I only stayed a short time in St. Petersburg, and then I went to Moscow, to the house of Marie Karlovna von Kotz, a lady who took in English pupils, mostly officers in the British Army, to teach them Russian. She lived in an out-of-the-way street, on the second story of a small house, and gave one or two lessons every day. She was a fine teacher, and a brilliant musician; an energetic and extremely competent woman, and an example of the best type of the intelligentsia.
One day, a friend of hers, a young married lady, came in and said she was starting for the Far East, as a hospital nurse. She seemed to be full of enthusiasm. She was a young and charming person, bristling with energy and intelligence. The sequel of this story was a strange one. A year later, she reappeared at Marie Karlovna’s house—I think she had been to the war in the meantime—and said: “I am now going to the Far West,” and she went to Paris. She stayed there a short time, and then came back to Moscow and went to the play every night, bought jewels, went to hear the gipsies, and then quite suddenly shot herself on Tchekov’s tomb. The explanation of her act being her disgust with public events and her wish to give her land to the peasants. She left her estate to them in her will. In the normal course of things it would go to her brother, but her brother was a fanatical reactionary, and she killed herself rather than he should have it. But, as it turned out, she had reckoned without Russian law, which said that the wills and bequests of those who committed suicide in Russia were null and void, and so the property went to her brother after all. Suicides at the tomb of Tchekov became so frequent that a barrier was put round it, and people were forbidden to visit it.
There were one or more other pupils living in Marie Karlovna’s house besides the English Consul, who used to board there. We used to have dinner at two o’clock in the afternoon, and a late supper, ending in tea, which used to go on till far into the night. It was there I made my first acquaintance with the peculiar comfortless comfort of Russian life among the intelligentsia. Nothing could seemingly and theoretically be more uncomfortable; the hours irregular; no door to any room ever being shut; no fireplaces, only a stove lit once every twenty-four hours; visitors drifting in, and sitting and talking for hours; but nothing in practice was more comfortable. There was an indescribable ease about the life, a complete absence of fuss, a fluid intimacy without any of the formalities, any of the small conventions and minute ritual that distinguish German bourgeois life and, indeed, are a part of its charm. In Russia, everybody seemed to take everybody and everything for granted. There were no barriers, no rules, no obstacles. No explanations were ever thought necessary or were either ever asked for or given. Time, too, had no meaning. One long conversation succeeded another, into which different people drifted, and from which people departed without anyone asking why or whence or whither. Moscow in winter was a comfortable city. The snow was deep; sometimes in the evening we would go to the montagnes Russes and toboggan down a steep chute, and more often I would go to the play.
At that time the Art Theatre at Moscow, the Hudozhestvenii Teater, was at the height of its glory and of its excellence. This theatre had been started about four years previously by a company of well-to-do amateurs under the direction of M. Stanislavsky. I believe, although I am not quite sure, they began by acting The Mikado for fun, continued acting for pleasure, and determined to spare neither trouble nor expense in making their performances as perfect as possible. They took a theatre, and gave performances almost for nothing, but the success of these performances was so great, the public so affluent, that they were obliged to take a new theatre and charge high prices. Gradually the Art Theatre became a public institution. In 1904 they possessed the best all-round theatre in Russia, if not in Europe.
The rise of such a theatre in Russia was not the same thing as that of an Art Theatre would be in London. For in Moscow and St. Petersburg there were large State-paid theatres where ancient and modern drama was performed by highly trained and excellent artists; but it stood in relation to these theatres as the Théâtre Antoine to the Comédie Française, the Vaudeville, and the Gymnase in Paris: with this difference, that the acting, though equally finished, was more natural, and the quality of the plays performed unique on the European stage. The Art Theatre made the reputation of Tchekov as a dramatist. His first serious play, Ivanov, was performed at one of the minor theatres at Moscow, and we can read in his letters what he thought of that performance. Another of his important plays, The Seagull (Chaika), was performed at one of the big State-paid theatres at St. Petersburg, and well performed, but on conventional lines. It is not surprising the play failed. When this same play was performed by the Art Theatre at Moscow, it was triumphantly and instantly successful. The reason is that Tchekov’s plays demand a peculiar treatment on the stage to make their subtle points tell, and cross the footlights. In them the clash of events is subservient to the human figure; and the human figure itself to the atmosphere in which it is plunged. Later, I saw The Seagull played at a State theatre at St. Petersburg, long after Tchekov’s reputation was firmly established. It was well played, but the effect of the play was ruined, or rather non-existent. In London, I saw The Cherry Orchard and another play of his done, where the company had not even realised the meaning of the action, besides being costumed in the most grotesquely impossible clothes, as grotesque and impossible as it would be to put on the English stage a member of Parliament returning from the House of Commons in a kilt, or dressed as a harlequin. One of the most dramatic situations in one of these plays had simply escaped the notice of the producer, and was allowed not only to fall flat, but was not rendered at all. It was this: a man, who has been wounded in the head and has a bandage, has a quarrel with his mother, and in a passion of rage, he tears his bandage from his head, with the object of reopening his wound, and killing himself. The company had, I suppose, read the stage direction, which says: “Man removes bandage,” and the words of the scene were spoken without any emotion or emphasis, and at one moment, the man quietly removed his bandage, and dropped it on the floor, as though it were in the way, or as if he were throwing down a cigarette which he has done with.
In Moscow, in the Art Theatre, every effect was made to tell, and the acting was so natural that on one occasion I remember a man in the stage-box joining in the conversation and contradicting one of the actors. Although the ensemble of the troupe was superlative, they had no actor or actress of outstanding genius, no Duse, no Sarah Bernhardt, no Irving, no Chaliapine; on the other hand, there was not one small part which was not more than adequately played.
In 1904, they had just produced The Cherry Orchard by Tchekov, and soon afterwards, Tchekov died. That winter, I saw The Cherry Orchard and Uncle Vania, Shakespeare’s Julius Cæsar, and Hauptmann’s Lonely Lives.
The end of Uncle Vania was unforgettable. The subject and action of that play can be summed up in a few words. The play is called Scenes from Country Life. A professor, not unlike Casaubon, in Middlemarch, marries a young and beautiful wife. His estate is managed by his first wife’s brother, Uncle Vania, assisted by his niece, a good girl ill-favoured in looks. Astroff, a doctor, is called in to minister to the professor. Uncle Vania is in love with the professor’s wife. His niece, Sonia, is in love with Astroff. The professor’s wife, a non-moral, well-meaning Circe, is interested, but not more than interested, in the doctor, and flirts with him enough to prevent his marrying the girl. The nerves of these various characters, under the stress of the situation, are worked up to such a pitch, that Uncle Vania actually tries to kill the professor, and shoots at him twice, but misses him. Then the professor and his wife go away; the doctor goes back to his practice, and Uncle Vania and his niece are left behind to resume the tenor of their way. You see the good-byes: a half-passionate, half-cynical good-bye, between the professor’s wife and the doctor—the professor says good-bye to Uncle Vania, and to Uncle Vania’s old mother. You hear the bells of the horses outside, in the autumn evening. One after another, Uncle Vania’s mother, his niece, and the old servant of the house come in and say: “They have gone!”
When I first saw the play, this is what I wrote about it, and I have nothing to add, nor could I put it differently:
“Described, this appears insignificant; seen, acted as it is with incomparable naturalness, it is indescribably effective. In this scene a particular mood, which we have all felt, is captured and rendered; a certain chord is struck which exists in all of us; that kind of ‘toothache at heart’ which we feel when a sudden parting takes place and we are left behind. The parting need not necessarily be a sad one. But the tenor of our life is interrupted. As a rule the leaves of life are turned over so quickly and noiselessly by Time that we are not aware of the process. In the case of a sudden parting we hear the leaf of life turn over and fall back into the great blurred book of the past—read, finished, and irrevocable. It is this hearing of the turning leaf which Tchekov has rendered merely by three people coming into a room one after another and saying: ‘They’ve gone!’