Konovitser (Efros), Anton's fiancee in 1886, was as close as twelve years ago; Elena Shavrova and Tania Shchepkina-Kupernik visited. Masha was invited to Mrs Shavrova's house and, though she disliked the Shavrova girls' monocled cavalieri, she found Elena Shavrova beautiful and interesting. Olga Shavrova even invited her to become an actress. Levitan, near death, was too ill to court her - 'I lie breathing heavily like a fish out of water,' he told Anton - yet Masha felt she might still find 'personal happiness'. She did not want to teach geography in Yalta. She meant to enjoy the Moscow season and study art.
On 17 December 1898, with carriages jamming the streets, The Seagull opened to a full house. Nemirovich- Danchenko telegraphed 'colossal success mad with happiness'. Anton wired back 'Your telegram has made me healthy and happy'. Nemirovich-Danchenko requested Uncle Vania exclusively for the Moscow Arts. Anton's school friend Vishnevsky telegraphed, 'Seagull will be our theatre's battleship.' The Seagull, Nina, was badly interpreted by Roksanova (soon to be ousted), and Stanislavsky acted Trigorin like 'an impotent recovering from typhoid', but the audience was ecstatic. Olga Knipper won special praise. Nemirovich-Danchenko told Anton: 'She is so involved in her part mat you can't tell her apart from [Arkadina's] elegant actress's get-up and vulgar charm, meanness and jealousy.' Masha encouraged her brother's instincts: 'A very, very nice actress, Knipper, was playing; she is amazingly talented, it was pure enjoyment to see and hear her.' Tania Shchepkina-Kupernik wrote to Anton: 'for the first time in three years I have had enjoyment in the theatre… Everything was new, unexpected, enthralling… Knipper was very good.'
Many old friends made contact. Levitan got off his sick bed, paid double for a ticket and said that he now understood the play; torn between older and younger women, he felt for Trigorin. Even the
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I IE I I l i. i (e i e?, actor Lensky, a sworn enemy since lie had been caricatured in 'The Grasshopper', was enchanted by The Seagull. By January 1899 Sergei Bychkov, the footman at the Great Moscow Hotel, had seen The Seagull four times: he reminded Chekhov 'how passionately Liudmila Ozerova wanted to act your Seagull'.9 Women clamoured to be Seagulls. Kundasova informed Anton that her sister Zoia was widowed and free: Nemirovich- Danchenko must give her the part.
Knipper fell ill and two performances of The Seagull were postponed, a loss for Anton, who was to receive 10 per cent of the gross takings. Yet he now equated his bond with the Moscow Arts theatre with marriage to an actress. To Elena Shavrova and to Dunia and Efim Konovitser he used the same image: 'I have no luck with the theatre, such awful luck that if I married an actress we would probably beget an orang utan or a porcupine.' Anton was paying for a Moscow flat, an estate and school at Melikhovo, buildings in Autka and a farmhouse at Kttchuk- Koy. He had indigent relatives and not long to live. Rather than beg, as Levitan advised, from rich patrons, he took decisive action.
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7 am a Marxist7 January-April 1899 I low 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',.uul 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 m 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 (Ihekhov. 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.'10 Suvorin offered Chekhov a 20,000 rouble advance: 'Write and tell me
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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 Grtinberg, 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.' 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 Grtinberg 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
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liiii llr -Pr ia iifPflaliBS 46, Anton with the Suvorin family at Feodosia, September 1896. He is sitting second from right with Emilie Bijon on his left; Suvorin is standing second from left, between 11nc and Nastia Suvorina 47. The schoolteachers at Talezh and Melikhovo, Aleksandr Mikhailov and Maria Terentieva #~ r ilir
48. Lidia Iavorskaia
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65. Evgenia, Masha, Olga and Anton at Yalta, February 1902 •w. 66. In the garden at Yalta with a tame crane, March 1904
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of stories from the iate 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
