Now it was Chekhov's turn to grow angry with Suvorin as he read the mounting invective in New Times, with its anti-Semitic innuendoes, against Dreyfus. "We talk of nothing here but Zola and Dreyfus," he wrote the Russian editor of Cosmopolis, F. D. Batyushkov. "Ihe immense majority of educated people are on the side of Zola and believe Dreyfus innocent. . . . New Times is simply repulsive." (January 23, 1898.) And shortly after, to a query from Alexandra Khotyaintseva, he replied: "You ask whether I still think Zola is right. I ask you: do you think so ill of me that you can imagine for a moment that I'm not on Zola's side? I would not exchange one of his fingernails for all those who sit on the case at the court, all those generals and highborn witnesses." (February 2,1898.)
Then, on February 6, in an effort to educate Suvorin on the facts of the case and perhaps influence him to alter the prejudiced stand of New Times, Chekhov wrote him a long, circumstantial letter, almost like a lawyer's brief, in which he condensed the mountain of evidence he had accumulated on the subject. He began: "You write that you are annoyed with Zola, but here all have a feeling that a new, better Zola has arisen. In his trial he has been cleansed, as though by turpentine, of all his outer grease spots, and now shines before the French in his true brilliance. He has a purity and moral elevation which no one had suspected." Then Chekhov provides a summary of the case from the beginning: the curious withholding of evidence, on the part of the War Office, from Dreyfus' attorney; the strange reluctance of the authorities to reopen the case when new facts became available; the current of anti-Semitism that developed; the failure to evaluate the evidence against Major Esterhazy, believed by many to be the real perpetrator of the espionage; and then the reasons behind Zola's courageous attempt to force the government into calling for a new trial in the face of what seemed like a terrible judicial error. The chief point, continued Chekhov, is that Zola is sincere, and bases his judgment, not on phantoms, but on what he sees. And though sincere people ean be mistaken, such mistakes do less harm than calculated insincerity, prejudgments, or political considerations. "Suppose Dreyfus is guilty — Zola would still be right, for it is the business of a writer not to accuse, not to persecute, but to champion the guilty once they have been condemned and undergo punishment. But great writers and artists ought to engage in politics only to the extent necessary to defend themselves against politics."
Since Suvorin's letter to Chekhov has vanished, we have no conclusive information on whether his thinking on the Dreyfus case was influenced by this effort of his friend. However, the unpublished memoirs of Kovalevsky shed some light on the matter. Chekhov told him that Suvorin, after receiving his letter, replied: "You have convinced me." Then Chekhov added: "However, I never did. New Times did not retreat from its massive malice against the unhappy captain, which continued for weeks and months after this letter." Kovalevsky asked Chekhov how he explained this. "By nothing other than Suvorin's extreme lack of character. I've never known a man more irresolute, even in matters affecting his own family." And in Leontiev-Shcheglov's notes for an unpublished article on Chekhov, he quotes Chekhov as saying: "I like Suvorin very, very much, but do you know . . . people who lack character can behave like the most harmful rascals, and at times in the most serious moments of life."
Once again, correspondence with Suvorin lapsed, but Chekhov continued his criticism of the slanderous campaign which New Times kept up against two men he considered guiltless. He wrote Misha that the majority of Russian papers, although they were not for Zola, at least were not in favor of persecuting him as was New Times. And in a letter to Alexander he bluntly declared: "In the Zola affair New Times behaved simply abominably. The old man and I have exchanged letters on the subject (though in an extremely moderate tone), and now both of us have grown silent. I don't want to write and I don't want his letters, in which he justifies the tactlessness of his paper by saying that he loves the military — I don't want them because I have been thoroughly sick of it all for a long time." (February 22, 1898.)
Though over the years Chekhov had tried to disassociate Suvorin from the reactionary policies of his newspaper, he felt he could do so no longer. His sincere desire to construct an image of his friend at variance with all that he found repugnant in New Times did not lack support in Suvorin's actions, conversations, and even in some of his own journalism. About a year before this rupture Chekhov had commented, with almost pathctic eagerness, on two liberally directed pieces which Suvorin had written for his paper, one aimed against the black reactionary Moscow News, the other on student disorders, in which Suvorin had pleaded the causc of the new generation. "I endlessly love it," Chekhov wrote, "when you arc liberal — that is, when you write what you want to." (January 4, 1897.) But more and more manifestations of Suvorin's opportunism and his lack of integrity had been undermining the strong affection Chekhov had for this older man. Perhaps it was only his profound sense of gratitude that prevented him, now, from ending a long and intimate friendship.
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For months Chekhov had been eagerly looking forward to taking a trip to Algeria with Kovalcvsky in January. Africa was a continent he had often dreamed of visiting, and, besides, pension living had long since begun to irritate him. Hence it was a keen disappointment when early that month Kovalcvsky informed him of his inability to make the trip because of illness. Chekhov felt entirely at loose ends with nowhere to go. When his birthday arrived on January 17, he disconsolately declared that he felt like eighty-nine years old instead of thirty-eight, and that he had become a grumbler and a mere clinic patient.
The agitation of the Dreyfus case and the Zola trial during all of February fortunately occupied Chekhov's thoughts and much of his time, and then he was comforted by the news that Potapenko expected to pay him a visit at Nice — he arrived on March 2 and stayed at the Pension Russe. Another friend, Sumbatov-Yuzhin, had come, and March also saw the arrival of Sobolcvsky and his wife, the novelist Boborykin, and "Lcvitan's Morozov," who struck Chekhov as a colossal bore. Chekhov's dull pension regimen quickly changed. Potapenko wanted to win a million at Monte Carlo so that he could write as he wished and never again have to think of advances from publishers, and Sumbatov-Yuzhin wanted only several hundred thousand francs in order to build a fine new theater. According to the account in Pota- penko's memoirs, though gambling at Monte Carlo depressed Chekhov, he was not immune to its poison. With paper and pencil and a small roulette wheel which they bought, they spent feverish hours working out combinations that would realize the gambler's dream — the secret of always winning. They disputed and arrived at different systems which they tried out daily at Monte Carlo. Potapenko was more of a plunger; Chekhov, though excited at play, wagered cautiously.
In his memoirs Potapenko argues that the gambling instinct in Chekhov ought to correct, in some measure, the common conccption that he stood apart from life, free of its weaknesses, passions, and errors. Though Chekhov's personality and the way he lived provide a complete refutation of this curious characterization, on this score the comments of Potapenko, who knew him intimately, have their interest. "No, Chekhov was not an angel," he writes, "not a self-righteous person, but a human being in the full sense of the word. And the even temper and sobriety with which he amazed all were achieved only with difficulty, after a painful inner struggle. The artist in him helped in this struggle, for art required all his time and energy, but life does not wish to submit to anything without a struggle. . . . And in Chekhov's life everything was experienced by him — the great and the insignificant."