To Al. P. Chekhov, 3 September 1887. Moscow.

1 A brief note written from Moscow on 3 September 1887 to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander, addressed here by the joking nickname "Gusev." By this date the family had settled at the Kudrinskaya Sadovaya house, one of several Moscow addresses the Chekhovs occupied in the 1880s. Alexander was then living in Petersburg and working for Alexei Suvorin’s newspaper Novoye Vremya, where Chekhov’s own stories and correspondence fees were also being handled – hence the practical request at the letter’s core.

2 The letter is a fragment of ordinary business between brothers: a mocking thanks for a promised (and evidently unlikely) letter, wrapped in an obscure folk-saying jab ("having said ’pan,’ I’ll give you a sheepskin coat" – a play on a proverb about grand promises followed by nothing, capped with the jibe "you’re a crinoline and nothing more"), followed by a request that Alexander collect Chekhov’s fee from the Novoye Vremya office and forward it, so Alexander need not keep making the trip to the post office himself. The closing address block – Alexander’s Petersburg street address – is preserved as part of the original document, being written on the back of the letter itself.