To M. E. Chekhov, 31 January 1885. Moscow.

This letter, dated January 31, 1885, is addressed to Mitrofan Egorovich Chekhov, Anton Chekhov’s uncle and the younger brother of his father Pavel. Mitrofan had remained in Taganrog, the family’s home town on the Sea of Azov, after Pavel’s 1876 bankruptcy scattered the rest of the Chekhovs to Moscow, and he had just been elected to the town council – the occasion Chekhov congratulates him on here. Twenty-four years old and newly qualified as a physician, Chekhov writes with real warmth toward an uncle he plainly still misses, apologizing for his long silence and promising, as he often would and rarely could, a visit south that year.

The letter is notable for a piece of hard biographical fact folded casually into family news: Chekhov mentions that in December he had begun spitting blood and had borrowed money from the Literary Fund to go abroad for treatment – an early, understated sign of the tuberculosis that would eventually kill him, mentioned here almost in passing before he moves on to describe his medical practice, his modest but growing comforts in Moscow (new furniture, a piano, two servants), and brief reports on his mother and siblings, including brother Ivan’s steady employment and Nikolai’s plans to marry. The final section of the source consists only of the heading "Notes" (Примечания), a placeholder for editorial annotation rather than further letter text.