There is almost something naive in Chekhov's insistence that his marriage would change nothing in the kind of life he had been living for so many years, a determination that could hardly have pleased his wife. But he anxiously wished to assure his sister that her lovely house of cards had not tumbled down. However, the next day he realized that it had already tumbled, when he received Masha's answer of May 24 — much delayed in reaching him because of his traveling — to his letter of May 20, in which he had lightly mentioned the possibility of his marrying. "Now let me express my opinion on the score of your marriage," she wrote with obvious feeling. "For me personally this course of action is shocking! And in your case these emotions are superfluous. If people love you, they will not abandon you, and there is no question of sacrifice on that side nor of egoism on yours, not in the slightest. How could that have entered your mind? What egoism?! You will always be able to get married. Pass that on to your Knipshits.5 To begin with, you need to think about the state of your health. For God's sake don't imagine that selfishness directs me. For me you have always been the nearest and dearest person and your happiness is my only concern. I need nothing more than for you to be well and happy. In any case, act according to your own judgment, for perhaps I am showing partiality in this situation. And it is you who have taught me to be without prejudices!
"My God, how hard it will be to live without you for two whole months, even in Yalta! If you would only permit me to visit you while you are taking the kumiss treatment, even if it were only for a week. Write more often, please." And Masha appended an anxious
5 Another of Chekhov's pet names for Olga Knipper.
postscript: "If you don't answer this letter right away, then I'll be ill. Greetings to 'her.' "
In short, Masha saw no reason why Olga should not remain her famous brother's mistress and be grateful for the privilege. Her reaction deeply troubled him and the emotional implications behind it even more so. On June 4 Chekhov answered her in a letter which Masha saw fit to conceal from the world after his death:0 "Dear Masha, your letter, in which you advise me not to marry, reached me here yesterday from Moscow. I don't know whether or not I'm mistaken, but the principal reasons I married are: in the first place, I'm now more than forty years old; secondly, Olga's family is a good one; thirdly, if I have to part with her, I will part without any let or hindrance, just as if I had not married; she is an independent person and lives on her own means. So an important consideration is that this marriage has in no sense changed either my form of life or that of those who have lived and still live with me. Everything will positively remain as it was, and as formerly I will continue to live in Yalta alone." The rest of the letter seizes eagerly upon her request to join him, and after explaining the necessary travel and financial details, he slipped in a peacemaking comment: "When I told Knipshits that you were coming, she rejoiced." At the same time, in order to save Masha any further anxious waiting for his reply to her disturbed letter, he sent a telegram: i'm sending a letter in which 1 propose a trip
together on the volga. well. you are agitated to no purpose, all remains as of old. greetings to mother. write.
These commonplace and pedantically itemized reasons for his marriage were in Chekhov's characteristic, half-humorous manner of deflecting queries that concerned his inner life. No doubt they were also calculated to lessen the tension in the family circle. But the tension had mounted higher. Conscience-stricken over her letter of May 24 once she had learned of his marriage, but still not having heard from
6 It did not appear in her six-volume edition of Chekhov's letters, 1912-1916. In 1951, however, she turned the letter over to the Manuscript Division of the Lenin Library with the notation: "I request that it not be published." Accordingly, it was not included in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem A. P. Chekhova (Complete Works and Letters of A. P. Chekhov), 1944-1951. However, in 1954, when Masha published her own Pisma k bratu A. P. Chekhova (Letters to Brother A. P. Chekhov), she included her letter of May 24 and, in a note, part of Chekhov's answer of June 4. Ilence, it was recently found possible to publish the whole of Che- kov's letter for the first time in Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (Literary Heritage), Moscow, i960, LXVIII, 236-237. Masha died in 1957.
him, Masha wrote on May 28: "I go about thinking, thinking without end. My thoughts crowd one another. How terrible I felt when I learned that you had suddenly married! Of course, I realized that sooner or later Olya would manage to get close to you, but the fact that you got married somehow at once disturbed my whole existence and compelled me to think about you and myself and about our future relations with Olya. And they suddenly change for the worse and how I fear this. I feel more alone than ever. Don't think there is malice in me or anything of that sort, no, I love you more than before, and with all my soul I desire every happiness for you, and for Olya also, although I don't know how she will regard us and I cannot now give an account of my own feeling toward her. I'm a little angry with her because she said absolutely nothing to me of a marriage, and it could hardly have happened impromptu. You realize Antosha that I'm very sad and low in spirits, I am good for nothing and everything sickens me. I want only to see you and no one else. . . ."
After receiving Chekhov's telegram and letter of June 4, Masha confined her reply of June 6 to grateful acknowledgments and to some comments on the furor his marriage had caused in the press. But she could not resist a spiteful dig at Olga over their pictures in the Daily News: "Which is the celebrated one, you or Knipshits? They portrayed her in her costume in Uncle Vanya, but you in your pince-nez."
Masha, however, had sense enough to reject her brother's strange request to come and join him and his bride on their honeymoon. But a letter from Olga, perhaps intended to be friendly, aroused her bitterness all over again. Masha wrote Chekhov on June 16: "Dear Antosha, Olya writes that you were very distressed by my letter. Forgive me for being unable to restrain my disturbed state of mind. I'm sure that you will understand and forgive me. This is the first time that I've indulged' in such frankness and I regret that it has distressed you and Olya. If you had married someone other than Knipshits, then I would probably never have written you a thing, for I would have hated your wife. But the present situation is quite different: your wife was my friend to whom I had grown attached and we had experienced much together. That is why I was filled with various doubts and fears, perhaps- exaggerated and to no purpose, but I sincerely wrote what I thought. Olya once told me how difficult it was for her to live through the marriage of her oldest brother, so it seems to me that she should all the more readily understand my situation and not scold me. In any case.
it makes me unhappy to have distressed you and I'll never, never do it .again. ... So don't be angry with me and remember that I love you and Olya more than anything in the world."
Poor Masha! She had dedicated the best years of her life to Chekhov. Hardly any practical endeavor was undertaken without her assistance — the renting of apartments in Moscow and of summer houses in various places, the buying and selling of Melikhovo, the building of his house at Autka; and she had been his principal assistant in all his social endeavors and in his medical practice. The porridge wouldn't boil without her, he had rightly said. Even her own opportunities to marry she had probably sacrificed out of love for her brother. And would her best friend now take her place in this hallowed attachment which Masha had built up over the years? The anguish would not leave her. She poured it out to Bunin, the one writer among Chekhov's friends with whom she felt on intimate terms and now regarded as almost a member of the family: "I'm in a murderous mood and constantly feel the wretchedness of my existence. The reason for this partly is Brother's marriage. It happened so suddenly. . . . I've long been emotionally upset and keep asking myself: Why did Olechka have to allow a sick man to take such a beating, and even more so in Moscow? But it seems that the affair has ended all right. . . . I've begun to think about my own marriage, and so I ask you, Bukishonchik, find me a bridegroom, and may he be rich and generous! I've no desire to write but would talk with you with great satisfaction. Write me some more. I'm very broken up over Antosha and Olechka."