Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov

Reading notes

• To V. V. Bilibin, 4 April 1886. Moscow. §22 Худекова

  Sergei Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the Petersburg Gazette, for which Chekhov was a regular contributor; Chekhov's inquiry after Khudekov's whereabouts sets up his plan to ask him directly for a raise in pay.

• To N. A. Leikin, 17 November 1884. Moscow. §6 Khudekov

  Editor of the Peterburgskaya Gazeta; Leikin had evidently relayed his request for brief factual court items rather than full feuilletons, which Chekhov initially misunderstood.

• To N. A. Leikin, 26 November 1884. Moscow. §8 Khudekov's

  Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the Peterburgskaya gazeta, whose exacting standards Chekhov, as a new and inexperienced court reporter, worried he was failing to meet.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 26 January 1887. Moscow. §4 Khudekov's letter

  Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the Peterburgskaya Gazeta, whose letter apparently confirmed Chekhov's new, higher per-line rate.

• To N. A. Leikin, 23 April 1888. Moscow. §6 he had said as much to Khudekov, and to him as well

  Sergei Khudekov, editor of "Peterburgskaya gazeta." Referent tracking: it is Khudekov -- not Pleshcheyev -- whom Leikin is said to have told about the supposed bonus; Pleshcheyev is only relaying the story to Chekhov.

• To N. A. Leikin, 23 April 1888. Moscow. §7 you spoke of this reward to Khudekov only in order to embarrass him -- Khudekov, I mean

  Chekhov's parenthetical "-- Khudekov, I mean --" is his own clarifying aside against exactly this ambiguity: the pronoun "him" refers to Khudekov, the editor Leikin was pressuring into paying Chekhov's customary bonus, not to Pleshcheyev, who has no stake in the transaction and is merely the messenger of loc 6.

• To A. S. Suvorin, 17 December 1888. Moscow. §10 I got a telegram from Khudekov. He is asking me to send him a story of 200 lines for Christmas and is offering a hundred rubles for it.

  Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the Peterburgskaya Gazeta, already established in this corpus (first appearance); reused here for this Christmas-story commission, which adds a new, concrete commercial detail (200 lines, 100 rubles) to his established identity.

• To N. A. Leikin, 22 December 1888. Moscow. §10 I have sent Khudekov a story

  Sergei Nikolayevich Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the Petersburg "Peterburgskaya Gazeta," to whom Chekhov contributed stories; the story sent is not named in the source and should not be guessed at.

• To N. A. Leikin, 21 February 1889. Moscow. §9 called on Khudekov

  Sergei Nikolayevich Khudekov, editor of the Petersburg "Peterburgskaya Gazeta," here the owner of the dachshund puppies Chekhov jokes about wanting to take.

• To N. A. Leikin, 21 February 1889. Moscow. §10 the Khudekovs. Khudekov's wife

  Khudekov's wife is praised as "a very agreeable woman" but is not named in this letter beyond that description; left unlinked as an unresolved entity.

• To the Chekhovs, 31 December 1891. Petersburg. §6 Khudekov

  Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the Peterburgskaya Gazeta, first attested at in connection with Chekhov's court-reporting work for the paper. Here he calls on Chekhov in person at year's end and offers 40 kopecks a line -- a concrete rate offer reported alongside the news that the family will begin receiving the paper itself.

• To N. M. Yezhov, 2 January 1892. Petersburg. §6 Khudekov handed me two engraved medals (silver, unfortunately) to pass on to you and A. Gruzinsky.

  Sergei Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the \emph{Peterburgskaya Gazeta}, for whom Chekhov had earlier covered the Rykov bank-fraud trial. The jubilee marks an anniversary of the paper; the medals are keepsakes for contributors, and Chekhov's parenthetical -- 'silver, unfortunately' -- is a wry aside implying he'd have preferred gold, characteristic of his deflating humor even inside a genuinely warm gesture.

• To N. M. Yezhov, 2 January 1892. Petersburg. §6 The same Khudekov has set my rate at 40 kopecks a line and given me 200 rubles against future work, though I did not ask him for it.

  A concrete record of Chekhov's standing as a working journalist at this date: an unsolicited 40-kopeck-per-line rate from Khudekov's paper, with 200 rubles advanced against future copy -- the kind of running author's-ledger detail that recurs throughout the letters (cf. the running tally against \emph{The Duel} in \S5). The 'though I did not ask him for it' is a small note of pride: the terms were offered, not solicited.

• To A. S. Lazarev, 13 March 1890. Moscow. §9 Худекову я напишу

  Sergei Nikolaevich Khudekov, editor and co-owner of the "Peterburgskaya Gazeta" -- a separate outlet from Suvorin's "Novoye Vremya" -- to whom Chekhov promises to write on Lazarev's behalf, presumably to help place or promote Lazarev's work there. Chekhov had himself contributed to Khudekov's paper earlier in his career, so the promise draws on his own standing credit with the editor rather than a fresh introduction.