Stanislavsky's telegram, which arrived two days later, was lyrical by comparison: 1 was overcome, cannot collect myself, i fell into unprecedented rapture. i regard your play as the best of all the beautiful things written by you. my heartfelt congratulations to an author of genius. And soon thereafter both directors sent telegrams of the reaction of the troupe when Nemirovich-Danchenko read The Cherry Orchard to tliern: enormous impression . . . ; great and
remarkable excitement ... j exceptionally brilliant success . . . ;
they wept at the last act. And Stanislavsky then informed him, revealing that he had somewhat missed the point: "This is not a comedy or a farce, as you wrote, it is a tragedy whatever the solution you may have found for the better life in the last act." Further, Chekhov promptly received an offer from Gorky to publish the play in the annual of his firm Znanie, at a remuneration of fifteen hundred roubles a signature, the highest Chekhov had ever received. Because of his contract with Marx, which restricted publication of new works to newspapers and magazines, or to books that appeared for charitable purposes, it seemed at first that Chekhov would have to reject this alluring proposal. Violation of the contract carried a penalty at the rate of five thousand roubles for every printed signature. However, a way out was found. Both Chekhov and Gorky were interested in an appeal to aid indigent women medical students in Petersburg, and the Znanie Annual, including The Cherry Orchard, was published on behalf of this charitable purpose.9
Chekhov had reason to feci elated by all these encomiums, but he was also a bit dismayed. He had been conscious of weaknesses in the second act and was prepared to alter it, as well as other things, for he did not regard the manuscript he sent in as the final form of the play. But he had no notion that he had written a tragedy, and he resented the imputation that his characters constantly gave way to tears. He wrote Olga: "Today I received a telegram from Alekseev (Stanislavsky) in which lie calls my play a work of genius; this amounts to overpraising the play and robbing it of a good half of the success it might have under favorable circumstances." (October 21, 1903.)
In fact, at this point several disagreeable happenings occurred which soured Chekhov's initial enthusiasm for The Cherry Orchard and caused him to wonder why he had ever written it. In what appeared to be a misguided effort at promotion, Nemirovich-Danchenko had given an account of the contents of the play to N. E. Efros of the Daily News. When the story appeared it was garbled. In Act III, instead of the
0 With ccrtain changes and corrections, The Cherry Orchard was first published in the Znanie Annual in Petersburg in 1904, and a second edition appeared the following year. The play was also brought out in a separate edition by Marx (Petersburg, 1904).
action taking place in a drawing room, a hotel was indicated, the name of a leading character was distorted, and other details were wrong. Worse, it was plainly announced in this premature notice that the author's wife would act the lead (the casting had not yet been done). Olga at once wrote her husband to deplore this mess, and Chekhov sent an indignant telegram to Nemirovich-Danchenko, for the news item was picked up by the press in general and widely reprinted. The incident grew in complexity — with Chekhov inserting a denunciation in the Crimean Courier, and this in turn answered by the Daily News. He ultimately accepted Nemirovich-Danchenko's apologies, but the whole affair left him with the eerie feeling that either the play had been misread in Moscow or that there were things in this manuscript which he did not remember and which ought to be eliminated.
An additional annoyance was the failure of the co-directors, after the first flush of excitement about The Cherry Orchard, to inform Chekhov promptly whether the play would be produced that season and, if so, what the casting would be. Here his impatience, no doubt aggravated by his illness, was somewhat unreasonable. The Art Theater's season was under way, and, among their many problems of repertoire, the directors were struggling with a new production of Julius Caesar. Further, latent differences between the co-directors were cropping up, rumors of which reached Chekhov. When he eventually received a letter from Stanislavsky on October 29 about the details of the casting, he replied the next day and curtly pointed out that he was all alone at Yalta, that letters were precious to him, and that if it had not been for his wife, he would have remained entirely in the dark about the play ever since he had submitted the manuscript. Indeed, Olga had become the butt of his irritation and he inflicted on her his complaints over the delays as well as much interesting information on casting, the interpretaton of roles, and staging which he was really anxious to impart to the directors.
One thing that particularly disturbed Chekhov was his fear that Nemirovich-Danchenko would assign roles out of diplomatic considerations. In order to anticipate this possibility, Chekhov wrote him a long letter on November 2, in which he provided brief sketches of the salient features of most of the characters and then suggested actors in the company to fill each of the roles. He also commented firmly on the growing estrangements of the co-directors, a development which Nemirovich-Danchenko himself had mentioned. Chekhov tended to side with him in the dispute, and rejected his pious characterization of the company as "Stanislavsky's theater." If Nemirovich-Danchenko left, Chekhov asserted, so would he. And in reacting to the news that Gorky intended, in imitation of the Moscow Art Theater, to set up a "people's theater" in Nizhny Novgorod, Chekhov declared: "Let me say in this conncction that people's theaters and people's literature arc just foolishness, something to sweeten up the people. Gogol should not he lowered to the level of the people, but the people should be raised to Gogol's level."
Not until November 7 did Nemirovich-Danchenko wire Chekhov the names of the actors in the cast, with the exception of Anya, Varya, and Charlotta, where he offered several suggestions and asked Chekhov to make the final choice. On the whole, the total selection pleased him. Shortly thereafter, Stanislavsky announced that rehearsals would begin on November 10. Though Chekhov's main questions had now been answered, he still felt uneasy about the play. When he learned that a scheduled public reading by Nemirovich-Danchcnko of an act of The Cherry Orchard had been canccled bccausc students, convinced that they had been discriminated against in the assignment of tickcts, stormed the auditorium, Chekhov wryly commented in a letter to Olga: "So Nemirovich-Danchenko did not read my play to the Socicty of Lovers of Russian Literature? We began with misunderstandings and we shall end with them — such, it seems, is the fate of my play." (November 25, 1903.)
«8»
In replying to the letter of an old acquaintance, the writer V. L. Kign-Dcdlov, from whom he had not heard for some time, Chekhov mentioned in bringing him up to date: "Two or three years ago I married and I'm very glad of it; it seems to me that my life has changed for the better. What they ordinarily write about married life is the uttercst fibbing." (November 10, 1903.) Indeed he never wearied now of telling his pony — his new nickname for Olga — that he could not live without her. In fact, when she left for Moscow on September 19, he had every intention of rejoining her there at the end of that month and spending the rest of the autumn and winter with her.
The worsening of his health at that point, rather than any desire to remain at Yalta to finish his play, resulted in a series of agonizing postponements. And in his weakened state Chekhov seemed inclined to accept, for the time being, the wise advice of Dr. Altschuler against any