To N. A. Leikin, 19 November 1884. Moscow.
Н. А. Лейкину, 19 ноября 1884 г. Москва.
Headnote
Nikolai Alexandrovich Leikin was the editor of the Petersburg humor weekly *Oskolki* (Fragments), Chekhov’s principal outlet in the early 1880s and the publication that did the most to shape his apprenticeship as a writer of short comic pieces. By late 1884, recently graduated as a doctor and juggling medicine with journalism, Chekhov was a steady supplier of "trifles" to Leikin’s pages, and his letters to him from this period are mostly business: what he’s sending, what needs cutting, what payment is owed.
This note is typical of that traffic. Chekhov forwards three minor pieces in place of a longer story he had evidently promised, and adds an unsolicited favor: a manuscript from an aspiring contributor, Ekaterina Politkovskaya, who had come to his rooms in person to ask for his recommendation. His handling of the request – equal parts obliging and wry – is characteristic: he passes the awkward task of writing a kind rejection on to Leikin, jokes about his own susceptibility to a nervous visitor’s sales pitch, and signs off with the mock-gallant French "Votre A. Chekhov."