To M. M. Chekhov, 1885. Moscow.
M. M. Чехову, Октябрь, не ранее 11, 1885 г. Москва.
Headnote
Written in Moscow in mid-October 1885, this short, warm note goes to Chekhov’s younger brother Mikhail Pavlovich (Misha), then still a teenager finishing school, who would go on to become a writer, lawyer, and Chekhov’s own memoirist and first biographer. The occasion is purely domestic: the Chekhov family has just moved apartments, and Misha’s presence on the eve of the move – helping direct the carters and draymen – made the whole operation go, in Anton’s telling, remarkably smoothly. Chekhov’s thanks are exaggerated for comic effect, crediting "fortune" itself with sending Misha round at just the right moment.
Behind the joke is real affection and an invitation: now that the family’s new lodgings put brother and brother closer together as "almost neighbors," Chekhov presses Misha to visit weekly rather than rarely, and spells out exactly which evenings he’s free to receive him. The letter closes with a practical postscript giving Chekhov’s precise at-home hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays, underscoring how deliberately he is trying to keep the family circle close even as his own household and literary career were rapidly expanding. It is a small, domestic counterpart to the business letters of the same period, showing Chekhov as an attentive elder brother amid the bustle of moving house.