place
Petersburg Side
also: Петербургская сторона, Петербургской стороной, Petersburg side
A district of St. Petersburg, referenced by Chekhov in a joking 'divorced from your granny and the Petersburg Side' line to Shcheglov about a change in the latter's residence/domestic circumstances; also invoked, in a different figurative turn, in his same-day letter to Leikin ('those gray [heavens] now hanging over the Petersburg side').
Reading notes
- To I. L. Leontyev, 10 December 1890. Moscow. §6 You have divorced yourself from your granny and from the Petersburg Side... My congratulations on the new era...
A joking mock-legal register ("divorced," "new era") applied to what was evidently a change of residence or domestic circumstance for Shcheglov, who had apparently moved away from the Petersburg Side district (and, teasingly, from a "granny" figure -- likely a landlady or elderly relative in that household) to a new home elsewhere; Chekhov's exaggerated formality ("God grant you every prosperity in your new home") is affectionate needling rather than literal news, consistent with the corpus's running comic idiom for Shcheglov's domestic life.