That fall Chekhov was clected provisional president of the well- known Society of the Lovers of Russian Literature. Flattered by the honor, he requested that the post be held in abcyance for a year, when improved health would enable him to attend meetings, but in the meantime he offered to participate in the society's publishing program as an editor. He was not so pleased with Taganrog's unexpected announcement that it would celebrate that year the twenty-fifth anniversary of his literary activity. The date was premature, he told his wife, and besides, he objected, this customary form of glorifying writers would
inevitably result in the telling of a lot of lies about him.
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Upon his return to Yalta that summer, however, the main task that Chekhov set for himself was to complete The Cherry Orchard. All his plays had been written in a continuous flow of inspiration and in a remarkably short time, whatever polishing he might do on them later. He seemed convinced that an initial swift effort was an essential concomitant of dramatic writing, enabling one to avoid prolix development of theme and action. Though he had lately become accustomed to a slower, more careful and thoughtful approach to writing, illness largely accounted for the delay in completing The Cherry Orchard. And now only a magnificent triumph of will over bodily weakness made it possible for him to finish this last play.
The pressures on Chekhov to complete the work were considerable. Having already missed the previous season of the Art Theater, he now set as his target date the season of 1903-1904, which meant that he must have a manuscript ready by the late fall or early winter. Stanislavsky, Nemirovich-Danchenko, Olga, and Masha urged him on. Over July and August they wrote to him, and to each other, about progress of the play. All were aware, though perhaps not fully enough, of the obstacle of Chekhov's health, and the driving spirit of their concerted endeavor was reflected in Stanislavsky's letter to Olga in July: "Most of all it distresses us that Anton Pavlovich does not feel entirely well and is sometimes in low spirits. Often we have recalled the fateful words of Ostroumov. He made a mistake and spoiled the fine mood of Anton Pavlovich, for it is clear that his health depends on an inner calm. Do not think badly of us. We grieve for Anton Pavlovich and those around him, we think of the play only in those moments when we are agitated about the fate of our theater. However you regard it, our theater is Chekhov's, and without him, it will go badly for us."
To this lament Olga replied: "He now works every day; however, yesterday and today he was unwell and did not write. . . . Now there are few people around, and if his health permitted it he would work more assiduously. Don't worry — now he has just sat down to write."
Chekhov's immediate goal was to have the play ready for Olga to take to Moscow on September 19 when she left Yalta to resume her theatrical work. By September 2, he felt able to inform Nemirovich- Danchenko that, if he could maintain the pace he had struck, The Cherry Orchard would soon be finished. "I call the play a comedy," he wrote, and he added that the second act had caused him much difficulty, that Olga ought to play the part of the mother, Ranevskaya, but that he had no notion of who should take the role of her daughter Anya. Several days later, however, illness brought the pace to a standstill, and on September 15 he had to write Stanislavsky's wife, who acted under the name of Lilina, that Olga would not arrive in Moscow with a manuscript after all, but that he hoped to send all four acts soon. Once again he emphasized the fact that "Not a drama but a comedy has emerged from me, in places even a farce," and he worried over the effect this might have on Nemirovich-Danchenko.
Now, in almost daily letters to Olga in Moscow, Chekhov kept her posted — and, through her, the directors of the Art Theater — on his tortuous progress. It is a record of heroic struggle against the disintegrating forces of nature in a supreme effort to achieve a work of artistic beauty. Added to extreme debility, loss of appetite, and endless coughing was a protracted bowel disturbance, one of the complications of his disease. The incommunicable sadness of his hopes as he worked away in the wretched light of the candle-illuminated study at Yalta is somehow conveyed in one of his reports to Olga: "The last act will be merry, and indeed the whole play will be merry and giddy." (September 21, 1903.)
On September 26 Chekhov wired his wife that he had at last finished the first draft of The Cherry Orchard. But he still had to recopy and revise it. Always more inclined to disparage than to praise his artistic efforts, he now could not resist the temptation to claim that he had contributed something new in his play. "My people have turned out alive, that is true," he wrote Olga, "but what the play amounts to, I don't know." (September 27, 1903.) As the days slipped by and his wife failed to receive the promised manuscript, she charged him with deceiving her about having finished the play. Her impatience was no doubt intensified by the anxieties of the directors of the Art Theater. Repeatedly he pleaded with Olga to realize that in recopying it he had to think over many points, to change much, and that this process made for a better play and more clearly delineated characters. "There is still weakness and coughing," he informed her on October 2. "I write every day; though only a little, still I write. When you read the play after I send it, you will see what might have been done with this subject under favorable circumstances — that is, with good health. But now it is a shame, I write a couple of lines a day, get used to what I've written, and so on and so on." And the next day he besought her not to be cross, for he could not write any faster: "Darling, forgive me about the play! Forgive me! On my honor I've finished it, and am only recopying it." Then in five more days he exclaimed: "I tell you the holy truth, darling: if my play is not a success, it can be blamed on my bowels." Actually, Chekhov was involved in not only a second but also a third draft of The Cherry Orchard.
Finally, on October 12, he informed his wife: "And so, pony, hurrah for my long-suffering and yours! The play is finished, finished at last; and tomorrow evening, or at the latest on the morning of the fourteenth, it will be sent to Moscow!" And he added, with a degree of feeling which Olga could perhaps never appreciate: "Darling, how hard it was for me to write the play!"
Chekhov waited impatiently at Yalta for reactions to The Cherry Orchard. Perhaps he had a premonition that this play, created with so much effort and pain, was to be his last, for he seemed hypersensitive about its success and everything connected with it. For some time he had been wondering whether his powers had failed. After he received telegrams from Olga and Nemirovich-Danchenko, he wrote his wife on October 19 that all day he had waited for news with a flutter at his heart and in a state of funk, for he was terrified. Nemirovich-Danchenko's telegram of a hundred and eighty words described the play as Chekhov's finest, the characters as new, interesting, and rich in substance, and the social content as not new but freshly apprehended, original, and poetic. But he had some reservations, which concerned mostly a heaviness in the second act and a superfluity of tears among the characters.