By this will Masha was to receive by far the lion's share of his estate, although he probably took into consideration his wife's income from her acting. Nothing was left to his mother because he could be certain that Masha would take care of her, as well as fulfill the several promises of donations he mentions in his will.
Chekhov's letters to Olga after the first separation from his wife — she left for rehearsals at Moscow on August 20 — are filled with details of the local callers who annoyed him and the outside visitors whose company he enjoyed: the amusing Bunin, the clever newspaper writer V. M. Doroshevich whom he so much admired, the psychiatrist N. N. Reformatsky, and the wandering, loose-living actor P. N. Orlenev
His cousin, son of his aunt, Fedosiya.
Another cousin, daughter of his favorite uncle, Mitrofan.
The former apprentice in the grocery store of Chekhov's father.
whose anecdotes on theatrical life delighted him. Orlenev assisted Chekhov in organizing a theatrical performance to aid the consumptives of Yalta, but he also shamelessly used his acquaintance to introduce his cronies to him, one of whom sought his influence in securing the admission of a Jewish youngster to the local school.4
With almost comic iteration, in the light of his recently forsaken bachelor existence, Chekhov dutifully itemizes his performance, or lack of it, of the commands Olga had left behind concerning scrubbing his teeth, bathing, changes of linen, keeping his clothes in order, and taking laxatives. He rarely mentioned financial matters to her, in which she was much more practical than he was — Masha bore the brunt of his concerns in this respect —but on August 23 he asked her to take care of the transfer of eight hundred roubles to his cousin, Alexei Dol- zhenko, who worked in Moscow. It was obviously a loan, one of the many which he never expected to be paid back. Hence Olga must have been surprised to receive an outburst from him very shortly thereafter: "It is entirely incomprehensible how my money disappears daily, incomprehensible! I must get away from here, my darling. Yesterday one person got a hundred roubles, today another came to say good-by and took ten from me. I gave a hundred to still a third, promised a hundred to another and fifty to someone else, and all this must be handed over when the bank opens tomorrow." (September 9, 1901.) Despite his need, Chekhov rejected the proposal of Gorky, who only recently had learned of the disadvantageous terms of Marx's contract, to obtain funds to buy out the publisher's rights and to accept Chekhov in his own firm, Znanie, which would guarantee him a much larger income from the publication of his works. He had neither desire nor energy nor faith to undertake this business, Chekhov wrote Gorky. Besides, Marx was ill, he said, and even if he were well, to break his contract with this man would reflect badly on the publisher's business. :
Aware of the monotony of the contents of his letters, Chekhov once asked Olga to forgive her "old husband" for writing so often about castor oil. The sameness was not entirely caused by the fact that they exchanged letters at the rate of one a day or every other day. Olga's letters, though limited largely to her Moscow social and theatrical world, are often lively and highly informative. But he seems to have erccted a barrier between them on the higher things of the mind and
4 In Tsarist times only a small percentage of the Jews in a given community were allowed to attend the local schools.
spirit which were part of his world, and he rarely vaulted it in his letters to his wife, a fact which the intelligent Olga sensed and resented. The lack is all the more surprising in the light of the intellectual brilliance and literary charm of so much of Chekhov's epistolary prose.
There was nothing lacking, however, in Chekhov's expression of love and tenderness for Olga in his letters. He had grown used to her like a little child and felt cold and comfortless without her, he wrote after her departure, and he had ordered her easy chair brought into his room. It was horribly dull sleeping alone, he assured her, and he was turning into a regular bourgeois husband who could not live without his wife. An almost feminine softness and submissiveness characterize his devotion which he playfully conceals by a pretense of severity. When she proposes to take in a cat in her new apartment, he protests, for he cannot abide cats. He suggests a dog instead —and then adds: "However, my love, you know best, keep a crocodile if you like; I permit everything and give you my leave and am ready to sleep even with a cat." (August 30, 1901.) In procuring the new passport of a married couple for her, he wrote: "At first I wanted to describe you as the wife of an 'honorary academician,' but then I decided that it was much more agreeable to be the wife of a doctor. . . . Write every day or I'll take away the passport. On the whole, I'm going to keep a stern hand over you in order to make you fear and obey me. I'll give it to you!" (September 4, 1901.)
So lonely was her "severe husband" without her that after a separation of only three weeks Chekhov abandoned the salutary Yalta climate in the fall and set off to join Olga in cold, blustery Moscow.
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In Moscow Olga and Masha had taken a large apartment together. It was a money-saving device and would also provide a study for Chekhov on his visits. Olga had worked hard to have it all renovated, clean, and furnished by the time of his arrival. Masha, thinking of their new Yalta house, was displeased with this old building, but Chekhov informed his mother at once that the apartment was fine and had a room available for her —he now wrote her frequently when away, for he did not want her to feel deserted because of his marriage.
An event Chekhov had eagerly anticipated in the city was his first view of a performance of The Three Sisters by the Moscow Art Theater. Reviews and reports the previous season had left him dissatisfied and now he made a point of attending rehearsals and offering a number of observations on the staging. V. V. Luzhsky's acting as Andrei displeased him and he spent considerable time with him on the interpretation of the role. The portrait 011 the wall of General Prozorov, father of the three sisters, lie banished because it resembled a Japanese general. Chekhov also thought that the cooing of doves as the curtain went up, simulated by a group of actors under the direction of Stanislavsky, was simply inane. "Listen," lie declared to Luzhsky, "you coo marvclously, only it is like an Egyptian dove!" And somewhat to Stanislavsky's annoyance, Chekhov insisted upon staging the fire sccnc in the third act.
Stanislavsky indicated in his recollections that Chekhov's efforts on this occasion to usurp the prerogatives of the director adversely af- fcctcd the September 21 opening performance of The Three Sisters in the 1901 season. The reviews, however, give quite the contrary impression. The Daily News, in describing the succcss of the performance, stressed the "whole series of rapturous ovations" tendered the author and the veritable demonstration by the audience when Chekhov appeared alone on the stage at the end of the play. And the critic of Russian Word wrote: "The presence of the author obviously clcctrificd the actors and the play went off better than ever. Something in the performance had changcd, and one might agree that this was because of the direction given to it by the author. It was especially noticeable in the role of Andrei, actcd by Mr. Luzhsky."
There can be 110 question that this performance delighted Chekhov. For he wrote Srcdin in Yalta: "The Wild Duck did not do well on the stage of the Art Theater. It was sluggish, uninteresting, and weak. How- vcr, The Three Sisters went magnificently, with brilliancc, a great deal better than I have written the play. I did a bit of staging, made some author's suggestions, and they say that the play goes off better than it did last season." (September 24,1901.)