SCENES FROM A LIFE
ROSAMUND BARTLETT
First published in Great Britain by The Free Press in 2004 An imprint of Simon 8c Schuster UK Ltd A Viacom Company
Copyright © 2004 by Rosamund Bartlett
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CONTENTS
List of illustrations xi
Note on abbreviations, transliteration and dates xiii
Preface xv
Chronology xix
Maps xxiii
Prologue: Chekhov the Wanderer xxix
Pre-history: A Port on the Azov Sea 1
I Greeks and Scythians 1
II Venetians, Turks and Russian Tsars 8
III The British 15
Taganrog and the Steppe 22
I A Southern Childhood 22
II The Merchant Background 32
III The Don Steppe 42
Moscow 54
Nomads in the City 54
Dr Chekhov's Casebook 75 III The Expanding Chest of Drawers 82
Summers at the Dacha 96
New Jerusalem 96
Luka 112 III Aleksin 123
St Petersburg 128
I Fragments of Fame 128
Messengers from the North 139
Chekhov and the Imperial Theatres 150
Siberia and the West 159
Sakhalin 159
Europe 185
Melikhovo 193
A Place in the Country 193
Paterfamilias 201
The Muzhiks 213
Croquet on the Lawn 221
A Season on the Cote d'Azur 230
Nostalgia in Nice 230
The Pension Russe 239
The Russian Riviera 255
Yalta and the Romanovs 255
Chekhov and the Tatars 270
The White Dacha 276
Marx and the Meadow 288
A Dream of Moscow 293
Part-Time Resident 293
The Art Theatre 296
Part-Time Husband 300
Exile in the Crimea 308
The Gentleman with the Little Dog 308
Pushkin, the Old Oak of Taganrog, and Three Sisters 311 III The Actress and the Bishop 31912 White Death in the Black Forest 329
Badenweiler 329
The Russian Aftermath 338
Epilogue: Chekhov Street 340
Acknowledgements 353
Notes 354
Bibliography 376
Index 383
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The port at Taganrog 3
Petrovskaya Street, Taganrog 4
Taganrog's Stone Steps 6
The statue of Peter the Great in Taganrog by Antokolsky (1898) 12
Chekhov's birthplace, Taganrog 23
Pavel and Mitrofan Chekhov and their families, 1874 25
Pavel Chekhov's store, Taganrog 26
Uspensky Cathedral, Taganrog, where Chekhov was christened 39
Trubnaya Square, Moscow 58
Stretenka Street, Moscow 62
Chekhov and his brother, Nikok ij February 1882 66 The Church of St John the Warrior, Moscow, opposite which
the Chekhovs lived in 1885 70
The New Catherine Hospital in Moscow 80
The Korsh Theatre, Moscow, where Ivanov premiered in 188/ 91
The New Jerusalem Monastery, Moscow 100
Zvenigorod, near Moscow 102 Illustrations of the fish Chekhov used to catch,
from Sabaneev's Fishes of Russia 104 Nikolaevsky Station, Moscow, where Chekhov
boarded trains for St Petersburg 129
Nevsky Prospekt, St Petersburg 136
Suvorin's bookshop, Nevsky Prospekt, St Petersburg 143 The Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre, St Petersburg, wnere
The Seagull premiered in 1896 151
Ykaterinburg 168
Krasnoyarsk and the Yenirey River 170
The city of Irkutsk 172
An Amur River steamer similar to the one Chekhov travelled on 174
The famous Sakhalin convict Sofya Blyuvshtein 179
Gilyak storehouses for dried fish, Sakhalin 181
Chekhov's house and garden at Melikhovo 194 The guest annexe at Melikhovo, where Chekhov wrote
The Seagull 226 The Hermitage restaurant, Moscow, where Chekhov suffered a
haemorrhage in 1897 231 The Grand Moscow Hotel, Chekhov's favourite place to stay
during his visits from Melikhovo 232 Prof. Ostroumov's clinic, Moscow, where Chekhov was a
patient in 1897 234
The view from the bench by the church at Oreanda 263 The seafront in Yalta, which the Lady with the little dog
walks along 277
The Hotel Marino, Yalta, where Chekhov stayed in 1899 279 The town park, where Gurov makes the acaua.ntance of Anna
Sergey evna 280 The harbour in Yalta, where Gurov and Anna Sergeyevna
come to watch people d>sembarking from the steamer 282 Chekhov photographed in St Petersburg after meeting Adolf
Marx in 1899 294 Alexander Vishnevsky as Uncle Vanya in the first Moscow Art
Theatre production, 1899 298
The closing scene of Uncle Vanya in 1899 300 The Church of the Exaltation of the Cross, Moscow, where
Chekhov married Olga Knipper, May 1901 301 The new Moscow Art Theatre build'ng, designed by Fyodor
Shekhtel, 1902 304
Olga Knipper as Ranevskaya in The Cherry Orchard, 1904 306
Chekhov with his dogs Schnap and Sharik, 1904 310
Olga as Masha in Three Sisters, 1901 314
Stanislavsky as VershHin in Three Sisters, 1901 315
Yalta, seen from the east 323
Chekhov's house in Autka, 1901 325 m 500-rouble banknote issued in 1997, showing Antokolsky's
statue of Peter the Great in Arkhangelsk 345
NOTE ON ABBREVIATIONS, TRANSLITERATION AND DATES
All quotations from Chekhov's writings refer to the thirty-volume Academy of Sciences edii on of Ыг> complete collected works, published in Moscow between 1974 and 1983: the works are published in eighteen volumes and the letters in twelve volumes. Notes to the works are preceded by 'W' and contain volume numbers followed by page references; in the case of references to letters, volume numbers are preceded by 'L'.
A si tnplified transliteration system has been followed in the body of the text, with a more accurate system employed in the notes.
The dates cited refer to the Julian calendar used in Russia before 1917, which was twelve days behind the Western calendar in the nineteenth century and thirteen in the twentieth century.
PREFACE
In a recent volume of articles about Chekhov, a prominent Russian scholar asked the question: 'Is it easy to be Chekhov's biographer?'1 Despite hundreds of memoirs, twelve volumes of annotated letters, articles, monographs, and copious other sources, published and unpublished, not to mention a myriad clues contained in the works chemselves, she had to conclude that it was not. Chekhov's letters, after all, are not always as straightforward as they appear, and memoirs can often be unreliable and even flatly contradictory: there is still a lack of agreement even on such ruaimentary points, for example, as the colour of Chekhov's eyes (variously described as grey, blue, or brown). A major achievement in the late twentieth century was to remove the layers of distortion that had accreted over the decades of Soviet rule and make Chekhov human agai 1. The Stalinist image of Chekhov as a personality without flaws proved remarkably resilient, but has now at last given way to a more balanced view. For this, we are indebted to the pioneering biographies based on detailed study of the available Russian sources by British and American Slavists such as Ronald Hingley and Ernest J. Simmons, and, in ©articular, to the recent exhaustive account by Donald Rayfield. Because of the lingering reverence with which wrii.ers are still held in Russia, a full- scale b;ograohy of Chekhov in Russian has yet to be written, but thanks to Donald Rayheld's meticulous research in newly opened archives, we now have a definitive account of Chekhov's day-to-day life, set 'n the context of his :mmediate environment. The fact that Chekhov was as inconsistent and as contradictory as the nex*- person, however, suggests that we will thankfully never have a definitive interpretation of his life. The conventional image of Chekhov as someone self-contained and reserved in manner certainly tallies with the form and structure of his artistic works, yet he himself admitted at one point to having a fiery temper and a nervous disposition. Such anomalies encourage us to continue the process of interpreting Chekhov's life, rather than acting as a deterrent.