The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov

A German from Stuttgart sent me fifty marks for a transla- tion of my story. How do you like that? . . .

Keep well and calm. How is your head? Does it ache more or less than it used to? My head doesn't ache as much—because I don't smoke.

My profound respects to Anna Ivanovna and the children.

Your

A. Chekhov

To LYDIA MIZINOVA

March 27, 1894, Yalta

Sweet Lika,

Thank you for the letter. Though you scare me by saying you are going to die soon, and you twit me for throwing you over, thanks anyway. I know perfectly well you aren't going to die and nobody threw you over.

I am in Yalta and at loose ends, very much so. The local aristocracy or whatever you call it is putting on "Faust" and I attend rehearsals, delight in gazing upon a regular flower bed of charming black, red, flaxen and auburn heads, listen to sing- ing and eat; I dine upon deep-fat fried lamb, onion fritters and mutton chops with kasha in the company of the directress of the girls' school; I eat sorrel soup with well-born families; I eat at the pastry shop and at my own hotel as well. I go to bed at ten, get up at ten and rest after dinner, but still I am bored, sweet Lika. I am not bored because I don't have "my women" around, but because the northern spring is better than this one, and the thought that I must, that I am obliged to write, won't leave me a single instant. I must write, write and write. I am of the opinion that real happiness is impossible without idleness. My ideal is to be idle and love a plump young girl. My most intense pleasiire is to walk or sit doing nothing; my favorite occupation is picking useless stuff (leaves, straw and so on) and doing use- less things. Meanwhile I am a literary man and must write, even here in Yalta. Sweet Lika, when you become a great singer and are paid enormous fees, be charitable: marry me and support me, so that I will find it possible to live without work. If you really are going to die, then give the job to Varvara Eberle, whom, as you know, I love. I have worked myself into such a state by continual worry over my obligations and the tasks I can't get out of that I have been tormented for a week without letup by palpitations of the heart. It is a loathesome feeling.

I sold my fox coat for twenty rubles! It cost sixty, but as forty rubles' worth of fur has already shed, twenty rubles was no bargain. The gooseberries haven't ripened yet but it is warm and bright, the trees are in bloom, the sea has a summery look, the young ladies pine for sensations, but still the north is better than the Russian south, at least in spring. . . . Because of the palpitations I haven't had wine now for a week, and because of the lack of wine the local atmosphere strikes me as even sorrier. You were lately in Paris? How are the French? Do you like them? Fire away, then!

l\Iirov gave a concert here and made a net profit of 150 rubles. He roared like a lion but had an enormous success. How ter- ribly sorry I am I didn't study voice; I could have roared, too, as my throat is full of husky notes and people say I have a real octave. I would earn good money and be popular with the ladies.

I won't go to Paris this June, but want you to come to us in Melikhovo—homesickness for Russia will drive you to it. There's no way of getting out of a visit to Russia, even if it's only for a day. You run into Potapenko occasionally. Well, this summer he too is returning to Russia. If you make the trip with him it will cost less. Have him buy your ticket and then forget to pay him (you won't be the first) . But if you won't make the trip, I'll go to Paris. Though I am sure you are coming. . . .

Keep well, Lika, and calm and happy and content. I wish you success. You're a bright girl.

If you want to spoil me with a letter, direct it to Melikhovo, where I shall soon be going. I will answer your letters regularly. I kiss both your hands.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

May 21,1894, Melikhovo

Ungrateful brother!

I haven't answered for all this time, first, because I am a snob with property of my own, and you are poor; and second, be- cause I didn't know how to reply to the thing you wanted most to know. That's because the same upheavals experienced by "The North" are now taking place at the "Artist" office, and there is no way of figuring who the editor is. Kumanin, who was editing it, has left, handing over the reins to Novikov; and the office itself has moved to Arbat St. Whatever has happened, the paper is still in existence and it is possible to get work on it (I even get my forty rubles monthly) but you won't overeat; all the new contributors are paid a fiver, i.e., fifty per sixteen pages.

The weather is fine. If you are thinking of visiting us, I shall be very much indebted to you; I'll put you to work looking after the young bull and shooing the ducks to the pond. I won't give you a salary, but the board will be on me.

All are in good health. Father philosophizes and grumbles at Mother because "something stuck right here in her throat," etc.

Greetings to the family and keep well. On the other hand, try not to act like a nincompoop.

Your

A. Chekhov

I ha,e put twenty-three rubles in the savings bank. My wealth is accumulating. But you won't get a single kopek of it because you are not mentioned in my will.

To .ALEXEI SUVORIN

July 11, 1894, Melikhovo You wrote you would be here one of these days, so I waited. . . . I don't feel drawn toward Yasnaya Polyana.^x My brain func- tions feebly and doesn't want to get any more weighty impres- sions. I would prefer some sea bathing and nonsensical talk.

Here is my plan. The twentieth or twenty-second of July I am going to Taganrog to treat my uncle, who is seriously ill and insists on my sen'ices. He is a truly fine person, the best of men, and I would feel bad about denying him this service although I know it will be futile . . . . After finishing my "Sakhalin" here, and offering thanks to heaven, I will declare my freedom and readiness to go wherever I please. If there is money I will go abroad, or to the Caucasus, or to Bukhara. But I shall doubt- less have some financial difficulties, so that a change of plan is not to be avoided. It would be nice to speak to \Vitte, the Minister of Finance, and tell him that instead of scattering sub-

1 Yasnaya Polyana was the Tolstoy estate.

sidies right and left or promising wo,ooo to the fund, he ought to arrange for literary people and artists to travel free on the state railways. Except for Leikin (blast his hide!) all Russian men of letters exist in a virtual state of chronic hunger, for all of them, even those who turn out a couple of thousand pages a year, by some quirk of fate are weighed down by a fiendish heap of obligations. And there is nothing more irksome or less poetic, one may say, than the prosaic struggle for existence which takes away the joy of life and drags one into apathy. However, all this has nothing to do with the matter in hand. If you go to Tagan- rog with me—a very nice city—so be it. In August I am at your service; we'll take off then for Switzerland.

The play can be written somewhere on the shores of Lake Como or even left unborn; there's no sense getting hot and bothered over it and if we do—then the hell with it.

Now as to leeches. What you need, mainly, is to be in good spirits, and not leeches. In Moscow you impressed me as being cheerful and healthy and as I looked at you I certainly didn't think you would be reminding me of leeches. But once you did bring them up, very well. Leeches won't do you any harm. It is not a matter of bloodletting, but rather a nervous counter- reaction. They suck but little blood and don't cause pain. . . .

Write me what's new. Write about our Taganrog project, too.

. . . About ten years ago I went in for spiritualism and once got this message from Turgenev, whose spirit I had evoked at a session, "Your life is nearing its decline." I want so keenly to enjoy everything as if life were a perpetual Shrove Tuesday. I seem to have tried everything: life abroad, a good novel . . . And some inner force, like a presentiment, nudges me to make haste. Perhaps it is not a presentiment but simply sorrow that life flows on in such a monotonous and pallid way. A protest of the soul, one might say. . . .

I send my respects and pray heaven for the forgiveness of your sins and the showering of blessings upon you.

Prior Antoni

About September /4, /894, Odessa

I have been to Yalta and am now in Odessa. Since I probably won't reach home until October I consider it not amiss to tell you the following:

Get the money on the first of October by presenting the enclosed note.

Dig up the sword lilies and have the tulips covered with leaves. I shall be grateful if you set out some more tulips. You can buy peonies and such on Truba Square.

Handicraft courses are being given in Taganrog where young girls from lifteen to twenty are taught the art of sew- ing in the latest styles (modes et robes). Sasha, our deceased uncle's daughter, a very sweet and good girl, took these courses and according to the mayor was considered the star pupil. And she really does sew beautifully. She has a great deal of taste. It so happened that in a conversation with me the mayor complained it was utterly impossible to lind a teacher for these classes, that they had to send to St. Petersburg for one and so on. I asked him if I took this cousin of mine whom he praised so highly to Moscow and had her apprenticed to the very best modiste there, whether he would give her the teaching post afterward. He re- plied he would be delighted to hire her. A teacher ordinarily gets a salary of fifty rubles a month and this money could not be more welcome in uncle's family, which will now be in real need. So please think it over: isn't it possible to do something for the little girl? She could stay in Moscow one winter; I would give her lifteen or twenty rubles a month for her lodgings. She might live with you, which would put you out only slightly since, I repeat, she is a line young girl. The important thing is that she should be helped. Consider the matter before my re- turn and then we'll talk it over.

On the fourteenth of September, Ascension Day, the policeman ought to get a ruble. Give it to him if you have not already done so.

5. When you send the horses to call for me, don't forget to take along a warm cap. . . .

My best regards to all. Keep well and don't get lonesome.

Your

A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

December 30, 1894, Melikhovo

My Lord!

I received the book and find extremely impertinent your desire to compete with me in the literary market. Nobody will buy it because everybody knows of your immoral behavior and chronically drunken condition.

You are not worthy of contributing to the "Russian News," since the man who signs himself "Letter" (Vasilievski) —a dignified man of character—is already writing for it from St. Petersburg. However, I'll talk to them. I suppose they will print the stories without doing it as a favor to me.

I have not yet received the cigars and don't need your gifts. When I get them I'll throw them down the toilet.

Our Papa was groaning all night. When asked why, he re- plied that he had "seen Beelzebub." . . .

Three days ago I was at a Christmas party for the insane, held in the violent ward. Too bad you weren't there.

Since the New Year will soon be with us, may I wish your family a Happy New Year and all the best—as for you, may you see Beelzebub in your dreams.

The money has been given to the French girl, the one you liked so much, in payment for your immoral conduct with her.

All the best, sir. Is everyone well, my good man?

Your, sir,

A. Chekhov

January 21, 1895, Melikhovo

I will telegraph you without fail. Please come, but don't "kiss the feet of [name omitted, ed.]." She is a gifted young girl but I doubt that you will find her attractive. I am sorry for her be- cause I am annoyed with myself, but half the time I can't abide her. She is as foxy as the devil, but her motives are so petty that she turns out to be a rat rather than a devil. As for [name omit- ted, ed.], she's another matter. She is a very good woman and a good actress who might perhaps have developed into someone worthwhile if she hadn't been spoiled by her schooling. She is a bit gross, but that doesn't matter.¹

Heavens, I hadn't the slightest intention of putting Kunda- sova² into the story! To begin with, Kundasova looks upon money in an entirely different light; secondly, she has never had a home life; thirdly, regardless of all else, she is a sick woman. Nor does the old merchant resemble my father, for my father will remain until the end what he has been all through life—a man of average calibre and limited imagination. As for religion, the young merchants are disgusted with it. If you had had beatings as a child because of religious matters, you would understand why. And why is such disgust labeled stupidity? Perhaps the sentiment is stupidly expressed, but in itself it is not as stupid as you think. It has . less need for jus- tification, for instance, than the idyllic attitude toward religion of those who worship it in feudal fashion, leisurely, as people enjoy a snowstorm or cloudburst while seated comfortably in their studies. I am writing to the lady astronomer [Kundasova] today to tell her you want to see her. She will be touched and will probably try to meet you. . ..

Phew! \Vomen take away one's youth, only not in my case. My life has been that of the store clerk, not of the proprietor,

It has been impossible to identify these ladies.

SuTOrin thought that he recognized Chekhov's father and Kundasova in the story "Three Years." and fate hasn't often been kind to me. I have had few romances and am as much like Catherine as a nut is like a battleship. Silk nightgowns means nothing to me except that they are comfort- able, that is, soft to the touch. I am well disposed toward the comfortable life, but debauchery does not attract me. . . .

My health requires me to go far away somewhere for eight or ten months. I'm going to leave for Australia or the mouth of the Yenisei—I'll croak otherwise. Very well then, I'll settle for St. Petersburg instead, but would there be a room where I might hide away? This is an extremely important question, be- cause I ought to be writing all of February to earn enough for my trip. How much I need to get away! My chest rattles all over, my hemorrhoids are so bad that the devil himself would be nauseated. I must have an operation. No, the hell with litera- ture, I should be busy with my medical practice. I shouldn't be making comparisons, though. I owe the best days of my life and my deepest-felt emotions to literature.

My profound salutations to Anna Ivanovna, Nastya and Borya.

Yours entirely,

A. Chekhov

I'll be in Moscow on the twenty-sixth. Grand Moscow Hotel.

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

April ij, 1895, Melikhovo ... I am making my way through Sienkiewicz's "The Polanet- skis." This book is like a Polish cheese pudding flavored with saffron. Add Potapenko to Paul Bourget, sprinkle them with Eau de Cologne from \Varsaw, divide in two and you get Sien- kiewicz. "The Polanetskis" was undoubtedly composed under the influence of "Cosmopolis," Rome and marriage (Sienkie- wicz recently got married) ; he has the catacombs, an elderly eccentric professor breathing idealism, the saintly Leo XIII with a visage not of this earth, advice to return to prayer and asper- sions on a decadent character dying of morphinism after going to confession and taking communion, i.e., repenting his errors in the name of the church. A devilish heap of scenes of family happiness and discourses on love have been dragged in, and the hero's wife is so extremely faithful to her husband and under- stands God and life so thoroughly "by intuition" that the final result is sickeningly cloying and clumsy, just as though you had got a wet, slobbery kiss. Sienkiewicz apparently hasn't read Tolstoy, is not familiar with Nietzsche, discusses hypnotism like a middle-class householder, but still every one of his pages is brightly colored with Riibenses, Borgheses, Correggios, Botti- cellis—all neatly done to show off his cultire to the bourgeois reader and to make faces at materialism. The novel's aim is to lull the bourgeoisie into golden dreams. Be faithful to your wife, pray alongside her before the altar, make money, love sport—and you're all set both in this world and the next. The bourgeoisie is very fond of so-called "practical" types and novels with happy endings, because this kind of writing soothes it into believing that it can make lots of money and preserve its inno- cence, act like a beast and stay happy all at the same time.

This spring is a pitiful affair. The snow still lies on the fields, driving on runners or wheels is impossible and the cattle pine for grass and for freedom. Yesterday a drunken old peasant un- dressed himself and went bathing in the pond, his decrepit old mother beat him with a stick and everybody else stood around and laughed boisterously. After finishing his bath the peasant went home barefoot through the snow, his old mother behind him. One day this old lady came to me for treatment of her bruises—her son had beaten her up. 'Vhat baseness it is to post- pone enlightenment of our dark masses! . . .

I wish you all happiness. I congratulate you on the Sino^ Japanese peace and trust we may acquire the eastern shore for an ice-free Feodosia as soon as possible, and lay out a railroad to it. The old lady had nothing to worry about, so she bought herself a pig. And it seems to me we are laying up a heap of troubles for ourselves with this ice-free port. It will stand us dearer than if we had made up our minds to conquer all of Japan. However, futura sunt in manibus deorum. . . .

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

October 21, 1895, Melikhovo Thanks for the letter, for the cordial words and the invita- tion. I will come, but most likely not until the end of Novem- ber, as I have a fiendish amount of stuff to take care of. To start with, next spring I am putting up a new school in the village, of which I am a trustee; before going about it I must work up a plan and budget, go here and there and so on. In the second place, just imagine, I am writing a play^x which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the con- ventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of a lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love.

I read about Ozerova's flop and felt sorry, as there is nothing more painful than failure. I can imagine how this [. . .] wept and grew stony as she read the "St. Petersburg Gazette," which called her playing downright ridiculous. I read about the suc- cess of "The Power of Darkness" at your theatre. . . . \Vhen I was at Tolstoy's in August he told me, as he wiped his hands after one of his washings, that he wouldn't rewrite his play. And now, in recalling his remark, I believe he already knew his play would be passed in toto for public presentation. I stayed with him a day and a half. A wonderful impression. I felt as carefree as I do at home and the talks we had were in that easy vein. I will give you full details when we meet. . . . 1 The Seagull.

I am in a state—and this is why. There is a first-rate magazine published in Moscow called "The Annals of Surgery," which even enjoys popularity abroad. It is edited by the eminent surgeon-scientists Sklifasovski and Diakonov. The number of subscribers has grown annually, yet there is always a deficit at the end of the year. This deficit has been made up hitherto (until this coming January) by Sklifasovski; but as he has been transferred to St. Petersburg, he has lost his practice and so has no extra money. Now neither he nor anyone else in the world knows who will meet the 1896 debt, if there is one; and on the basis of analogies with past years a deficit of from a thousand to fifteen hundred rubles can be expected. \Vhen I learned the magazine was in peril I got hot under the collar; how absurd to witness the ruin of so essential a publication, and one that would show a profit in three or four years, and all on account of a paltry sum! This absurdity hit me in the face and at white heat I promised to find a publisher, as I was firmly convinced I could do so. And I did look diligently, begged, lowered my- self, drove all over town, God only knows with whom I didn't dine, but couldn't find anybody. . .. How sorry I am your print- ing plant is not in Moscow! Then I wouldn't have had to take on this grotesque role of unsuccessful broker. When we meet I will draw you a true picture of the emotional upheavals I went through. Were it not for the building of the school, which is costing me about fifteen hundred rubles, I would undertake to publish the magazine out of my own funds, so difficult and pain- ful do I find it to reconcile myself to a clearly ridiculous situa- tion. On the twenty-second of October I am going to Moscow to see the editors and as a last resort will propose that they ask for a subsidy of fifteen hundred or two thousand a year. If they agree, I'll dash to St. Petersburg and begin hammering away. How does one go about it? Will you instruct me? To save the magazine I am prepared to interview just about anyone and hang around in just anyone's outer office; if I succeed I will heave a sigh of relief and enjoy a feeling of satisfaction, because saving a good surgical magazine is as useful as performing twenty thousand successful operations. At any rate, give me some advice on what to do.

Write me in Moscow after Sunday, c/o Grand Moscow Hotel, No. 5. ...

My profound respects. Write, I implore you.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

October 26, 1895, Moscow . . . Tolstoy's daughters are very nice. They adore their father and have a fanatic faith in him. That is a sure sign that Tolstoy is indeed a mighty moral force, for if he were insincere and not above reproach, the first to regard him skeptically would be his daughters, because daughters are shrewd creatures and you can't pull the wool over their eyes. You can fool a fiancee or mistress as much as you please, and in the eyes of a loving woman even a donkey may pass for a philosopher, but daughters are another matter. . . .

As for "The Annals of Surgery," the magazine itself, all the surgical instruments, bandages and bottles of carbolic acid send their most profound and humble greetings to you. Their joy, of course, is unconfined. This is what we have decided to do: if the idea of a subsidy seems feasible, I am to take up the matter and when we get the subsidy, we return the fifteen hundred to you. I am going to see Sklifasovski in November and, if possible, will actually see Witte^x in an attempt to save these very artless people. They are like children. It would be hard to find any with less practical sense. At any rate, your fifteen h undred will be returned to you sooner or later. In gratitude for my en- deavors they are operating on my hemorrhoids—an operation I cannot avoid and which is already beginning to worry me. They will sing your praises and when you come to Moscow will

1 Witte was the Minister of Finance.

show you the new clinics in the neighborhood of Novo-Deviche Monastcry. They're as much worth looking at as a cemetery or a circus.

Write. Scnd the fifteen hundred care of me, and, if possible, not through the mails but via your store. . . .

Yours,

A. Chekhov

ToELENA SHAVROVA

November 18, 1895, Melikhovo

I will be in Moscow around the twenty-eighth, too, and re- main six to ten days. 'Ve'll be seeing each other, I am going to ask your pardon and perhaps will manage to convince you that I was very, very far from consciously wishing to wound your self-esteem. I agree I ought to be sent up for hard labor for losing your manuscript, but I assure you even a halfhearted apologist could find cause for going easy with me.. ..

I have finished my play. It is called "The Seagull." It's noth- ing to ooh and ah about. On the whole I would say I am an indifferent playwright.

I will be stopping at the Grand Hotel in Moscow, opposite the Iverskaya clock tower, last entrance. The telephone is at your service, messengers also. If you will let me know of your presence in Moscow, by messenger or otherwise, I shall be most grateful.

All my best wishes . . .

Your guilty and repentant

cher maitre,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

December 6, 1895, Moscow

The young lady with the Remington has done me a cruel turn. In leaving for Moscow I had counted upon my play's having been typed long since and sent to its destination—why, two full weeks had elapsed since I had sent it to the young lady. But the typing job turned out to be far from finished. I took back the manuscript and the young lady was most apologetic. You will have the play tomorrow, but in manuscript. If it is to be typed, we shall have to wait again, which annoys me for my patience has been exhausted. Read the play and tell me what to do with it and how. There is still plenty of time until next season, so that the most radical revisions can be undertaken. . . . So you will get the play on Friday. Order all flags at full mast on that day.

You write you are arriving in Moscow ten days hence. Shall I wait for you there? Write without fail. I am anticipating your visit with the keenest pleasure, if only you don't disappoint mel If you are not coming I will get out of Moscow say around the tenth or twentieth. The Moscow weather is fine, there is no cholera and no Lesbianism either. Br-r-r! The recollection of those people of whom you write turns my stomach, as if I had eaten a rotten fish. So now there aren't any in Moscow— splendid. . . .

Today is St. Nicholas Day and there is a delightful sound of bells in Moscow. I rose early, lit the candles and sat down to write; outside the bells were ringing and very agreeable it was.

I wish you health. Salutations to Anna Ivanovna, Nastya and Borya. Happiness to you all.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To MIKHAIL CHEKHOV

October 18, 1896, St. Petersburg

The play fell flat and flopped with a bang.¹ The audience was bewildered. They acted as if they were ashamed to be in the theatre. The performances were vile and stupid.

1 The first performance of The Seagull was a sensational flop; the second formance was a great success.

The moral of the story is: I shouldn't write plays. Nevertheless and just the same I am alive and well and my innards are in good spirit.

Your pappy,

A. Chekhov.

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

October 22, 1896, Melihhovo

In your last letter (dated October 18) you thrice call me an old woman and say I was a coward. \Vhy the libel? After the play I dined at Romanov's, as was fitting, then went to sleep, slept well and the next day left for home without pronouncing a single syllable in complaint. If I had acted the coward I would have dashed from one editor to another, from one actor to an- other, nervously begged their condescension, nervously intro- duced useless changes and would have spent another two or three wceks in St. Petersburg, running back and forth to per- formances of my "Seagull," in a dither, drenched in cold sweat, complaining. . . . Why, when you visited me the night after the show, you yourself said it would be better for me to leave; and the next morning I had a letter from you saying goodbye. So where is the cowardice? I acted just as reasonably and coolly as a man who has proposed, been turned down and has nothing left to do but leave. Yes, my vanity was wounded, but certainly the thing wasn't a bolt from the blue; I expected a llop and had prepared myself for it, as I told you in advance in entire sincerity.

Back home I gave myself a dose of castor oil, took a cold bath—and now I wouldn't even mind doing another play. I no longer have that tircd, irritated feeling. ... I approve your revisions—and thank you a thousand times. But please don't be sorry you weren't at thc rehearsals. Actually there was only one genuine rehcarsal, at which it was impossible to tell what

was going on; the play was completely lost in a fog of vile acting.

I had a telegram from Potapenko:¹ a colossal success. I had a letter from Veselitskaya (Mikulich) ² whom I haven't met, ex- pressing her sympathy in the tone she would use had someone died in my family—which was hitting pretty wide of the mark. All this is nonsense, though.

My sister is enchanted with you and Anna Ivanovna and I am very glad, because I am as fond of your family as of my own. She hurried home from St. Petersburg, probably feeling that I would hang myself.

We are having warm, damp weather, and many people are ill. Yesterday I stuck a huge enema into a rich peasant whose intestine had become clogged with excrement and he got better at once. Please forgive me, I went off with your "European Herald" deliberately, and with Filippov's "Collected Works" unintentionally. I will return the first, and the second after I have read them. . . .

I wish you all the blessings of heaven and earth, and thank you with all my heart.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ELENA SHAVROVA

November i, i8g6, Melikhovo Esteemed lady, if, as "one of the audience" you are writing about the first performance, permit me—yes, permit me—to doubt your sincerity. You hurry to pour healing balm on the author's wounds, assuming that under the circumstances this would be better and more needed than sincerity; you are kind, sweet Mask, very kind, and the feeling does honor to your heart. I did not see everything at the first performance, but what I did see was vague, dingy, dreary and wooden. I had no

Ignati Potapenko, as mentioned previously, was a novelist and playwright.

Lydia Veselitskaya was a writer.

hand in assigning the parts, I wasn't given any new scenery, there were only two rehearsals, the actors didn't know their parts—and the result was general panic, utter depression of spirit; even Kommisarjevskaya's performance was nothing much, though her playing at one of the rehearsals was so prodi- gious that people in the orchestra wept and blew their noses.

\Vell ma'am, how are you getting along? Why don't you try your hand at writing a play? You know, creating a play is like wading into a mineral bath, certain that it will be warm, and then being shocked by the fact that it is cold. Do drop me a line.

. . . Send me another two or three lines, for I do find life a bore. I have a sensation of nothingness, past and present.

My best wishes, and again my thanks.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ANATOL KONI

November 11, 1896, Melikhovo

Dear Anatol Fedorovich,

You cannot imagine how happy your letter made me. I saw only the first two acts of my play from the front, after that I kept in the wings, feeling all the time "The Sea Gull" would be a failure. The night of the performance and the day after peo- ple asserted I had created nothing but idiots, that my play was clumsy from the standpoint of staging, fatuous, unintelligible, even senseless, etc., etc. You can imagine my situation—it was a flop worse than a nightmare! I was ashamed and annoyed and left St. Petersburg brimming with doubts. I figured that if I had written and staged a play so obviously crammed with monstrous defects, I had lost all my senses and my machinery had apparently broken down for good. I was back home when I heard from St. Petersburg that the second and third perform- ances were successful; I got several letters, signed and anon- ymous, praising the play and scolding the critics; I read them with a sense of pleasure but still I was ashamed and peeved, and the thought lodged itself in my head that if good people found it necessary to console me, my affairs must be going badly. But your letter had a galvanizing effect on me. I have known you for a long time, esteem you profoundly and have more faith in you than in all the critics put together—you must have felt that when you wrote your letter and that is why it is so fine and convincing. I am quite calm now and can already think back on the play and the performance itself without revulsion.

Kommisarjevskaya is a marvelous actress. At one of the re- hearsals many people were teary-eyed as they watched her and remarked that she was the best actress in Russia at the present time; but at the performance she too succumbed to the pre- vailing mood of hostility toward my "Sea Gull" and was intim- idated by it, as it were, and her voice failed her. Our press treats her coldly, an attitude she does not merit, and I am sorry for her.

Permit me to thank you with all my heart for your letter. Please believe that I value the feelings prompting you to write it more profoundly than I can express in words, and the sym- pathy that you entitle "unnecessary" at the end of your letter I will never, never forget, whatever the future may hold.

Your sincerely respectful and devoted

A. Chekhov

ToALEXANDER CHEKHOV

November 16, i8g6, Melikhovo Your parents are sick at heart that you are not doing any- thing. I beg of you, mend your ways! Get up early in the morn- ing, wash yourself well and go to Klochkov's bookstore at 55 Liteinaya and buy:

658. Peterson, O. The Bronte Family (Currer, Ellis and An- ton Bell) St. Petersburg, 1895, 8°, covers (1 r.) With a portrait of C. Bronte! 50 k.

To VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO [1896]

752. Renan, Historical and Religious Studies, 3rd Ed., St. Petersburg, 1894, covers, 16°, 75 k.

943. Rules of the St. Petersburg Slavonic Philanthropic So- ciety, St. Petersburg, 1877, S°, covers, 10 k.

945. Rules and Memoranda of the Society for the Care of Poor and Sick Children, St. Petersburg, 1892, 16°, covers, 15 k.

All these are taken from their Catalogue No. 214. 'Vrap them in a package and if they don't weigh too much send them regis- tered parcel post, sticking on two kopeks' postage for each 2 oz. If you can get the second two books for nothing, so much the better, especially as 943 is probably out of date already. The errand is not for me but for your benefactor, His Honor the Mayor and Chief Magistrate of Taganrog, with all his medals. . . . I have already written you that an information section has been opened at the Taganrog City Library. Needed are the rules and regulations of all learned, philanthropic, bicycle, Masonic and other societies to which you would not be ad- mitted on account of your unseemly appearance. (Vukov knows all.)

I'll pay any expenses incurred. Can't I send trifling sums (up to three or five rubles) in current postage stamps? . . .

In your last letter you called me a fool. I am amazed that your despicable hand has not withered away on you. However, to your abuse I reply with a general pardon. No use paying any attention to a retired office boy with illegitimate children!

A. Chekhov

To VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

„ . . , November 26, 1806, Melikhovo

Dear friend, *

This is in reply to the main point of your letter—why we

have so few serious talks generally. 'Vhen people are silent it is

because they have nothing to talk about or are shy. What can

we discuss? "\Ve have no political interests, we haven't any social,

club, or even street life, our urban existence is poor, monoton-

To VLADIMIR NEMlROVICH-DANCHENKO [l8g6]

ous, wearisome and uninteresting—and talking about it is as tedious as corresponding with Lugovoi. You say we are men of letters, which in itself enriches our life. But is that right? We are stuck in our profession up to the ears and it has grad- ually isolated us from the outer world; as a result we have little free time, little money, few books, we read little and reluc- tantly, hear little, seldom go places. . . . Should we talk about literature? But we've taken that up already, you know. . . . Every year it's the same thing over and over again and whatever we usually take up leads inevitably to who wrote better and who worse; talks always flag on more general or broader themes, because when tundras and Eskimos surround you, general ideas, so unsuited to the moment, quickly spread thin and slip away like thoughts of everlasting bliss. Should we talk of personal life? Yes, sometimes this can be interesting, I daresay we might talk about it, but in this area we become shy, evasive, insincere, the instinct of self-preservation restrains us and we get fearful. We are afraid that some uncivilized Eskimo may overhear us, somebody who doesn't like us and whom we don't like; per- sonally I am afraid my friend Sergeyenko,x whose intelligence you find pleasing, will blatantly reach a decision on why I live with A when B is in love with me, shaking his finger in the air meanwhile through the length and breadth of the land. . . . To put it briefly, don't blame yourself or me for our silence and the lack of seriousness and interest in our talks, put the blame on what the critics call "the times" or the climate, or the vast expanses, on whatever you wish and let circumstances take their own fateful, inexorable course, while we put our hopes in a better future. . . .

I thank you with all my heart for your letter and press your hand cordially. . . . Write when you are m the mood. I will answer with the very greatest pleasure.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

1 A writer who had gone to school with Chekhov in Taganrog.

To VLADIMIR YAKOVENKO

january 30, /8g7, Melikhovo

Dear Vladimir Ivanovich,

Having read your letter in "The Physician," I wrote to Mos- cow to have them send you my "Sakhalin Island." There you will find a bit about corporal punishment and transportation for crime, and some comments, incidentally, on Yadrintsev, which I recommend to you. . . .

It may be pointed out, relevantly, that jurists and penologists consider as corporal punishment (in its narrow, physical sense) not only beating with birch rods, switching or hitting with the fist, but also shackling, the "cold" treatment, the schoolboy "no dinner," "bread and water," prolonged kneeling, repeated touching of the forehead to the ground and binding the anns.

This inventory has made me suffer. Never yet have I had so little time.

I wish you all the best and warmly clasp your hand.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

. . . The reaction of corporal punishment upon physical health can be noted in the doctors' records, which you will find in the proceedings on tortures.

"Since 1884 I have been spitting blood every spring. . . ." In the spring of 1897, as Chekhov sat down to dinner with Suvorin in a Moscow restaurant, he suddenly collapsed. He ^^ carried to Suvorin's room, became critically ill during the night and was taken to a hospital the following morning. The diagnosis was tuberculosis of the upper lungs. For several weeks he lay in bed barely able to move or speak. His sister, Maria, and his brother, Ivan, came immediately—Chekhov forbade them to tell his mother and father the nature of the illness—but friends and admirers were barred from the room. Tolstoy, however, managed to get by the nurses: he came to soothe the patient with sickroom small talk, but he stayed to argue that a work of art only fulfilled its function if an uneducated peasant could understand it. That must, indeed, have been a scene: the great man pacing the floor, the sick man trying to answer from his bed. By the time Tolstoy left, the patient had had a dangerous relapse.

When he recovered enough to travel, Chekhov went to Nice. (From now on he was to live not where and how he chose, but where and how the disease dictated.) All of France, even the refugees and pleasure lovers of the Riviera, was in ferment over the Dreyfus case. Chekhov was convinced of Dreyfus' innocence and his warm defense of Zola's brave position got him into a fight with Suvorin. For many years Chekhov had disliked the politics and the anti-Semitism of Suvorin's newspaper, but he had managed to avoid an open row with Suvorin. Now he could no longer stomach Suvorin's position in the Dreyfus case, and he said so in sharp words. They were never again to be close friends.

The months of invalid exile in Nice were not lonely—the south of France has always had a large Russian colony—and one has the feeling that France was good for Chekhov. But, as always, the time came when he was desperate to go home. The doctors would not allow him to live in Moscow: they insisted that he move to a milder climate. And so began the last years, the Yalta years.

The Moscow Art Theatre was founded in 1895 by Nemirov- ich-Danchenko and Konstantin Stanislavski in revolt against a theatre of stale domestic plays and foreign fripperies, of rhet- oric and rant, a theatre where the star actor manipulated every- thing to suit his own style and fancy. These two men and their associates believed in a more natural style of acting—they called it "spiritual realism." They believed that every side of stage production, direction, costuming, lighting, music, was of equal importance and should be carefully integrated into an artistic whole. The ideas of this new group were so fresh, their meth- ods so interesting, and their productions so remarkable that the Moscow Art Theatre became the greatest theatre influence in modern times. Our stage still works from the prompt books of Stanislavski, although it sometimes treats the books as if they were the Bible in bad translation. \Vhenever and wherever it is curtain time in the \Vestern world, Stanislavski and Nemirov- ich-Danchenko are still in the theatre.

Chekhov was attracted by this new theatre group and when they came to him he was pleased at the possibility of working with them. Nemirovich-Danchenko had always been a great admirer of The Seagull and now he proposed to include it in the opening repertory program. But he had a hard time per- suading Chekhov to allow the performance and an even harder time persuading Stanislavski and the other actors. Stanislavski said he didn't like the play and, at the first few meetings, didn't like the playwright, either. He thought Chekhov arrogant and insincere, which are two quite remarkable words from Stanis- lavski about Chekhov. The actors of the company, in the early meetings, were also bewildered and irritated by Chekhov. \Vhen one of them asked him how a part should be played Chekhov said, "As well as possiblc." This remark is still quoted as the charmingly naive statement of a writer who didn't know any- thing about the stage. It is, of course, the statement of a writer who knew a great deal about the stage but who refused to deal in the large words of stagc palaver.

The Moscow Art Theatre opened its door with an initial success, but then went financially down hill. As the group ap- proached the Nemirovich-Danchenko production of The Sea- gull they were at the end of their resources. Nemirovich-Dan- chenko had never intended the play to carry that much of a burden. The rehearsals and the opening night were as dramatic as they were comic. The company had enough trouble without the sudden appearance of Maria Chekhova, who came to plead with them to cancel the performance: she said the almost cer- tain failure of the play would be dangerous to her brother's health. Fortunately, Nemirovich-Danchenko was a man of sense who knew more about Chekhov than his sister and he refused to cancel the performance. But the sister's last-minute dramatic plea, thrown at people who were already frightened that their theatre was about to collapse, was enough to cause a panic. Stanislavski said that "an inner voice"—an inner voice is as much a part of every theatre as is the curtain or the lights— told the cast that if they did not act well, if the play should fail, they would be the executioners of their beloved Chekhov. (This was, indeed, a romantic picture of a writer who had always taken failure and success with calmness and serenity.) The cast fortified their inner voices with valerian drops, and got ready. Stanislavski's left foot, which had taken to violent and mysteri- ous jerkings all on its own, was finally put under control, and Olga Knipper and the other actors throttled down the hysterics in plenty of time to get dressed. The curtain went up, the cur- tain came down. The play was a great success. The Seagull had saved the Moscow Art Theatre. To this day, a seagull is painted on the curtain of their theatre, in gratitude to Chekhov.

Chekhov had rewritten—the date of rewriting is not clear— Wood Demon and renamed it Uncle Vanya. Provincial reper- tory companies had already picked up the play and were per- forming it—Gorki wrote to Chekhov that he had seen it in Nizhni-Novgorod—before the Moscow Art Theatre was ready with its production in the autumn of 1899. Chekhov, who Stan- islavski thought would be killed by the failure of The Seagull, went to bed in Yalta without realizing that Uncle Vanya was opening in Moscow. The new production of Uncle Vanya was not a brilliant success, although it was certainly not the failure that Olga Knipper made it in her excited report to Chekhov. It was enough of a success to convince the Moscow Art Theatre that their future lay in the hands of their new playwright and, because it was difficult for him to come to Moscow, they ar- ranged a Crimean tour in the hope of encouraging him to write more plays. It was a gay and charming troupe that came south and the triumph of their tour and the pleasure of their com- pany gave Chekhov a happy time. He sat down to write The Three Sisters for them.

I think The Three Sisters is a great play. It is a greater play than Uncle Vanya which, to me, is a greater play than The Cherry Orchard. But all three plays are of such importance that no easy and quick summary should be made of them.

It would be impossible here, and needless, since the letters speak for themselves, to make a full report of the last five years of Chekhov's life. They were crowded years. Chekhov, as usual, moved around a great deal. Sometimes he was happy at Yalta,

/S97-I904

often he fumed and yawned in the dull, provincial life of the town. These were the years during which a new edition of his works was published, an edition that is now considered incom- plete and badly annotated, but which was of great importance in its day; the years of his warm and generous and loyal rela- tions with Maxim Gorki—Chekhov resigned from the Academy when Gorki was refused admission and he invited Gorki to live in his house when Gorki was under police supervision; the years of his complex relations with the Moscow Art Theatre; the years of his greatest powers as a writer, and of his greatest rewards.

And, at the age of 41, he got married. Chekhov biographers offer us a picture of Olga Knipper as a charming and intelligent woman deeply in love with, and deeply loved by, a brilliant and famous man. There is, of course, no tape measure for in-loveness, but the biographers' picture cannot be the whole truth because many of the facts do not support it. There has been a strange lack of speculation about the relationship between Chekhov and Knipper—every other aspect of Chekhov's life has been rather overexplored—and it is difficult to know the reason why. Perhaps because both people are, in a sense, of our generation, we wish to accept Chekhov's letters to Knipper at their charm- ing face value. Perhaps most of us do not wish to see trouble in the marital relations of people we admire, not so much out of kindheartedness as out of fear that we will grow depressed about our own.

I think it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Chekhov marriage was not a good marriage. Indeed, it seems to me to have been a sad marriage. Knipper was a charming and talented young woman, but she was an ambitious woman who covered her ambition with self-righteous talk about duty to her art. She is one—and it is amazing how little she differs from the rest—in a long line of ladies who want love and all the good things that go with it, but who haven't the slightest intention of

/897-1904

giving up much to get it. After the marriage she stayed on with her career in Moscow, her husband stayed on in Yalta, and they came together only occasionally like secret lovers on holiday trips. True, Chekhov urged her not to sacrifice her career to his invalid's life, but his words were laid over with loneliness and it seems that a warmer heart would have understood the isola- tion and the fears of a sick man. True, Knipper cried out in her letters that she did want to come to him, but she seldom came. Her letters are full of guilt, which is what makes them often so boring, and sometimes her guilt makes her sound angry with her husband. She was obviously a childish woman, not only crying to get her own way, but demanding to be assured that her own way was the best and only way for both of them. Her letters tell him of the grand parties she has been to in Moscow and then, catching herself, she says that she finds the parties dull and foolish. She never seems to notice that Chekhov, in answering, shows his own desire for a little pleasure, a little party gaiety. One biographer says, "It helped him (Chekhov) to know that despite the excitements of Moscow, Olga's thoughts were constantly with him." It may have helped him, but not very much. He was a man and not a saint. There have always been Knippers in the international theatre, and they do not change with the husband, the education, the century or the regime. It seems as foolish to glorify Knipper as it would be to condemn her.

It should be said that life with Chekhov at the time Knipper married him could not have been ideal for an attrac- tive young woman. He was a very sick man, he was famous and she was not, his natural high spirits were completely circum- scribed by sickness, and he had a doting and possessive family who, under the best circumstances, would have irritated any bride. A house of illness is always a gloomy house, and the house of a middle-agcd bridegroom is set in its ways, and Yalta was a dull, provincial town filled with the aged and the com- plaining, and Knipper had a miscarriage of the child they both wanted, and so on down a long, long list of troubles. And it is doubtful if Chekhov was a man of passion. He was romantic and tender and he loved women, but if he ever had been a man of passion it was now too late.

The nature of the Chekhov marriage would not be of any great significance if everything in it—and everything lacking in it—were not such remarkable clues to his life and work. Here, in the mirror of the marriage, is all of him: the gentle pride—he would not beg or ask favors from Knipper, nor chas- tise her for not giving them; the ability to accept what life offered and to make the most of it; the sweetness of his nature, and the sadness; the refusal to fool himself. In the married Chekhov there are the thousand sides that make the work so wonderful. Conversely, what we miss in the marriage is exactly what we miss in the work: there is a lack of passion and of power. Chekhov was without that final spiritual violence which the very great creative genius has always had. And he knew it as he knew most things about himself.

In June, 1904, he went to Germany with Knipper. On the night of July 1st, for the first time in the history of his illness, he asked to see a doctor. His conversation with the doctor had a kind of noble humor. The doctor ordered an ice pack placed on his heart and Chekhov said, "You don't put an ice pack on an empty heart." Then the doctor insisted that he drink a glass of champagne. Chekhov's last words were, "It's a long time since I've had any champagne." They are perhaps the pleasantest last words ever spoken.

Chekhov's body, on its way home to Russia, traveled in a railroad coach marked "Fresh Oysters." This was an ending so pat-ironic, so ham, that while a lesser writer might have used it for the ending of "A Tiresome Tale," no writer as good as Chekhov would have touched it, and biographers should not be too sure that it would have amused him.

But Moscow paid him great honor: his death was a time of national mourning. He was more beloved than he ever knew. Years before, Tolstoy had said, "What a beautiful, magnificent man. He is simply wonderful."

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

April i, 1897, Moscow The doctors diagnosed tuberculosis in the upper part of the lungs and have prescribed a change in my way of life. I can grasp the first but not the second, which is just about impos- sible. I have been definitely ordered into the country, but certainly, continual living in the country presupposes continual trouble with peasants, animals, natural elements of various kinds, and it is as hard to protect yourself from fuss and trouble in rural areas as it is from burns in hell. Still, I shall try to change my life to the fullest possible extent and have already sent word through Masha that I am giving up medical practice. For me this will be both a relief and a severe deprivation. I am dropping official duties, am buying a dressing gown, will warm my bones in the sun and eat a lot. The doctors have ordered me to eat about six times a day and are in a state of indignation because I eat very little. I have been forbidden to do much talking, to swim and so forth and so on.

Except for my lungs, all my organs were found healthy. . . . Hitherto it seemed to me I drank exactly as much as would do me no harm; the latest checkup shows I drank less than I had a right to. What a pity!

The author of "Ward No. 6" has been moved from \Vard 16 to 14. It is spacious here, with two windows, the lighting re- minds one of a Potapenko play, and the room has three tables. I am not losing much blood. After the evening Tolstoy was here (we had a long talk) , coughed a lot of blood at four in the morning.

Melikhovo is a healthy place; it happens to be in a water- shed and stands high, so fevers and diphtheria never visit it. At a consultation a decision was taken for me not to try a new spot, but to continue living in Melikhovo, except that the place would have to be made more comfortable. When I get tired of the house, I'll go next door to the cottage I rented for the use of my brothers, in case they should decide to visit.

People come and go continually, bring flowers, candies, good things to eat. In a word, bliss. . . .

I am not on my back, but am writing this sitting up, though the minute I'm through, I'll be back on my loge.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

Please write, I implore you.

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

April 2, 1897, Moscow This is the story. Since 1884 I have been spitting blood every spring. That time when you accused me of being blessed by the Most Holy Synod, and didn't believe my denial, I was so upset that at a time when Mr. Suvorin was present I lost a lot of blood and was put into a clinic. My case was diagnosed as tuber- culosis in the upper part of the lungs, i.e., I acquired the right, if I wished, to consider myself an invalid. My temperature is normal, I don't have night sweats or any weakness, but I dream of the saints, my future looks pretty dim and although the lung condition is not so very advanced, a will must be drawn up, without delay, so that you won't be able to grab all my property. I'm being dismissed from the clinic on Wednesday of Holy Week, will proceed to Melikhovo and then we'll see what happens next. I have been ordered to keep myself well nourished, so now it's me that has to be fed, not Papa and Mama. Nobody at home knows of my illness, so when you write

don't shoot your mouth off with the malice peculiar to you. . . .

My kindest regards to your wife and children—with all my heart, of course. Keep well.

Your benefactor,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER ERTEL

ApriZ /7, /897, Melikhovo My dear friend A lexander Ivanovich,

I am home now. Just before the holidays I spent two weeks in Ostroumov's clinic, bleeding, and the doctor diagnosed tuberculosis of the upper part of the lungs. I feel fine all over, nothing aches, nothing disturbs me inwardly, but the doctors have forbidden me vinum, movement, talk, have ordered me to eat a lot, have forbidden me to practice medicine—and I am at loose ends, as it were.

I haven't heard a thing about a people's theatre. At the con- gress it was mentioned offhand and with no enthusiasm, and the group that had undertaken to write a chartei and get work under way has evidently cooled off somewhat. This is probably due to the presence of spring. . . .

There is nothing new. There is a lull in literature. In the editorial ollices people drink tea and cheap wine without relish, all as a result, evidently, of nothing to do. Tolstoy is writing a pamphlet on art. He visited me at the clinic and said he had tossed aside his novel "Resurrection" because he didn't like it, writes only on art and has read sixty books about it. His ideas on the subject are not new; all the wise old men have repeated them throughout the centuries in various keys. Old men have always been prone to see the end of the world, and assert that morality has fallen to its nec plus ultra, that art has been de- based and is out at the elbows, that people have become weak

and so on and so forth. Leo Nikolayevich's pamphlet would like

to convince the world that art has now entered its final phase and is in a blind alley from which it cannot get out except by going backward.

1 am not doing anything, am feeding the sparrows with hemp seeds and prune the roses, one a day. The flowers bloom luxur- iantly afterward. 1 am not doing any farming.

Keep well, dear Alexander Ivanovich, thanks for your letter and friendly sympathy. Write me because of the infirmities of my flesh, and don't find too great fault with my irregularity in corresponding. From now on 1 will try to answer your letters right after reading them. 1 cordially press your hand.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To VASILI SOBOLEVSKI

August 19, 1897, Melikhovo

Dear Vasili Mikhailovich,

I have been looking for your address so as to get in touch with you and find out whether you would be going to Nice— and if you were, whether you couldn't take me along. From your yesterday's letter I learned you were in Biarritz. Excellent, I will go to Biarritz too. I can't get away from horne before the end of August (around the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh, I guess); furthermore, there is no need to rush, as the weather here is warm and dry. In the meantime please be so good as to let me know what is the best train for me to take out of Moscow, whether to Berlin or Vienna, what train out of Paris, what hotel you stopped at. I am asking you for this sort of de- tailed itinerary because this is my first time in Biarritz and I am somewhat shy. You know I talk all languages except the foreign ones; when I speak French or German abroad, the con- ductors usually laugh; and for me, transferring from one station to another in Paris is just like playing blind man's buff.

I count upon staying in Biarritz for a month, then will be off for some other warm spot.

So long! In anticipation of your reply let me shake your hand and wish you all the best.

Your

A. Chekhov

To LYDIA AVILOVA

October 6, i8gj, Nice . . . You deplore the fact that my characters are gloomy. Alas, it isn't my fault! This happens involuntarily, and when I write I don't think I am lugubrious; at any rate, I am always in a good mood while I work. It has been pointed out that som- bre, melancholy people always \\Tite gaily, while the works of cheerful souls are always depressing. And I am a joyous person; at least I have lived the first thirty years of my life at my ease, as they say.

My health is tolerable in the morning and excellent at night. I am not doing anything, don't write and don't feel like writing. I ha\e become frightfully lazy.

Keep well and happy. I press your hand.

Your

A. Chekhov

I shall probably remain abroad all winter.

To MARIA CHEKHOVA

October 27, 1897, Nice

Dear Masha,

... The weather is marvelous; so incredibly bright and warm. It is summer, really.

Here is a nice little treat for you: a French lesson. The ac- cepted form of address is "Monsieur Antoine Tchekhoff" and not "a M-r Ant. Tchekhoff." You must write "recommandee" and not "recommendee." The French language is a very polite and subtle one and not a single sentence, even in conversation with servants, policemen or cab drivers lacks its monsieur, rna- dame, or "I beg you" and "be so kind." It is not permissible to say, "Give me some water," you say rather, "Be so kind as to give me some water," or, "Give me some water, I beg of you." But this phrase, i.e., "I beg of you," should not be "Je vous en prie" (je vuzan pree) , as they say in Russia, but unfailingly "S'il vous plait" (if it please you), or, for variety, "ayez la bonte de donner" (have the goodness to give), "veuillez don- ner" (vuyay) —would you wish to give.

If someone in a shop says "Je vous en prie," you can tell he is a Russian. The Russians pronounce the word "les gens" in the sense of "servants" like jans, but this is not correct, one should say, "Jon." The word "oui" must be pronounced not "vooee" as we say it, but "ooee," so that you can hear the ee. In wishing someone a pleasant journey the Russians say, "bon voyage—bun vooayash," giving a distinct sound to sh, while it should be pronounced voayazh-zh . . . Voisinage . . . vooazinazh- zh ... and not vooazhinash. Also "treize" ( 13) and "quatorze" ( 14) should be pronounced not tress and katorss, the way Ade- laide says it, but trezzzz . . katorzzz—so that you get the z sound at the end of the word. The word "sens"—feeling, is pro- nounced sanss, the word "soit" in the sense of "so be it"— sooatt. The word "ailleurs"^^lsewhere—and "d'ailleurs"— besides—are pronounced ayor and dayor, in which the eu sound approximates our e.

Well, that will be enough for the first time. There is nothing new, my health is not bad. What's with Lika? Does she want to go to Milan?

Keep well. Kindest regards to all.

Yes, one more observation: Russians are recognized here by their frequent use of "donc" and "deja." It sounds bad, trite. They also say "ce n'est pas vrai"—"that is not true." But for a Frenchman such an expression is too coarse, not an expression of doubt or incredulity, as it is with us, but opprobrious. If you wish to express doubt or incredulity you must say, "C'est im- possible, monsieur."

I am doing a little writing.

Did Mama get the cards? If you wish me to bring or send any cosmetics or artists' supplies when the opportunity presents, write me what you need. I can bring in a whole box full of paints duty free and here all of this material is first-rate and not expensive.

Agreez l'assurance de rna parfaite consideration.

Antoine Tchekhoff

To ANNA SUVORINA

November /o, /897, Nice

Dear Anna Ivanovna,

Thank you very much for the letter, which I am answering immediately upon reading. You ask about my health. I feel ex- tremely fit, outwardly (I believe) I am completely well, my mis- fortune is that I cough blood. I don't cough it in any quantity, but it persists for a long time and my last attack, which is still upon me, began about three weeks ago. Because of it I must subject myself to various deprivations; I don't leave the house after three in the afternoon, don't drink, don't eat anything hot, don't walk fast, am never anywhere except on the street, in short, I am not living but vegetating. This naturally annoys me and puts me in a bad temper; and it seems to me that at dinner the Russians here speak nonsense and banalities, and I have to control myself not to answer impertinently.

But for the Lord's sake, don't tell anyone about the coughing, this is between ourselves. I write home that I am entirely well; declaring anything to the contrary would not make sense, since I do feel fine—and if they find out at home about my losing blood, there will be loud outcries.

Now you want to know about that little affair of mine. In

Biarritz I picked up a young lady of nineteen, named Margot, to teach me French; when we bade each other farewell she said she would be in Nice without fail. She probably is here, but I just cannot find her and so—I am not speaking French.

The weather here is heavenly. It is hot, calm, charming. The musical competitions are under way. Bands march along the streets, which are full of excitement, dancing and laughter. I look at all this and think to myself how silly I was not to have lived abroad more. I now believe, if I remain alive, I will no longer spend winters in Moscow, no matter what the induce- ments. The minute October comes around, out I go from Rus- sia. I am not inspired by the natural beauty hereabouts, which I find alien, but I passionately love warmth, and I love culture. . . . And culture here oozes out of every shop window, every willow basket; every dog has the odor of civilization.

. . . Don't be so proud and majestic, write me as often as you can. I need letters. I kiss your hand a hundred hundred times, wish you happiness and again thank you.

Yours heart and soul,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

January 4, 1898, Nice

This is my program: the end of January (old style) or, more likely, the beginning of February, I am going to Algeria, Tunis, etc., then return to Nice, where I will expect you (you wrote you were coming to Nice), then after a stay here we will go to Paris together, if you like, whence on the "lightning" to Russia in time to usher in Easter. Your last letter arrived here un- sealed.

I am very rarely in Monte Carlo, say once in three or four weeks. The first days, when Sobolevski and Nemirovich were here, I played a very moderate game (rouge et noir) and would return home occasionally with fifty or a hundred francs, but then I had to give it up, as it exhausts me—physically.

The Dreyfus affair has seethed and died down, but hasn't yet got back onto the right track. Zola is a noble spirit and I (a member of the syndicate and in the pay of Jews to the extent of a hundred francs) am in raptures over this outburst. France is a wonderful country, and its writers are wonderful. . . .

\Ve have with us Hirshman, the Kharkov oculist, the well- knowra philanthropist and friend of Koni, a saintly man who is on a visit to his tuberculous son. I have been seeing him and talking with him, but his wife is a nuisance, a fussy dim-witted woman, as tedious as forty thousand wives. There is a Russian woman artist here who draws me in caricature about ten or fifteen times a day.

Judging from the extract published in "New Times," Leo Tolstoy's article on art doesn't sound interesting. It is all old stuff. Saying of art that it has grown decrepit, drifted into a blind alley, that it isn't what it ought to be, and so forth and so on, is the same as saying that the desire to eat and drink has grown obsolete, seen its day and isn't what it ought to be. Of course hunger is an old story, and in our desire to eat we have entered a blind alley, but still we have to do it and we will keep on eating, whatever the philosophers and angry old men may go to the trouble of saying.

Keep well.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

February 6, i8g8, Nice

A few days ago I saw a striking announcement on the first page of "New Times" on the forthcoming issue of "Cosmopolis," which will contain my story, "On A Visit." To begin with, my story isn't called "On A Visit" but "Visiting with Friends." In the second place, this sort of publicity goes against the grain; let alone the fact that the story itself is far from unusual, being one of those things you grind out one per day.

You write you are provoked with Zola, while here the gen- eral feeling is as though a new, better Zola had come into being. In this trial oЈ his he has cleaned off all his external grease spots with turpentine, as it were, and now gleams before the French in his true brilliance. He has a purity and moral elevation which no one had suspected. Just trace the whole scandal from the very beginning. The degradation of Dreyfus, whether just or otherwise, had a depressing, dismal effect on everyone (among others on you, too, as I recall). At the time of his sentencing Dreyfus conducted himself like an honorable, well-disciplined officer, while others present, the journalists, for instance, yelled at him, "Shut up, you Judas!" i.e., behaved scandalously. Everybody came away dissatisfied and left the courtroom with a troubled conscience. Particularly dissatisfied was Dreyfus' defense attorney, Demange, an honest man, who even during the preliminary hearing had felt something was wrong behind the scenes; then there were the experts, who, to convince them- selves that they were not mistaken, spoke only of Dreyfus, of his guilt, and kept roaming through Paris, roaming. . . . Of the experts, one turned out to be crazy, the author of a gro- tesque, absurd scheme, two were eccentrics. The logic of the situation was such that one was bound to question the intelli- gence bureau of the War Ministry, that military consistory de- voted to spy hunting and reading other people's letters; then people started saying that Sandher, the bureau chief, was aficted with progressive paralysis; Paty de Clam turned out to be almost a counterpart of the Berliner, Tausch; and Picquart resigned, suddenly and mysteriously. A regular series of gross errors of justice came to light, as though purposely arranged. People became convinced, little by little, that Dreyfus had really been condemned on the basis of a secret document which had not been shown either to the defendant or to his attorney— and law-abiding people looked upon this as a basic breach of justice; had that letter been written even by the sun itself, not to speak of Wilhelm, it still should have been shown to Demange. Everyone had wild guesses as to the contents of this letter and cock-and-bull stories were current. Dreyfus was an officer, and so the military expected the worst; Dreyfus was a Jew—the Jews expected the worst. . . . All the talk was of mili- tarism, of the yids. . . . Such profoundly distrusted people as Drumont held their heads high; an evil plant began g.-owing in the soil of anti-Semitism, in a soil stinking of the slaughter- house. \Vhen something does not go well with us, we look for reasons outside of us and have no trouble finding them: "It's the French who are ruining us, the yids, Wilhelm. . . . Capital, bogeymen, Masons, the syndicate, the Jesuits—these are all spectres, but hmv they do assuage our uneasy minds! These things are a bad sign, of course. Once the French started talking about yids, or the syndicate, it was an indication that they felt all was not well, that some worm was gnawing underneath, that they needed such spectres to appease their troubled consciences. Then this Esterhazy, a brawler out of Turgenev, an insolent, doubtful character, a man despised by his comrades, the striking similarity of his handwriting with that of the document, the letters of the Uhlan, the threats he chose not to carry out for reasons of his own, finally the strange decision, made in absolute secrecy, that the document was written in Esterhazy's handwrit- ing but not by his hand. . . . The gases were accumulating, and people began feeling acute tension, an oppressive closeness in the air. The scuffle in the court was a pure manifestation of nerves, simply a hysterical consequence of this tension. Zola's letter and his trial are also aspects of this same situation. \Vhat would you want? It is for the best people, always ahead of their nations, to be the first to sound the alarm—and this is just what happened. First to speak up was Scherer-Koestner, whom the French, knowing him, call (in Kovalevski's^l words) a "Caucas- ian dagger"—he is so shiningly clean and flawless. Zola was the second. And now he is on trial.

^ Kovalcvski was a historian, sociologist and j urist. Bccausc of his libcral views he lost his post as profcssor at Moscow Univcrsity and cmigratcd to Paris, whcre hc taught and lcctured.

Yes, Zola is not Voltaire, nor are any of us Voltaires, but life sometimes produces such a chain of circumstances that it is very much out of place to reproach us for not being Voltaires. Think of Korolenko, who defended the M ultan pagans and saved them from penal servitude. Nor was Doctor Haas a Vol- taire, yet his wonderful life ran along to a good end.

I am acquainted with the affair from the stenographic report and it certainly is not what you read in the newspapers. I can see Zola plain. The important point is that he is sincere, i.e., he builds his judgments solely on what he sees, and not on spectres, as others do. Sincere people can certainly make mistakes—no doubt about that—but such mistakes cause less harm than well- advised insincerity, prejudices or political considerations. Sup- pose Dreyfus is guilty: Zola is right anyway, because it is the writer's business not to accuse and not to persecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer pun- ishment. People will say, what about politics and the interests of the government? But great writers and artists should engage in politics only to the extent necessary to defend themselves against politics. Even without political considerations there are plenty of accusers, prosecutors and policemen, and in any case the role of Paul suits them better than that of Saul. And no matter what the verdict may be, Zola nonethelesss will expe- rience a vibrant joy after the trial is over, his old age will be a good old age and when he dies it will be with a serene or at any rate eased conscience.

The French people have sickened and they grasp at every word of comfort and at every well-intended reproach coming from without; that is why Bjornstern's letter was so popular here, along with our Zakrevski's article (which people read in the "News"), and why the abuse of Zola was so obnoxious, i.e., the stuff the yellow press, which the French despise, dishes up for them every day. No matter how neurotic Zola may be, in court he still represents French common sense, and so the French love him and are proud of him, although they applaud

To OLGA HERMANOVNA CHEKHOVA [l8g8]

the generals who, simple-minded as they are, frighten them first with the honor of the army and then with the threat of war.

See what a long letter this is. It is spring here and the mood is that of a Little Russian Easter: warmth, sunshine, the peal of bells, memories of the past. Do come! By the way, Duse will be playing here. . . .

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To OLGA HERMANOVNA CHEKHOVA

February 22, i8g8, Nice

My dear daughter and protegee,

I congratulate you on the addition to the family and hope your daughter will be beautiful, clever, interesting, and to cap it all will marry a good man, if possible, a tender and patient one, who won't jump out of a window because of his mother- in-law. I had received word of this happy event in the family some time ago and heartily shared your joy, but haven't offered my congratulations until now because I haven't been up to it, I myself felt I had a young one in my belly, I've been having such acute pain. The dentist broke a tooth, took three sessions to extract it and probably caused an infection, as an infectious periostitis set in in the upper jaw, my countenance became dis- torted, and I crawled up the walls with the pain. I had a fever like typhus. The day before yesterday I had an operation and now the pain has eased. So saying, everything below concerns your husband. . . .

. . . You ask my opinion regarding Zola and his trial. I reckon first of all with the obvious facts: on Zola's side is the entire European intelligentsia and opposed to him is everything that is vile and of doubtful character. This is the way things are: just suppose a university administration expelled one student instead of another in error, you started protesting and people shouted at you, "You are insulting knowledge!" although the university administration and knowledge have only one thing in common, that both the administering officials and the profes- sors wear blue frock coats; then you swear, assure, accuse, and people shout, "Proofs!"

"See here," you say, "let's go into the administrative office and have a look into its books."

"That's not allowed! That's an administrative secret! . . ." Now, this is the wild-goose chase going on here. The psychol- ogy of the French government is transparent. Like a decent woman who has deceived her husband once, commits a number of gross mistakes, falls prey to insolent blackmail and finally kills herself—and all in order to conceal her initial fall from grace—so the French government, too, will stop at nothing, but shuts its eyes and reels to left and right, just to avoid acknowl- edging its mistake.

"New Times" is conducting a ridiculous campaign; on the other hand the majority of Russian papers, even though they are not for Zola, are against his persecution. The Court of Cassation will settle nothing, even with a favorable outcome. The question will resolve itself, in some casual fashion, as a result of the explosion of the steams now storing up inside of French heads. Everything will tum out all right.

There is nothing new. Everything is running along smoothly, if you don't count the periostitis. My countenance is still askew. Keep well. If Mama is still with you, give her my regards. I have sent home a lot of perfumed soap. If you were in Mel- ikhovo you would get a piece.

Your papa,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

February 23, 1898, Nice

Brother!!

... "New Times" behaved just abominably in the Zola affair. The old man and I exchanged letters on the subject (in an extremely moderate tone, though) and now both of us have shut up. I don't want to write to him or get his letters, wherein he justifies his paper's tactlessness by saying he loves the mili- tary—I really don't, as I have been sick and tired of the whole business for a long time. I am fond of the military, too, but if I owned a paper, I would not allow those cactuses to make a supplementary printing of a novel¹ of Zola's without paying royalties and then pour filth over the author—and what for?— for having qualities that not a single one of those cactuses could ever recognize—a noble impulse and purity of spirit. At any rate, abusing Zola when he is on trial is unworthy of literature.

I got your portrait and have presented it to a little French girl with this inscription: . . . She will think you are discussing one of your articles on the woman question.

Don't be bashful about writing. Greetings to Natalia Alexan- drovna and the children.

L'homme des lettres,

A. Tchekhoff

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

August 14, 1898, Melikhovo

Your first-born, Nikolai, arrived the day before yesterday. He will live in Melikhovo until his studies in Moscow get under way. We have just had the following conversation:

I. I am going to write your father now. What shall I tell him about you?

He. Tell him I am sitting here eating apples and that's all.

He has been telling us about Valdaika and the estate it seems you have bought or intend to buy. If this is so, it's a good idea.

When you walk past the theatre office, go in and tell the young lady there that authors hafta eat. She owes me some money and you have every right to demand it. What do you

1 Supplements were the extra section of newspapers or magazines given to readers as premiums for subscriptions. New Times was running Zola's novel Paris in ils supplements without paying any royalties.

hear about Suvorin? \Vhere is he? We are having hot weather and are melting away pleasantly. A general has taken up resi- dence in the country home next door, which is very Hattering to us. My greetings to Dr. Oldrogge, and write me in greater detail of your alcoholic undertakings. Regards to your pious family. In bad weather keep your pants dry and heed your elders.

Your benefactor,

Antonio

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

October 8, /SgS, YaZta

You write that the public should not be pampered; so be it, but still there is no need to sell my books for more money than Potapenko's and Korolenko's. Here in Yalta my books are sold in large numbers and I have been told in the bookshops that the buying public is often ill-disposed toward me. I am in fear that the ladies I meet on the streets may thrash me with their parasols. . . .

The Crimean seashore is beautiful and comfortable and I prefer it to the Riviera, but it has one serious drawback—there is no culture. In the matter of civilization Yalta has even pro- gressed beyond Nice with our splendid sewage system, but the outskirts are pure Asia.

I read a notice on Nemirovich's and Stanislavski's theatre and on their production of "Fyodor Ioannovich"¹ in "New Times" and I couldn't understand what the review was driving at. You had liked the production so much and it had been so cordially received that only some deep misunderstanding could have led to the writing of such a notice, something I know nothing about. What happened?

Before my departure, I may say in passing, I attended a rehearsal of "Fyodor Ioannovich." Its tone of culture had an

1 Czar Fyodor loannovich—well-known play by Count A!e.\ei K. Tolstoy (1817-1875). The role of Fyodor was played by the to-be-famous Ivan lloskvin.

To vladimir nemirovich-danchenko [/8gb]

ag.-eeable effect on me and the performance was a truly artistic one, although no particularly dazzling talents were in evidence. In my opinion Irina² was admirable. Her voice, her nobility, her quality of warmth were so superb that I felt choked with emotion. Fyodor seemed to me not so good. . . . But Irina was best of all. IЈ I had remained in Moscow I would have fallen in love with this Irina . . . .

Keep well and let me wish you all the best—I send my re- spects. I am on my way to the bath house.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

October 21, i8g8, Yalta

My dear Vladimir Ivanovich,

am in Yalta and will continue here for some time to come. The trees and g.-ass are wearing their summer green, it is warm, bright, calm, dry, and today, for example, it is not warm, but downright hot. I like it very much and may decide to settle here for good.

Your teleg.-am affected me profoundly. My warm thanks to you, Konstantin Semyonovich and the company for remember- ing me. Pleasc don't forget me and write, even though it isn't often. You are now a very busy person, and a director, but still do write now and then to this idle chap. Give me all the details, how the company reacted to the success of the first perform- ances, how "The Sea Gull" is going, what changes have been made in the assignment of parts and so on and so forth. Judg- ing by the newspapers, the start was brilliant—and I am very, very happy, happier than you can imagine. Your success is merely additional proof that both the public and the actors

Irina—this part was played by Olga Knipper. Knipper married Chekhov in 1901.

need a cultured theatre. But why is there no mention of Irina— Knipper? Don't tell me some confusion has arisen? I didn't like your Fyodor, but Irina seemed extraordinary; now people talk more of Fyodor than they do of Irina.

I have become involved in the life of the community and have been appointed a member of the board of trustees of the girls' school. And now I walk along the school steps very sedately and all the young girl students in their white caps drop me curtsies. . . .

I am waiting for "Antigone"¹ and waiting because you prom- ised to send a copy. I need it badly.

I am expecting my sister, who is coming here, according to the wire she sent. We are going to decide what to do now. Now that Father is dead my mother will scarcely wish to live alone in the country. We'll have to think up something else for her.

My respects and regards to Ekaterina Nikolayevna, Roxanova and Knipper, and my humble salutations to Vishnevski. I recall them all with great pleasure.

Keep well and happy. Please write. A cordial handshake.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To LYDIA AVILOVA

October 21, 1898, Yalta I read your letter and could only throw up my hands in despair. If I wished you happiness and good health in my last letter it was not because I desired to discontinue our corre- spondence or, Heaven help us, avoid you, but simply because I really wished and now wish you happiness and health. That should be plain. And if you read things in my letters that are not there, it is probably because I don't know how to express myself. . . .

1 Sophocles' tragedy was in rehearsal at the Moscow Art Theatre.

I am now in Yalta, will stay on for some time to come, even perhaps for the entire winter. The weather is marvelous, abso- lutely summerlike . . . . Perhaps I shall even make my home in Yalta. My father died this month and with his death the coun- try place where I resided has lost all its delight for me; my mother and sister do not wish to live there either and now I must begin a new life. And since I am forbidden to spend my winters in the north, it behooves me to weave myself a new nest, in the south probably. My father died unexpectedly, after a serious operation—and it had a depressing effect on me and my whole family; I cannot pull myself together. . . .

At any rate, don't be angry with me and forgive me if in my last letters there was really anything stiff or disagreeable. I did not mean to cause you distress and if my letters don't please you, it is not intentional on my part, quite the contrary.

I cordially clasp your hand and wish you all the best. My address is Yalta. Nothing else is necessary. Just Yalta.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To MIKHAIL CHEKHOV

October 26, 1898, Yalta

Dear Michel,

I had hardly mailed my postcard when I got yours. My heart ached when I found out what you had gone through at Father's funeral. I learned of Father's death from Sinani only on the evening of the thirteenth, as for some reason nobody had tele- graphed me and if I hadn't dropped into Sinani's shop quite by accident I would have remained in thc dark a long time.

I am buying a plot of ground in Yalta and intend building, so as to havc a place to spend the winters. The prospect of a nomadic life with its hotel rooms, doormcn, hit-or-miss cookery and so on alarms me. Mother could spend thc winters with mc. Yalta has no winter; here it is the end of October and roses and other flowers are blooming with all their might, the trees are green and the weather is mild. There is lots of water. The house by itself will take care of all my needs, without outbuild- ings, and everything under one roof.

The basement provides space for coal, wood, porter's quar- ters and everything. Hens lay all the year round and don't need special coops, as an enclosure is enough. The bakery and market are nearby. So life will be warm and very convenient for Mother. Incidentally, people pick various types of mushrooms all autumn in the outlying woods—and our mother would find this diverting. I am not going to undertake the building opera- tions by myself but will let the architect take care of every- thing. By April the house will be ready. It is a sizeable plot for the city, with enough ground for orchard, flower bed and veg- etable garden. Next year Yalta is to have a railway. . . .

As for your insistence on marriage—how can I explain it to you? Getting married is interesting only when one is in love; marrying a girl simply because she is attractive is like buying something you don't need just because it is nice. The most im- portant thing that holds family life together is love, sexual attraction, "and they two shall be one flesh"—all the rest is dreary and unreliable, no matter how cleverly we may have calculated the factors. Accordingly it is not a question of an attractive girl but of a dearly loved one; so you see, delaying the matter doesn't make any difference. . . .

My "Uncle Vanya" is playing everywhere in the provinces with universal success. So you never can tell where you are going to find something good or where you may lose it. I cer- tainly was not counting on that play. Keep well and write.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

It was a very good idea to have Father buried in Novodevichi Monastery. I wanted to telegraph about burying him there but thought I was too late; you anticipated my wishes.

To MAXIM GORKI

December 1898, Yalta

Dear Alexei Maximovich,

Your last lettcr afforded me great pleasure. Thank you with all my heart. "Uncle Vanya" was written long ago, a very long time ago; I have never seen it on the stage. During these past few years it has been presented often on provincial stages—per- haps because a collection of my plays has been published. On the whole I react coolly toward my plays, have long ago lost touch with the theatre and don't feel like writing for it any more.

You ask for my opinion of your stories. My opinion? You have undoubted talent, truly a genuine, immense talent. In your story "On the Steppe," for example, your talent is shown as extraordinarily powerful, and I even experienced a moment of envy that it was not I who had written it. You are an artist and a brilliant man. You feel things magnificently; you are plastic, i.e., when you depict a thing, you see it and touch it with your hands. That is true art. There you have my opinion, and I am very glad that I can come out with it. I repeat, I am very glad, and if we could meet and chat for an hour or two, you would be convinced how highly I value you and what hope I have in your gifts.

Now shall I speak of your defects? This is not so easy, though. Referring to shortcomings in the way of talent is like talking of the defccts of a fine tree in an orchard; in the main it is certainly not a question of the trce itself but of the tastes of those who look at it. Isn't that so?

I will bcgin by pointing out that in my opinion you have no restraint. You are like a spectator in a theatre who expresses his rapturc so unrestrainedly that he prevents himself and others from hearing. This lack of restraint is especially evident in your descriptions of nature, which break up the continuity of your dialogues; one would like these descriptions to be more compact and concise, just two or three lines or so. The frequent references to voluptuousness, whispering, velvet softness and so on lend a certain rhetorical quality and monotony to these de- scriptions, and they dampen one's enthusiasm and almost fatigue the reader. This lack of restraint is also evident in your characterizations of women ("Malva," "On the Rafts") and in love scenes. The effect you create is not of expansiveness nor of a broad sweep of your brush, but merely lack of restraint. Then, you make frequent use of words entirely unsuited to your kind of story. Accompaniment, disk, harmony—these words stand in the way of the narrative. You speak often of waves. There is a strained, circumspect effect in your portrayals of people of culture; it is not because you haven't observed them closely enough, for you do know them; it is that you don't exactly know how to tackle them.

How old are you? I don't know you or where you come from or who you are, but it seems to me that you should quit Nizhni while you are still young and really live for two or three years, lose yourself, so to speak, among literature and literary people; it would not be in order to learn to crow like the rest of our cocks or to acquire even more sharpness, but rather to plunge head over heels into literature and fall in love with it; in addi- tion, the provinces cause one to age early. Korolenko, Potap- enko, Mamin and Ertel are all excellent people; at the outset, perhaps, their company may seem somewhat dull, but after a year or two you will get used to them and esteem them accord- ing to their merits; their society will pay you back with interest for the unpleasantness and inconvenience of life in the capital.

I am hurrying to the post office. Keep well and happy, and let me clasp your hand cordially. I thank you again for your letter.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To MAXIM GORKI

january j, 1899, Ya/

My dear A1exei Maximovich,

I am answering both your letters right away. To begin with, I wish you a Happy New Year with all my heart and offer a friendly wish for your happiness, old or new—just as you would have it.

Apparently you misunderstood me somewhat. I didn't refer to crudity of style, but merely to the incongruity of foreign, not truly Russian or rarely used words. In other authors words like "fatalistically," for instance, pass unnoticed, but your things are musical and well proportioned, so that every rough spot stands out like a sore thumb. Of course we are here concerned with a matter of taste and perhaps I am only expressing the excessive fastidiousness or conservatism of a man who has long been rooted in definite habits. . . .

Are you self-taught? In your stories you are the true artist, a real man of culture. Least of all is coarseness a quality of yours, you are understanding and you feel things subtly and sensi- tively. Your best works are "On the Steppe" and "On the Rafts"—did I write you so? These are superb pieces, models of their kind, obviously by an artist who has gone through a very good school. I do not think I am mistaken. The only defect is the lack of restraint, of grace. \Vhen a person expends the least possible quantity of movement on a certain act, that is grace. There is a feeling of excess, though, in your outlay of words.

The descriptions of nature are artistic; you are a genuine landscapist. Except that the frequent use of the device of per- sonification (anthromorphism) when you have the sea breathe, the heavens gaze down, the steppe caress, nature whisper, speak or mourn, etc.—such expressions render your descriptions some- what monotonous, occasionally oversweet and sometimes indis- tinct; picturesque and expressive descriptions of nature are at- tained only through simplicity, by the use of such plain phrases as "the sun came out," "it grew dark," "it rained," etc. This simplicity is inherent in you to a degree rarely found among any of our writers.

I did not like the first number of the newly revived "Life" magazine. There seems to be a lack of seriousness in everything about it. ... The tone of your "Little Cyril" is good, but the characterization of the local government administrator spoils the general effect. Never portray these people. There is nothing easier than depicting officialdom in its unattractive aspects; the reader loves this sort of thing, but he is the most disagreeable and banal type of reader. . . . But I happen to live in the country, am personally acquainted with all these people in my own and neighboring districts, have known them a long time and find that their characters and the things they do are alto- gether untypical, usually of no interest, and so I think I may be right.

Now as to vagabondage. It is a life that interests and entices one, but with the years a kind of heaviness sets in and one gets glued to a place. The literary profession itself draws one into its clutches. Time passes quickly with failures and disappoint- ments, one fails to see life whole and the past, with its freedom, no longer seems to be mine, but someone else's.

The mail has arrived and I must read my letters and papers. Keep well and happy. Thank you for the letters, thank you for getting so easily into the swing of our correspondence.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

January ij, 1899, Yalta

... I have read Leo Tolstoy's son's story "The Folly of the Mir." The story construction is poor, and a straight article would have been more effective, but the idea is treated cor- rectly and passionately. I myself am opposed to the commune. A commune makes sense when you have to deal with external

To VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO [l8gg]

enemies who are always raiding your lands, or with wild beasts, but today it is merely a crowd bound together artificially, like a gang of convicts. They say Russia is an agricultural country. That is so, but the commune has nothing to do with it, cer- tainly not at the present time. The commune lives by farming, but once farming starts changing into scientific culture of the soil, the commune splits at all its seams, as the commune and scientific culture are incompatible ideas. I may add incidentally that the drunkenness and profound ignorance so widespread among our people are sins of the commune. . . .

The weather in Yalta is like summer. I leave the house evenings and go out on cold, rainy days—so as to get myself used to severe weather and be ready to spend next winter in Moscow and St. Petersburg. I'm weary of hanging around like this.

I am reading proof on the first volume, and doing over many of the stories completely. The volume will contain more than seventy stories in all. "Motley Stories" will make up the second volume, "In the Twilight" the third, etc. Except that here and there I have to add stories to make up the number of pages required by the censor.

Where will you be this spring? This summer? I would love to run away to Paris and most likely will do so. . . .

Keep well and happy.

Yours, A. Chekhov

To VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

January 29, 1899, Yalta

Dear Vladimir Nikolayevich,

. . . Here is what Mme. Just writes: " 'The Seagull' is being performed even better and more smoothly than it was at its second performance, although Stanislavski plays Trigorin as a novelist who is much too weak physically and morally, and the

Seagull herself U'en conviens) might look a bit handsomer in the last act. But on the other hand Arkadina, Treplev, Masha, Sorin, the teacher (those wide trousers of his are a treat in themselves) and the steward—are magnificent, absolutely liv- ing people." Here you have a specimen of the reviews I have been receiving.

I think a radical change is taking place in my life; I have been negotiating with Marx and it seems the negotiations have been concluded and the sensation I feel is akin to being finally granted a divorce by the Most Holy Synod, after a long wait. No longer will I have any business with printing plants! I won't have to think of formats, prices, or book titles! . . .

How nice it would be for everybody in the cast of "The Seagull" to be photographed in their costumes and grease paint and the picture sent to me!

I am bored here. And so, keep well and happy.

Your

A. Chekhov

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

February 6, i8gg, Yalta Let me start by making a slight correction. I wired you just as soon as I was informed that Marx wanted to buy my works. And I wired Sergeyenko to get in touch with you. The offer wasn't any secret, nor was there any delay in getting in touch with you and, I assure you, the phrase you used in speaking to Sergeyenko and which you repeated in your last letter, "Chek- hov didn't want to sell to me," is based, expressing myself in the language of classroom ladies, solely on a paradox of your own.

In the copy of the contract fonvarded to me, a great number of all sorts of unnecessary items are set forth, but not a word said about royalties from the plays. I raised a rumpus and am now awaiting a reply. . . . The plays are the important thing, all the rest is not worth bothering about—I hold firmly to this old truth and consider the royalties from the plays my main- stay.

Out of sheer boredom I am reading "The Book of My Life" by Bishop Porphiri. Here is a passage on the subject of war: "Standing armies in peacetime are in essence a swarm of locusts devouring the people's bread, leaving behind a stench in society; as for their function in time of war they are arti- ficial military machines which, as they increase and develop, sound a farewell to freedom, security and glory of the people! . . . They are lawless defenders of unjust and prejudicial laws, privilege and tyranny. . . ."

This was written back in the forties.

Please send me a calendar as a token of our thirteen-year- old association It is a bore not knowing when people's birth- days are. We'll each have to think up a fitting celebration for the occasion and then talk it over. . . .

I have just been given your second letter about Marx and the sale. I believe the sale will prove profitable if I don't live long, less than five or ten years; and unprofitable if I live longer.

'Vrite me whether it is true that you are coming to Yalta.

Keep well and happy.

Your

A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV^

February 16, 1899, Yalta

You don't have to rummage around for the material printed in 1885.

What isn't indicated in the letter does not have to be copied, for all of it has already been published in collections.

I need "The Tale," "The Teacher," "Sister," "Difficult People," "Life's Tedium," and "Tales of Life." These are some of the first stories that were printed in "New Times," soon after "Requiem" and "The \Vitch."

There is still another "Tale" that is about millionaires. It was published at New Year's, or Easter, or Christmas.

What is "Bad Weather?" Let's have it.

Have someone else copy the folios and do the searching. You are no longer of an age to engage in such occupations. Here you are fifty-three years old and have for some time been suffering from impotentia senilis, if you will pardon the ex- pression! I however am still a young man and I'm even on the lookout for a bride.

Your benefactor,

A. Chekhov

Have every story copied into a separate writing-paper note- book; indicate the year and the issue. Write on one side of the paper.

To IVAN ORLOV

February 22, /8gg, Ya/ta

Greetings, dear Ivan /vanovich,

... I have sold Marx everything—my past and my future, and have become a Marxist for the rest of my life. For every 320 pages of prose already published I will receive 5,ooo from him; five years from now I will receive 7 ,ooo and so on—with an increase every five years. Thus, when I am 95, I will be getting a fearful mess of money. I am getting 75,000 for my past. I drove a bargain in favor of myself and my heirs to retain royalties from the plays. But alas! I am still far from being a Vanderbilt. Twenty-five thousand is already on hand, but I won't be getting the remaining 5o,ooo in any hurry, but spread over two years; so I really can't set myself up in style.

There is no particular news. I am not writing much. During the coming season my play,* which has not thus far been put on in the big cities, is being produced at the Little Theatre: nice royalties involved, as you can see. My house in Autka has scarcely got under way because of the raw weather, which has stretched on for almost all of January and February. I'll have to leave before the completion of building operations . . . . I have hopes of constructing a house on the cheap side, but in European style, so as to be able to spend time there in winter as well. The present little two-storey place is adequate only for summer occupancy. . . .

Actually, Yalta in winter is a cross that not everyone can bear. It abounds in drabness, slanders, intrigue and the most shame- less calumny. . . .

Your letter contains a text from the scriptures. To your com- plaint regarding the tutor and various failures, I will also reply quoting chapter and verse: put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man. . . . And I recall yet another expression con- cerning the sons of man, those very ones who make life so dif- ficult for you: they are children of the age. It is not the tutor, but the entire educated class that is at fault, all of it, my good sir. \Vhile they are just university students they are an honest, admirable group of people, they are our hope, the future of Russia; but no sooner do these university students, male and female, stand on their own feet and turn into adults than this hope for the future vanishes into smoke and in the filter are left nothing but doctors, owners of summer cottages, insatiable officials, thieving engineers. ... I do not believe in our edu- cated class, which is hypocritical, false, hysterical, poorly edu- cated and indolent; I don't believe in it even when it suffers and complains, for its persecutors emerge from its own bosom. I believe in individuals, I see salvation in individual personali- ties scattered here and there throughout Russia—they may be

1 Uncle Vanya.

intellectuals or peasants—these are the ones with the power, however few they may be. A prophet is not honored in his own country; the individual personalities of whom I speak play an insignificant role in society. They do not dominate, but their work is apparent; at any rate, science is continually going for- ward, social consciousness is growing, questions of morality are beginning to cause uneasiness, etc., etc.—and all this is being done despite the public prosecutors, the engineers, the tutors, despite the intelligentsia en masse and despite everything.

. . . I clasp your hand cordially—keep well, happy and gay. Write I

Your

A. Chekhov

To LYDIA AVILOVA

February 26, i8gg, Yalta

Dear Lydia A lexeyevna,

. . . Five or six days ago I sent you a letter and today I am writing again. What is new in St. Petersburg and in literature? Do you like Gorki? In my opinion he is genuinely talented, his brushes and colors are genuine, but his is a sort of unrestrained, devil-may-care gift. His "On the Steppe" is a magnificent thing. But I don't like Veresayev or Chirikov a bit. Theirs is not writing, but chirping; they chirp and then sulk. And I don't like the writer Avilova because she writes so little. \Vomen authors should write a great deal, if they want to master the art; just take these Englishwomen as an example. \Vhat marvel- ous workers! But I seem to have gone in for criticism; I am afraid that in reply you are going to write me something edifying.

Today the weather is delightful, springlike. The birds are trilling, the almond and cherry trees are in blossom and it is hot. But still I should be going north. My "Seagull" is being performed in Moscow for the eighteenth time and I am told it is staged magnificently.

Keep well. I cordially clasp your hand.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To MARIA CHEKHOVA

March 29, 1899, Yalta

Dear Masha,

I have already sent you word that on the first of January 1900 I will receive thirty thousand from Marx and will then be able to pay whatever amount you need for the house. If you like Yeremeyev's property, by all means buy it; perhaps Yeremeyev is agreeable to selling it before the first of January—in which event we can make out the title deed; if not, we can borrow. A mortgage can be raised, but not for a large amount, not above ten thousand, so that paying the interest won't be burden- some.

The house apparently will not pay for itself, but if we have a comfortable, decent and quiet apartment, it will fully compensate for all our losses; for the quieter (in the physical sense) our existence, the more lightly and gladly can work be done. Bestir yourself and make Yeremeyev take responsibility for the business of the title deed, i.e., all the expenses connected with the sale of the house, or else the house will certainly stand us thirty-two and a half thousand. You can just explain to him that it is easier for him to come down in the price than for us to add to it.¹

As to "Uncle Vanya,"² I am not going to write or telegraph anything; I don't know the committee's address and therefore I don't know where to send a telegram; secondly, my letters go unanswered; I have already written Nemirovich-Danchenko a

The house in Moscow was never bought.

Chekhov had already had trouble with Uncle J'anya. He had refused to allow the Maly Theatre to make any changes in the play.

thousand times; thirdly, this whole business has annoyed me terribly, I just can't stand any more of it. Let me repeat, all this business with "Uncle Vanya" has annoyed me and I am not going to put on any of my plays with anyone or anywhere. And I won't write to anyone. . . .

The almond tree (with red blossoms) is blooming mag- nificently on our Autka property and it is a joy. The house is going up and work is at fever heat.

I will be arriving soon. Keep well. Greetings to Mama.

Your Antoine

To ANNA SUVORINA

March 29, 1899, Yalta

Dear Anna /vanovna,

If St. Petersburg were not so remote and so cold, I would visit you in an attempt to bear off Alexei Sergeyevich [Suvorin]. I get a great many letters and listen to talk from morning to night and I know something of what is going on at your place. You reproach me for disloyalty. You write that Alexei Sergeye- vich is good-hearted and disinterested and that I do not pay him back in kind; but what, as a sincerely well-disposed per- son, might I do for him? What? The present situation has not developed overnight, but has been going on for many years, and what people are saying now they have been saying for a long time, everywhere, and you and Alexei Sergeyevich were not aware of the truth, as kings do not know what goes on about them. I am not philosophizing but stating what I know. "New Times" is experiencing difficult days, but certainly it re- mains, and will remain, a force; a certain amount of time will elapse and everything will get back into its accustomed groove; nothing will change and everything will be as it was.

What interests me more is the question of whether Alexei Sergeyevich should remain in St. Petersburg; I would be very happy if he threw everything aside for a week and left town. I "Tote him in this regard, asked him to wire me, but he hasn't sent me a single word and now I don't know what to do with myself, whether to stay in Yalta and wait for him or go north. . . . I will write Alexei Sergeyevich, but you speak to him as well and have him wire me.

Where will you be this summer? Are you taking a trip any- where? It is spring here, my health is passable, but life is tedi- ous, all this rigmarole has bored me. . . .

Hearty thanks to you for the letter and for remembering me. Keep well and happy. I kiss your hand and wish you all the very best.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To ALEXANDER CHEKHOV

March jo, 1899, Yalta Proletarian! My poor brother! Honest toiler, exploited by the rich!

When you get this letter I shall already be on the wing; the third of April I will be packing and the fourth or fifth will go north to Moscow and then to my own estate, where in the posi- tion of a man of wealth I will exploit the proletarians. And so you have not managed to swindle me out of part of my capital witi flattering words! Your plans have crashed to earth.

If it is not warm by the fifteenth of April, I will remain in Moscow as late as the eighteenth; if you wish, stop in on your way back (M. Dmitrovka St., c/o Vladimirov) ....

Keep well and conduct yourself properly and moderately.

They "Tite from home that Mother was ill, but that she is well now. There is nothing new. However strange it may ap- pear, I am undergoing financial difficulties.

My benefactor Marx has only paid me a small part of what he owes, the rest will be handed over later on, after 1900, in the coming century, and little by little. This is certainly not Eng- land! . . .

Your brother, member of the Yalta Mutual Credit Society,

A. Chekhov

Sashechka, are you an atheist?

To MAXIM GORKI

April 25, 1899, Moscov)

Dear A lexei Maximovich,

Not a sight or sound of you—where are you? What are you doing? Where are you off to?

The day before yesterday I was at Tolstoy's; he praised you highly and said you were a "remarkable writer." He likes your "The Fair" and "On the Steppe," but doesn't like your "Malva." He said, "You can invent anything you please, but not psy- chology, and Gorki is full of psychological inventions. He has described what he hasn't felt." There you are. I told him we would visit him together the next time you were in Moscow.

When will you be here? "The Seagull" is being performed on Thursday, a special performance for yours truly. I'll have a seat for you if you come. . . .

I have been getting grim, rather repentant letters from St. Petersburg¹ • • • and they trouble me, for I do not know how to answer them, or what attitude to take. Yes indeed, life is a complicated affair when it is not a psychological invention.

Drop me two or three lines. Tolstoy asked a great many ques- tions about you—you have aroused his curiosity. It is evident you have stirred him.

So, keep in good health and let me clasp your hand. My com- pliments to your little Maxim.

Your

A. Chekhov

^ From Suvorin. Chekhov very probably meant that Suvorin was repentant over his anti-Zola attitude in the Dreyfus Affair.

To MAXIM GORKI

My dear A lexei Maximovich, ^{May lB99, Me 1 ovo}

I am sending you a copy of Strindberg's play "Countess Julie." Read it and return it to its owner, Elena Just, 13/15 Pante- leimon Street, St. Petersburg.

At one time I liked hunting, but now I am indifferent to it.¹ I saw "The Seagull" without the stage sets; I cannot judge the play dispassionately, because the Seagull herselЈ² gave an abom- inable performance, kept sobbing violently; and the actor play- ing the part of the writer Trigorin walked and talked like a paralytic. He interpreted his part to be that of a man without a "will of his own" and in a way that absolutely nauseated me. But on the whole it was not so bad, it gripped me. In places I could hardly believe it was I who had written it.

I shall be very glad to make Father Petrov's³ acquaintance. I have already read about him. If he is going to be in Alushta at the beginning of July it won't be difficult to arrange a meet- ing. I have not seen his book.

I am living here in comfort. It is hot, the rooks are croaking and the peasants pay me visits. For the time being life is not dull.

I bought myself a gold watch, but a very ordinary one.

When will you be here?

Do keep well, happy and gay. Don't forget, write me how- ever seldom.

If you decide to write a play, do so and then send it to me for reading. But keep it a secret until you are done, otherwise you will get kicked around and your good spirits wiped out.

I cordially shake your hand. Y_0ur

A. Chekhov

Gorki had thanked Chekhov for the gift of a watch and asked if Chekhov liked hunting because he wanted to send him a gun.

Roxanova played Nina and Stanislavski played Trigorin.

Father Petrov was a priest who was later thrown out of the Orthodox Church for his heretical writings. Lenin called him "a Christian democrat, an extremcly popular demagogue."

May 11, 1899, Melikhovo

My poor, indigent Sasha,

... I am going to be in St. Petersburg at the end of May. Get yourself dolled up.

At the moment all goes well at home. \Ve feel fine. "\Ve enter- tain aristocratic guests, the Malkiels, for instance "\Ve serve tea as it is done in the finest homes, with little napkins. You would certainly be ordered away from the table, as people who smell are not permitted.

To have as few failures as possible in fiction writing, or in order not to be so sensitive to failures, you must write more, around one hundred or two hundred stories a year. That is the secret.

Is everyone still boycotting you and is it true that Diaghilev beat up Burenin? "\Vhere is Alexei Sergeyevich? "\Vas there a court of honor? "\Vrite a lot more, don't cramp your style.

I wanted to send you my old pants but thought better of it; I was afraid you might put on airs.

Tuus frater bonus,

Antonius

To OLGA KNIPPER¹

june 16, 1899, Melikhovo What does this mean? "\Vhere are you? You are so stubborn about not sending news of yourself that we are absolutely at sea and have already begun thinking you have forgotten us and got married in the Caucasus. If you really are married, to whom is it? Haven't you decided to leave the stage?

The author is forgotten—and how terrible it is, how cruel and perfidious!

Everyone sends regards. There is nothing new. There aren't even any flies. Even the calves won't bite.

1 By this date, Knipper and Chekhov were good friends and she had visited the Chckhovs at Melikhovo. This is the first lettcr Chekhov wrote to her.

I had wanted to accompany you to the station that time, but fortunately the rain prevented me from doing so.

I was in St. Petersburg and had my picture taken twice; I almost froze to death there. I won't be leaving for Yalta before the beginning of July.

\Vith your permission, I press your hand cordially and send my best wishes.

Your

A. Chekhov

To MAXIM GORKI

june 22, /8gg, Moscow

My dearest Alexei Maximovich,

Why are you depressed? Why do you abuse your "Foma Gordeyev" so violently? If you will permit me, I believe there are two reasons, in addition to the others, for your attitude. You started your career with success, with eclat, and now every- thing that appears commonplace and humdrum to you causes dissatisfaction and annoyance. That's one. Second, a literary man cannot live in the provinces with impunity. No matter what you may have to say on this score, you have partaken of literature and are already hopelessly infected. You are a literary man, and a literary man you will remain. His natural habitat is always close to literary circles, living among those who write, and breathing literature. Don't struggle against nature, yield to it once and for all and move to St. Petersburg or Moscow. Quarrel with literary people, don't recognize them, despise half of them, but live with them. . . .

Keep well, I firmly clasp your hand and wish you everything good. Don't give way to fits of despondency.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

July 22, 1899, Yalta

Dear Masha,

This is in answer to your letter. I am arriving in Moscow not later than the second of August. But why are you waiting for me to come? Certainly I left you the power of attorney, and we can't sell the property together—it must be sold by one of us alone. I do not propose to sell it and will not negotiate with Morel; if you cannot or will not go on with it (although it's not a complicated matter at all), let's give it to someone else. The price depends entirely on you. Go ahead and sell it for i5,ooo— I won't argue with you. Knipper is here, she is very sweet, but is depressed. The building is coming along nicely. Keep well. If you don't want to exercise the power of attorney, entrust it to someone, even a person like Vinogradov. Knipper likes your room very much. It isnt a room, but a bit of magic.

The packing job on the sideboard was schwach—everything was broken.

The armchair arrived in good condition.

To MARIA CHEKHOVA

August 29,1899, Yalta

Dear Masha,

Here are the details. The kitchen is already done and Maryusha's room as well. The parquet is being laid in your room. They wanted to hang the wallpaper but I told them to wait with it until you arrived. l\'lother's and my rooms will be ready by the first of September, i.e., the flooring and wallpaper and window fittings will be in. . . . I am living in the wing and have fixed myself up cozily. The place is cramped with all the stuff and your cupboard, where I keep my underwear, has ren- dered great service.

All the things arrived intact. The table linen is in good con- dition, undamaged, and there are lots of towels. The cupboard reached hcre safely.

They are also not going to touch the walls in the entrance hall until your arrival. Only Mama and I will have wallpaper. The waterproofing is being rushed through. The water in the well is good. . . .

Bear in mind that there are a great many passengers on the train and steamboat. \Vhen you get to Sevastopol don't wait until the baggage is distributed, but hire a cabman immediately and then do your waiting seated in the carriage . . . . The tariff from the wharf is seventy-five kopeks including baggage. One cab will be enough, as they have two- and four-seaters here. I will meet you at the quay and Mustapha will take care of the luggage. . . .

It is morning now and I have had my coffee. The alcohol stove works very well. We get our milk from our neighbors at ten kopeks a bottle. Although our yard is not particularly large, we can find enough room for chickens.

I won't get any money until Deccmber and must get busy.

Our ground is line for growing clover. If you can manage bring a pound of it with you and the same quantity of timothy and lucerne.

Yesterday I became a member of the Consumers' Society which runs a grocery and liquor store; I took out fifty rubles worth of shares. Now all our goods can be delivered to the house. In a few days I am installing a telephone. . . .

So—I hope you are well. Love to Mama. I am in good health.

Your Antoine

To OLGA KNIPPER

September 1899, Yalta

Sweet actress,

I am answering all your questions. I arrived safely. My fellow travelers ceded me a lower seat, then matters were so arranged that only two of us remained in the compartment: I and a young Armenian. I drank tea a number of times a day, three glasses each time, with lemon, sedately and leisurely. I ate up every- thing in the basket. But I find that fussing with a basket lunch and dashing out at the stations for boiling water for tea is an unbecoming procedure that undermines the prestige of the Art Theatre.

It was cold until Kursk, then it warmed up gradually and by the time we reached Sevastopol it was quite hot. In Yalta I went straight to my own home, where I am now living, guarded by the faithful Mustapha. I don't have a regular dinner every day, since it is a long distance to the city and again my prestige in- hibits me from fussing around with the oil stove in the kitchen; so I eat bread and cheese in the evenings.

. . . I am not drinking Narzan water. What more? I don't go to the park but stay home most of the time and think of you. Driving past Bakchisarai I thought of you and recalled our journey together. My precious, unusual actress, my wonderful woman, if you could only know how happy your letter made me! I bow down before you, bow low, so low that my forehead is touching the bottom of my well, which to date has been dug to a depth of forty feet. I have got used to you and miss you so much now that I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that I shan't be seeing you until spring; I am in a bad humor; and, in short, if Nadenkai only knew what is going on in my soul, there would be quite a scandal!

The Yalta weather has been splendid, but for no good reason we have had pouring rain for the past two days, now it is muddy and we must wear overshoes. The humidity is such that centi- pedes crawl along the walls and toads and young crocodiles dis- port themselves in the garden. The green reptile in the flower- pot you gave me which I carried here without mishap is repos- ing in the garden now and basking in the sun. . . .

1 Nadenka was an imaginary lady, a joke between Chekhov and Knipper; sometimes she was a jealous fiancĉe, sometimes a stern wife.

Well, then, let me press your hand and kiss it. Keep in good health, be gay and happy; work, cavort, amuse yourself, sing, and if possible don't forget the minor author and your assiduous admirer,

A. Chekhov.

To MAXIM GORKI

September j, /8gg, Ya/ta

My dear Alexei JI.Iaximovich,

Grectings once again! This is in answer to your letter. To start with, I am opposed in principle to dedicating books to living people, whoever they may be. I once did so and now feel maybe I shouldn't have. This is a general observation. Get- ting down to particulars, I could only considcr your dedication of "Foma Gordeyev" to me as a pleasure and honor. But why do I dcserve it? However, it's for you to make up your mind and for me just to thank you humbly. If possible don't put in any- thing fancy, i.e., just say "dedicated to so and so" and that's all. . . . Here is some more practical advice for you, if you want it: make it a big edition, not less than five or six thousand copies. The book will sell fast. You can have the second edition printed along with the first.

Hcre is more advice: when you read proof, take out adjectives and adverbs wherever you can. You use so many of them that the readcr finds it hard to concentrate and he gets tired. You under- stand what I mean when I say, "The man sat on the grass." You understand because the sentence is clear and there is nothing to distract your attention. Conversely, the brain has trouble under- standing me if I say, "A tall, narrow-chested man of medium height with a red beard sat on green grass trampled by passers- by, sat mutely, looking about timidly and fearfully." This docsn't get its meaning through to the brain immediately, which is what good writing must do, and fast.

Now for one more thing: by nature you are a lyricist and your spirit is tuned to melody. If you were a composer you would avoid composing marches. Being coarse and noisy, taunt- ing, accusing frantically—such things are not characteristic of your talent. Consequently you will understand why I advise you in reading proof not to have any mercy on the sons of bitches and curs that flit here and there through the pages of "Life."

Shall I expect you at the end of September? Why so late? Winter begins early this year, the autumn will be a short one and you should hurry.

Well, sir, keep yourself nice and alive and in good health.

Your

A. Chekhov

Performances begin at the Art Theatre on the thirtieth of September. "Uncle Vanya" is being given on the fourteenth of October.

Your best story is "On the Steppe."

To OLGA KNIPPER

September 29, 1899, Yalta Your sensible letter with a kiss for my right temple and your other letter with the photos have arrived. Thank you, sweet actress, thank you awfully. Your performances start today and so in gratitude for the letters and for remembering me I am sending you my congratulations on the seasons getting under way—a million good wishes. I would have liked to send a wire to the directors and congratulate the whole company, but as nobody writes and I have apparently been forgotten, not even being sent the company's yearly report (which carne out re- cently, according to the neswpapers), and as that same old Roxanova is playing in "The Seagull," I considered it best to appear offended and so my congratulations are for you alone. \Ve had some rain, but now it is bright and brisk. There was a fire last night; I got up to watch it from the terrace and felt terribly alone.

\Ve are occupying our own house now, use the dining room and have a piano.

I haven't a bit of money and am spending all my time hiding from my creditors. It will continue this way until the middle of December, when Marx sends some money.

I would like to make some more sensible remarks but can't think of a thing. My own season certainly has not begnn, I have nothing new or interesting to talk about and everything is just as it has been. I am not expecting anything except bad weather, which is already around the corner.

"Ivanov" and "Uncle Vanya" are playing at the Alexander Theatre.

So keep well, sweet actress, remarkable woman, and may God preservc you. I kiss both your hands and bow all the way down to your little feet. Don't forget me.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To OLGA KNIPPER

September jo, 1899, Yalta At your bidding I am dashing off a reply to your letter, in which you ask me about Astrov's last scene with Elena.¹ You tell me that in this scene Astrov's attitude toward Elena is that of the most ardent man in love, that he "snatches at his feelings as a drowning man at a straw." But that is incorrect, absolutely incorrect! Astrov likes Elena, her beauty takes his breath away, but by the last act he is already aware that the whole business is futile, that Elena is vanishing forever from his sight—and so in this scene the tone he takes with her is the one he would use in discussing the heat in Africa, and he kisses her simply be- cause that is all he has to do. If Astrov interprets this scene

1 Chekhov was speaking of Uncle T'anya.

tempestuously, the entire mood of Act IV—a quiet and languid one—will be ruined. . . .

It has suddenly grown cold here, as if a Moscow wind had blown upon us. How I should like to be in Moscow, sweet actress! However, your head is in a whirl, you have become infected and are held in a spell—and you have no time for me. Now you will be able to say, "We are creating a stir, my friend!"

As I write I look out of an enormous window with a very extensive view, so magnificent it cannot be described. I shan't send you my photograph until I get yours, you serpent! I wouldn't think of calling you a "snake," as you say; you are a great big serpent, not a little snake. Now, isn't that flattering?

\Vell my dear, I press your hand, send my profound compli- ments and knock my forehead against the floor in worship, my most respected lady.

I am sending you another present soon.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To GRIGORI ROSSOLIMO

October ii, 1899, Yalta

Dear Grigori Ivanovich,

Today I sent Dr. Raltsevich eight rubles fifty kopeks for the photograph and five rubles for annual dues. I am sending my photograph to you registered, rather a poor one (taken when my enteritis was in full swing) .

My autobiography? I have a disease called autobiographo- phobia. It is a real torment for me to read any details about myself, let alone prepare them for publication. On a separate sheet I am sending some extremely bare facts, and more than that I cannot give you. If you wish, add that my application to the dean for admission to the university was for the medical courses.

You ask when we are going to see each other. Probably not before spring. I am in Yalta, in exile, a splendid one, maybe, but still exile. Life proceeds drably. My health is so-so: it is not every day that I am well. Besides all the rest, I have hemor- rhoids, catarrh recti and there are days when I am utterly ex- hausted by frequent trips to the toilet. I must have an operation.

Please write if anything interesting occurs. I am lonesome here, really, and if it were not for letters I might even hang myself, learn to drink the poor Crimean wine or marry an ugly and stupid woman.

Keep well. I clasp your hand cordially and send my heartiest good wishes to yourself and your family.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

My name is A. P. Chekhov and I was born on the i7th of January i86o in Taganrog. My education began at the Greek school connected with the Emperor Constantine Church, after which I attended the Taganrog Boys' school. In 1879 I entered the medical school of Moscow University. At that time I only had a vagie idea of the various courses and cannot recall what considerations led me to choose the medical course, but I do not now regret the choice. During my first year at the university I was already having things printed in the weekly newspapers and magazines, and by the early eighties these literary pursuits had assumed a regular, professional character. In 1888 I was awarded the Pushkin Prize. In i8go I visited Sakhalin Island to write a book on our penal colony and prison system there. Excluding court reports, reviews, articles, notes, all the items composed from day to day in the newspapers and which would now be difficult to unearth and collect, in twenty years of literary activity I have set down on paper and had published more than forty-eight hundred pages of tales and stories. I have also written plays for the theatre.

My work in the medical sciences undoubtedly had a great influence on my writing; certainly it widened the area of my observations and enriched my knowledge, and only one who is himself a doctor can tell you how valuable that training has been. My medical background has also been a guide to me; I have probably managed to avoid many mistakes because of it. Familiarity with natural sciences and the scientific method has always kept me on my guard, and wherever possible I have tried to write on the basis of scientific data; where it was impossible, I preferred not to write. I may note incidentally that artistic considerations do not always allow me to write in complete harmony with scientific data; on the stage you cannot show death by poisoning as it actually occurs. But even in such a case one must be consistent with scientific data, i.e., the reader or spectator must clearly realize that certain conventions are re- sponsible for what has been shown and that he is dealing with an author who knows what he is talking about. I am not in the same camp with literary men who take a skeptical attitude to- ward science; and I would not want to belong to those who handle every subject solely on the basis of their wits.

As to my medical practice, while still a student I worked in the Voskresensk Community Hospital (near New Jerusalem) with P. A. Archangelski, the eminent physician; later I spent a short period as doctor at the Zvenigorod Hospital. During the cholera years ('92, '93) I directed the medical work in Melik- hovo Section of Serpukhov District.

To OLGA KNIPPER

October 30, /8gg, Yalta

Sweet actress and good little fellow,

You ask whether I am excited. As a matter of fact it was only from your letter, received on the twenty-seventh, that I learned "Uncle Vanya" was being performed on the twenty-sixth. The telegrams started arriving the evening of the twenty-seventh, after I had already gone to bed. They were repeated to me over the telephone. I kept on waking each time and running bare- foot to the telephone in the dark, giving myself a bad chill; I would hardly fall asleep before there would be another ring, and another. This is the first occasion my own personal glory has prevented my sleeping. Upon going to bed the next night I put my bedroom slippers and bathrobe next to the bed, but there were no more telegrams.

The telegrams contained nothing but words about the num- ber of curtain calls and the brilliant success achieved, but I could sense something strained, something very elusive, about all of them, which led me to conclude that you were not all in such very good spirits. The newspapers received here today have confirmed this conjecture of mine. Yes, my dear actress, you Art Theatre performers are not satisfied any more with just ordinary, average success. You must have fireworks, cannonad- ing and dynamite. You are utterly spoiled, deafened with these continual discourses on success, on full and empty houses; you are already infected with this dizzy whirl and in a couple of years you won't be fit for anything! So much for you people!

How are you getting along and how do you feel? I am still in the same place and everything remains the same: my program consists of literary work and setting out trees. . . .

Don't forget me and don't let our friendship fade, so that the two of us can take another trip somewhere next summer. So long! We shall probably not see each other before April. If you came to Yalta this spring, you could give some performances here and relax. That would be wonderfully artistic. . . .

I clasp your hand cordially. My respect to Anna Ivanovna^ and your military uncle.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

1 Anna Iv.anovna was Olga Knipper's mother; She was a teacher of singing at a conservatory.

My dear actress, do write, in the name of all that is holy, or I shall be lonesome. It's as if I were in jail and my spirits are very low.

To OLGA KNIPPER _Ar , _{0 v} „

November i, 1899, Yalta

I understand your mood, sweet little actress, understand it perfectly, but still in your place I wouldn't be in such a desper- ate dither. Neither the role of Annai nor the play itself is en- titled to impair your emotions and nerves to such an extent. The play is old and already outdated and has all sorts of defects; if more than half the performers just couldn't get into the swing of the thing the play is naturally to blame. That's the first point. Secondly, you've got to cut out worrying about suc- cesses and failures once and for all. They are not your affair. Your job is to jog along, day in, day out, like a quiet little creature, prepared for the mistakes that can't be avoided and for failures; in short, to do a job as an actress and let the others count the curtain calls. It is usual to write, or to act, and know all long that you are not doing the right thing—and for be- ginners this awareness is so usefull

In the third place, your director telegraphed that the second performance [of Uncle Vanya] came off magnificently, every- body played wonderfully and he was completely satisfied.

Masha writes that Moscow is unpleasant and I oughtn't to go there, but I would like so much to leave Yalta, where my lonely life has wearied me. I am a Johannes² without a wife, not a learned Johannes and not a virtuous one. . . .

Keep well! Write that you have already calmed down and that everything is going beautifully. I press your hand.

Your

A. Chekhov

"Anna" must be a mistake. Chekhov was, of course, writing about Elena in Uncle Vanya. Knipper was also playing the part of Anna in Hauptmann s play Lonely Lives that season,

Johannes is a character in Lonely Lives.

To VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO [1899]

To MARIA MALKIEL

November 5, 1899, Yalta

Dear klaria Samoilovna,

I hereby inform you that I have been converted to the Mohammedan faith and have already been entered as a mem- ber of the Tatar Society of Autka Village near Yalta. Our laws do not permit us to enter into correspondence with such weak creatures as women and if, in complying with the inclination of my heart, I write to you, I am committing a grievous sin. I thank you for the letter and send hearty regards to you and your prophetic sister, and I hope you both get into the harem of an eminent gentleman, one who is as handsome as Levitan. Write some more. Keep well and happy.

Osman Chekhov

To VLADIMIR NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

December j, 1899, Yalta

My dear Vladimir Ivanovich,

An answer has come from Karpov.¹ He agrees to postpone the production of "Uncle Vanya" until next year (or more exactly next season). Now it remains for you to act on a "legal" basis, as good lawyers say. The play belongs to you, you can go on with it and I will pretend I am powerless to do anything about it, since I have already given it to you.

Are you afraid of Suvorin? We no longer correspond and I don't know what is going on there now. But I can tell you be- forehand that very probably St. Petersburg won't like the Art Theatre. St. Petersburg literary men and actors are extremely jealous and envious, and superficial at that. . . .

I have read the criticisms of "Uncle Vanya" only in the "Courier" and "News of the Day." . . .

1 Evtikhi Pavlovich Karpov (1859-1926), playwTight, fiction writer and pro- ducer at various St. Petersburg theatres.

So you want definitely to have a play for next season. But suppose it doesn't get written? I will try, of course, but won't vouch for it and cannot promise a thing. However, we'll dis- cuss it after Eastertirne when, if I can believe Vishnevski and the newspapers, your troupe will be in Yalta. Then we'll really talk things over. . . .

Yes, you are right, Alexeyev-Trigorin² has to be done over for the St. Petersburg public, even if only slightly. Sprinkle a bit of thyroid extract over him, or something. Alexeyev, who plays Trigorin as a hopeless impotent, will puzzle them all in that town, the horne of most of our men of letters. I find the recollection of Alexeyev's acting too dismal to shake off and cannot possibly believe he is good in "Uncle Vanya" although everybody writes that he is really very good, very, very good.

You promised to send me your picture and I am still waiting. I need two copies: one for myself, the other for the Taganrog library, of which I am a trustee. , . .

Do keep well. My compliments to Ekaterina Nikolayevna, Alexeyev and the entire company. I press your hand and em- brace you.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To OLGA KNIPPER

january 2, rgoo, Ya1ta

Greetings to you, sweet actress,

Are you angry that I haven't written for so long? I have writ- ten you often but you haven't been getting the letters because a mutual acquaintance of ours has intercepted them at the post office.¹

2 Stanislavski (whose real name was Alexeyev) played the part of Trigorin in The Seagull.

1 The mutual acquaintance was Nemirovich-Danchenko. This was, of course, a joke.

My best wishes for a very Happy New Year. I wish you all happiness and throw myself at your feet in worship. Be happy, prosperous, healthy and jolly.

We are getting along pretty well, eat a lot, chatter a lot, laugh a lot and your name comes up often in our talks. Masha will tell you how we passed the holidays when she returns to Moscow.

am not congratulating you on the success of "Lonely Lives." I nurture the vague hope that all of you will be coming to Yalta, that I will see a performance of "Lonely Lives" and will then really and truly congratulate you. I wrote Meierhold to persuade him not to act the part of a nervous man with such abruptness. Most people are certainly nervous, and most of them suffer, and many feel acute pain, but where on earth do you see people throwing themselves around, hopping up and down or clutching their heads with their hands? Suffering should be expressed as it is expressed in life itself, not by action of arms and legs, but by a tone of voice, or a glance; not by gesticulation, but by a graceful movement. Subtle spiritual manifestations natural to cultivated people should be subtly expressed outwardly too. You are going to bring up considera- tions of staging. But no considerations can justify falsity.

My sister tells me you played Anna² marvelously. If only the Art Theatre would visit Yalta!

Your company has had high praise from "New Times." They have shifted their course; evidently they will praise all of you even during Lent. My long story—a very peculiar one—is ap- pearing in the February number of "Life." The cast of char- acters is large, with scenery, a crescent moon and a bittern, the bird that cries boo-boo from off in the distance, like a cow locked in a barn. There is a little bit of everything.

Levitan is with us. Over my fireplace he has painted a picture of a moonlit night during haying season. There's a meadow, sheaves, woods in the distance and a moon reigning over all.

In Lonely Lives.

Well ma'am, stay healthy, my sweet, extraordinary actress. I have missed you very much.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

When are you sending your photo? What cruelty!

To ALEXEI SUVORIN

January 8, i9oo, Yalta

Happy New Year!

The holidays are over, today I bade my guests farewell, am alone again and feel like writing letters. . . .

What you tell me about the subscriptions to the paper is of interest. . . . Certainly the "Northern Courier" is widely read in the provinces. In judging Prince Baryatinski by his paper I must admit I was unfair, as my own picture of him was quite different from what he actually is. His paper won't last, of course, but he will long retain his reputation as a good journal- ist. Do you want to know why the "Northern Courier" is enjoy- ing success? It is because our society is sick, hatred is making it decay and get sour like grass in a swamp, and it craves some- thing fresh, light and free, craves it desperately. . . .

I often run into Kondakov, the academician. "\Ve have been discussing the Pushkin Section of Belles-Lettres. As Kondakov is taking part in the selection of future academicians I have been trying to hypnotize him into suggesting that they elect Bar- antsevich and Mikhailovski. The former is a worn-out, tired man, but unquestionably a man of letters; now that old age is upon him he is in need and holds a post with a horse-car com- pany, just as he held the same job as a young man because of poverty. In his case a salary and repose would be very much to the point. The latter, Mikhailovski, would put the new section on a solid basis and his selection would satisfy three quarters of our literary brotherhood. But my hypnotism hasn't worked, and the project has not been successful. The addenda to the statutes are exactly like Tolstoy's epilogue to the "KreuUer Sonata." The academicians have done their utmost to protect themselves from literary men, in whose company they are as shocked as the Germans were in the company of Russian aca- demicians. A literary man can only be an honorary academician, which doesn't mean a thing, any more than being an honorary citizen of the town of Vyazma or Cherepovets; no salary and no voting rights. They've worked it pretty cleverly; they will elect professors to be the real academicians, and writers who do not live in St. Petersburg as honorary ones, i.e., those who can- not attend meetings and exchange abuse with the professors.

I can hear the muezzin calling from the minaret. The Turks are very religious; this is their fasting time and they eat nothing all day. They do not have religious ladies, that element in society which makes religion petty, as sand makes the Volga shallow. . . .

Thank you for your letter, and your indulgence. I give you a hearty handclasp.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To PYOTR KURKIN

january /8, rgoo, Yalta

Dear Pyotr Ivanovich,

. . . Thank you for the letter; I have long been wanting to write you, but haven't had time, as I am burdened with busi- ness and official correspondence. Yesterday was the l^th, my birthday and the day I was elected to the Academy. The tele- grams I got! And the letters yet to come! And all these will have to be answered, else posterity will accuse me of ignorance of social amenities.

Do you see l\Iasha? Have you drunk her wine? There is some news though I won't tell it to you now (no time) , but later on. I am not very well, and was sick all day yesterday. I press your hand cordially. Keep well.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To FYODOR BATUSHKOV

Januarj 24, 1900, Yalta

Dear Fyodor Dmitrievich,

Roche¹ requests you to send him the passages in "The Peasants" that were deleted by the censor. There weren't any such, though. There was one chapter that did not get into either the magazine or the book; that was the peasants' conver- sation about religion and the authorities. But there is no need to send this chapter to Paris, just as there wasn't any need at all for translating "The Peasants" into French.

Thank you sincerely for the photograph. To be illustrated by Repin is an honor I did not expect and for which I didn't dare hope. Getting the original will be most gratifying; tell Ilya Efimovich [Repin] I am awaiting it impatiently, and that he no longer has a right to change his mind, since I have already willed the original to the city of Taganrog, where I was born, in- cidentally.

Your letter mentions Gorki. How do you like him, by the way? I don't like everything he writes, but there are some things I like very, very much and there isn't the least doubt that Gorki is kneaded out of the kind of dough from which genuine artists rise. He is the real article. Personally he is a good, intel- ligent, reasonable and thoughtful man but he carries a lot of dead weight around with him, his provincialism, for one thing.

Thank you very much for your letter and for remembering me. I lead a solitary and boring life here and feel as though

1 Roche was Chekhov's French translator.

I had been pitched overboard. On top of it all the weather is miserable and I am ailing. I still keep on coughing. I wish you the best of everything.

Devotedly,

A. Chekhov

To MIKHAIL MENSHIKOV

January 28, 1900, Yalta

Dear Mikhail Osipovich,

I cannot figure out what sort of ailment Tolstoy has. Cherinov¹ failed to reply and from what I read in the newspapers and what you now write me it is impossible to draw any conclusion. Stomach or intestinal ulcers would have been otherwise indi- cated; there is no ulcerous condition present, nothing but bleed- ing scratches caused by gallstones passing through and making lacerations. He doesn't have a cancer, either, which would be immediately reflected in lack of appetite, general condition and above all in his face. Most likely Tolstoy is in good health (apart from the stones) and will live another twenty years or so. His illness frightened me and kept me in a state of tension. I dread Tolstoy's death. His death would create a vacuum in my life. To begin with, I have never loved anyone as much as him; I am an unbeliever, but of all the faiths I consider his the nearest to my heart and most suited to me. Then again, as long as there is a Tolstoy in literature it is simple and gratifying to be a literary figure; even the awareness of not having accomplished anything and not expecting to accomplish anything in the future is not so terrible because Tolstoy makes up for all of us. His career is justification for all the hopes and expectations re- posed in literature. In the third place, Tolstoy stands solid as a rock with his immense authority, and as long as he remains alive bad taste in literature, all vulgarity, be it insolent or tear-

1 Professor of medicine in Moscow to whom Chekhov had telegraphed to find out about ToIstoy's illness.

ful, all coarse, irascible vanities will be held at a distance, deep in the shadows. His moral authority alone is capable of keeping so-called literary moods and trends at a certain high level. With- out him the literary world would be a flock without a shepherd or a hopeless mess.

To wind up the subj ect of Tolstoy, I have something to say about "Resurrection," which I did not read in fits and starts but all at one gulp. It is a remarkable work of art. The most uninteresting section is that concerned with the relations of Nekhludov and Katusha; the most interesting characters are the princes, generals, old ladies, peasants, prisoners and overseers. As I read the scene at the general's, the commandant of the Peter and Paul Prison, and a spiritualist, my heart beat furiously, it was so good! And Mme. Korchagina in her armchair, and the peasant, Feodosia's husband! This peasant calls his old lady a "crafty character." So it is with Tolstoy; he has a crafty pen. The novel has no end; what there is can hardly be called one. Certainly it is using a theological device when he writes on and on and then proceeds to resolve the problems raised on the basis of a Gospel text. It is as arbitrary to use such a solution as it is to divide criminals into five classes. Why five and not ten? Why use a text from the Gospels and not from the Koran? First you ought to make people believe in the truth of the Gospels and then you can go ahead and solve your problem with a Gospel text.

. . . I have been ailing for some weeks and have attempted to get over my indisposition. Now I am at home with a blister under my left clavicle and don't feel too bad. The blister doesn't bother me but the resulting red spot does.

I am certainly going to send you my photograph. I am pleased to have acquired the title of academician, since it is nice know- ing that Sigma envies me. But I shall be even gladder when I lose this title after some misunderstanding. And there will un- doubtedly be misunderstandings, because the learned academi- cians are very much afraid that we shall shock them. Tolstoy was elected with a gnashing of teeth. In their opinion he is a nihilist. At least that was how a lady, the wife of a very im- portant person, entitled him, and I congratulate him upon it with all my heart . . . .

Keep well, and let me press your hand warmly. . . .

Yours,

Write! A Chekhov

To MIKHAIL CHEKHOV

january 29, /900, Ya1ta

Dear Michel,

This is in reply to your letter.

I was never in Torjok in my life and never sent anyone a telegram from there. I left St. Petersburg the day following the performance of "The Seagull" and was accompanied to the station by Suvorin's valet and Potapenko.

Suvorin knew in detail about the sale of my works to Marx and under what conditions it took place. When the straight question was put to him as to whether he wished to purchase them, he replied that he had no money, that his children would not permit him to do so and that nobody could offer more than Marx.

An advance of 2o,ooo would actually mean purchasing my works for 2o,ooo, as I would never be able to wrest myself free from my debts.

When everything was concluded with Marx, A. S. wrote me he was very glad of it, because his conscience had always troubled him on account of the bad job he had made of pub- lishing my work.

Nobody in Nice talked about the trend "New Times" was taking.

The "relations" I wrote you about (of course you shouldn't have been so frank with the Suvorins) began to change dras- tically when A. S. himself wrote me there was nothing more for us to write to each other.

His presses started printing a complete edition of my works but did not continue, as the printers kept losing my manuscripts and there was no reply to my letters; this careless attitude caused me to despair; I had tuberculosis and had to consider what steps to take to prevent dumping my works upon my heirs in a messy, practically valueless heap.

Of course I should not have told you all this, as it is much too personal and only a nuisance; but I have to tell you all this because they have got you in their clutches and have presented the affair to you in that light, so read these eight points and think them over carefully. Talk of reconciliation is out of the question, as Suvorin and I did not quarrel and are again corre- sponding as if nothing had happened. Anna Ivanovna is a nice woman, but she is very sharp. I believe she is kindly disposed, but when I talk with her I never forget for an instant that she is an artful character and that A. S. is a very good man and publishes "New Times." I am writing this for you alone.

Everything is all right here. Mother was slightly ill but has recovered. Did you see Masha in Moscow?

... I wish you both good health and all the best.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To MAXIM GORKI

February igoo, Yalta

Dear A lexei Maximovich,

Thank you for the letter and your words about Tolstoy and "Uncle Vanya," which I haven't seen on the stage; thanks gen- erally for not forgetting me. You feel like lying down and dying in this blessed Yalta unless you get letters. Indolence, a silly winter with a constant temperature just above freezing, the utter absence of interesting women, the pigs' snouts you en- counter along the boardwalk—such factors can drive one to wrack and ruin in no time at all. I am tired out, and it seems to me the winter has been ten years long.

Are you suffering from pleurisy? If so, why do you remain in Nizhni, why? What are you doing in this Nizhni, may I ask incidentally? What's the tar that keeps you sticking to this city? If you like Moscow, as you say you do, why don't you live in it? Moscow has theatres and all sorts of other things, and the main point is its handiness to the border, while if you continue living in Nizhni you will just get stuck there and never get any farther than Vasilsursk. You must see more and know more, you must have a wider range. Your imagination is quick to catch and grip, but it is like a big stove that isn't fed enough wood. You can feel this lack in general, and your stories reveal it in particular; you will present two or three strong figures, but they stand aloof, apart from the mass; it is evident that they are alive in your imagination, but it is only they who live—the mass is not grasped properly. I am excluding from this generalization your Crimean things ("My Companion," for example), where you get a feeling not alone of the figures but of the human mass from which they are derived, and of the atmosphere and per- spective—in short, of everything that should be there. You see what a talking to I have given you—and all to get you out of Nizhni. You are a young, vigorous, hardy individual; in your place I would be off for India, for God only knows where, and I would get myself a couple of university degrees. I would in- deed—you may laugh at me, but I am so exasperated that I am forty years old, am short of breath and suffer from all sorts of nonsensical ailments that prevent my living like a free soul. At any rate, be a good man and a good comrade, don't get angry at my reading you written sermons, like a churchman.

Do write. I am looking forward to "Foma Gordeyev," which I haven't yet read properly.

There is nothing new. Keep well and let me clasp your hand cordially.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

February 6, 1900, Yalta

Dear Masha,

Maria Abramovna Altshuller is now in Moscow. Her address is c/o Mirke, the Bakhrushin house, George Lane, Myasnitskaya Street. She has two bottles of wine for you. She will be in Moscow about five days. Give- her some caviar, sausage from Belov's, smoked meat and some other stuff to take back with her. If for some reason you can't get to see her, send a mes- senger. Altshuller is treating Mother and there is no way for me to pay him back other than to give his wife the chance of seeing my play—once she expressed the desire. Arrange for her to see "Lonely Lives" and "Uncle Vanya." If you haven't time to get the tickets, write Vishnevski to send tickets for her to the above address and then you can pay him.

Mother is well, complains only of her shoulder; everything is in order. The weather was good, now it is miserable. The pavement hasn't been finished yet. Keep well.

Your Antoine

To OLGA KNIPPER

February 10, i9oo, Yalta

Sweet actress,

The winter is so long, I have been ailing, nobody has written for almost a month—and I had decided there was nothing left to do but to go abroad, where life is not quite so drab. But now the weather has become more balmy and life is more pleasant, and so I have made up my mind to leave for abroad only at the end of this summer, in time for the exposition.

Why, oh why have you got the blues? You are really living, working, hoping and singing, you laugh when your uncle reads aloud—what more do you want? It's another matter as far as I am concerned. I have been wrenched from my native soil, can't live a rounded life, can't drink, although I like to very much; I love sound but never hear any, in brief, I am now in the situation of a transplanted tree hesitating as to whether it will take root or wither away. I may have some basis for occa- sionally allowing myself to complain of boredom in my letters, but have you? Meierhold complains of life's dullness too. My God! Incidentally, a word on Meierhold. He must spend all summer in the Crimea, his health requires it. And I mean all summer.

Well, ma'am, I'm in good health now. I am not doing any- thing, as I am getting ready to sit down to my work. I've been digging away in the garden.

You wrote not long ago that the future of you little people is shrouded in mystery. Recently I had a letter from your boss, Nemirovich. He tells me the company is going to perform in Sevastopol, and then in Yalta at the beginning of May. There are to be five performances in Yalta followed by evening re- hearsals. Only the valued members of the cast are going to stay behind for the rehearsals, while the rest can have time off to rest wherever they wish. I hope you are valued. For the director you may be valued, but for the author you are beyond value. There you have a pun as a tidbit. I won't write more until you send your picture. I kiss your sweet hand.

Your Antonio, acadernicus

. .. Thanks for your good wishes on my marriage. I informed my fiancĉe¹ of your intention to visit Yalta in order to carry on with me behind her back. To this she said that when "that horrid woman" carne here, she would not let me out of her embraces for an instant. I said that embracing for such a pro- tracted period during hot weather was unhygienic. She became offended and went into a brown study, in an attempt to guess in what sort of circle I had acquired this fagon de parler; after a brief pause she said that the theatre is evil and that my inten-

1 This is, again, the joke about the imaginary lady.

tion to give up play writing was most praiseworthy. Then she asked me to kiss her. To this I replied that it was not decorous to kiss so often in my position as academician. She cried, and I left.

To OLGA KNIPPER

February 14, 1900, Yalta

Sweet actress,

The photos are very, very good, especially the one in which you wear an air of dejection, with your elbows on the back of the chair and with a modestly sorrowful, quiet expression, be- hind which lurks a little imp. The other is also successful, but there you resemble somewhat a little J ewess, a very musical young lady who attends the conservatory and at the same time, just in case, is secretly studying the art of dentistry and is en- gaged to a young man from Moghilev,¹ the Manasevich² type. Are you angry? Really and truly angry? That is my revenge for your not having signed them. . . .

The willow tree is green all over; near the bench in the corner the grass has been a lush green for a long time. The almond tree is in blossom. I've set up benches all over the garden, not fancy ones with iron legs, but plain wooden ones, which I am painting green. I've put up three little bridges across the brook and am setting out some palms. . . . Not since autumn have I heard music, or singing, nor have I seen a single interesting female—can you wonder that I am blue?

I had decided not to write you, but since you have sent the pictures I have lifted ' the ban and here I am, obviously, writing. I'll even travel to Sevastopol to meet you, only, let me repeat, you are not to tell anyone, especially not Vishnevski. I'll go there incognito, and will sign the hotel register as Count Blackmugg.

Moghilev was a city within the Jewish settlement of Byelorussia.

Manasevich was the secretary of the Moscow Art Theatre.

I was just joking when I said you looked like a Jewess. Don't be angry, my precious one. Now let me kiss your sweet hand and be eternally your

A. Chekhov

To MAXIM GORKI

February 15, 1900, Yalta

Dear Alexei Maxim0vich,

Your article in the "Nizhni-Novgorod Blade" was balm to my soul. How gifted you are! I don't know how to write anything except fiction, while you are completely master of the news- paperman's pen as well. At first I thought I liked the article so much because you praised me . . .

Why am I not sent "Foma Gordeyev?" I have read it only in snatches, but I should have read it all together, at one sitting, as I read "Resurrection" not long ago. Except for the relations of Nekhludov and Katya, which are rather unclear and con- trived, everything in this novel struck me with its vigor and richness, its breadth, and I was also struck with the insincerity of a man who fears death, won't admit it and clutches at texts from Holy Writ. . . .

"Twenty Six Men and a Girl" is a good story, the best of the stuff "Life" generally prints in its dilettantish magazine. You get a vivid sense of the place and can smell the hot bagels.

My story in "Life" was full of bad errors despite my having read proof. Their provincial pictures by Chirikov also annoy me, and their illustration entitled "Happy New Year!" as well as Gurevich's story.

I have just been handed a letter from you. So India is out? Too bad. When you have India in your past, and long sea voyages, you have something to recall when you can't sleep nights. And a trip abroad doesn't take much time, it won't interfere with your walking trip through Russia.

I am bored not in the sense of Weltschmerz, nor from any loneliness of existence as such, but merely bored without peo- ple, without music, which I love, and without women, who just don't exist in Yalta. I am bored without caviar and sauer- kraut.

I am very sorry you have evidently changed your mind about a visit to Yalta. The Moscow Art Theatre will be here in May, is giving five performances and is then staying on for rehearsals. Do come, you will learn all about the conventions of the stage at rehearsals and will then write a play in five to eight days which I would welcome joyfully, with all my heart.

Yes, I now have the right to expose the fact that I am forty, and no longer a young man. I was the very youngest of the fic- tion writers but you carne on the scene and I immediately grew more sedate and now nobody calls me the youngest any more. I press your hand cordially. Keep well.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To OLGA KNIPPER

March 26, 1900, Yalta Black melancholy streams from your letter, sweet actress; you are gloomy, and frightfully unhappy, but not for long I should think, as soon, very soon, you will sit in a railway coach and eat snacks with great gusto. It's a good thing you are corning before the others, with Masha; at any rate we will manage to talk about things, take walks, visit places roundabout, eat and drink. But please don't bring Vishnevski along, or else he will trail at our heels and not let anybody get in a word edgewise; he won't let us live in peace, as he will keep on reciting stuff from "Uncle Vanya."

I haven't got a new play, the newspapers are just lying. Gen- erally speaking, the papers have never written the truth about me. If I had begun a new play, naturally you would be the first I would have told of it.

\Ve have a wind here, and real spring weather hasn't come into its own but still we can go out without galoshes and with regular hats. Soon, any day now, the tulips will be in bloom. I have a lovely garden, but it is rather messy and dusty, a sort of dilettante garden.

Gorki is here and praises you and your theatre very highly. I'll introduce you to him.

Goodness! Somebody has driven up. The visitor has j ust come in. Goodbye for now, actress!

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To OLGA KNIPPER

August 8, /900, Ya1ta Greetingj, my sweet little O1)'a, joy of my life,

I got your letter today, the first since your departure, read it, then reread it and now I am answering, my actress. After seeing you off I drove to Kiest's Hotel, where I spent the night; the next day, out of boredom and for want of something better to do, I drove to Balaklava. There I spent my time dodging the ladies who recognized me and wanted to give me an ovation; after a night there I left for Yalta the next morning on the "Tavel." The crossing was fiendishly upsetting. Now I am back home, lonesome, out of sorts, and worn out. Alexeyev [Stani- slavski] was here yesterday. \Ve spoke of the playi and I gave him my word I would finish it not later than September. See what a bright boy I am.

I keep on thinking the door will open and you will walk in. But you won't, you are either attending rehearsals or are at home in Merzlyakovski Lane, far from Yalta and me.

Farewell, and the heavenly powers and guardian angels pre- serve you. Farewell, my good little girl.

Your Antonio

1 The Three Sisters.

To OLGA KNIPPER

August 18, 1900, Yalta

My sweet little pet,

Here are answers to the questions that pop out of your letters. I am not working in Gurzuf but in Yalta, and I am being hin- dered, cruelly, vilely and basely hindered. The play^J is complete in my head, has taken form from where my imagination left off and is pleading to be set onto paper, but hardly do I place a sheet of paper in front of me than the door opens and some ugly mug intrudes. I don't know how it is going to turn out, but the start is not bad, pretty smooth, I think.

Shall we be seeing each other? Yes, we will, but when? The first part of September, in all probability. I am lonesome and in a bad temper. My money is disappearing devilishly fast; I am being ruined and will wind up in the poorhouse. Today we have a most fierce wind, a gale, and the trees are withering. One crane has flown away.

Yes, my sweet bit of an actress, how joyfully, with what purely calflike pleasure would I disport myself in field and forest, beside a stream, amongst the herd. It does seem silly to bring up, but it has been two years since I have seen grass. My preci- ous, how dull is life!

Masha is leaving tomorrow.

Do keep well. ... .

^r Your Antonio

Vishnevski doesn't write and is probably angry. Just for that I'll write in a bad part for him.

To OLGA KNIPPER

September 8, 1900, Yalta You write that you find everything bewildering, in confusion. , . . It is good for things to be confused, my sweet little actress, very good! It indicates that you are a philosopher, a woman of parts. 1 The Three Sisters.

So the weather seems to have turned warm? No matter what, the twentieth of September I am leaving for Moscow to stay until the first of October. I'm going to spend all that time sit- ting in my hotel room and working on the play. Shall I write or make a clean copy? I don't know, dear old lady of mine. One of my lady characters just hasn't come off somehow, I can't do a thing with her and am in despair.

I just had a letter from Marx, who tells me my plays will be out in ten days.

I am afraid you may be disillusioned with me. My hair is falling out in terrible quantities, so fast that one fine day you'll take a look at me and a week later find me resembling some- body's grandpappy. Apparently it is the barber's fault, for I started losing my hair the minute I had it cut.

Is Gorki writing a play or isn't he? 'Vhence the note in "News of the Day" about the title "The Three Sisters" not being ap- propriate? 'Vhat stuff and nonsense! Perhaps it isn't suitable, but I have no intention of changing it.

I am terribly blue. Do you know what I mean? Terribly! My diet consists exclusively of soup. It is cold at night, and so I stay horne. There are no handsome young ladies, less and less money, and my beard is turning gray. . . .

My little darling, I kiss your sweet hands, both the right and the left. Keep well and don't feel depressed and don't worry about being confused.

Goodbye for now, my good little Olya. You are a little crocodile wvho has crawled into my heart!

Your Antonio

To MARIA CHEKHOVA

September 9, 1900, Yalta

Dear Masha,

This is in reply to the letter in which you ask about Mother. In my opinion it would be better for her to go to Moscow now, this fall, rather than after December. Why, in Moscow she would get tired and lonesome for Yalta in a month, and if you take her to Moscow in the fall, she will be back in Yalta again at Christmas. That's how I look at it, and I may possibly be mistaken, but at any rate in reaching a decision you must bear in mind that it is much duller in Yalta before Christmas than after; incomparably duller. . . .

There is nothing new. There is no rain, either, and every- thing is parched. At home it is quiet, peaceable, very nice and, of course, dreary.

Writing "The Three Sisters" is very hard, harder than my earlier plays. But no matter, maybe it will come out all right, if not now, then next season. I may say in passing that writing in Yalta is a hard job: people bother me and in addition I seem to write without aim and I don't like today what I wrote yesterday. . . .

I have just had a telegram from Kommisarjevskaya, asking for a play for her benefit performance.

Well, keep in good health and happy. My deepest respects to Olga Leonardovna, and Vishnevski and the rest.

If Gorki is in Moscow, tell him I sent a letter to His 'Vor- ship in Nizhni-Novgorod.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

T0 OLGA KNIPPER

September 27, 1900, Yalta My sweet little Olya, my w0nderful little actress,

Why this tone, why the querulous, petulant mood? Am I really so much to blame? Then do forgive me, my darling, my good girl, don't be angry, for I'm not so much at fault as your misgivings prompt you to assume. I assure you, my sweet, the only reason I have not yet left for Moscow is because I haven't been well, upon my word of honor. Honestly and trulyl Won't you believe me?

I shall remain in Yalta until the tenth of October to work, after which I will leave for Moscow or abroad, depending upon my health. In any event I shall keep on writing you.

I haven't had any letters from my brother Ivan or sister Masha. Apparently they are angry, but I don't know why. . . .

Do keep your eyes open and write in detail how "The Snow Maiden"i went, how the shows have been going generally, what mood the company is in, the reaction of the audiences and so on and so forth. Certainly you aren't in my situation; you have a great deal of material for letters, more than you can handle; I have nothing to report, beyond the fact that I caught two mice today. . . .

You write that I have a loving, tender heart and ask why I have steeled it. When have I done so? Precisely how have I ex- pressed this hardheartedness? I have always loved you tenderly with all my heart and never have I concealed my sentiments from you, never, never, yet here you accuse me of hardhearted- ness just to have something to put down in the exuberance of your health.

Judging from the general tone of your letter, you wish and expect some kind of explanation, some sort of lengthy conversa- tion carried on with grave expressions on our faces and with momentous conclusions to be drawn. But I don't know what to tell you, except the one thing I have repeated ten thousand times and will probably continue to repeat for a long time to come, i.e., that I love you—that's all. If we are not together now, it isn't you or I who are to blame, but the demon that filled me with bacilli and you with love for art.

Goodbye once again, my charming little lady, and may the holy angels guard you. Don't be cross with me, dear one, don't be blue, be a good girl.

What's new in the theatre? Please write.

Your Antoine

To OLGA KNIPPER

September 28, 1900, Yalta

My sweet Olya,

I sent you a telegram today saying I would probably come to Moscow in October. If I do, it will be on or about the tenth, not sooner; I will remain there five days or so and then leave for abroad. In any event I shall inform you by telegram of the day of my arrival. I do not know whether express trains will be running after the fourth of October; will you find out about it so that you do not go to the station needlessly.

Today I read the first criticisms of "The Snow Maiden"— they like only the beginning and then they get tired of it, as of a game. I am of the opinion that your theatre should produce only contemporary plays, nothing but! You should treat of con- temporary life, of life among the intelligentsia, which is neg- lected in other theatres because of their utter lack of intel- lectuality and, in part, want of talent.

I don't get letters from anybody. Nemirovich seems to have gotten angry and hasn't sent me a line all this time. My rela- tives do not write. How did "Lonely Lives" go off? It should be somewhat better than "The Snow Maiden."

And so, keep well and happy. Oh, what a role there is for you in "The Three Sisters!" What a role! If you give me ten rubles you'll get it, otherwise I'll give it to another actress. I won't offer "The Three Sisters" this season; let the play lie a bit and ripen, or, as certain good ladies say about a cake when they put it on the table—let it sigh.

There is nothing new. .

⁰ Your own Antoine

To MAXIM GORKI

October 16, 1900, Yalta

My dear A lexei Maximovich,

. . . Well, my dear sir, the twenty-first of this month I am leaving for Moscow, and thence abroad. Just think, I've written a play. I haven't recopied it, though, as it won't be put on now, but only next season. I'll let it lie around and ripen. Writing "The Three Sisters" was terribly hard work. It has three heroines, you know, each one has to be a special type, and all three of them are a general's daughters! The action takes place in a provincial city, on the order of Perm, and the surroundings are military, an artillery unit.

The Yalta weather is glorious, the air is fresh, and my health has improved. I don't even feel like leaving here for Moscow, the work goes on so well and it is so nice not to feel the itching in my rear end that I had all summer. I am not coughing and even eat meat. I am all by myself, all alone. Mother is in Moscow.

Thank you for the letters, dear chap. I read them twice. Re- member me to your wife and little Maxim, and give them my hearty regards. And so, until we meet in Moscow. I hope you won't disappoint me and that we'll be seeing each other.

God bless you!

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To OLGA KNIPPER

December 28, igoo, Nice My sweet little pup, imagine this horrible situation!

I was just informed some gentleman had asked for me down- stairs. I go down, look him over—an old fellow, who introduces himself as Chertkov. In his hands are a bundle of letters, and it turns out that he had received all these letters, addressed to me, because of the similarity of names. One of your letters (there were three in all—the first three you wrote) had been opened. How do you like that? Henceforward you should ap- parently write me thus: Monsieur Antoine Tchekhoff, rue 9 Gounod (or Pension Russe), Nice. But be sure you write Antoine—othenvise I won't get your letters for ten or fifteen days after you have posted them.

The letter of reprimand regarding Vienna, in which you call me "a Slavonic jellyfish," came very late; fifteen years ago, it is true, I would lose my way abroad and not get where I wanted to go; but when I was in Vienna this time I got everywhere; I went to the theatre, too, but all their tickets were sold out. How- ever, upon leaving the city I remembered that I had forgotten to read the ads of what was being played—just like a Russian. I bought myself a magnificent wallet there, at Klein's. It seems he had opened his shop two days before. I also bought some straps for my luggage. So you can see what a practical person I am, my precious.

You lecture me for not writing Mother. My dear, I have writ- ten both my mother and Masha many times, but haven't had an answer and probably won't get one. So I've given up. I haven't had a single line from them, but have it your way—I always was and will be a jellyfish and will always be in the wrong, though I don't know why.

Thank you for the words about Tolstoy. . . . Vladimir Nemi- rovich and his spouse are in Nice. In comparison with other women here she seems utterly banal, like the wife of a small- town storekeeper. She is buying the devil knows what, as cheaply as she can get the stuff. I am sorry she is with him. He is as ever a fine person, and good company.

We had a cold spell but now it is warm and we are wearing our summer coats. I won five hundred francs at roulette. May I play, my love?

I was in such a hurry with the last act, thinking you people needed it. But it seems you won't begin rehearsing before Nemirovich's return. If I could only have kept this act another two or three days, I daresay it would have been much more meaty. . . .

Have you fully recovered? It's about time! Although you are a nice little girl even when you are ill, and write nice letters, just the same don't you dare get sick again.

I dine at the same table with a great many ladies, some of

To KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI [/gO/]

them from Moscow, but I won't exchange even half a word with them. I sit there and sulk in silence, eat stubbornly or think of you. Once in a while the Moscow ladies turn the talk to the theatre in an obvious effort to draw me into the conversa- tion, but I maintain my silence and keep on eating. I am always gratified to hear you praised. And you are very highly praised! They talk about you as a good actress. Well, little miss, keep healthy and happy. I am yours! Just take and eat me with olive oil and vinegar. A big kiss.

Your Antoine

To KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI

january 2, rgor, Nice

Dear Konstantin Sergeyevich,

I received the letter sent on the twenty-third of December only yesterday. . . .

I wish you a Happy New Year, and, if I may hope, a new theatre, which you will soon start building. And I wish you about five new and magnificent plays. As to that old play, "The Three Sisters," reading it at the Countess'¹ evening party is absolutely forbidden under any circumstances. For God's sake, I beg of you, don't read it, not by any means, nor in any manner, otherwise you will cause me a great deal of anguish.

I sent Act IV off long ago, before Christmas, addressed to Vladimir Ivanovich. I have made a great many changes. You tell me that in Act III, when N atasha makes the rounds of the house at night, she extinguishes the lights and looks for evil- doers under the furniture. But it seems to me it would be pre- ferable to have her walk across the stage in a straight line with- out looking at anything or anybody, a la Lady Macbeth, with a candle—that way the scene would be shorter and more blood- curdling. . . .

1 Tolstoy's wife, who was arranging a charity soirĉe.

Thank you with all my heart for the letter which gave me such joy. I warmly clasp your hand.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

T0 JOASAPH TIKHOMIROV¹

January 14, 1901, Nice

Dear Joasaph Alexandr0vich,

I have just received your letter—you have given me great pleasure and I thank you enormously. Here are the answers to your questions:

Irina does not know that Tuzenbach is having a duel, but surmises that something went wrong that may have grave, not to say tragic, consequences. And when a woman guesses, she says, "I knew it, I knew it."

Chebutykin only sings the words, ""Vould it not please you to accept this date . . ." These are words from an operetta which was given some time ago at the Hermitage. I don't re- member its title, but you can make inquiries, if you wish, from Shechtel the architect (private house, near the Yermolayev Church). Chebutykin must not sing anything else or his exit will be too prolonged.

Solyoni actually believes he looks like Lermontov; but of course he doesn't—it is silly even to consider a resemblance. He should be made up to look like Lermontov. The likeness to Lermontov is immense, but only in the opinion of Solyoni him- self.

Forgive me if I haven't answered as I should, or satisfied you. There is nothing new with me, all goes along in the old way. I will probably return earlier than I thought, and it is very possible that in March I will already be at home, i.e., in Yalta.

Nobody writes me anything about the play; Nemirovich- Danchenko never said a word about it when he was here and

1 This letter refers, of course, to the characters in The Three Sisters.

[ 281]

it seemed to me it bored him and wouldn't be successful. Your letter, for which I thank you, helped to dispel my melancholy. . . . I wish you good health and all the best.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKI

January 15, igoi, Nice

Dear Konstantin Sergeyevich,

Many thanks for your letter. Of course you are a thousand times right, it wouldn't do at all to show Tuzenbach's body. I myself felt it when I wrote the play and spoke to you of it, if you will recall. That the finale reminds one of "Uncle Vanya" is a minor evil. "Uncle Vanya" happens to be my own play, and not someone else's, and when you are reminiscent of yourself in your works, people will say that is the way it should be. Chebutykin doesn't talk, but sings the phrase, "Would it not please you to accept this date." It is from an operetta, I don't remember which one, not if my life depended on it. . . .

Many thanks for having written. My sincere compliments to Maria Petrovna and all the artists, and I wish you all the best. Keep well and happy.

Yours,

A. Chekhov

To MARIA ANDREYEVA

January 26, igoi, Nice

Dear Maria Fyodorovna,

It was not I who sent you the flowers, but please let us assume that I did, for otherwise my embarrassment and anguish will be boundless. I cannot express the joy your letter caused me. My heartiest thanks, and you can now consider me forever in your debt.

You write that I made you unhappy on my last visit, that I was afraid of speaking frankly, as it were, about "The Three Sisters," etc., etc. Merciful Heavens! I wasn't afraid of speaking frankly, I was afraid of intruding on you and purposely said nothing and restrained myself as much as possible, so as not to interfere with your work. If I were in Moscow I would certainly not undertake to make remarks except after the tenth rehearsal, and then, as a matter of fact, only on minor points. People write me from Moscow that you are magnificent in "The Three Sis- ters," that your performance is downright marvelous, and I am glad—very, very glad—and may God give you strength! Con- sider me your debtor, that is all.

Today I am departing for Algiers, will remain there a couple of weeks and then leave for Russia. I very much regret that you will be performing in St. Petersburg, since I do not like the city and do not rate its tastes very high. My respects and regards to your husband and the children. Keep nice and healthy, and may the heavenly angels guard you.

Devotedly,

A. Chekhov

To OLGA KNIPPER

March i, 1901, Yalta

My dear one,

Don't read the newspapers, don't read anything, or you will pine away altogether. Here is some sound advice for future reference: heed the words of your old holy hermit. Certainly I told you, I assured you, that things wouldn't go well in St. Petersburg—and you should have listened to me. At any rate, your theatre will never again visit the place—thank God.

Personally I am giving up the theatre entirely, and will never again write for it. It is possible to write for the stage in Ger- many, in Sweden, even in Spain, but not in Russia, where dramatic authors are not respected, are kicked around and are forgiven neither their successes nor their failures. You are being abused now for the first time in your life, which accounts for your sensitiveness, but it will pass away with time, and you'll get used to such treatment. But imagine the divine, sublime feelings of Sanin.i He probably has his pockets crammed with reviews and looks upon the rest of you most superciliously. . . .

\Ve are having remarkable weather here, with warmth and a brightly shining sun, and the apricots and almond trees are in bloom. I shall expect you during Holy Week, my poor abused little actress, and shall continue to wait for you, bear that in mind.

Between the twentieth and twenty-eighth of February I sent you five letters and eight telegrams; I asked you to telegraph me, but haven't had a word in reply. . . .

Tell me how long you are all staying in St. Pete. Write, little actress.

I am well—cross my heart.

I press you tenderly to me.

Your Holy Hermit

To OLGA KNIPPER

April 22, /90/, YaZ

My swee<, de/ight/uZ Knippjchitz,

I didn't detain you because I found Yalta revolting and had the idea we would soon be seeing each other anyway as free souls. Be that as it may, your anger is groundless, my darling. I haven't any concealed thoughts of any kind, and tell you every- thing that comes to mind.

I shall be arriving in Moscow early in May, and if it is pos- sible we'll get married and take a trip along the Volga, or we can take the trip first and then get married—whichever you find more convenient. \Ve can board the boat at Yaroslavl or Rybinsk and head for Astrakhan, thence to Baku, and from Baku to Batum. Or maybe you don't care for that route? We might take

1 "The Moscow Art Theatre opened its St. Petersburg repertory with Haupt- mann's Lonely Lives. Sanin, apparently, was the only actor in the company who was praised by the critics.

one along the northern Dvina to Archangel, on the Solovka. We'll go wherever you decide. After that we can live in a Moscow apartment for all or the greater part of the winter. If only I keep my strength and stay well! My cough deprives me of every bit of energy, I take a dim view of the future and work quite without enthusiasm. Please think about the future for me, be my little manager, and I'll do whatever you say; other- wise we shan't really live, but gulp down a tablespoonful of life once every hour.

So you are left without a part now? That's very pleasant. Today I was sent a review of "The Three Sisters" from the "Revue Blanche." I also received a copy of the Tolstoy reply to the Synod's resolution.¹ Then there was a copy of the almanac called "Northern Flowers" with my story in it. I had a letter from my brother Ivan saying he was ill. I also had a telegram from the Olympia acting company in St. Petersburg asking per- mission to perform "The Three Sisters." Today we have rain and a desperate wind, but out of doors the air is warm and pleasant. My dog, Chestnut, whom you call Redhead, had her leg stepped on by a horse, and now I have to fuss over her and put on bandages; I am quite permeated with iodoform. . . .

What plays will I find on at your theatre? What rehearsals are under way? Rehearsals of "Mikhail Kramer"? "The Wild Duck"? At moments I experience an overwhelming desire to write a four-act farce or comedy for the Art Theatre. And I'm going to do so, if nothing interferes, except that I won't let the theatre have it before the end of 1903.

I will telegraph you, but don't tell anyone and come to the station alone. Do you hear? So long for now, my precious, my charming little girl. Don't go around moping and imagining God only knows what; honest to goodness, I haven't the slightest secret I would keep from you even for a moment. Be a good little creature, don't be cross.

Your Antoine

1 The Synod had excommunicated Tolstoy from the Church.

To EVGENIA CHEKHOVA [Telegram]

May 25, /90/, Moscow DEAR MA:\lA GI\'E ME YOUR BLESSING AM GETTING MARRIED EVERYTHING WILL REMAIN AS IT WAS LEAVING TO TAKE KUMISS CURE ADDRESS AKSEN0\'0 SAMARA ZLATOUST HEALTH IS BETTER

ANTON

To MARIA CHEKHOVA

June 2, /90/, Aksenovo

Greetings, dear Masha,

I have been intending to write you and have not got around to it; I have lots of business to take care of, trivial matters, of course. You already know I am married. I believe this action of mine will in no wise change my life or the surroundings I have always been in. Mother most likely is already saying God knows what, but you tell her there will be absolutely no changes, everything will continue as it has until now. I will keep on going along as I have hitherto, and Mother as well; my relations with you will remain as unalterably warm and good as they always have been.