To Al. P. Chekhov, 16 November 1888. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 16 November 1888 to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander Pavlovich, a journalist on Suvorin’s "New Times." The bulk of the letter is an elaborate comic conceit: a mock "power of attorney" appointing Alexander as Chekhov’s business agent for theatrical matters, followed by a run of shorter items on family news, journal business, and household chores.

2 Chekhov opens by addressing Alexander as "boatswain" and sets out, in a numbered mock-legal document, the powers he is granting him: to go to the Academy of Sciences (playing on Chekhov’s real recent Pushkin Prize, already announced in the immediately preceding letters and) and claim 500 "laurels," with young Suvorin as his guide there; and to act as Chekhov’s authorized negotiator with theater managements over any of his plays that reach the imperial stage, collecting the fee but never selling a play outright, only a percentage of the box-office take. He explains he grants Alexander these duties less to please him than out of respect for their parents. He then acknowledges receiving a bill of exchange and news of an "unlawful marriage" (a joking reference to Alexander’s common-law household arrangement, already a running subject in this correspondence, e.g., where Chekhov weighs in at length on Alexander’s prospective remarriage to Elena Mikhailovna), dismisses a rumor that the critic Averkiev knows anything about "Severny Vestnik," and wonders in passing whether an "M. Chekhov" newly announced as a contributor to the journal "Rodina" is their uncle Mitrofan. He gives Alexander detailed, half-joking instructions for handling any unauthorized productions of his plays – distinguishing the imperial stage (where "The Bear" and "The Swan Song" are the two plays currently proposed) from the private stage, where pirated "novelties" under his name might turn up and are to be ignored rather than protested – and tells him to keep quiet about his theatrical business and never to solicit favors on his own initiative. A brief aside on the Dramatic Society’s oversight of uncontracted plays follows, then an invitation to write a play of his own if he likes. The letter closes with family news (Masha’s social falling-out and the day’s laundry, plus a domestic aside about the actor Lensky’s wife and their mother), the signature, and two terse postscripts about money and paperwork before a final request for Alexander’s home address.

3 No content requiring softening; the letter is comic throughout, in Chekhov’s familiar register of mock-legal and mock-solemn language, translated at full force per policy. One textual note: in the source ends with the fragment "Hада." – the capital Latin "H" here is almost certainly a digitization artifact for Cyrillic "Надо" ("It’s needed" / "Must"), which reads coherently as a clipped instruction following "Without the paper, take nothing"; rendered accordingly as "It’s needed," not flagged as garbled since the reading is unambiguous in context. "Alexei Alexeyevich Suvorini filius" (5) is young Suvorin, the publisher Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin’s son, already established in this correspondence as a confidant of Chekhov’s (e.g.); "Suvorini filius" is Chekhov’s own mock-Latin coinage (a play on the Latin genitive tag convention, as with "Al. P. Chekhov" elsewhere), not a genuine Latin name, and is kept in Latin with the bracketed gloss "Suvorin’s son" to preserve the joke. "Averkiev" (9) is Dmitry Averkiev, a conservative playwright and critic; the joke is that he "wheezes, and that’s all," i.e. is a gossipy nonentity with no real inside knowledge of the journal’s affairs. "Rodina" ("Homeland,") is a periodical distinct from "Severny Vestnik" ("The Northern Herald,"), the journal that already owed Chekhov money per; "M. Chekhov" is almost certainly their uncle Mitrofan Yegorovich Chekhov (called "Mitrofan Yegorovich" throughout the corpus, e.g., and invoked by nickname via Suvorin in), not Alexander’s son or any other relation – Chekhov’s question is rhetorical surprise that their staid merchant uncle might be publishing. "The Bear" (Медведь) and "The Swan Song (Kalkhas)" (Лебединая песня (Калхас)) in are Chekhov’s own plays, both already established in this corpus (, etc.); "Kalkhas" was the play’s working title before Chekhov settled on "The Swan Song," per. "Crocodile Fricasseed, or Ay-Da, Uncle!" (12, Крокодил всмятку, или Ай да дядя!) is a nonsense title Chekhov invents on the spot as a hypothetical pirated "novelty" falsely credited to him – not a real play, and not to be catalogued as one of Chekhov’s works. "Masha" (14) is Chekhov’s sister Maria Pavlovna; "Efrosina" is a household or social acquaintance of hers not otherwise identified in this corpus. The "68 roubles" and the "prize"/"paper" items in-17 are terse financial postscripts whose full referents (what specifically Alexander pocketed, and what document must accompany the prize money) are not otherwise explained in this letter or its immediate neighbors; left as in the source without invented elaboration, per the corpus’s no-bridging policy for underspecified material.