Anton Chekhov
Page 71
Notes
1 See OR, 331 66 78–124: telegrams to Olga Knipper-Chekhova, July 1904.
2 See Pis’ma A. S. Suvorina k V. V. Rozanovu, SPb, 1913, 10. For a fuller account of that morning, see A. Rostovtsev, ‘Pamiati Chekhova’ in Obozrenie teatra, 2–7 July 1914.
3 See RGALI, 2540 1 478: Aleksandr’s letters to Misha, 1883–1904: 4 July 1904.
4 See LN68, 618–9.
EIGHTY-FOUR
Epilogue
1904–1959
IMMEDIATELY AFTER the funeral Olga left with Evgenia, Masha, Misha and Vania for Yalta. Aleksandr in Petersburg wept alone. Suvorin sent him back to the Crimea in pursuit. After the distress of the funeral, whatever Suvorin felt privately, publicly he disowned Anton.1 On 22 July he told Ivan Shcheglov, ‘Chekhov was the bard of the middle classes. He never was and never will be a great writer.’ Suvorin transferred his protection and even his affection to a new figure, the fifty-year-old philosopher Vasili Rozanov.
At the forty-day requiem in Moscow on 10 August the church was crowded. By the graveside a choir of nuns sang. Olga Kundasova and the Chekhovs’ old landlord, Dr Korneev, appeared. Korneev gave a communion loaf for Evgenia. On it were written the names of her dead: father-in-law, brother, husband, sister and two sons: ‘For the peace of the souls of Georgi, Iakov, Pavel, Feodosia, Nikolai, Anton.’ On 18 August Olga left Yalta. Her brother Kostia and Olga Kundasova came to stay with her in Moscow. She was beginning rehearsals for Ivanov in which her performance as the doomed wife, Anna, would be especially moving.2
Olga won Masha a few weeks’ leave until the Chekhov inheritance could be clarified. Anton’s ‘will’ of 1901, leaving everything to Masha, informally drawn up and improperly witnessed, was declared invalid, but Olga, to the family’s relief and even gratitude, renounced all claim on the estate and gave to Masha the substantial sum in her and Anton’s joint account. She would live on her earnings as an actress and shareholder in the theatre. All the survivors agreed that Anton’s intentions should be honoured and that all his estate should pass to Masha, who would look after Evgenia and the Yalta house. The lawyers pondered the next step. As Anton had died effectively intestate, Russian law gave the inheritance to all his siblings. A year passed before Olga and the Chekhov brothers had signed a legal deed, giving Masha ‘all the income and profit as heirs from literary works, theatrical plays and estate’. The houses and money in the bank were worth 80,000 roubles. This and Chekhov’s plays now made Masha a rich woman.3
Trusting only Masha to keep her in comfort, Evgenia was relieved. Her sister-in-law Liudmila, and Irinushka, who had nursed Anton as a baby, came from Taganrog to live with her in Yalta. Aleksandr visited her and wrote to Vania:
Old Mariushka is alive, toothless, and has no intention of dying. Mother has got two worthless mongrels to replace Tuzik, who was poisoned. She’s very afraid, seriously, that her children may steal her inheritance and send her packing. She doesn’t believe in her children’s decency.4
To Misha, Aleksandr wrote:
She fixedly thought I was the main crook, able to lead you astray into a conspiracy. When she heard I had written a renunciation at Vania’s, she bowed down almost to my feet … She won’t give me Suvorin’s letters: ‘Masha told me not to.’ The old ladies are not that unhappy, they laugh loud all the time.5
Evgenia enjoyed the garden, prosperity, and rides in the automobiles that came to ply the route from Yalta to the railhead. She died aged 84 in 1919.
Masha gave up schoolteaching and assumed responsibility for the home at Yalta as a temple to her brother. Once memoirs and letters were published, it was her life’s task to manage the enormous archive. Through revolution, civil war, Stalin’s terror and German occupation she never relaxed her grip on the Chekhov heritage. Her private life was set aside.6 She bought a dacha, which she sold to a Yalta dentist for diamonds just before revolution made real estate and money valueless. She died, aged 94, in 1957.
Aleksandr plunged back into alcoholism. In 1908, Natalia forced him out, despite his pleas.7 He lived with a servant, a dog and his chickens outside town. In 1906 he published vivid recollections of his and Anton’s childhood. Masha and Misha, indignant at what they saw as Aleksandr’s slurs on their father, ostracized him.8 Aleksandr’s obituary ran:
For a whole year he endured [throat cancer], the knowledge that it was incurable oppressed him horribly and he had many hours of severe physical and moral torment. He found peace at 9 a.m. on 17 May 1913.
Masha told Olga that none of the family would go to the funeral.9 Misha worked for Suvorin’s agencies until revolution destroyed them. Until his death in 1936, he was, like Masha, his brother’s biographer. His son Sergei gathered an archive of all his kin except Masha and Anton. Vania remained a teacher. In December 1917 Vania’s son Volodia, who knew he was incurably ill, stole his cousin Mikhail’s revolver from a desk drawer and shot himself. Broken by this tragedy and by hunger, Vania died in 1922, aged sixty-one.
Aleksandr’s son Kolia, discharged from the navy, appeared in Yalta, ‘pathetic, ragged’. Masha gave him money to go to Siberia. In 1911 he reappeared: ‘I wept, because I was sorry for him,’ Masha told Olga. In the revolution Kolia returned to the Crimea, married a woman twenty-four years older, and ran a smallholding with chickens and even a cow. Always a sailor, he kept a logbook.10 He welcomed the Bolsheviks and may have been shot in 1921 by the White Army as it fled the Reds. Kolia’s brother Anton, the typesetter, was conscripted in 1908 and was dead by 1921.11
Mikhail, Aleksandr’s youngest son, suffered nervous breakdowns and alcoholism. He told friends that he had been seduced by his mother, Natalia. In 1919 she died: Mikhail forgot where he buried her. Mikhail’s theatrical talent made him a star in the Moscow Arts Theatre. In 1915 he eloped with another Olga Knipper, the niece of Anton’s widow. The marriage broke up, just after a child, Olga Chekhova was born. In the 1920s, Mikhail, his wife and daughter all ended up in Germany. Mikhail Chekhov eventually taught Stanislavskian acting to Hollywood. His ex-wife, now Olga Tschechowa, became an actress, was photographed with Adolf Hitler, and spied for Stalin. Thanks to her, the Nazis protected Chekhov’s Yalta house.12
Olga Knipper-Chekhova, like Masha, died in her nineties. She was the linchpin of the Moscow Arts Theatre. Even when Stalin in 1935 made it his official theatre, Olga adapted.
Suvorin had power wrenched from him by the Dauphin, who was irascible to the point of madness. In 1912 he died of throat cancer, with the same stoicism as Aleksandr Chekhov. The letters Suvorin had written to Anton have not been seen since 1919. Suvorin’s sons fled Russia and lived in Yugoslavia and France, where in 1937 the Dauphin, following his mother’s and younger brother’s example, gassed himself.
Dunia Efros, Anton’s first fiancée, left Russia for France. In 1943, aged eighty-two, she was seized by the Vichy police and gassed by the Germans. Olga Kundasova stayed in Russia, living until 1947: she burnt her archive. Lika Mizinova remained faithful to Sanin-Schoenberg: when he became psychotic, she nursed him to sanity. Lika died in Paris of cancer in 1937. Elena Shavrova-Iust, destitute after her husband was executed, sold her Chekhoviana to live. Lidia Iavorskaia divorced Prince Bariatinsky in 1915; in 1919 she escaped arrest in revolutionary Petrograd and fled to England, dying in 1921.13 Tania Shchepkina-Kupernik obliterated her Bohemian image and became a Soviet children’s writer. Lidia Avilova, first abroad and then in Russia, persuaded herself that she had been Anton’s only love. Just before dying in 1942, she met Aleksandr Smagin, Masha’s faithful admirer. The two victims of unrequited passion commiserated. Lidia Avilova was just one of a scattered congregation who mourned Anton Chekhov all their lives.
Notes
1 In 1909 Suvorin’s Istoricheskii vestnik published a scandalous and venomous exposé by Ezhov which portrayed Chekhov as a conceited mediocrity.
2 See Shcheglov’s diary, which, however, found her Cherry Orchard ‘could have been more entertaining’ (LN68, 486).
3 See OR, 331 79 1
3: documents on the Chekhov inheritance.
4 See RGALI, 2540 1 150: Aleksandr’s letters to Vania, 1898–1905: 9 Sept. 1904.
5 See RGALI, 2540 1 478: Aleksandr’s letters to Misha, 1883–1904: 9 Sept. 1904.
6 After Bunin left, Masha had a flirtation, which ended in 1912, with Baron Stuart, the purchaser of Melikhovo; Aleksandr Smagin pined all his life for her.
7 See RGALI, 5459 1 402: Aleksandr’s letters to Natalia, 1908: 5 Nov.
8 In 1939, with uncharacteristic liberalism, the Soviet state published Aleksandr’s letters to Anton, and his wayward genius was recognized. See his son’s memoirs in M. A. Chekhov, 1986.
9 See OR, 331 77 18+ and 331 105 7+: Masha’s and Olga’s fifty-year correspondence after Anton’s death is a little known mine of biographical and historical material.
10 See OR, 331 84 38: Nikolai Aleksandrovich Chekhov’s notebooks.
11 In the mid 1930s a woman, apparently his wife, wrote to Masha from a prison camp. Masha hid the letter behind a stove; in the 1940s, when it was found by a secretary, Masha destroyed it.
12 See Vladimir Knipper Pora galliutsinatsii, 1995. Olga Tschechowa’s daughter ‘proved’ her Aryan blood by sending to Sumy, under German occupation, for her grandmother, Natalia Golden’s, wedding certificate, where Jewishness was not mentioned.
13 Her obituary, as Princess Bariatinsky, is in The Times, 5 Sept. 1921.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
Works I have found particularly useful are asterisked. All quotations are translated from the standard edition of complete works and letters. Place of publication is Moscow unless indicated.
Chekhov’s writings
IN RUSSIAN
*A. P. Chekhov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem (PSSP): 1–18, works [referred to as I–XVIII]; 1–12 (+ indices), letters [referred to as 1–12], 1973–83.
Some items missing from PSSP can be found in:
A. B. Derman, ed., A. P. Chekhov Sbornik dokumentov …, 1947 [inc. student post-mortem report].
A. P. Chudakov, ‘“Neprilichnye slova” i oblik klassika’ in Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 1991, 11, 54.
Podtsenzurnyi Chekhov in Kuranty, 8 Sept., 1993, 9 [lists some cuts in PSSP 1–4].
L. Shcheglov [allegedly after Chekhov], Sila gipnotizma in Zhizn’ vverkh nogami, SPb, 1911.
IN ENGLISH
Michael Frayn (tr.), Chekhov: Plays, London, 1993 [actable versions of the mature plays].
Constance Garnett (tr.), (revised D. Rayfield) The Chekhov Omnibus, London, 1994 [classic selection of prose fiction].
Ronald Hingley (tr.), The Oxford Chekhov (complete mature works) 9 vols, 1972.
Gordon McVay (tr.), Chekhov: A Life in Letters, Folio Society, London, 1974 [best selection].
Donald Rayfield ‘Sanitising the Classics’ in Comparative Criticism 16, Cambridge, 1994, 19–32.
Brian Reeves (tr.), The Island of Sakhalin, London, 1993.
Bibliographical and reference works
*N. I. Gitovich, Letopis’ zhizni i tvorchestva A. P. Chekhova, 1955 [fundamental; much is unique, some inaccurate: a new chronicle is imminent].
*E. E. Leitnekker, Arkhiv A. P. Chekhov, 1939 [a full catalogue of letters to Anton in the Otdel rukopisei archive as of 1939. Excludes family correspondence: now outdated].
*I. F. Masanov, Chekhoviana: sistematicheski ukazatel’, 1930 [a list of 2766 publications on Chekhov, nearly complete up to, 1929; supplements Gitovich].
I. Iu. Tverdokhliobov, Novye daty in Chekhoviana, 1990, 213–25.
*P. A. Nikolaev, Russkie pisateli 1800–1917, A–M 3 vols, 1992–5 [standard reference to Chekhov’s contemporaries].
*A. P. Chekhov Dokumenty, fotografii, 1984 [best pictorial record].
A. P. Chekhov: Materialy … pushkinskogo doma, Leningrad, 1982 [mostly pictorial].
*A. P. Chekhov: rukopisi, pis’ma, biograficheskie dokumenty: opisanie materialov, TsGALI, 1960.
Letters to Anton
ALEKSANDR CHEKHOV
*I. S. Ezhov, Pis’ma A. P. Chekhovu ego brata Aleksandra Pavlovicha, 1939 [nearly complete, but Rabelaisian passages and Tsarist sentiments cut].
MASHA CHEKHOVA
*M. P. Chekhova, Pis’ma k bratu A. P. Chekhovu, 1954 (Pis’ma, 1954) [fairly complete, well annotated].
OLGA KNIPPER-CHEKHOVA
*A. P. Derman, Perepiska A. P. Chekhova i O. L. Knipper, 1934, 1936 [2 vols, up to 10 Oct., 1902. 90 per cent complete, cut by Olga Knipper].
A. V. Khanilo, ‘Iz pisem M. P. Chekhovoi k O. L. Knipper-Chekhovoi’ in Chekhovskie chteniia v Ialte, 1993 [extracts 1904–45].
V. Ia. Vilenkin, Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova, 1972 [2 vols. Vol. 1: correspondence 1896–1959; vol. 2: letters to Anton Nov., 1902–4; very selective and heavily cut].
ISAAK LEVITAN
*A. Fiodorov-Davydov, A. Shapiro, I. I. Levitan: Pis’ma, dokumenty, vospominaniia, 1956 [full, but bowdlerized: 1966 edition has more information].
MENSHIKOV
Zapiski GBL VIII, 1941.
VL. I. NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO
Ezhegodnik MKhaTa, 1944, vol. 1.
Vl. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Teatral’noe nasledie, 1954, II, 144.
PAVEL SVOBODIN
Zapiski Otdela rukopisei Gosudarstvennoi Bibliotèki Lenina, 16, 1954 [about 50 per cent complete].
FATHER UNDOLSKY
A. M. Melkova, ‘Novye materialy …’, in Chekhovskie chteniia v Ialte, 1987, 108–25.
COMPILATIONS
Chekhovskie chteniia v Ialte, 1973, 154–78 [Masha and Misha Chekhov, Sergeenko: in articles by A. M. Melkova, S. M. Chekhov].
Slovo: sbornik vtoroi, 1914, 199–289 [Grigorovich, Mikhailovsky, Tchaikovsky, Soloviov, Polonsky, Pleshcheev, Urusov].
Zapiski OR GBL 8, 1941 [letters to Masha from Evgenia, Aleksandr].
*M. P. Gromova et al., Perepiska Chekhova, 1996, 3 vols. (expanded from Perepiska I, II, 1984) [Leikin, Grigorovich, Pleshcheev, Svobodin, Lavrov, Mizinova, Potapenko, Shchepkina-Kupernik, Komissarzhevskaia, V. Nemirovich-Danchenko, Stanislavsky, Gorky, Bunin, Knipper].
E. N. Konshina, Iz arkhiva Chekhova, Otdel ruk., 1960 [inc. duller letters from various Drs (Valter, Diakonov), Diagilev etc.].
M. V. Teplinskii, ‘… o sakhalinskom puteshestvii …’ in A. P. Chekhov: sbornik statei Iuzhno-Sakhalinsk, 1959 [includes letters from Bulgarevich and Feldman].
Writings of Chekhov’s relatives and contemporaries
IVAN BUNIN
I. A. Bunin, O Chekhove, New York, 1955 [memoir, biography, and critique: trusts Avilova].
PAVEL CHEKHOV
*A. P. Kuzicheva, E. M. Sakharova, Melikhovskii letopisets: Dnevnik P. E. Chekhova, 1995 [Pavel’s Melikhovo diary, complete, well illustrated and indexed].
Vstrechi s proshlym 4, 1987, 43–80 [Pavel’s letters to Vania, 4 Oct. 1890–3 May 1891].
VANIA (IVAN) CHEKHOV
M. A. Sheikina, ‘Teper’ … (Iz pisem I. P. Chekhova k S. V. Ch-oi)’, in Chekhoviana, 1995, 315–27.
MASHA CHEKHOVA
Iz daliokogo proshlogo (recorded by N. A. Sysoev), 1960 [the fullest text of Masha’s memoirs].
MISHA CHEKHOV
Sergei Mikhailovich Chekhov, O semie, Iaroslavl, 1970 [a turgid but thorough documentation of Mikhail’s years in Iaroslavl 1894–1901].
MIKHAIL ALEKSANDROVICH CHEKHOV
Literaturnoe nasledie, 1986, 2 vols [vol. 1 includes memoirs and letters].
COMPILATIONS
Solntse Rossii, SPb, 1914, 25 June [a selection of minor memoirs, some never reprinted].
*Vokrug Chekhova (comp. E. M. Sakharova), 1990 [siblings’, widow’s, nephews’ and niece’s memoirs; well annotated].
Khoziaika chekhovskogo doma, Simferopol, 1969 [Masha’s memories recorded by S. M. Chekhov; memoirs of Masha by Marinetta Shaginian, M. A. Sofiiskaia; Masha’s letters to and from Bunin, A. V. Sredin].
*Chekhov v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (comp. N. I. Gitovich), 1986 [non-family memoirs; authoritative and well annotated; previous editions, 1947, 1
954 and 1960 are inferior, but have some different material].
Iz shkol’nykh let Anton Chekhova, 1962 [inc. many Taganrog memoirs: Dolzhenko, Volkenshtein, Tan, Drossi, Vishnevsky].
*Literaturnoe nasledstvo 68: Chekhov (ed. V. V. Vinogradov), 1960 [vast compendium of diaries, letters etc.]
*Literaturnoe nasledstvo 87: Iz istorii russkoi literatury … (ed V. R. Shcherbina), 1977 [Sakhalin material, log of Peterburg, diaries of Smirnova-Sazonova and Lazarevsky].
M. D. Beliaev … A. P. Chekhov: Novye vospominaiia, Leningrad, 1925 [inc. Anna Suvorina’s memoirs].
I. M. Sel’vaniuk, Sbornik statei i materialov 3, Rostov, 1963 [inc. Elena Shavrova’s memoirs].
Biographies and biographical material
BOOKS AND BOOK-LENGTH ARTICLES IN RUSSIAN
E. Balabanovich Dom, A. P. Chekhova v Moskve, 1958 [a study of the Korneev house].
E. Balabanovich, Chekhov i Chaikovskii, 1973.
*S. Balukhatyi, ‘Bibliotèka Chekhova’ in Chekhov i ego sreda, Leningrad, 1930, 210–418 [a primary but incomplete source on what Chekhov read].
G. Berdnikov, Chekhov, 1974 [the best of the Soviet biographies].
Iu. A. Bychkov, Techenie Melikhovskoi zhizni, 1989 [illustrations of Melikhovo better than text].