To D. T. Savelyev, 19 January 1884. Moscow.
Д. Т. Савельеву, 19 января 1884 г. Москва.
Headnote
A brief, high-spirited note to Dmitry Timofeyevich Savelyev, thanking him for a frock coat he had lent or given Chekhov – the kind of small material favor that ran constantly between the Chekhov household and its circle of friends in these lean Moscow years. Chekhov, twenty-three and already supporting his family on feuilleton writing and his medical studies, turns the errand into a miniature comic performance: mock-solemn gratitude, a bachelor’s rueful joke at a married friend’s expense, and a closing threat – delivered with a straight face – to report Savelyev to "the gendarme general" should he stray from his wife.
The textbooks mentioned in passing (Zernov, Lesgaft, and a garbled "Ga(v)no" physics primer meant for someone named Makar) are a glimpse of Chekhov’s medical-student life running alongside his writing career: he is still circulating course materials among friends even as he complains, in the same breath, of being "worn out beyond all decency" from turning out a feuilleton. The note is slight, but it shows the fast, joking hand of the early Chekhonte period at work even in private correspondence.