Anton Chekhov to Olga Knipper
    The Russian playwright, Anton Chekhov, met the actress Olga Knipper for the first time on September 9, 1898, during rehearsals for his play The Seagull. He was 38 and she was 10 years younger. Shortly after their meeting, Chekhov, who had advanced tuberculosis, went south from Moscow to Yalta in the Crimea for the good of his health. He took with him memories of Olga's voice, her nobility and warmth. He told a friend that if he had staying on in Moscow he would have fallen in love. Olga, like the rest of the company, found Chekhov's charm overwhelming. Soon a correspondence developed between them, Anton relying on Olga's letters to keep him in touch with the wider world. Courtship and marriage followed, characterized by brief meetings and long separations; but their relationship, founded on love, was sound. Their letters to each other were a source of joy and consolation, through illness and separation.
    Chekhov, descend from serfs and trained as a doctor, had supported his family since 1879. As well as tending the sick, he busied himself visiting school and establishing libraries. But Chekhov earned most of his income selling comic stories to magazines. Gradually he raised his literary sights, and by the time he met Olga he had a growing reputation as writer and dramatist.
    Family necessity brought Olga to the theater too. When her apparently well-off father died in 1894, he left his family heavily in debt. To earn a living Olga gave music lessons. In 1895 she entered drama school, and three years later joined the new Moscow Art Theater. When Anton met her--a tall and elegant woman, with dark-brown hair, vivid eyes, and an expressive face--she and the company were about to take Moscow by storm with a vibrant interpretation of The Seagull. They brilliantly revealed the passion he concealed beneath the quietly comic surfaces of Russian life. This same wry sense of humor sustained the sensitive writer throughout the years that he suffered from the debilitating symptoms of tuberculosis.
    In May 1899, with spring in full flower, Chekhov invited Olga to his mother's home in the country. In her memoirs Olga recalled happily,

"We had three days filled with a sense of anticipation, with joy and sun."
Over the summer they corresponded, Chekhov addressing her with,

"Greetings, last page of my life, great actress of the Russian land."
Their relationship took a decisive turn in August, when Olga, who was staying with family friends in Yalta, traveled back to Moscow with Anton. Part of the way took them by carriage through the beautiful Kokkoz Valley. There they came to some kind of "agreement". Anton later wrote to Olga saying how he scarcely went into his beautiful Yalta garden, but sat indoors and thought of her, remembering their journey together. He wrote,

"I warmly press and kiss your hand. Be well, merry, happy, work, skip about, be enthusiastic, sing and, if possible, don't forget the retired author, your devout admirer. A. Chekhov."
    Olga became his mistress in the summer of 1899, flirtation turning to a deep and sincere love. Their life was full of partings, and they were separated for long stretches. Chekhov lived n warm, dull Yalta, while Olga continued her career in glamorous but cold Moscow. However, that summer chekhov, partly through fear and partly out of consideration, was slow to propose. On August 13, Olga complained to Chekhov's devoted sister, Masha,

"Can anyone come to a decision with him?"
The following month, on September 27, Chekhov wrote defending himself,

"If we're not together now, it's not my fault or yours, but that of the devil who implanted the bacilli in me and the love of art in you."
    There were many things to consider. How would marriage to Anton in far-off Yalta affect Olga's acting career? What about Masha, who had turned down offers of marriage to look after him? Would the strain of marriage, as Masha believed, be too much for Anton? Chekhov himself had an inner core of loneliness, made worse by his illness, that made him afraid of committing himself to another person. Sometimes his good-humored self-sufficiency seemed to Olga like indifference.
    Eventually, however, he gave in to pressure, and they married, secretly and happily, on May 25, 1901, in Moscow. To avoid any fuss or sentimentality, Anton invited most of his friends and relatives to a dinner in Moscow, which he and Olga deliberately failed to attend. Even Masha and her mother first heard the news by telegram. In his plays and prose, Chekhov had often portrayed marriages as either comic or unhappy. Perhaps he was embarrassed to have succumbed at last, after so many years of flirtations and short affairs.
But in December 1902, he had one regret, he wrote,

"We have one fault in common, we married each other too late."
    After the wedding their long separations continued. A child might have kept them together, but Olga miscarried. Then, inevitably, Chekhov's illness worsened and on July 1, 1904, he died. Olga was at his bedside. At the last, he was given champagne. Glass in hand, he smiled and said,

"It's a long while since I've drunk champagne."
He drank it, turned on his side and died moments later. A huge black moth suddenly flew in through the open window, batted wildly against the lamp, and then found its way out, leaving silence. Olga later consoled herself with the recollection:

"There was only beauty, peace and the grandeur of death."





Text from
Famous Love Letters
Messages of Intimacy and Passion
Edited by Ronald Tamplin