Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky

Reading notes

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 10 January 1886. Moscow. §2 Bank

  Chekhov's joking nickname for his childhood friend Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, playing on the idea of Dyukovsky as a source of ready cash -- a running joke sustained through the letter's request for a loan.

• To Yu. I. Lyadova, 18 November 1879. Moscow. §5 Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky

  One of the medical students who boarded with the Chekhov family in their first Moscow apartment; a recurring presence in the household's domestic life of these years.

• To Yu. I. Lyadova, 21 September 1880. Moscow. §4 Mikhail Dyukovsky

  Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, the medical student boarding with the Chekhov family, here toasted in mock-heroic terms for a minor decoration.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 5 February 1883. Moscow. §4 Mikhail Mikhailovich

  Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, a medical student who had boarded with the Chekhov family in their first Moscow apartment; here the recipient of a letter about placing a manuscript, evidently his own or a relative's literary effort.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 5 October 1888. Moscow. §2 Mikhail Mikhailovich

  Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, a medical student who had boarded with the Chekhov family in their early Moscow years -- not to be confused with Anton's cousin Mikhail Mikhailovich Chekhov, addressee of the 1877 letter, who shares the same given name and patronymic but is a different man entirely.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 5 October 1888. Moscow. §9 Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky

  The letter's addressee, distinct from Anton's cousin of the same given name and patronymic, Mikhail Mikhailovich Chekhov.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 13 December 1888. Petersburg. §2 Mikhail Mikhailovich

  Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, the same acquaintance at the Meshchanskoye School near the Kaluga Gate whom Chekhov had asked to lend him the Address-Calendar of Moscow in the earlier letter -- not to be confused with Anton's cousin of the identical given name and patronymic, Mikhail Mikhailovich Chekhov, addressee of the 1877 letter. The two men share a name but are distinct individuals; this is the second surviving note to this Dyukovsky.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 13 December 1888. Petersburg. §9 Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky

  The letter's addressee. As at, this Dyukovsky is distinct from Anton's cousin of the same given name and patronymic, Mikhail Mikhailovich Chekhov; the two are unrelated men who happen to share a name, and should not be conflated in the apparatus.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 7 January 1889. Moscow. §3 Mikhail Mikhailovich

  The addressee, Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, is named here only by first name and patronymic, in keeping with the letter's familiar tone. He is identified elsewhere in the corpus (see and its headnote) as a medical student who had boarded with the Chekhov family in their first Moscow apartment. This letter's own content -- passing on a bookselling discount for the Meshchansky School -- suggests some ongoing connection to that school by 1889, but the letter itself gives no further identifying detail; the household-boarder identification is carried over from the earlier letter and should be treated as the best available link pending any further letters to him that might confirm or refine it.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 24 June 1889. Sumy. §7 I am very glad that you are getting married.

  Chekhov's condolence reply pivots, in the letter's characteristic terse compression, from his brother's death directly to congratulating Dyukovsky on his own upcoming marriage -- the ordinary business of correspondence resuming within the same paragraph as the grief.

• To M. M. Dyukovsky, 24 June 1889. Sumy. §14 The Meshchanskoye School

  Dyukovsky's postal address near the Kaluga Gate in Moscow, consistent with his identification (a former Chekhov household student-boarder, connected to the Meshchansky School) in the and apparatus.