He asked Nemirovich-Danchenko to read the manuscript, and later listened to this dramatist's lengthy criticism, staring gloomily out the window and not saying a word. Nemirovich-Danchenko wondered at his silence and concluded that none of the Chekhovs liked to reveal their souls; but he, too, pointed out in his memoirs the resemblances of the love affairs of Potapenko and Lika and Trigorin and Nina.
Chekhov, apparently, had been unaware of how directly he had drawn upon an incident in real life, involving people quite close to him, in this
It should perhaps be noted that Katya, the career-minded actress in A Dreary Story, also has an illegitimate child in a broken love affair and the child dies. The father, however, is an actor.
In her account, Shchepkina-Kupernik erroneously states that the death of Lika's baby by Potapenko took place three years after the writing of The Sea Gull. There is positive evidence, however, that the child's death occurred before the writing of the play.
first draft of The Sea Gull,10 and the fact obviously disturbed him. Members of the family and intimate Moscow friends, fully informed of the details of the broken romance of Lika and Potapenko, were perhaps quicker to notice the correspondences. However, when Suvorin wrote him from Petersburg, after having read the first draft of The Sea Gull, that he also detected the resemblances, Chekhov rather sharply replied: "My play (The Sea Gull) has been rejected without even a presentation. If it is true that I've depicted Potapenko in it, then of course it will be impossible either to publish or perform it." (December 16,1895.)
The dubious reactions of those who had read or heard the first version of The Sea Gull must have recalled to Chekhov the unpleasant experience of the failure of The Wood Demon. He was "not destined to be a playwright," he had written Suvorin on December 13. "I have no luck at it. But I'm not sad over it, for I can still go on writing stories — for in that sphere I feel at home; but when I write a play, I feel uneasy, as though someone were peering over my shoulder." ITiough he had every intention of thoroughly revising The Sea Gull, premonitions about its ultimate fate already troubled him.
chapter xvi
a
A Work of Art Should Express a Great Idea"
Chekhov did not allow the task of revising The Sea Gull to interfere with his usual winter visit to Petersburg. As soon as the houseful of New Year's guests had departed — including his old Taganrog and Medical School comrade Saveliev — he left on January 2, 1896. This time he stayed at the Hotel d'Angleterre in St. Isaac's Square, which gave him more freedom of movement than being a house guest of Suvorin, although he saw him almost daily. Unlike Moscow, which Chekhov both loved and disliked and where he was somewhat taken for granted as a
16 This first draft of The Sea Gull has not survived, and hence it is impossible to say how close were the correspondences between the events and characters of the two love affairs, but apparently they were very close.
"native," Petersburg enabled him to play a kind of guest role. People wanted to be seen with him, friends called for a chat and a bottle of wine, and at parties he was treated as the lion of the evening. He enlivened the atmosphere of literary and artistic gatherings and his geniality and sallies helped to compose the differences of quarreling writers. If some of his younger rivals envied his fame and popularity, he himself was devoid of envy and always ready to aid a struggling author.
Unlike Leontiev-Shchcglov, whose diary reveals that his admiration for Chekhov was not unmixed with spite, the ever-cheerful Potapenko never faltered in his loyalty and worship. Chekhov saw much of him on this trip, for Potapenko, now that he had ended his affair with Lika, had dutifully settled down with his triumphant wife in a luxurious Petersburg apartment. They and Chekhov attended plays at Suvorin's new theater, one of them Yavorskaya's benefit performance of Rostand's La Princesse lointaine, translated by Tatyana Shchepkina-Kupcrnik. And he and Potapenko visited D. N. Mamin-Sibiryak at Tsarskoe Selo. The somewhat primitive and original behavior of this author of tales about the harsh and joyless existence of miners in the Urals intrigued Chekhov. The three had their picture taken, with Mamin-Sibiryak in the middle, affecting the pose of a pompous-Napoleon.
At the end of two weeks, "domestic circumstances," said Chekhov, interrupted his visit, and he returned to Melikhovo. The determined Misha had finally ferreted out a girl who would marry him, "a sweet and openhearted woman," Chekhov described her, "and an expert cook." The marriage took place on January 22 at Vaskino, a village near Melikhovo. In the absence of the bride's father, Chekhov played the part of the parent who blesses the young couple, which prompted him thereafter to sign his letters to Misha "Your daddy" or "Your illegitimate daddy." Shortly after his marriage, the ambitious Misha, anxious .to follow in his brother's footsteps, had a one-act play produced in Suvorin's theater.
Another reason for Chekhov's premature departure from Petersburg was the necessity to discuss with Serpukhov administrative officials specifications for the construction of the Talezh village school that he was planning.
Having finished with the "domestic circumstances" in the course of a week, Chekhov returned to Petersburg, and this time stayed with Suvorin. At a dinner at Alexander's his brother's wife disapproved of his eating so little and said that he looked like a coughing skeleton. But when he took the children to a puppet show, Alexander was mightily pleased.
Besides his notebooks, which contain largely material bearing on Chekhov's stories and plays, in 1896 he began to keep a diary, the entries of which are extremely sparse and of little help as a record of his personal life. For example, the only entry on this visit runs: "In January I was in Petersburg, stayed at Suvorin's. Often with Potapenko. Saw Korolenko. Frequently attended the Maly Theater.1 Once Alexander and I were coming down the stairs of the editorial office2 at the same time as В. V. Gei,3 and he indignantly said to me: 'Why do you take up arms against Burenin with the old man (i.e., Suvorin)?' However, I never spoke ill about the contributors of New Times to Suvorin, although I have no deep esteem for the majority of them."4
The diary also mentions that when Chekhov returned to Moscow, accompanied by Suvorin, both of them paid a visit to Tolstoy's house on February 15. On this occasion Chekhov found the great man in a dispute with another guest, testily denouncing the decadent writers and artists who were then coming into vogue in Russia. His wife, Sofya Andreevna, also seemed irritated as she criticized the painter of religious subjects, N. N. Ge, a devoted admirer of her husband. However, two of the daughters, Tatyana and Mariya, who played cards during the evening, struck him as being very considerate and touching in their relations with their father. Suvorin, in his diary, mentions only Tolstoy's regret that Chekhov had read the manuscript of Resurrection before its revision, and he promised to give it to him in its final form, to look over.5
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In Chekhov's diary for this year, 1896, however, there is no mention of attending a masquerade in Suvorin's theater on January 27, an event