When Olga learned from Masha of his dark speculation about going abroad for the summer, she promptly wrote to implore him to abandon the idea. In his reply he explained that he had contemplated it because it was so dull in Yalta. Unlike her full existence, he wrote, his was a different matter: "I'm torn up by the roots, I'm not living a full life, I don't drink although I like to drink; I love excitement and have none of it, in brief, I'm now in the state of a transplanted tree, uncertain whether to take root or begin to wither." (February 10, 1900.) Then he assured her that at most he would go to Europe only at the end of the summer, to attend the International Exhibition at Paris, and he gave her the best of news, which he had just learned from Nemirovich- Danchenko : that the Moscow Art Theater would definitely perform at Sevastopol and Yalta that spring.
Shortly thereafter, however, Chekhov received a shattering telegram from Nemirovich-Danchenko to inform him that the troupe, instead of going to Yalta in the spring, would remain in Moscow to play a special engagement in the Korsh Theater. But subsequently wiser counsel on the proposed tour must have prevailed. The Moscow Art Theater had run up a large deficit. Chekhov's two plays were the only ones in the repertoire that consistently packed the house. Stanislavsky frankly admitted that the purpose of the Yalta tour was to show Chekhov the full productions of the Moscow Art Theater at their best, with all the refinements of staging which he had never seen, in the hope of prevailing upon him to do a new play. As Stanislavsky put it, if Mohammed could not come to the mountain, the mountain must go to Mohammed. And the grateful Chekhov was delighted. "I rejoice, rejoice," he wrote Vishnevsky, "primarily for myself, for to see all of you, and especially in a finished production ... I confess this is a dream the realization of which I had not believed in until recently; and now I tremble with every ring of the telephone at the thought that it is a telegram from Moscow to announce cancellation of the plans." (March ij, igoo.)
Playbills went up in Yalta. Tickets at Sinani's bookstore were soon sold out. It would cause a scandal now, Chekhov reassured himself, if the theater failed to turn up. To make doubly sure, and at a financial loss to himself, he informed Nemirovich-Danchenko that he had told Petersburg's Alexandrinsky Theater, which was pressing him for permission to produce Uncle Vanya, that it could do so only by agreement with the Moscow Art Theater. Every letter now joyfully alerted his friends of the projected visit, and urged them to make the trip to Yalta to see the performances of this remarkable theater. Masha was instructed to ship from Moscow quantities of special dainties for the large amount of entertainment he expected to do.
Olga sent him presents of candy, and a pocketbook so that a man who intended to buy up the whole south coast of the Crimea, she wrote, would have a place to put his money; and she complained of her dull life. She, too, was impatient to meet him, and had decided to come a few days in advance of the troupe with Masha, who had her spring vacation. "It is splendid that you are coming with Masha before the others," Chekhov wrote her, "for we shall at least have time to talk, to stroll, to see things, and to drink and eat a bit. Only please don't bring Vishnevsky with you, because he'll follow us about and will not allow
us to say a word to each other. . . ." (March 26, 1900.)
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Masha and Olga arrived at the beginning of April. Olga found the new house, which she had seen only in the process of construction the previous summer, cozy and warm. The happy Chekhov eagerly showed her everything, especially the garden, which he had lightly dismissed in one of his letters to her as "a dilettante garden," and he listed all the improvements that he expected to introduce. In the mornings she would find him working in the garden while he waited for her, or playing with Chestnut and watching the dervish dance of the ungainly cranes. Gorky, who had come to Yalta, at Chekhov's bidding, to sec the Moscow Art Theater performance, called frequently. In the study he would enthrall the family and guests with original and vivid accounts of his tramping over southern Russia.
For Olga time passed too rapidly in these friendly surroundings, for she soon had to leave for Sevastopol where the troupe would give its first performance. Chekhov, of course, planned to accompany her, but shortly before their departure he had to take to his bed with a bad hemorrhage, and the frightened Olga had to go on alone.
The Moscow Art Theater had arrived in Sevastopol on April 7 with a railroad car full of scenery and equipment, a number of fans, and a distinguished metropolitan critic. The whole trip had been conducted in a holiday spirit. The young actors often broke out into group singing, played practical jokes, and Dubbled over with the enthusiasm of their first tour to the picturesque South. Olga's report and Chekhov's telegram of his uncertainty about coming transformed the troupe's happy mood into general gloom. They gathered at the pier whenever a steamer from Yalta docked. Finally he arrived, on the morning of the tenth, looking pale, thin, and with a hacking cough. Stanislavsky almost wept. It must have cost Chekhov a major effort of will to make the trip. His large eyes lost their sad look as he answered with a smile tactless questions about his health: "Excellent. I'm entirely well." He put up at the Vettsel Hotel, and the ladies of the troupe busied themselves trying to place him where there would be no drafts.
That evening, concealing himself in the back of the director's box, Chekhov saw Uncle Vanya performed for the first time, and also for the first time the Moscow Art Theater in a full production before a public audience. The performance was a glorious success and hesitantly lie responded to the numerous calls of the audience for the author. All the actors pleased him and at one of the intermissions he went to Stanislavsky's dressing room to congratulate him on his superb acting in the role of Astrov.
The triumph seemed to give new strength and vigor to Chekhov. He stayed on, visited the museum, ministered to the ailing actor A. P. Artyom, and entertained the local journalists in his hotel, delivering to them a homily on the failure of the provincial press which concerned itself with trifles of daily life in small towns instead of exposing major evils and injustices of their society. Interested in every detail of staging, he visited the theater during its preparations for the next production, Hauptmann's Lonely Lives, talked with the actors, and never wearied of telling them about what a remarkable theater they had. That second evening he was profoundly impressed by Lonely Lives, which he saw for the first time, and he told Stanislavsky that he preferred it to any of his own plays: "He is a real dramatist. I'm not a dramatist. Listen, I'm a doctor." Vsevolod Meierhold's acting in the lead, Johannes, he thought outstanding. But he was equally certain in a negative way after seeing Ibsen's Hedda Gabler the third night: "Look here, Ibsen is really not a dramatist," he emphatically declared to Stanislavsky. Chekhov did not remain at Sevastopol for the last play in the tour's repertoire, The Sea Gull, for the weather had taken a turn for the worse and he began to feel a bit unwell.
Though a storm was blowing, a huge gaily dressed crowd was on hand to greet the company when it arrived in Yalta on April 14. Chaos reigned at the pier as the throng surged around the actors, threw flowers, fell over mountains of luggage, and tried to carry on conversation in the howling wind. But the young actors were deliriously happy at this unexpected tribute to the fame of their theater. They were perhaps more dazzled the next morning when a group of Chekhov's literary friends, including Gorky, arrived to talk with them and inspect the playhouse, for a large number of the leading writers and artists of the country had come to Yalta for this event.3