About the time Chekhov finished The Betrothed, he was surprised and pleased to receive a letter from his old friend Potapenko, inviting him to join in the editing and promotion of a new magazine. He replied affectionately, recalling pleasant memories of Potapenko, and assuring him that he had not changed over the years. "However," he added, "I've got married. But at my age this is no more worth mentioning than growing bald." (February 26, 1903.) For a variety of reasons he refused Potapenko's offer, but certainly a major consideration was his desire to return once more to the oft-promised play. On March 1, having informed Olga of the completion of The Betrothed, he continued: ". . . But the play — well, I've laid out the paper on the table and written the title." Several weeks earlier, in thanking Stanislavsky for the "Order of the Sea Gull" which he had sent — a gold medallion with the bird engraved on it — Chekhov told him the title of the new play, The Cherry Orchard, and promised to have it written by about March 20.
Though the design for The Cherry Orchard had been in Chekhov's mind for some time, now, as at Lyubimovka, he could not seem to begin the writing. And it irritated him when the Art Theater, in a broad hint, asked him to suggest plays for their repertoire for the next season: he argued against those of contemporary authors, urging instead old standbys of Gogol and Turgenev. And when Olga, now oncc too often, blamed the lack of progress on his laziness, lie snapped back: "My laziness has nothing to do with it. Why, I'm not an enemy of myself, and if I had the strength I would write not one but twenty-five plays." (March 4,1903.)
But only two weeks after this Olga received the happy news that he was getting along well with the play except that one of the leading characters was causing him some difficulty. And three days later he jubilantly announced to her: "The Cherry Orchard will come off; I'm trying to have as few characters as possible; this will make it more intimate." Then on April 9 he informed her: "I'll write the play in Moscow for it is impossible to write here. They don't even give me a chance to correct proof." Not only the visitors, but the excitement and anticipation of his long-delayed meeting with his wife had cluttered his thoughts and slowed his pen.
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Momentarily at least, Chekhov always seemed to gain strength upon touching Moscow earth. To his mother he wrote that he liked everything about the new apartment on Petrovka, but to negotiate three flights of stairs was an act of martyrdom. In considering the apartment, Olga and Masha had warned him of this disadvantage, but he had then offered no serious objection, although they perhaps should have
"то Moscow, то Moscow!" / 595
realized how difficult it would be for him with his weak lungs. It took him almost half an hour to make the asccnt. Although he had lost no time in informing his mother of his arrival, Chekhov was not particularly worried about leaving her on this trip. Besides the servants, his cousin Yegorushka had been transferred to a Yalta maritime concern, and Elena, Yegorushka's sister, was then on a lengthy visit to the Chekhovs; both had offered to look out for their old aunt.
Chekhov at first found the Moscow weather too cold to go out, but instead of using this opportunity to continue his work on The Cherry Orchard, in his expansive frame of mind he wrote letters to various friends to invite them to call. Even Suvorin in Petersburg was urged to come to Moscow and visit him, and he did. Learning of this fact the small fry descended upon Chekhov for favors — a poet to ask him to persuade Suvorin to publish his translation of Robert Bums, a novelist to have his stories published — and as usual Chekhov obliged. Then an impoverished former editor requested his assistance in obtaining a pension from the Literary Fund, and Iordanov at Taganrog asked for more books for the library and Chekhov collected a large packing ease full and shipped them. Goltsev invited him to take charge of the literary department of Russian Thought, which he agreed to consider, and the Moscow court summoned him to answer a complaint, from which he was eventually exonerated, against Olga's dog Snap. Tolstoy, who presented Chekhov with an inscribed photograph of himself at this time, also sent him, through his son Ilya, a list of what he considered Chekhov's best talcs. He singled out thirty stories and divided them equally into two groups, one of "first quality" and the other of "second quality."2 It is an interesting list, revealing Tolstoy's critical insight as well as his personal bias in favor of Chekhov's early, brief, and quite objective stories where a simple theme is simply treated with a strong emphasis on moral feeling. This was a manner rather similar to Tolstoy's in the tales of his later years. In fact, Tolstoy told Lazarevsky that he had bound these talcs of Chekhov together in a book and repeatedly read them with great satisfaction. "Just as one
2 Tales of first quality: Children, The Chorus Girl, A Play, Home, Misery, The Runaway, In Court, Vanka, Ladies, The Malefactors, The Boys, Darkness, Sleepy, The Helpmate, The Darling.
Tales of second quality: Л Transgression, Sorrow, The Witch, Verochka, In a Strange Land, The Cook's Wedding, A Tedious Business, An Upheaval, OhI The Public!, The Mask, A Woman's Luck, Nerves, The Wedding, A Defenseless Creature, Peasant Wives.
may find in Pushkin's verses an echo of one's own personal experiences," Tolstoy remarked, "so this is true of Chekhov's tales. Certain of his things are positively remarkable."
Despite Chekhov's lack of co-operation, Gorky, and now some of his friends, were continuing to explore ways and means of evading the terms of the contract with Marx. They informed Chekhov that the publisher had already realized some two hundred thousand roubles on the sale of his works, which Marx had now begun to republish as book supplements to Niva, the magazine he controlled. The crusaders had interested a lawyer, who took a position more palatable to Chekhov. That is, there should be no question of breaking the contract by refunding Marx's payment of seventy-five thousand roubles. Rather Marx should be requested to reconsider the original terms in the light of his large profits, and be asked to pay Chekhov a third of all income from the sale of his works. In fact, if it were not for the markedly increased earnings from his plays, Chekhov would once again have been hard- pushed. But such income was an uncertain factor. By now he had also bought shares in the Art Theater and it pleased him immensely to be able to report to Masha that he had realized a thousand roubles from its profits this past season.