To A. N. Pleshcheyev, 10–11 October 1888. Moscow.
А. Н. ПЛЕЩЕЕВУ, 10 или 11 октября 1888 г. Москва.
Headnote
1 This very brief note to the poet and "Severny Vestnik" editor Alexei Nikolayevich Pleshcheyev continues, in condensed form, the same defense of "Good People" ("Хорошие люди") that Chekhov mounts at length in the immediately preceding letter of 9 October (3-497). There Pleshcheyev had suggested the story lacks a "protesting element" and that Chekhov shies from being taken for a liberal; here Chekhov returns to that charge in a single indignant burst, insisting the story protests against falsehood from start to finish, and closing with a self-deprecating aside ("or I am a flea") about his own inability to bite hard enough to be noticed.
2 The second point is a fresh worry, not covered in 3-497: fear that the censor will cut the passage describing "Pyotr Dmitrich" presiding in court, on the grounds that it hits too close to how real court presidents actually behave. "Pyotr Dmitrich" is the same character from "Good People" already identified in the headnote to letter 3-497 (section 5, note 1) – not a real person – so the censorship worry is that the fictional portrait reads as recognizable satire of actual sitting judges, not that Chekhov names anyone real.
3 The closing line, "Ah, how I have worn you out!," is a wry, affectionate acknowledgment that Chekhov has now written to Pleshcheyev repeatedly in quick succession over the same story (cf. 3-497, and the broader autumn 1888 sequence); it is self-mocking rather than literal.