To G. M. Chekhov, 23 June 1887. Babkino.

1 Written from the Kiselyov family’s estate at Babkino, where the Chekhovs summered in 1887, this letter went to Georgy Mitrofanovich Chekhov, a cousin living in Taganrog, Chekhov’s home town in the south. It answers a letter that had evidently sat unanswered for a while, and mixes an apology for a small domestic embarrassment (an underpaid Moscow cabman, who caused a scene at his mother’s expense) with a round-up of family and professional news from an eventful year: a recent trip south that took him through Slavyansk, ongoing literary work, and the imminent publication of a new book by his publisher Suvorin.

2 The letter is dense with small, concrete details characteristic of Chekhov’s family correspondence: complaints of encroaching deafness following the leg pains he had mentioned in earlier letters, wry self-deprecation about his own absent-mindedness, a chance reunion with a family acquaintance (Sasha Selivanova) that corrects some gossip about her, and a pointed request that his letters be kept private within the family. It closes with greetings to various relatives, including an invitation to an uncle to dine with him regularly once winter comes, using Moscow’s horse-drawn tram.