The Mystery of Olga Chekhova Read Online Free PDF

lower. Her French and German were adequate and she distinguished herself only in art. The reaction of many within the family was that ‘such a beauty didn’t need to go to school anyway’.
    Young Olga longed to go on the stage, but her father, Konstantin, absolutely forbade any idea of the theatre as a career. He could not say so, out of loyalty to his sister, the great symbol of the Moscow Art Theatre, but actresses, like ballerinas, were seen in imperial Russia as not much better than high-class prostitutes. Yet Lulu, her mother, seems to have secretly sympathized. According to young Olga, her aunt, when acting for a season in St Petersburg, brought the great Italian actress Eleanora Duse to the house. Duse, she later claimed, patted her head and said: ‘You will definitely become an actress one day, my little one.’ Nobody, however, would have predicted that, like Aunt Olya, Olga too would marry into the Chekhov family, although in her case the marriage would prove disastrous.

3. Mikhail Chekhov
     
    The acting talents of Olga’s future husband, Misha Chekhov, were evident from an early age. In 1907, when he was just sixteen, his besotted mother, Natalya, moved him to the school of the Maly Theatre in St Petersburg. He studied there for three years and graduated with distinction. In October 1911, aged only nineteen, he was given the lead role in the Maly’s production of Aleksei Tolstoy’s Tsar Feodor. It was the play which had launched the Moscow Art Theatre just before The Seagull and brought fame, as well as Chekhov’s attention, to Aunt Olya in the role of the Tsarina Irina.
    Misha was an instant success. He had an extraordinary gift for mimicry, both facial and vocal, while his mesmerizing eyes and haunted face allowed him to play old men convincingly even before he was twenty. A first cousin, Sergei Chekhov, described Misha in the spring of 1912: ‘He was short, thin and moved restlessly. He dressed carelessly in a shabby velvet jacket and, horror of horrors, he did not just lack a starched collar, he wore no collar at all. But he had a captivating tenderness about him. He was warm and had a sweet smile which made one forget that he was not handsome. He would pull up his trousers in a characteristic gesture of exaggerated elegance, and rolled his eyes in an amusing way.’ The two of them went for walks together, fooled around and danced the tango, which was then the rage in St Petersburg. Misha gave his cousin a photograph of himself frowning and signed it with the words: ‘This is how I look after the tango.’
    During the spring of 1912, the Moscow Art Theatre came to St Petersburg for its annual season. Anton Chekhov’s sister, Masha, the devoted guardian of the playwright’s flame, arranged for him to meet her sister-in-law Olga Knipper Chekhova, still the star of the Moscow Art Theatre, and she in turn promised to arrange an audition with Stanislavsky. Misha spent a sleepless night beforehand, so keen was he to join the company. The next morning he found that the collar of his only suitable shirt was so tight that it produced a ringing in the ears, and his trousers had to be hauled up so high ‘as if I had to step over puddles’.
    ‘Thank you, Aunt Masha,’ he wrote afterwards. ‘I can imagine what a silly and funny impression I made upon them. I am terribly shy. I can’t speak, and when I meet a person for the first time, I can’t even say two words.’ But Stanislavsky recognized his talent immediately and invited him to join the Moscow Art Theatre. The fact that he was a nephew of the theatre’s patron saint was certainly not a hindrance. In August of that year, Misha left St Petersburg for Moscow.
    At first he lived under Aunt Masha’s wing in her apartment on Dolgorukovskaya ulitsa. She was a vegetarian at the time and was teased by the rest of the family. Misha called his aunt ‘the Countess’, and kissed her hand most elaborately. When he returned to St Petersburg the following