"Twenty Six Men and a Girl" is a good story, the best of the stuff "Life" generally prints in its dilettantish magazine. You get a vivid sense of the place and can smell the hot bagels.
My story in "Life" was full of bad errors despite my having read proof. Their provincial pictures by Chirikov also annoy me, and their illustration entitled "Happy New Year!" as well as Gurevich's story.
I have just been handed a letter from you. So India is out? Too bad. When you have India in your past, and long sea voyages, you have something to recall when you can't sleep nights. And a trip abroad doesn't take much time, it won't interfere with your walking trip through Russia.
I am bored not in the sense of Weltschmerz, nor from any loneliness of existence as such, but merely bored without peo- ple, without music, which I love, and without women, who just don't exist in Yalta. I am bored without caviar and sauer- kraut.
I am very sorry you have evidently changed your mind about a visit to Yalta. The Moscow Art Theatre will be here in May, is giving five performances and is then staying on for rehearsals. Do come, you will learn all about the conventions of the stage at rehearsals and will then write a play in five to eight days which I would welcome joyfully, with all my heart.
Yes, I now have the right to expose the fact that I am forty, and no longer a young man. I was the very youngest of the fic- tion writers but you carne on the scene and I immediately grew more sedate and now nobody calls me the youngest any more. I press your hand cordially. Keep well.
Yours,
A. Chekhov
To OLGA KNIPPER
March 26, 1900, Yalta Black melancholy streams from your letter, sweet actress; you are gloomy, and frightfully unhappy, but not for long I should think, as soon, very soon, you will sit in a railway coach and eat snacks with great gusto. It's a good thing you are corning before the others, with Masha; at any rate we will manage to talk about things, take walks, visit places roundabout, eat and drink. But please don't bring Vishnevski along, or else he will trail at our heels and not let anybody get in a word edgewise; he won't let us live in peace, as he will keep on reciting stuff from "Uncle Vanya."
I haven't got a new play, the newspapers are just lying. Gen- erally speaking, the papers have never written the truth about me. If I had begun a new play, naturally you would be the first I would have told of it.
\Ve have a wind here, and real spring weather hasn't come into its own but still we can go out without galoshes and with regular hats. Soon, any day now, the tulips will be in bloom. I have a lovely garden, but it is rather messy and dusty, a sort of dilettante garden.
Gorki is here and praises you and your theatre very highly. I'll introduce you to him.
Goodness! Somebody has driven up. The visitor has j ust come in. Goodbye for now, actress!
Yours,
A. Chekhov
To OLGA KNIPPER
August 8, /900, Ya1ta Greetingj, my sweet little O1)'a, joy of my life,
I got your letter today, the first since your departure, read it, then reread it and now I am answering, my actress. After seeing you off I drove to Kiest's Hotel, where I spent the night; the next day, out of boredom and for want of something better to do, I drove to Balaklava. There I spent my time dodging the ladies who recognized me and wanted to give me an ovation; after a night there I left for Yalta the next morning on the "Tavel." The crossing was fiendishly upsetting. Now I am back home, lonesome, out of sorts, and worn out. Alexeyev [Stani- slavski] was here yesterday. \Ve spoke of the playi and I gave him my word I would finish it not later than September. See what a bright boy I am.
I keep on thinking the door will open and you will walk in. But you won't, you are either attending rehearsals or are at home in Merzlyakovski Lane, far from Yalta and me.
Farewell, and the heavenly powers and guardian angels pre- serve you. Farewell, my good little girl.
Your Antonio
1 The Three Sisters.
To OLGA KNIPPER
August 18, 1900, Yalta
My sweet little pet,
Here are answers to the questions that pop out of your letters. I am not working in Gurzuf but in Yalta, and I am being hin- dered, cruelly, vilely and basely hindered. The playJ is complete in my head, has taken form from where my imagination left off and is pleading to be set onto paper, but hardly do I place a sheet of paper in front of me than the door opens and some ugly mug intrudes. I don't know how it is going to turn out, but the start is not bad, pretty smooth, I think.
Shall we be seeing each other? Yes, we will, but when? The first part of September, in all probability. I am lonesome and in a bad temper. My money is disappearing devilishly fast; I am being ruined and will wind up in the poorhouse. Today we have a most fierce wind, a gale, and the trees are withering. One crane has flown away.
Yes, my sweet bit of an actress, how joyfully, with what purely calflike pleasure would I disport myself in field and forest, beside a stream, amongst the herd. It does seem silly to bring up, but it has been two years since I have seen grass. My preci- ous, how dull is life!
Masha is leaving tomorrow.
Do keep well. ... .
r Your Antonio
Vishnevski doesn't write and is probably angry. Just for that I'll write in a bad part for him.
To OLGA KNIPPER
September 8, 1900, Yalta You write that you find everything bewildering, in confusion. , . . It is good for things to be confused, my sweet little actress, very good! It indicates that you are a philosopher, a woman of parts. 1 The Three Sisters.
So the weather seems to have turned warm? No matter what, the twentieth of September I am leaving for Moscow to stay until the first of October. I'm going to spend all that time sit- ting in my hotel room and working on the play. Shall I write or make a clean copy? I don't know, dear old lady of mine. One of my lady characters just hasn't come off somehow, I can't do a thing with her and am in despair.
I just had a letter from Marx, who tells me my plays will be out in ten days.
I am afraid you may be disillusioned with me. My hair is falling out in terrible quantities, so fast that one fine day you'll take a look at me and a week later find me resembling some- body's grandpappy. Apparently it is the barber's fault, for I started losing my hair the minute I had it cut.
Is Gorki writing a play or isn't he? 'Vhence the note in "News of the Day" about the title "The Three Sisters" not being ap- propriate? 'Vhat stuff and nonsense! Perhaps it isn't suitable, but I have no intention of changing it.
I am terribly blue. Do you know what I mean? Terribly! My diet consists exclusively of soup. It is cold at night, and so I stay horne. There are no handsome young ladies, less and less money, and my beard is turning gray. . . .
My little darling, I kiss your sweet hands, both the right and the left. Keep well and don't feel depressed and don't worry about being confused.
Goodbye for now, my good little Olya. You are a little crocodile wvho has crawled into my heart!
Your Antonio
To MARIA CHEKHOVA
September 9, 1900, Yalta
Dear Masha,
This is in reply to the letter in which you ask about Mother. In my opinion it would be better for her to go to Moscow now, this fall, rather than after December. Why, in Moscow she would get tired and lonesome for Yalta in a month, and if you take her to Moscow in the fall, she will be back in Yalta again at Christmas. That's how I look at it, and I may possibly be mistaken, but at any rate in reaching a decision you must bear in mind that it is much duller in Yalta before Christmas than after; incomparably duller. . . .