To M. M. Dyukovsky, February 1886. Moscow.

1 A brief comic note from February 1886, written in Moscow to Mikhail Mikhailovich Dyukovsky, a friend from Chekhov’s circle. Cast as a mock-official petition – addressed to "Your Excellency" and, on the envelope, to the fictitious "Minister of Petty-Bourgeois Enlightenment" – the letter is really a small, urgent request for a loan of five to ten roubles, dressed up in absurd bureaucratic and melodramatic flourishes (a "blonde" worth 30,000, a promised album offered as collateral, a stray gold Turkish lira).

2 The letter is a good example of Chekhov’s early comic epistolary style: even a trivial request for pocket money becomes an occasion for parody, mock titles, and theatrical self-deprecation ("I do not throw my creditors down the stairs"). It offers a glimpse of the young Chekhov’s chronic shortage of cash in his Moscow years and his habit of turning private embarrassments into private jokes for friends.