To V. A. Tikhonov, 2 December 1888. en route to Petersburg.

1 Written on 2 December 1888 while Chekhov was en route to Petersburg – literally composed aboard the mail train, as the letter itself says – this note goes to Vladimir Alekseevich Tikhonov, the playwright and editor Chekhov had already been corresponding with earlier in the year. Where the earlier letters discuss Tikhonov’s own writing and plans, this one is the first addressed to him directly during an actual journey to Petersburg, and it reads as a brief travel notice rather than a substantive letter.

2 The note is only two sentences: Chekhov reports that he is writing from the mail train itself and that he will stop where he had already told Tikhonov he would (the specific stopping point is not named in the letter and is not recoverable from it alone). As in several other short notes of the period, the original preserves the address written on the reverse of the sheet – addressed to Tikhonov at Pushkinskaya 19, apartment 26, in Petersburg – reproduced here as its own sequence of short sections, matching the convention of the 5 October and 10 November 1888 notes.