In the audience was Ezhov. He saw the cuckolded schoolteacher Kulygin as a caricature of himself, and reported to Suvorin on 1 February 1901: All the heroes whine, none is satisfied. There is a drunken old doctor who has read nothing… There is adultery (Chekhov's favourite theme)… The content: three sisters, daughters of a brigadier
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i IIRII: i id èì I'll s general, their brother studying to be a professor, all passionately desire to move to live in Moscow… The play is acted splendidly… I shall not be writing about this play in New Times.61 Suvorin thoroughly disliked the play when he saw it a year later in Moscow.
SEVENTY-FIVE Ô
The Secret Marriage February-May 1901 WHEN ANTON ARRIVED, Bunin moved out to sleep at the Hotel Yalta, where there was a corpse in the next room. Bunin's humour and tact endeared him to Anton, who pressed him to stay. Masha in Moscow was propitiated by a parcel of gifts from her brother: a tartan rug, lace handkerchiefs, scissors and a blotter.
Olga Knipper was still further away. In Moscow the theatres closed for Lent, so Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky took their company to Petersburg, where the theatres closed only for the first, fourth and last weeks of Lent. The public enthused in Petersburg as they had in Moscow. Unadvertised, all seats were sold; people queued for tickets until midnight. The press, however, was brutal. Burenin denounced a 'press claque puffing Chekhov'. New Times derided Olga in Lonely People. Kugel in The Petersburg Newspaper reviewed the first night of Uncle Vania on 19 February 1901: Knipper is 'a very phlegmatic lady… praise of this actress is for me an utter mystery.' Amfite-atrov's Courier declared: 'Knipper is a very bad actress.' Critics praised Maria Andreeva, whose Katchen, the dowdy wife in Hauptmann's play, was more beautiful than Olga's siren Anna Mahr. Olga and Andreeva became enemies. Three Sisters changed a few minds: Amfi-teatrov, for one, decided that Knipper was a great actress.
When the curtain fell the audiences called out the wording of congratulatory telegrams to Chekhov, but Suvorin's critics accused the Moscow Arts Theatre of destroying him. Nikolai Sazonov told his wife he would never have passed the play when he was censor. The Ministry of Education banned it from 'people's theatres'. Finally, on 20 March, Burenin published a vicious skit: Nine Sisters and Not a Single Groom. Burenin's sisters, Hysteria, Cretina and Idiota, utter Chekhovian gibberish, Tra-ta-tam and Tsip, tsip, tsip and his cast includes trained cockroaches. Nine Sisters ends with the sisters sucking
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Ill Ê I I i IM i \i i- il '. their blankets and the theatre collapsing to thunderous applause. Burenin's parody upset Chekhov - all the more so because it was published in Suvorin's paper.62
Olga was distraught about her bad reviews: she loved Petersburg and wanted her love reciprocated. Stanislavsky explained to the cast that every critic was the husband or lover of an actress whose nose had been put out of joint by their performance of Chekhov. Petersburg actors queued to apologize and Lidia Iavorskaia showed her support. She took a red carnation from between her breasts and threw it to Stanislavsky, then came backstage and invited the cast to stay as her guests for the fourth week of Lent. Nemirovich-Danchenko and Stanislavsky, to Olga's disgust, accepted. Iavorskaia, Anton's notorious old love, repelled her: 24 February… Iavorskaia crept into my dressing room again, she pushes in, flattering and keeps inviting me to see her. The brazen woman. 3 March… Iavorskaia has invited me on 5 March, but I certainly shan't go. I can't bear the sight of that coarse woman and have given orders for her not to be allowed in my dressing rooms in the interval.63 Another old flame of Anton's approached Olga. She wrote to him on 2 March to say: 'I just had a letter from L. Avilova, you seem to know her. She wishes… to get a ticket to the Sisters. I replied politely. I cannot get a ticket.' She was angry with 'Kitten', Nemirovich-Danchenko's wife, as well.64
Anton was upset by the ordeal the company had endured, but reproached Olga for quarrelling with Iavorskaia (who had sent him a telegram of praise). Anton even renounced writing plays in a country where actresses were abused. Suvorin was punished: for the twenty-fifth anniversary of New Times students organized a 'cat's concert' under the windows of his offices; police had to drive demonstrators away. Another student demonstration was attacked by Cossacks and police; news came that the Church's Holy Synod had excommunicated Tolstoy. In a tense and excited Petersburg theatre audiences became even more emotional. Sazonova took a friend, Evgenia, to see Three Sisters on 1 March 1901: 'She left the theatre in tears. Masha's affair with an artillery colonel is her own story.' One persona found Anton's
FEBRUARY-MAY IOOI
drama and personal life amusing. Anna Suvorina wrote to Anton at Easter: 'We all went to see Uncle Vania, six times in a row… it makes me laugh since I can see and hear many of my kith and kin… I'd like to say hello to your "wife" [Olga Knipper], but how can I?'65
In the middle of all the turmoil Misha Chekhov turned up in Petersburg to take up Suvorin's offer of employment: Suvorin 'could not think what you're fit for', and forgot to assign Misha a salary. Masha supported her youngest brother: 'it's the fate of the boys in our family to be writers, not officials'. Misha declared that he was doing what Anton had advised him to do ten years ago. Now Anton reminded him that Suvorin published New Times and was 'an awful liar, especially in his so-called frank moments'; also that Anna Suvorina was petty. The only honest employment with Suvorin would be with Tychinkin in the print shop. Despondent at Suvorin's offhandedness and Anton's disapproval, Misha went back to Iaroslavl to rehabilitate himself. Suvorin wired him. Misha returned to Petersburg, apologizing to Suvorin on 17 March: 'I was always being terrified in my childhood that God would punish me and the Devil lead me astray… [My parents] made me a weak character.'66 Misha was employed with Suvorin first as an editor, then in his advertising agency, for 350 roubles a month. Suvorin had won another Chekhov.
Alone with his mother in the Crimea, Anton was reaching a decision. To Bunin he joked: 'marrying a German is better: they are tidier'. Gorky, keeping Olga company in Petersburg, wrote to Anton: 'Why have people everywhere been saying that you are married?' Meanwhile the almonds blossomed and Anton gardened. He was reading proofs for volume IV of The Complete Works, but not writing. He had promised another story to the journal Life: that journal was now banned. His old editor, Mikhail Menshikov, left The Week to work for Suvorin, and another outlet vanished. Anton grew iller. Nikolai Sazonov reported back to his wife that Chekhov would share the fate of the poet Nadson: 'he will be wiped out by consumption and Burenin's parodies'. Masha picked up the ominous adverb in a letter from Bunin: 'Anton is relatively well', and asked for his support in Yalta, when she came for Easter.67 Anton was expecting Olga to come for four whole months. On 5 March, she made him an ultimatum:
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THKI'.I. TRIUMPHS