In the meantime, Brother Misha, seeking Suvorin's aid in obtaining a position, had called upon him in Petersburg and Suvorin and his wife had presented a kind of bill of particulars on why their long friendship with Chekhov had been soured. In what he imagined was an effort to reconcile the two friends, Misha conveyed the substance of the Su- vorins' complaints in a letter which has unfortunately been lost. Obviously annoyed with Misha's good intentions, Chekhov wrote his brother to clarify his own position on all these old scores and ended: "Of course, I ought not to be writing this to you, for it is all too personal and dull, but once they had bewitched you and presented the affair to you in that light, I had to tell you all this. . . . There can be no talk about a reconciliation, because Suvorin and I did not quarrel and we are again corresponding as though nothing had happened." (January 29,1900.)
Now, after a silence of some eight months, Chekhov answered Suvorin's letter in a pleasant, unstrained manner. He congratulated him on the marriage of his daughter, and from the bottom of his heart wished happiness to the whole family "to which I am joined almost as to my own." After bringing him up to date on his doings, he took the occasion once again to criticize New Times, which had published an account about him and Gorky. It appears that during the intermission of a performance of The Sea Gull, admirers of Gorky cheered him in the foyer of the theater. Annoyed, Gorky berated them: ". . . it is offensive to me as a professional writer that while you are attending a play of Chekhov, one filled with such enormous significance, you occupy yourself with such trifles in the intermission." Chekhov protested in his letter: "What was written in New Times about Gorky and me is incorrect, even though reported by eyewitnesses. They say that Gorky turned on the public with certain words; nothing like this was said in front of me." (November 16, 1900.) However, Chekhov urged Suvorin to come to Moscow, for he wanted very much to see him. According to Suvorin's diary, he went, and he reported Chekhov as saying that he was going to Algeria and inviting Suvorin to visit him there.
Chekhov brought with him to Moscow something of the passion for gaiety that he had evinced during the visit of the Moscow Art Theater to Yalta. A part of this mood was no doubt the natural reaction to weeks of work on The Three Sisters, another perhaps was his persistent feeling that time was running out on him. How he enjoyed being in Moscow! (he told Suvorin). The Dresden Hotel was only a place to sleep in; daily he was off from morning to the early hours of the next with Olga, with Gorky, with Chaliapin or the painter Vasnetsov. Old friends, like Korobov, could never find him in, and in answer to their despairing notes, he made appointments with them for a half-hour at the Moscow Art Theater or at his sister's, where he was entertaining. The distinguished Dr. M. A. Chlenov ran him down finally, to discuss a project for establishing in Moscow an institute for medical specialists in skin diseases and syphilis. After several vain efforts, the well-known artist V. A. Serov persuaded him to squeeze out some time to pose for a portrait.
Weeks of this hectic existence, in addition to bad weather, took their usual toll — extreme headaches, temperature, and prolonged fits of coughing. He knew that he must leave Moscow, but he could not abide the thought of returning to Yalta for another winter. Once again he settled upon Nice. Masha agreed to keep their mother with her until his return, and Marx, pleased that the corrected proof of the third volume was already in, willingly paid part of the next installment in advance.
What Olga's thoughts were on their parting on December 11 are unknown; they are discreetly omitted from any of the records. She wrote him later that she cried bitterly after he left. It would have pained her to read a sentence in Chekhov's last letter to Suvorin, even if he had meant it jokingly: "You have heard that I am manying? It is not true." For shortly after her return from that unofficial honeymoon at Yalta, Nemirovich-Danchenko wrote to Stanislavsky that Olga Knipper had informed him that her marriage to Chekhov had definitely been decided upon!
Part VI
MARRIAGE AND DEATH 1901 -1904
chapter xxiii
"What Do You Know, I'm Going to Get Married"
"Ah, you limp Slav jelly," scolded Olga — Chekhov's letter from Vienna led her to believe that he had not budged from his hotel during an overnight stop. But she had no reaction to his observation: "... I keep looking with ardent longing at the two beds in my room; I'll sleep, I'll think! Only it is a shame that I'm here alone, without you, my naughty child, my darling, an awful shame." (December 12, 1900.)
At Nicc the next day Chekhov took rooms at the Pension Russe. Nothing had changed about this old lodging of his. The Russian women there were the same "horrible frights," nor had the gay town with its lovely weather changed. And his old friends gathered around — the vice consul Yurasov, the irascible artist Yakobi, and the brilliant scholar Kovalevsky, who took away from his conversations the conviction that Chekhov anticipated the equality of the peasantry and the eventual disappearance of the landed gentry from the Russian countryside.
At Nice Chekhov also resumed acquaintance with Olga Vasilieva, a young Russian lady who had corresponded with him on the translation of his tales into English. Now his interest in her deepened. She sought his advice on the charitable use to which she might put a" large sum of money she expected to inherit soon from the sale of extensive Odessa properties of a deceased relative. He at once recalled his recent talk with Dr. Chlenov in Moscow, about the need for an institute for skin diseases. Though one has reason to suspect the motives of the young heiress in turning to Chekhov, he involved himself in an extensive correspondence, various interviews, and even an investigation of the Odessa holdings in a vain effort to realize this project. He was more successful with his own charitable enterprise, for he learned that the funds he had set out to collect were now adequate, along with a contribution of five thousand roubles of his own money, to set up a small sanatorium for consumptives in Yalta.
However, Chekhov's primary concern upon arriving at Nice was to revise and recopy the last two acts of The Three Sisters while rehearsal of the first two he had revised was taking place in Moscow. Olga Knipper wrote him on December 12 that Tolstoy, at a "Chekhov Evening" arranged by the Society of Arts and Literature, had laughed uproariously during the performance of those old one-acters, The Wedding and The Bear, and had told L. A. Sulerzhitsky that he regretted not having seen Chekhov before his departure. The next day she informed him in another letter that the cast had had a splendid rehearsal of The Three Sisters, in which she had found the right walk in her part of Masha. He must not fear, Olga added, that she would overdo the rough manner of the character. But Stanislavsky, she complained a bit later, was introducing his usual effects, such as the sound of a mouse scratching in Masha's scene with Vershinin.
Chekhov soon finished his revisions, making a number of changes, especially in the fourth act.1 Through the rest of December and much of January he was in correspondence with individual actors who asked for interpretations on this or that aspect of their roles. Meanwhile he kept forwarding to the theater additional alterations, deletions, or suggestions on the handling of a piece of stage business. "These little diamonds that he sent to us," declared Stanislavsky, "when studied in the rehearsals, put life into the action in an unusual degree and brought the actors close to the truth of what they were experiencing." And in a letter to Chekhov, he said that with every rehearsal he fell more and more in love with The Three Sisters. "We often talk of you and we marvel at your sensitiveness and knowledge of the stage, the stage of which we dream."