Anton a newspaper cutting from Zhitomir (in the Ukraine) which showed that library users preferred Potapenko to Chekhov.
Miss Gobiato was too slow: Anton finally sent a manuscript to Suvorin, who was told to expect it from the hands of 'a tall handsome widow' - Sasha Selivanova. Anton told Suvorin to let Potapenko, and nobody else, read it. Suvorin (who admired Potapenko's wife Maria) was shocked by the play; he told Anton that Trigorin, torn between Nina and Arkadina, was too obviously Potapenko, torn between Lika and his wife. Anton disingenuously replied that if this were so, the play would be unstageable. Suvorin, as Chekhov might have suspected, showed The Seagull to his confidante, Sazonova. She was already worried by Suvorin's fondness for decadent drama. On 21 December her diary anticipated public opinion: I read The Seagull. A thoroughly depressing impression. In literature only Chekhov, in music Chopin make that impression on me, like a stone on your soul, you can't breathe. It is unrelieved gloom. Iavorskaia still hoped that Chekhov would provide her with a triumphal chariot of a play, that The Seagull would be in the same neoroman-tic vein as Rostand's La Princesse lointaine, which she and Tania were taking to Petersburg for the new season. In Moscow, in early December, Chekhov read The Seagull to a large company in the blue drawing room at Iavorskaia's hotel. Tania recalls: Korsh… considered Chekhov his author, since he had put on the first production of Ivanov… I remember the impression the play made. It was like Arkadina's reaction to Treplev's play: 'Decadence!' 'New forms?'… I remember the argument, the noise, Iavorskaia feigning delight, Korsh's amazement: 'Dear boy, that's bad theatre: you have a man shoot himself off-stage and don't even let him speak before he dies!' etc. I remember Chekhov's face, half embarrassed, half stern.
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Iavorskaia and Chekhov had no more to say to each other. Anton then took his manuscript to Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, whose suggestions he respected and adopted.
Anton now treated Lika as lightly as his old sweetheart Sasha Seli-vanova. He was celibate, he told Suvorin on 10 November: I am afraid of a wife and family life which will restrict me and as I imagine them won't fit in with my disorderliness, but it is still better than tossing about in the sea of life and going through storms in the frail boat of dissipation. Anyway I don't love my mistresses any more, and with them I gradually become impotent. Anton visited Sasha Selivanova in Moscow to drink beer and vodka, and invited Lika to sing and walk in the woods. Only the faraway aroused desire. Liudmila Ozerova, the Petersburg actress, intrigued Anton even more after a fiasco in Schiller's Intrigue of Love. He wrote to Suvorin on 21 October: 'Reading The Petersburg Newspaper, where her acting was called simply absurd, I can imagine the little Jew-girl crying and going cold.'
After searching the attic in Melikhovo, Anton found Elena Shav-rova, now Mrs lust's manuscripts, which he had mislaid. He offered to make up to her for his delinquency and confided that he was writing a story ('My Fiancee', the future 'House with the Mezzanine'), as well as a play, about lost love: 'I used to have a fiancee'. Inviting each other to rendezvous in the Great Moscow hotel, she and Anton began a cautious game. Shavrova's letters become flirtatious. On 11 November she hinted at the relationship - of a young actress with a distinguished older man - that she sought: 'You know, I often recall Katia from 'A Dreary Story' and I understand her.' On 3 December she wrote: 'It's nice to know that cher maitre has loved, which means he could have and understand this earthly feeling… I think somehow that you analyse everything and everyone too finely to fall in love…'49 For the New Year Shavrova praised 'Ariadna' as a vraie femme aux hommes, and wished Chekhov 'as few boring days, hours and minutes as possible'.
Autumn left Anton no time for love or boredom. The creative impulse that had started in spring 1894 intensified. As soon as The Seagull was despatched, he sat down to work on his most nostalgic story, 'The House with the Mezzanine'. The scenery and the second356
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ary characters (an idle landowner and his domineering, weeping mistress) stem from 1891, the summer of the mongoose at Bogimovo. The narrator (an artist, never seen to paint a picture) stumbles on a decaying estate where a mother and her two daughters live, argues with the elder daughter and falls in love with the younger, only to have her snatched away when she responds. The sense of loss lies in the decaying pine needles and lime trees, the half-abandoned house and the narrator's passivity. The secondary theme of the story was to run through Chekhov's later plays and stories: the narrator argues the pointlessness of social activism in the face of the misery of the peasantry's condition. The elder sister is an activist and denounces art and idleness. The puzzle for the critics is that neither the active sister nor the artist is approved. In Chekhov's work the conflict is often between two sides of himself, the active landowner and contemplative artist, or the egalitarian and the misogynist.
As an activist, Chekhov now proposed a new school for the villagers, pooling his resources with the peasants' and whatever Serpukhov council granted towards the 3000 roubles needed. His neighbours were unhelpful. The Chekhovs and Semenkoviches, the new owners of Vaskino, visited each other, but Anton barely spoke to the seedy Varenikovs who lived to the east of Melikhovo. Varenikov offered to exchange a large amount of forest for a small amount of hayfield, but Masha would not agree. Varenikov had behaved badly in August: when the Chekhov cows strayed, he demanded a rouble per head to release them. Anton told him to keep the cattle. Varenikov surrendered: 'Have your cows collected; please forbid your servants to let them into your hayfields.'50
Anton in Moscow drank with Sasha Selivanova and chased up Miss Gobiato the typist. Masha taught from Monday to Friday. Pavel managed the estate tyrannically and the servants got drunk, quarrelsome and disobedient. After opening the kitchen windows to freeze the cockroaches to death, Pavel complained to Masha: Roman has quarrelled with his wife, and she has turned nasty, she wouldn't milk the cows, I had to ask and beg Aniuta to go and do the milking, and Mashutka to feed the hens and ducks, the old woman [Mariushka] with tears in her eyes put the bread in the oven… What is happening, can we allow the servants and workmen such freedom that they don't obey those that live in the house? Whom
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do they serve?… Roman used to be considerate when he wasn't allowed so much freedom and rope, now he has got above himself, he has become hypocritical, he has found out Antosha's weak point… All week two strapping lads have failed to get the manure out of the stables, we've had to hire a daily woman. We are sitting with no firewood, it's cold in the rooms.'1 Pavel's despotism irritated Anton. He complained to Aleksandr of Pavel 'nagging at mother over dinner and lecturing us at length about medals and awards.'
When Anton was in Melikhovo, harmony reigned, but he restricted his commands to the garden. He would prune raspberries, manure asparagus, minister to sick dachshunds, but would not reprimand the men-of-all-work, Ivan, Roman and his brother Egor. Anton would wander off to the woods: Pavel's diary, in Anton's hand, for 8 November reads: 'Clear morning: went hunting with the dachshunds, but didn't find the badger in his den.'
Levitan, still prey to depression, came on a few of these walks -this time without a gun. He was touchingly grateful for Anton's visit after his attempted suicide. Anton gave him The Island of Sakhalin, inscribed 'in case he should commit murder in a fit of jealousy' and end up a prisoner there. At the end of July Levitan wrote: I constantly observe myself and see clearly that I am completely going to pieces. And I am fed up with myself, and how fed up.
I don't know why, but the few days you spent with me were the most peaceful days this summer. In October Levitan came back to Melikhovo for two days.
Others needed Anton's support. Misha, downcast at being denied a tax inspectorate at Iaroslavl, asked Suvorin for help. Suvorin thought his letter muddled and tactless; Anton had to explain what Misha wanted. Suvorin went to the Finance Ministry and fixed Misha's posting, sending Chekhov a telegram: 'Say merri, my angel.' Misha would not be leaving Uglich alone. After Mamuna's betrayal, he fell in love with Olga Vladykina, a governess to Uglich's richest manufacturer. He drove her home from a party across the dangerous ice of the Volga. She agreed to marry Misha, but was hurt that Misha would not announce the engagement until he had received Anton's approval. Masha had a measure of independence in the form of a monthly
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allowance of 30 roubles from Misha and 'granddad' Sablin. Misha gave her the 1600 roubles due from the publication of his smallholder's encyclopaedia. Only Aleksandr still grumbled: he could not get his elder sons into school; little Kolia threw a cat from a third-floor window and expressed no remorse. Aleksandr turned to Vania and Sonia, as pedagogues: Would you take over the training of my piglets?… As soon as I leave the house they dash off God knows where, grab their hats and clear off… better that you should have the money than a stranger. Kolia… is
