ABSTRACT
During the first period of our acquaintance, before the Art Theatre had come into existence, people met occasionally at official dinners, celebrations, in theatres. The author meets Chekhov in the A. S. Suvorin bookshop in Moscow. The rehearsals on The Seagull were temporarily halted. The performance of The Seagull was given under terrible conditions. And meantime Chekhov himself was languishing in Moscow. The wind was so strong that a stagehand had to stand behind each wing and hold it up so it would not topple over toward the audience with every gust of wind. Finally, it was almost the end of June, people got word that Olga Knipper-Chekhov was well enough to go out, but there was no possibility of her undertaking the long journey to Yalta. So we proposed that he and his wife and Vishnevski occupy our wing of the house on my mother's estate where usually spent our summers. This was near Moscow, on the Yaroslavl railway.
