To V. A. Tikhonov, 20 December 1888. Moscow.

1 Written on 20 December 1888 in Moscow, this is Chekhov’s second letter addressed directly to Vladimir Alekseevich Tikhonov, the playwright and editor, following the brief travel note of 2 December 1888. Where that earlier note was a two-line travel notice, this one is a substantive letter written after Chekhov’s return from Petersburg to Moscow, following up on theater business the two had evidently discussed in person there.

2 The letter reports on the status of a Korsh’s-theatre production Tikhonov had asked about. Chekhov relays that he called on Nikolai Korsh’s theatre and learned that the actress Alexandra Glama-Meshcherskaya is genuinely ill – caries of the upper jaw with neuralgia – and away from Moscow, but that the actor and company member Nikolai Solovtsov expects her illness and recuperation to be brief, and that the play "Without the Yoke and the Flatiron" (Russian "Без коромысла и утюга") will resume as soon as she returns and continue to run. This appears to be a different work from the "Театральный воробей" ("The Theatrical Sparrow") discussed in the 20 November 1888 letter; no existing corpus entity currently identifies this specific play’s authorship, and it is treated here as an unglossed period stage title.