To N. A. Leikin, 9 May 1885. Babkino.

Written from Babkino, the country estate near Voskresensk where the Chekhov family was summering, this is another business letter to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin, editor-publisher of the Petersburg humor weekly Oskolki ("Splinters"). Chekhov apologizes for a missed week – the move to the dacha had swallowed his time – and encloses a feuilleton and several short pieces, asking Leikin to fill in placeholder names of Petersburg amusement venues in the story "The Peacock." He is preoccupied with money: he presses Leikin (not for the first time) to place a rejected story, "Abolished!", with another outlet, and asks to be sent a newspaper he isn’t receiving so he can track two stories he submitted elsewhere.

The letter’s most memorable passage concerns the painter Isaac Levitan (distinguished here from another Levitan Chekhov knew), a close friend staying with the family that summer, whom Chekhov describes as sliding into a suicidal depression – he had vanished, hinted at hanging himself, and returned from an unexplained absence rather than the Caucasus trip he’d announced. Chekhov has brought him to Babkino and is walking him through it, reporting cautiously that he seems to be improving. The rest of the letter turns to fishing, the pleasures of the countryside, and a wry closing joke about marrying a rich merchant’s wife to solve his money troubles – the characteristic Chekhov mix of comic self-deprecation and real financial strain, with a flash of genuine concern for a friend in crisis underneath.