was an attractive two-storey wooden villa with a spacious veranda, and stood next to a pine wood. In keeping with merchant style, the furniture was solid, comfortable and modest, and Chekhov felt very much at home.14 What
he delighted in most, though, was being able to fish in the deep waters of the River Klyazma while Olga recuperated. He had not spent a summer like this in ages, he told Stanislavsky: 'I fish every day, about five times a day, it's not been bad (yesterday there was fish soup from the ruff I caught), and I can't tell you how pleasant it is sitting on the river bank.'15 Sitting with his fishing rod all day was liberty compared with Yalta, he wrote to his sister, and he gloried in the long grass and leafy trees, which could not be found anywhere in the Crimea.16
Chekhov mulled over ideas for The Cherry Orchard while he was staying at Lyubimovka (where there was, in fact, a cherry orchard), and Stanislavsky's old retainers and the English governess next door partly inspired some of the play's characters.17 In mid-August, Chekhov returned to Yalta; when he came back for another six week stay in Moscow a month later, he went for the first time to the Moscow Art Theatre's new building on Kamergersky Lane, right in the centre of the city. With a 300,000 rouble investment from Savva Morozov, and leaving the fagade largely unchanged, Franz Shekhtel had designed an austere Art Nouveau interior, whose simplicity well suited the aesthetic of Chekhov's untheatrical drama. The Cherry Orchard would be the first of his plays to be premiered there.
The new Moscow Art Theatre building, designed by Fyodor Shekhtel, 1902
In 1903, during the summer months Chekhov spent in Moscow, he
stayed for a few weeks in a Flugel on an estate which belonged to the artist Maria Yakunchikova, a niece of the railway tycoon and patron of the arts, Savva Mamontov. Nara was situated on the railway line running south- west from Moscow, and was an attractive location: there was a river with plenty of fish, lots of places to go for walks and an old chapel. Chekhov enjoyed the lovely weather, the blossom, and the birds singing in the garden; he even managed to do some work on The Cherry Orchard, sitting by the large window of the house.18 The only down side seemed to be that the fish were not biting. He had still not caught even a tiddler after a week,19 and lamented not having anyone to fish with.20 Following the advice of Prof. Ostroumov, who now thought the climate in Yalta might not be ideal for Chekhov after all and was recommending that he spend his winters at a dacha outside Moscow, Chekhov also made two short trips with his wife to Zvenigorod and Voskresensk that summer to look at possible properties. He was delighted to have an excuse to stay up north, and immediately thought of buying a house in the area where he had enjoyed such happy times as a young man. In Voskresensk there were old friends to meet up with, and in Zvenigorod he visited the grave of the doctor he had replaced in 1884.21 He wrote to tell Masha about the wonderful bells he had heard at St Savva's, and how lovely it was, but just too dusty and hot.22 Although there was one charming property on the river bank behind the town church in Voskresensk, which would have suited his mother, the asking price was too high, and Chekhov returned to Yalta in July 1903 without having bought anything.
Rehearsals for The Cherry Orchard began in November 1903. When Stanislavsky started thinking about the 'dog on a lead' which Charlotta Ivanovna the governess enters with in the first act, Olga's dog, a black dachshund called Schnap, immediately presented himself as the obvious candidate and was summoned for an audition. It was undoubtedly Chekhov who had suggested, during his visit to Moscow the previous summer, that Olga get a dog. If she had a dog, he reasoned that it could keep her company in his absence, and in due course it could be taken to Yalta. Schnap had been duly delivered to Olga's apartment while she was seeing Chekhov off on to his train back to Sevastopol,23 and she proudly announced to her husband that he was a pure pedigree. Masha was not so sure, and her doubts are borne out by the one extant photograph of Chekhov standing in his garden with Schnap and Sharik.
In his letters to Olga in Moscow, Chekhov wrote to say that he shook his paw, and worried that when he got to Yalta he might torment the two pet cranes who also were also part of the household.24 Meanwhile Schnap was being groomed for stardom. 'We rehearsed the second act without Konstantin Sergeyevich [Stanislavsky] yesterday,' Olga wrote to Chekhov in November 1903. 'I took Schnap along, so he had a chance to walk about and look around the stage, and today we've got the first act and he is going to have a go at acting. I'm worried that he's got too much of a pedigree temperament, he isn't trained and he doesn't have any discipline. We'll see. He was greeted with laughter yesterday.'25 Chekhov had got to know Schnap earlier that year and was alarmed at the prospect of seeing him on stage. He immediately wrote back to tell
Olga that what he actually had in mind for the play was a mangy, decrepit, shaggy little dog with a sour expression; short-haired Schnap would not do.26
A few weeks later, in December 1903, Chekhov came up to Moscow himself to attend the final rehearsals. The premiere of The Cherry Orchard took place on 17 January 1904, his birthday, and was accompanied by a celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his activity as a writer. He was by this time very ill, and only arrived at the theatre during the third act, at the express request of Nemirovich-Danchenko. What happened next was torture for him. As soon as Chekhov appeared on stage during the interval, representatives of almost every newspaper, journal and literary organization in the country stood up to read their eulogies to him. Telegrams from all over the country were read out, too, to prolonged and vociferous applause from the audience. Quite apart from his hatred of self-promotion and being in the limelight, Chekhov could barely stand up. He felt like the bookcase to which Gaev delivers a maudlin speech in Act 1 of the play.
A few weeks later, he travelled back to Yalta for the last time, taking Schnap with him, as well as his mother and Nastya, the new cook. He sent a letter to Olga before the steamer left Sevastopol, giving her a bulletin on their progress: 'Schnap feels quite at home, he is adorable. In the train he also felt quite at home; he barked at the guards and amused everybody, and now he is sitting on deck with his legs stretched out behind him. He has clearly already forgotten about Moscow, however terrible that is to contemplate.'27 It did not take Schnap long to settle in at the White Dacha. When he started barking a lot in a heavy bass, Chekhov felt he had successfully made the transition to mongrel,28 but he was not always pleased when Schnap came and lay down in his study because he was always dirty from playing with the dogs in the yard.29 Schnap soon had a routine which Olga was kept fully apprised of: Arseny took him to the market every day, and the rest of the time he spent walking round the garden, playing with the other dogs or sleeping downstairs by the warm ceramic stove, issuing the occasional groan. In the evenings he went upstairs to sleep in Chekhov's comfortable armchair by the fireplace and retired next door to Evgenia Yakovlevna's room at night.
Olga Knipper as Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, 1904
Chapter 11 EXILE IN THE CRIMEA
I The Gentleman with the Little Dog
Yalta is Siberia!
Letter to Leonid Sredin, 26 December 1900
Chekhov found his second winter in Yalta just as difficult as the first. His sister came to stay over New Year then left, and friends were few and far between. His mother was ill; Tolstoy was ill down the road in nearby Gaspra; Levitan was ill. And he was ill. So many organs in his body had become superfluous through lack of use, he joked, that he had sold them to a Turk. Nevertheless, he complained that he had to put up with guests who came for interminable visits. He felt as though he had been living in Yalta a million years. It was not a good start to the twentieth century. Meanwhile what he craved was intellectual stimulation, music and beautiful women, and he
