Anton Chekhov

by Donald Rayfield

  Notes

  1 Anton had met the Ilovaiskys in Voronezh in the famine of 1892.

  2 See OR, 331 73 11: Evgenia’s letters to Mikhail Chekhov, 1888–1903: 7 Nov. 1898.

  3 For this Varenikov was summoned by the magistrates, but the authorities dropped the case.

  4 See OR, 331 56 38: Aleksandra Pokhlebina’s letters to Anton, 1893–8.

  5 See E. A. Polotskaia, ‘Ialtinskaia redaktsia “Shutochki”’ in Chekhoviana, 1993, 101–16.

  6 See OR, 331 48 4: Nadia Kolomnina’s letters to Anton, 1896–1900.

  7 See OR, 331 48 7: Vera Komissarzhevskaia’s letters to Anton, 1896–1900.

  8 Many of Gorky’s letters to Chekhov are printed in Perepiska, 1984, II, 297–365.

  9 See OR, 331 37 64: Semion Bychkov’s letters to Anton, 1898–9: 3 Jan. 1899.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  ‘I am a Marxist’

  January–April 1899

  HOW ODD OF ANTON to send Piotr Sergeenko as agent to Petersburg to sell his complete works to Adolf Marx! Sergeenko, Anton’s schoolmate, had become a comic writer under the pseudonym ‘Navel’, and he was one of many who had failed to follow Anton into serious literature. Chekhov derided Sergeenko’s How Tolstoy Lives and Works and his novel, Daisy: he called him a ‘hearse on legs’. A Tolstoyan, Sergeenko hid nothing from his family. Anton’s lubricious talk embarrassed him, just as his po-faced tone irritated Anton. Only Sergeenko’s pedantry qualified him as an agent.

  For five years Anton had been impressed with Marx, who published in Russian and did business in German. Marx’s The Cornfield was Russia’s best family weekly, offering a literary supplement, and reference books as bonuses to subscribers. He produced standard writers beautifully, and paid well. Tolstoy had advised Marx to secure Chekhov. All Petersburg knew that Russia’s greatest writer (after Tolstoy), was in financial straits. Sergeenko expected that, despite an opening bid of 50,000 roubles, Marx would pay 75,000 roubles for exclusive rights – enough to keep the Chekhovs secure. Anton offered Suvorin first refusal. Suvorin consulted his heirs: the Dauphin objected violently, and Suvorin wired Anton: ‘… can’t see why hurry when property rights rising look before you leap is your health really bad.’ Sergeenko reported Suvorin demurring:

  ‘Chekhov is worth more. And why should he hurry.’

  ‘So you’ll give more?’ There was a hiss, nothing more.

  ‘I’m not a banker. Everyone thinks I’m rich. That’s rubbish. I’ve a moral responsibility to my children, and I have one foot in the grave.’1

  Suvorin offered Chekhov a 20,000 rouble advance: ‘Write and tell me what made you do it think all the best dear Anton.’ Anton wanted no auction. He was breaking not so much with Suvorin as with shoddy printing and accounting. It was a Biblical moment. ‘I am being sold into Egypt,’ he told Vania; he told Aleksandr that he was parting from Suvorin ‘as Jacob parted from Laban’. At the end of 1899 he confessed to Khudekov: ‘… like Esau I sold my birthright for a mess of pottage’. Sergeenko negotiated for eight hours at a stretch, pushing Marx and his assistant Julius Grünberg, until 75,000 was agreed as a fee for the right to publish all Chekhov’s past and present works. By 31 January a contract was drafted. The contract was, everyone agreed, a coup for Marx and a disaster for Anton. Marx made 100,000 roubles in the first year – much of Chekhov’s work had already been typeset by Suvorin. Sergeenko erred by not getting 75,000 as a lump sum. Too late, on 12 February, Suvorin wired:

  your deal for two years let alone ten is disadvantageous your reputation is just starting to soar to giddy heights and you throw your hand in … I warmly shake your hand Suvorin.2

  Chekhov received 25,000 on signature of the contract and the rest at two eight month intervals. Marx received the right to everything Chekhov had written and or would write. Anton’s name day passed unmarked as telegrams flew, hammering out the contract. Sergeenko secured increments for new work: 250 roubles per printer’s sheet (24 pages), rising by 200 roubles every five years. Anton wired an undertaking to die before he was 80. Marx and Grünberg baulked loudly in German at the thought of what a Chekhov story would cost in 1949: the contract was then set to expire altogether in 1919. Sergeenko won few concessions: Anton could keep fees from periodicals or charitable publications, and, fortunately, his theatre takings. Marx inserted Draconian clauses: he could reject ‘unfit’ work, and Chekhov would pay a penalty of 5000 roubles per printer’s sheet published elsewhere. Worst of all, Anton had to send by July 1899 a fair copy of all publications. ‘That will force Mr Chekhov to make an effort,’ Marx told Sergeenko.

  The contract ruined 1899. Anton had destroyed most manuscripts and had few copies of his early work. He despatched all who loved him to the libraries to make copies. Lidia Avilova, as sister-in-law of the editor of The Petersburg Newspaper, found two copyists for dozens of stories from the late 1880s. Nikolai Ezhov traced stories in The Alarm Clock and Amusements: with his usual incompetence he dropped whole paragraphs as he copied. Aleksandr in Petersburg wrote out the New Times stories personally: the Dauphin forbade him to bring in a copyist or to remove volumes from the office. During the winter, spring and summer of 1899, Chekhov revised this material. To Marx’s annoyance, he reserved himself extra rights: to reject half of the 400 stories he had retrieved, and radically to rewrite, in proof, those he chose to preserve. From 1899 to 1901 rewriting took more of Anton’s energy than new composition. Readers noticed with dismay that each new edition of Chekhov’s stories threw out more early pearls. Marx made Suvorin pay 5000 roubles for the right to sell his stock – 16,000 volumes of Chekhov’s work. Suvorin nobly offered Anton 70 per cent of the profit from the sales of these. Marx’s monopoly made Chekhov’s Plays, which included The Seagull and Uncle Vania, unavailable for three years.3

  Masha, advised by the lawyer Konovitser, feared that Anton had been cheated: Marx was offering 125,000 roubles for the works of far more lowly writers. Masha consoled herself she could be a helpmate, like Countess Sofia to Tolstoy, and collect, copy and edit. Never had her role as sister given her so much fulfilment. Only Dr Obolonsky clouded her horizon: he hinted that she had TB. Anton’s brothers, however, wanted their due. Aleksandr begged 1000 roubles for his new dacha, while Misha, who had put two years’ work into Melikhovo, lamented to Masha in January 1899 in tones like Uncle Vania’s:

  I lived in Melikhovo as you all saw, ate and drank at common cost, and where my 4400 roubles went I don’t know; when I went to Uglich, I had, I’m ashamed to say, nothing but a pillow, a frock coat, a suit, three pairs of underpants, four calico shirts and half a dozen socks.4

  Anton promised Aleksandr money, but ignored Misha’s hints. He settled down to review his old work, recalling Pushkin’s elegiac line: ‘and with revulsion I survey my past’. Relief from debt made the Herculean task seem lighter: he told Nemirovich-Danchenko he ‘had been given a divorce by the Holy Synod’. To the Tolstoyan Gorbunov-Posadov, who could no longer reprint Chekhov in his editions for the masses, he declared ‘it has fallen on my head like a flower pot from a windowsill’. He joked ‘Any moment I’ll become a Marxist.’5 Sergeenko felt he had done his best: even if Suvorin had matched Adolf Marx’s offer Anton would ‘never have had accounts until the Third Coming’. Sergeenko pocketed 500 roubles for his trouble and wired 19,500 to Anton.

  Anton had his first cheque book. He regretted planning his house so thriftily; now he splashed out on furnishings and the garden. He hired a Tatar gardener, Mustafa, who spoke little Russian but shared Anton’s love of trees. He gave Evgenia ten roubles (a sum which made her quite content). His wealth, like his health, was public knowledge. Letters poured in. Gavriil Kharchenko, the sole survivor of the brothers who had worked in Pavel’s shop, wrote from Kharkov, where he was now a prosperous shop assistant.6 Kharchenko gladly took up Anton’s offer to pay his daughter’s school fees. Consumptive writers got in touch. Epifanov, who like Chekhov had written for Amusement in the early 1880s, was dying of TB: through Ezhov, Anton paid him 25 roubles a
month and considered moving him to Yalta. A Father Undolsky was lent the cost of rebuilding the church school in the Tatar village of Mukhalatka.7

  Losing Chekhov at the height of his fame was a blow to the finances and morale of New Times, and there was more turbulence ahead. In February 1899 the police murderously attacked a student demonstration; even government ministers protested, but Suvorin’s editorial supported the police. Public opinion raged against Suvorin. A ‘cat’s concert’ was to be organized under his windows by students and journalists. Clubs and societies cancelled their subscriptions. In a bungling attempt to counter rumours, the Dauphin published circulation figures: New Times had, instead of the reputed 70,000, only 34,000 subscribers. Journalists broke away to form a rival newspaper. Contributors boycotted New Times. Finally the writer’s union summoned Suvorin to a court of honour on charges of dishonourable conduct.8 Until the ‘trial’ Suvorin could not sleep.

  Anton loathed kangaroo courts. In April 1899 he told Suvorin that to submit was to be in the ‘pathetic situation of little wild animals which, when caged, bite off each others’ tails’. Suvorin, Anton reported to Aleksandr, was writing letters ‘like the liturgy of penitence. Clearly, he is miserable.’ For a time Anton softened: on 9 March he told Ezhov (a Suvorin acolyte to the end) ‘Of course I’m sorry for Suvorin. But I’m not at all sorry for those around him.’ As over the Dreyfus affair, however, Suvorin’s private recantation was belied by public intransigence. Anton despaired: he even told Sergeenko that Suvorin had ‘all the marks of criminality.’ In vain Anna Suvorina appealed to him on 21 March: ‘If you were his friend or just loved him, you would not stand by the wayside at this time … I imagine if you were in his shoes what he’d have done! … Forgive me … I’m just hurt for him, that he has no friend.’9 Anton felt deviousness in Anna’s charm, but agreed, when spring set in, to talk to Suvorin in Moscow. In early April Anna pleaded again. Tychinkin, Suvorin’s typesetter, complained in April: ‘The atmosphere here is very oppressive, you feel you’re in a nightmare.’10 All literary Petersburg seemed distressed. Shcheglov was miserable. Barantsevich, on his infant son’s death from meningitis, wept every day.

  Lika Mizinova, who was taking her first faltering steps as a concert singer in Paris, got less response than Suvorin from Anton. He told her in the New Year that he was not writing because she wasn’t answering. She was outraged: ‘I love you far more than you are worth and treat you better than you treat me. If I were a great singer now I’d buy Melikhovo from you. I can’t bear to think I shan’t see it again.’11 Anton teased her: he announced he was marrying … Adolf Marx. He told her she was just like Aleksandra Pokhlebina who would try to kill herself with a corkscrew; he might see her in Paris in the spring. Lika responded 21 February 1899: ‘I promise to be polite to your bride and will even try somehow not scratch her eyes out! Better leave her behind in Russia! No, never get married! It’s bad! Better just live with Pokhlebina, but don’t wed! She loves you so.’ Lika was in touch with Masha: she guessed what kept Anton in Russia. Masha was quite sure. In February 1899 she was invited backstage to meet Nemirovich-Danchenko’s cast: ‘Knipper started jumping up and down, I gave her your regards. I advise you to woo Knipper. I think she is very interesting.’ Anton responded immediately, ‘Knipper is very nice and of course I’m stupid not to be living in Moscow.’ Soon Olga Knipper was calling on Masha. Their friendship bound the Knippers to the Chekhovs and the Chekhovs to the Moscow Arts Theatre.

  Anton longed for a break from exile. At Easter he would go to Moscow to meet his theatre company, Knipper, Lika, Masha, and his mother. Never, however, had Anton liked metropolitan Russia less. He loathed the authorities, and the radical students. Once students had graduated, he told a colleague, they forgot all ideals and became money-grubbing oppressors. He read the French newspaper Le Temps for honest reporting. He did not miss the peasantry, swamped as he was by letters from Melikhovo complaining of deceit and hostility. Masha’s school term ended on 12 April, the lease on the Moscow flat a week later, and they would have to live at Melikhovo: the prospect of Easter there was grim. On 10 March Masha told Anton:

  Sell Melikhovo as quickly as possible, that’s what I want. Crimea and Moscow! For Russian countryside any province and place will provide beauty, fishing and mushrooms. Melikhovo reminds me too much of father. Constant repairs, bother with servants and peasants.

  While Babakai mixed cement, Mustafa planted trees. Vukol Lavrov, an editor of Russian Thought, had given Anton Zolotariov’s Flora for Gardeners and, this Bible in hand, Anton planted an Eden to replace Melikhovo. Odessa’s nursery catalogues and the nearby Nikita Gardens inspired him. The Mediterranean flora he had seen in Nice did well in Yalta. Soon twelve cherries, two almonds and four white mulberry trees were planted; bamboos were also on their way. Here, not in Paris, Anton told Lika, they would meet.

  Nadia Ternovskaia, the archpriest’s pretty daughter, was in Odessa, where her brother taught, for the opera, which she loved fanatically. Anton had got her tickets and she sent violets and flirtatious letters. Tatiana Tolstaia, though she disliked The Seagull, was overwhelmed by her father’s dramatic readings, interrupted by fits of weeping and laughter, of ‘The Darling’ to motley audiences of musicians and foreigners. She wrote: ‘Father has read it four times in a row and says the piece made him wiser. And I recognize myself in “The Darling” so well that I am ashamed.’12 The infatuated teenager Olga Vasilieva, struggling to render Chekhov into English, sent notes asking the meaning of every unusual word. Suvorin’s granddaughter, Nadia Kolomnina, coyly flirted by letter from Petersburg. She sent Anton waltzes for other women to play him on Ilovaiskaia’s piano.13 Yalta laughed at Anton’s followers. Women who patrolled the promenade or the road to Autka, were named Antonovkas, after a Russian apple, a fruit he was not tempted to pluck. In chastity14 and isolation, Anton signed himself Antonius, Bishop of Melikhovo, Autka and Küchük-Köy. By April isolation and the company of sick doctors were wearying Anton: he complained to Suvorin that he was ‘like a priest with no parish’. It was still too early, however, to go to Moscow, where April was freezing cold, and Anton’s friends were alarmed by his determination to leave. Miroliubov, the singer and editor, tried to cut off his escape by wiring Vania: ‘Going north madness disease not cured must guard wants go Monday.’15

  Gorky, dressed in rough peasant garb, came to Yalta and detained Chekhov. They argued politics and literature; Anton showed Gorky Küchük-Köy. That same April, two other writers appeared in Yalta, the dandified Ivan Bunin and the jovial journalist Aleksandr Kuprin. The next generation of Russian prose-writers was at Chekhov’s feet. Bunin and Gorky hid the distrust that broke into warfare, once Bunin became the doyen of émigré literature, and Gorky the Bolsheviks’ Minister for Literature. Kuprin, Bunin’s friend, lacking Gorky’s wild excesses and Bunin’s fastidiousness, was the jester. These disciples were no jackals but, as Anton saw, three geniuses in the making. Gorky would prove the Judas, Bunin the Peter of the Chekhovian church. Suvorin was now morally and physically a thousand miles away: Anton directed his affection at Bunin, whom he and Masha called Bouquichon, after a foppish manager on Prince Orlov-Davydov’s estate near Melikhovo.

  Anton’s share of the takings for a dozen performances of The Seagull was only 1400 roubles, for the Ermitage theatre had very few seats. The theatre’s patron, the rich merchant Savva Morozov was promising a far larger theatre, to make them and Anton rich. Their repertoire, however, also needed expansion, and they wanted Uncle Vania, which Stanislavsky thought greater than The Seagull. Chekhov had to be induced to withdraw the play from the Maly theatre. This proved easy, when the professors of the Imperial Theatre Censor committee, who governed the Maly’s repertoire, took umbrage at the play’s aspersions on a professor and asked for changes. On 10 April, the day that the Committee met, Anton took the boat from Yalta to Sevastopol for the train to Moscow. A doctor met him at the station and took him to the warmth of Masha’s flat.

  Notes

&nb
sp; 1 Sergeenko’s letters and diaries are quoted in PSSP, 9, 282.

  2 See LN87, 261.

  3 In 1900 Rainer Maria Rilke wrote to Chekhov (331 57 24): ‘J’ai l’intention de traduire aussi Oncle Vania … toutes mes démarches pour me procurer l’édition imprimée de vos œuvres dramatiques ont été en vain.’ Unable to find Chekhov’s Plays, Rilke turned back to lyrical poetry.

  4 See OR, 331 82 61: Misha’s letters to Masha, 1899–1901: 24 Jan. 1899.

  5 The jest had its serious side. Adolf Marx was a very bourgeois publisher, but Karl-Marxists now acclaimed Chekhov as a champion of the working classes against their exploiters, and Chekhov promised his next major story to Life, a staunchly left-wing journal.

  6 See OR, 331 61 52: Gavriil Kharchenko’s letters to Anton, 1899–1901.

  7 See A. M. Melkova, Novye materialy …, in Chekhovskie chteniia v Ialte, 1987, 110–22.

  8 The Russian institution of ‘court of honour’ is thought to have hounded Tchaikovsky to suicide. Suvorin was eventually condemned, but ‘sentenced’ merely to a reprimand. Anton then told a Taganrog journalist: ‘When hounds can’t catch game, they torture cats.’

  9 See OR, 331 59 46: Anna Suvorina’s letters to Anton, 1889–1901; quoted in PSSP, 9, 282.

  10 See OR, 331 60 64: Konstantin Tychinkin’s forty-six letters to Anton, 1896–1902.