky clouded her horizon: he hinted that she had ÒÂ. Anton's brothers, however, wanted their due. Aleksandr begged 1000 roubles for his new dacha, while Misha, who had put two years' work into Melikhovo, lamented to Masha in January 1899 in tones like Uncle Vania's: I lived in Melikhovo as you all saw, ate and drank at common cost, and where my 4400 roubles went I don't know; when I went to Uglich, I had, I'm ashamed to say, nothing but a pillow, a frock coat, a suit, three pairs of underpants, four calico shirts and half a dozen socks." Anton promised Aleksandr money, but ignored Misha's hints. He settled down to review his old work, recalling Pushkin's elegiac line: 'and with revulsion I survey my past'. Relief from debt made the Herculean task seem lighter: he told Nemirovich-Danchenko he 'had been given a divorce by the Holy Synod'. To the Tolstoyan Gorbu-nov-Posadov, who could no longer reprint Chekhov in his editions for the masses, he declared 'it has fallen on my head like a flower pot
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i II H I I I It I II M I' II S from a wiiulowsill'. He joked 'Any moment I'll become a Marxist."4 Sergeenko felt he had done his best: even if Suvorin had matched Adolf Marx's offer Anton would 'never have had accounts until the Third Coming'. Sergeenko pocketed 500 roubles for his trouble and wired 19,500 to Anton.