To Al. P. Chekhov, 8 January 1887. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 8 January 1887 to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander, who was then living and working in Petersburg, this is a brisk piece of business correspondence dressed up in Chekhov’s habitual comic bluster. At twenty-six, Anton was already the household’s main breadwinner and its unofficial accountant, and the letter’s real business is simple: he needs Alexander to collect fees owed to him by two Petersburg publications – "Novoye Vremya," which had run his story "On the Way" ("На пути"), and the "Peterburgskaya Gazeta" – and to forward the money to Moscow without delay.

2 The letter is characteristic of Chekhov’s fraternal voice: affectionate needling wrapped around a genuinely urgent request, enclosed power-of-attorney paperwork, precise instructions on office hours and commission rates, and a closing flurry of family gossip (regards to Alexander’s common-law wife Anna Ivanovna and their children, a jab at their mutual acquaintance Leikin, a question about a friend’s travel notes). The comic image in – a woodcock fleeing with an arrow driven through it – is typical of the crude, high-energy humor Chekhov used freely with his brother.