To N. A. Leikin, 24 December 1886. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on December 24, 1886, to Nikolai Alexandrovich Leykin, editor of the Petersburg humor weekly Oskolki (“Fragments”), for which Chekhov had written comic sketches and stories for years and which paid a meaningful share of his income at this point in his career. The letter mixes New Year’s greetings with shop talk: unanswered submissions, a grueling attempt to finish a holiday story for Suvorin’s Novoye Vremya, feedback on a new Oskolki contributor’s debut piece, and a direct request that Leykin see his fee paid before year’s end.

2 Structurally the letter is typical of Chekhov’s business correspondence with Leykin: short, list-like paragraphs jumping between holiday pleasantries, a progress report on paid work, an editorial judgment on a colleague’s story (Chekhov objects to a debut built on drunkenness for cheap effect), a money request framed apologetically, and a closing weather aside. The weather line uses a coinage built on the Russian word for gonorrhea to describe foul, damp December weather – one of Chekhov’s characteristic crude jokes to a familiar correspondent, not a reference to illness or any person.