After The Lower Depths: A Night at the Hermitage Restaurant

In this early twentieth-century photograph, carriages stand outside the corner building on Neglinnaya Street. Two façades face the roadway; a restaurant sign looms above the central arch, although its smaller lettering cannot be fully made out in the image. On the evening of 18 December 1902, actors and writers gathered here after the first performance of The Lower Depths at the Moscow Art Theatre.

On stage stood Viktor Simov’s lodging house: rough wooden bunks, curtains and closely packed sleeping pallets. That same night, the performers found themselves in the Hermitage’s white, colonnaded hall, designed for Moscow’s affluent public. Olga Knipper-Chekhova’s letters preserve the transition from theatrical triumph to restaurant supper more faithfully than later retellings.

By December 1902, the establishment had been in existence for almost four decades. In 1864, according to Moscow Heritage magazine, the merchant Yakov Pegov and chef Lucien Olivier opened the Hermitage Olivier. The tale of their meeting beside a policeman’s sentry box over some fine snuff is a later legend. Other circumstances are documented: the tavern opened near Trubnaya Square, operated in the French style, and its guests were served by Moscow waiters in white shirts with silk sashes. Gilyarovsky recalled its communal dining rooms, private rooms and white, colonnaded hall. From the early 1890s, foreign businessmen and Russian merchants joined the traditional aristocratic clientele in the grand hall.

Two days before the premiere

On 16 December, Knipper recorded the preliminary plans for the forthcoming supper. Alexander Vishnevsky told her that Gorky had asked for a reception to be arranged at the Hermitage for about fifty people. The same account mentioned flowers promised for the ladies and champagne that was to flow freely. The letter records the plan before the premiere; it does not describe the actual cost, number of guests or table arrangements at the event itself.

The Moscow Art Theatre scheduled the premiere for 18 December 1902 according to the calendar then in use in Russia — 31 December in the New Style. The production was directed by Konstantin Stanislavsky and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, with sets designed by Viktor Simov. Stanislavsky played Satin, Ivan Moskvin played Luka, Vasily Kachalov the Baron, and Knipper-Chekhova Nastya. Before gathering beneath the restaurant’s columns that evening, they first had to appear before the audience as inhabitants of a lodging house.

Knipper described the performance without any haze of grandeur: everything was ‘simple, true to life, without tragedy’. It was precisely this restraint that gave the production its power. The audience repeatedly called for the author and performers; the actress compared the reception to the first performance of Chekhov’s The Seagull. In Simov’s stage setting, poverty was no picturesque backdrop: the cramped space and worn belongings shaped every movement of the large ensemble.

After the curtain calls, the evening continued beyond the theatre. The participants gathered at the Hermitage and settled into the colonnaded hall. Gilyarovsky wrote that dinners resembling Olivier’s receptions in private mansions were ordered here, and that the restaurant became particularly lively after performances. That night, the occasion was the premiere of Gorky’s play, which had just ended.

The white hall after the lodging house

On the morning of 20 December, Knipper wrote to Chekhov that the evening had been relaxed, ‘simple, without speeches’, before immediately clarifying: without any serious speeches. After their resounding success, the participants dispensed with formal ceremony. The letter preserves a rapid succession of people, sounds and shifts in mood.

Among the guests, Knipper named Baroness Varvara Ikskul, literary scholar Fyodor Batyushkov, Leonid Andreyev and his wife, Ivan Bunin, playwright Sergei Naydyonov, the poet and musician Skitalets, and writer Natalia Krandiyevskaya. Actors from the Art Theatre were there too. Writers, performers and members of Moscow society spent several hours together in the same hall, although the letter gives neither the exact number of those present nor their seating arrangements.

Anton Chekhov was in Yalta and learnt about the premiere through letters and newspapers. On 22 December, he asked his wife to describe the supper in detail and jokingly enquired what the guests had managed to eat and drink for eight hundred roubles. The figure of eight hundred roubles entered the story through Chekhov’s question, not Knipper’s account of the supper. The playwright was present only as a voice in a letter, awaiting details of an evening he had not attended.

Nemirovich-Danchenko did make a speech after all. According to Knipper, he spoke humorously and impersonated Gorky, as the author himself had asked him to speak. Knipper does not quote his exact words, so his jokes remain unknown. What the witness remembered was his manner: after the intense concentration of the performance, the director avoided any official solemnity.

The gusli and the late-night scandal

Knipper listed the musical details without providing an exact programme or chronology. Skitalets played the gusli and sang; an accordion and balalaika were heard in the hall, while guests sang Romani songs and danced a Russian folk dance if they wished. The letter also mentions cognac. The unrestrained clamour of the company after the weighty performance survives in a few short lines.

In the course of one evening, the actors inhabited two starkly different spaces: Simov’s lodging-house set and the restaurant hall where aristocrats, businessmen and university professors had once dined. Such was the Moscow rhythm of that night: after the performance, the participants gathered for supper on Neglinnaya Street.

The Hermitage had long hosted gatherings of writers and academics. In March 1879, Moscow writers and professors held a farewell dinner here for Ivan Turgenev; in 1899, a Pushkin dinner took place in the white hall. The restaurant was transformed for Tatiana Day. According to Gilyarovsky’s recollections, the expensive silk-covered furniture was removed, the floor was thickly strewn with sawdust, and plain wooden tables and chairs were brought in. Students celebrated alongside their favourite professors, writers and lawyers. The hall had been changing its social character long before that December night in 1902.

Later, the mood was shattered. Gorky left, and a man named Baranov, Knipper reported, became angry and began shouting and smashing glasses and plates. Some of the company stayed until morning and waited for the newspapers to arrive. In another letter, the actress explained to Chekhov that Gorky’s departure had enraged Baranov; she said the scene had spoilt the favourable impression. This commonplace quarrel brought to an end an evening that had begun with a theatrical triumph.

The morning after the premiere

Knipper preserved the unpleasant ending. She recorded the music, dancing and convivial mood, but alongside them the shouting and smashed crockery. The production’s later fame did not alter her letter: as a witness, she left behind the two unequal parts of a single night without reshaping them to fit a commemorative legend.

The theatrical record preserved the date of the premiere and the names of the directors, designer and performers. The correspondence added a human dimension: the plan for a supper for about fifty people, the named guests, the colonnaded hall, Nemirovich-Danchenko’s humorous speech, Skitalets’s gusli and the morning newspapers. The original plan, the evening itself and Chekhov’s later question belong to different letters and different moments in this story.

That night, the Hermitage became an extension of the theatrical event. The company showed the audience society’s lowest depths and then gathered at the restaurant with writers and other guests. They talked and sang, and towards morning waited for the newspapers to arrive. Without any prearranged ceremony, the restaurant linked the stage with Moscow’s literary milieu.

On the ‘Uncle Gilyai and His Times’ tour the Hermitage restaurant stands alongside the theatres and Gilyarovsky’s stories of city life. The connection is direct: the memoirist described the establishment’s layout and clientele, while the correspondence between Knipper and Chekhov preserved the events of one evening inside its white hall.

In the old photograph, carriages wait outside the façade. The image does not reveal who arrived after the performance or who was the first to leave the restaurant. By seven in the morning, some of the company were still waiting for the newspapers. After the scandal, Knipper rushed out into the vestibule, and Nemirovich-Danchenko took her home. With this brief departure, the letter brings the night after the first performance of The Lower Depths to a close.

Sources

1. Chekhov Moscow Art Theatre: The Lower Depths (1902)
2. The Correspondence of Anton Chekhov and Olga Knipper-Chekhova
3. Vladimir Gilyarovsky. Moscow and Muscovites
4. Moscow Heritage. Special Issue, 2019