person
Ivanov (Sumy notary)
Ivanov
also: Иванов, notary Ivanov, нотариус Иванов
A notary in Sumy, engaged at some point before January 1892 to draw up a power of attorney so that Chekhov and Natalya Mikhailovna Lintvaryova could jointly buy the Yatsenko farmstead; the power of attorney went unused when that end of the negotiation lapsed and remained with him as, in Chekhov's wry phrase, "a keepsake, a pleasant memory of us." The first half of the letter's running joke about notaries named Ivanov; distinct from the Petersburg notary of the same surname engaged separately in Smagin's name for the same farmstead (first named in) -- the two are different men who happen to share Russia's most common surname, not the same person recalled inconsistently.
Reading notes
- To N. M. Lintvareva, 18 January 1892. Derevnya Belaya. §3 in Sumy I ordered a power of attorney from the notary
Ivanov ... that power of attorney remained with poor Ivanov as a
keepsake
The first of two same-named notaries in this passage's running joke: a Sumy notary named Ivanov, engaged at some earlier point to draw up a power of attorney so that Chekhov and Lintvaryova could jointly buy the Yatsenko farmstead. That power of attorney went unused when the Sumy end of the negotiation stalled, left with the notary as a mere "keepsake." This Ivanov is a distinct person from the "likeable" Petersburg notary Ivanov of the next sentence (first named in and again in, engaged there in Smagin's name for the same farmstead): the corpus treats the two as separate individuals who happen to share Russia's most common surname, not as a single entity or a narrative inconsistency. Chekhov's own joke in this section -- that he is "created for the punishment of notaries named Ivanov" -- depends on there being two of them.