To N. A. Leikin, 6 November 1886. Moscow.
H. A. Лейкину, 6 ноября 1886 г. Москва.
Headnote
1 Written from Moscow on 6 November 1886 to Nikolai Leikin, editor of the humor magazine "Oskolki" ("Splinters") and one of Chekhov’s principal early publishers and correspondents. The letter is short and playful: a joke about newly acquired "fianc\’e’s stationery" for his (jesting) upcoming marriage, a wry aside on why he deliberately omitted the date from a previous letter, and gossip about the illustrator Liodor Palmin’s latest move and a run-in with a Moscow artist accused of passing off shoddy work as the German caricaturist Wilhelm Busch’s.
2 The letter is a light, bantering specimen of Chekhov’s correspondence with Leikin, mixing personal joking with the small professional gossip of Moscow’s satirical-press world – artists, plagiarism accusations, and deadline pressure for the "Petersburg Gazette." The "engagement" is not to be read literally; no biographical marriage is attested at this date, and the joke fits Chekhov’s habitual teasing register with Leikin.