MELIHOVO,
October 22, 1896.
In your last letter (of October 18) you three times call me womanish, and
say that I was in a funk. Why this libel? After the performance I had
supper at Romanov’s. On my word of honour. Then I went to bed, slept
soundly, and next day went home without uttering a sound of complaint. If I
had been in a funk I should have run from editor to editor and actor to
actor, should have nervously entreated them to be considerate, should
nervously have inserted useless corrections and should have spent two or
three weeks in Petersburg fussing over my “Seagull,” in excitement, in a
cold perspiration, in lamentation.... When you were with me the night after
the performance you told me yourself that it would be the best thing for me
to go away; and next morning I got a letter from you to say good-bye. How
did I show funk? I acted as coldly and reasonably as a man who has made an
offer, received a refusal, and has nothing left but to go. Yes, my vanity
was stung, but you know it was not a bolt from the blue; I was expecting a
failure, and was prepared for it, as I warned you with perfect sincerity
beforehand.
When I got home I took a dose of castor oil, and had a cold bath, and now I
am ready to write another play. I no longer feel exhausted and irritable,
and am not afraid that Davydov and Jean will come to me and talk about the
play. I agree with your corrections, and a thousand thanks for them. Only
please don’t regret that you were not at the rehearsals. You know there was
in reality only one rehearsal, at which one could make out nothing. One
could not see the play at all through the loathsome acting.
I have got a telegram from Potapenko--“A colossal success.” I have had a
letter from Mlle. Veselitsky (Mikulitch) whom I don’t know. She expresses
her sympathy in a tone as if one of my family were dead. It’s really quite
inappropriate; that’s all nonsense, though.
My sister is delighted with you and Anna Ivanovna, and I am inexpressibly
glad of it, for I love your family like my own. She hastened home from
Petersburg, possibly imagining that I would hang myself....