To N. A. Leikin, 12 January 1886. Moscow.
H. A. Лейкину, 12 января 1886 г. Москва.
Headnote
1 Written in Moscow on January 12, 1886, to Nikolai Leikin, editor of the comic weekly Oskolki ("Splinters"), for which Chekhov was a regular contributor. The letter is brisk and miscellaneous in the manner typical of Chekhov’s business correspondence with editors: he reports on the painter Isaac Levitan’s wounded pride over a refused cash advance, the attempted suicide (and survival) of the writer P. I. Kicheev, his own duties as best man at a friend’s wedding on the feast of St. Tatyana, a vague complaint about having been cheated, and closing queries about a subscription count, an unanswered letter to a colleague (Viktor Bilibin), and a newspaper contributor’s name.
2 The letter is a small window onto Chekhov’s daily juggling of literary work, friendships, and money in his mid-twenties, including his early patronage of Levitan, who would become one of Russia’s leading landscape painters and a lifelong friend.