The Lintvaryov Estate

Reading notes

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 25 April 1888. Moscow. §5 the Lintvaryov estate

  The country estate near Sumy that the Chekhov family would go on to rent as a summer dacha for several years running; this letter, inviting Barantsevich to visit, is an early reference to the arrangement.

• To V. G. Korolenko, 2 May 1888. Moscow. §3 the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family estate (Luka) near Sumy, Kharkov province, where the Chekhov household spent the summer of 1888; Chekhov gives Korolenko the full mailing address and route in anticipation of his promised visit.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 3 May 1888. Moscow. §3 Sumy, Kharkov province, the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family's estate near Sumy, in Kharkov province, where Chekhov and his family summered in 1888; he gives this as his new mailing address for the season.

• To V. A. Tikhonov, 4 May 1888. Moscow. §5 the town of Sumy, Kharkov Province, the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family's country estate near Sumy, where Chekhov and his family would summer for the next several years; he gives Tikhonov the same address supplied in the earlier April letter.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 4 May 1888. Moscow. §4 the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family's country estate near Sumy, Kharkov province, which the Chekhov household is about to rent for the summer of 1888 -- one of the earliest letters naming this address, to which Anton, his mother, and his sister depart the following day.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 1888. Sumy. §2 the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family estate near Sumy, on the Psyol, where Chekhov and his family spent the summers of 1888-1889; this letter's dateline gives the full address he wants Alexander to use.

• To I. P. Chekhov, 7–8 May 1888. Sumy. §3 The dacha is splendid

  The dacha is the wing of the Lintvaryov family's estate ('Luka') near Sumy, which the Chekhov household has just rented for the summer of 1888 -- their first season there.

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 10 May 1888. Sumy. §4 town of Sumy, Kharkov province, the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family estate near Sumy where the Chekhov household would summer for the first time in 1888; Chekhov gives Barantsevich the full mailing address, as he was doing in his letters to other correspondents around this date.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 10 May 1888. Sumy. §2 the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family's country estate near Sumy, which the Chekhov household was renting as a summer dacha in 1888, the first of several summers spent there.

• To N. A. Leikin, 11 May 1888. Sumy. §5 The landowners on whose estate I am staying are good, cheerful people.

  Referent tracking: "the landowners" are the Lintvaryov family, third parties being described to Leikin as Chekhov's summer hosts -- not Leikin himself, who has no connection to the estate.

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 17 May 1888. Sumy. §2 Sumy, Kharkov Province, the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family estate near Sumy where the Chekhov household summered from 1888 on; Chekhov gives Barantsevich the same address he was circulating to correspondents that spring.

• To Al. P. Chekhov, 27 May 1888. Sumy. §2 the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family's country estate near Sumy, where the Chekhov household summered beginning in 1888; this letter is written from there in the first weeks of that first Sumy summer.

• To I. L. Leontyev, 9 June 1888. Sumy. §2 the estate of A. V. Lintvaryova

  The Lintvaryov family estate near Sumy, on the Psyol, where Chekhov and his family spent the summer of 1888.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 12 June 1888. Sumy. §3 the three weeks I spent at Luka

  "Luka" is Chekhov's familiar name for the Lintvaryov family's estate near Sumy, where he and his household summered from 1888; Pleshcheyev had just spent three weeks there as a houseguest.

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 4 July 1888. Sumy. §4 the Lintvaryovs

  The Lintvaryov family, at whose Sumy estate (Luka) the Chekhov household was summering; referenced collectively here alongside Chekhov's own family.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 5–6 July 1888. Sumy. §2 Luka

  Luka, the Lintvaryov family's estate near Sumy on the Psyol river, where the Chekhovs were summering in 1888; the birth described here is that of Antonida Fyodorovna, wife of Pavel Mikhailovich Lintvaryov, one of the estate's resident family members.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 5–6 July 1888. Sumy. §8 the Lintvaryovs

  The Lintvaryov family, at whose Luka estate the Chekhovs were guests; Vorontsov is described as an old acquaintance of theirs, which Chekhov offers as evidence against Pleshcheyev's suspicion of a financial motive.

• To the Chekhovs, 23 July 1888. Feodosia. §3 the Chekhov family will have to winter at Luka

  Luka was the Lintvaryov family's estate on the Psel near Sumy, where the Chekhov household was renting a dacha for the summer of 1888; Chekhov jokes that if he keeps failing to earn money in the Crimea, the family will be stuck there through the winter as well.

• To N. M. Lintvareva, 11 February 1889. Moscow. §3 at Luka

  The Lintvaryov family estate near Sumy, in what is now northeastern Ukraine, where the Chekhov household summered from 1888. "Luka" is the estate's colloquial name, already carried as an alias of; this letter's discussion of "settling the question of the summer house" in favor of Luka anticipates the Chekhovs' return there for the 1889 season.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 11 February 1889. Moscow. §6 gone straight to Luka

  The Lintvaryov family estate near Sumy where the Chekhov household summered from 1888; "Luka" is its colloquial name. Chekhov speculates that Zhorzhik went there directly from Petersburg without passing through Moscow.

• To Ye. M. Lintvareva, 17 April 1889. Moscow. §3 Luka alone

  The Lintvaryov family estate near Sumy, on the Psel river, where the Chekhov household summered beginning in 1888; Chekhov proposes bringing his ill brother there in lieu of the unaffordable Crimea.

• To K. S. Barantsevich, 22 April 1889. Moscow. §3 Sumy, the Lintvaryova estate.

  The Lintvaryov family's estate at Luka, near Sumy, where the Chekhov household summered from 1888; "last year's" address confirms this as the same dacha described at length in the headnote to.

• To I. P. Chekhov, May 1889. Sumy. §4 All the Lintvaryovs

  The family at the Luka estate near Sumy where the Chekhovs were summering, described at length in the headnote to, the fullest family portrait in this corpus.

• To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 3 September 1889. Sumy. §1-2 September 3, 1889. Sumy. / September 3, '89, Luka.

  A doubled dateline, a pattern recurring elsewhere in this correspondence: \S1 gives the formal outer date and the nearest town (Sumy, for postal purposes), while \S2 is Chekhov's own informal dateline as he actually wrote it, naming Luka, the Lintvaryov estate itself. Not a sign of two merged letters.

• To A. I. Smagin, 16 December 1891. Moscow. §8 My sister leaves for Luka on the 22nd

  Luka, the Lintvaryov family estate on the Psyol river in Ukraine where the Chekhovs had spent several earlier summers; Marya Pavlovna's trip there is noted purely as a travel-schedule marker en route to the sister's telegram that will trigger the promised transfer of 3,000 rubles and power of attorney.

• To the Chekhovs, 29 April 1890. Yekaterinburg. §13 I wish Luka plenty of starlings

  "Шпаков" here means starlings, the birds -- a small, characteristic wish for the Lintvaryov estate where the Chekhov household summered, presumably tied to starling boxes or simply the pleasure of birdsong in season. The same Russian word (шпак/шпаки) is used elsewhere in this trip's letters (e.g., \S7) in an unrelated colloquial sense meaning "dandy" or "civilian dandy" -- the two senses are a genuine lexical coincidence in Russian, not a pun Chekhov is making across these two letters, and the English translations follow the sense required by each context ("starlings" here, "dandies" there) rather than trying to preserve a wordplay the source itself does not exploit.

• To Ye. Ya. Chekhova, 4 May 1890. Ishim. §11 At Luka

  "Luka" is the Lintvaryov family's estate on the Psyol River near Sumy, in Kharkov province, where the Chekhov household was renting a dacha for the summer of 1890 while Chekhov himself crossed Siberia; the envelope routes the letter through the town of Sumy (section 9) to this estate address (see, first attested at).