To L. A. Kamburova, 1880. Moscow.

This is one of the earliest surviving letters in Chekhov’s own hand – he was twenty, newly arrived in Moscow to study medicine, and still signing himself simply "A. Chekhov" rather than by the pen names he would soon adopt for his comic pieces. Lyubov Alexandrovna Kamburova was a family friend from the Chekhovs’ circle, apparently connected to relatives still in or near Taganrog, the provincial town on the Sea of Azov the family had recently and precariously left behind. The letter is prompted by pique: Kamburova had written at length to Chekhov’s brother Alexander and, in Anton’s telling, ignored him entirely – the whole letter is an extended, mock-aggrieved demand for equal attention, dressed up in the inflated courtly diction ("Most cultured and most ferocious,Gracious Lady, mademoiselle") that the young Chekhov already deploys as parody rather than sincerity.

The letter is characteristic of the "Antosha Chekhonte" register before the name existed: quick, cheerfully cruel comedy built on a household’s private nicknames and running jokes – Kolka and Nikolka for his brother Nikolai, Kotik pursued by a "cross-eyed tomcat" (Chekhov’s own self-deprecating joke about his cast eye), a "Minister of Finance" teased as a bribe-taker, a sister’s blushing suitor mocked with mock severity. Nothing here asks to be taken as it appears on the page; the affection runs underneath the comic insults, most visibly in the closing image of the "unhappy slave of the blues" and her neglected samovar, and in the invitation to be scoured clean by her "most humble servant."

The second half of the letter shifts hands: Chekhov’s brother Nikolai (N. P. Chekhov), a talented but already unsteady painter, adds his own postscript in a warmer, more practical key – their mother’s greetings, the family’s thin finances after the move from Taganrog, the bad Moscow weather, a private joke about their uncle Gavriil Parfentyevich and his straw hat. The two hands together give an early, unguarded glimpse of a household still finding its footing in the city, months after Pavel Chekhov’s bankruptcy had broken up the family home in the south.