To N. M. Lintvareva, 11 February 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 11 February 1889, this short letter goes to Natalya Mikhailovna Lintvareva, a member of the Lintvarev family who owned the Luka estate near Sumy, in Ukraine, where the Chekhovs had summered in 1888 and would again in 1889 and following years (cf. the Lintvarev/Luka references in letters 490 and 499 from the preceding autumn). Chekhov had evidently just returned from a trip to Petersburg, apparently made in company with, or in coordination with, Natalya’s brother Egor Mikhailovich Lintvarev, whom he had promised to travel back with but left ahead of schedule. He asks Natalya to convey his apology, explaining – half in earnest, half in his habitual self-deprecating comic register – that he fled Petersburg’s "strong sensations" the way a coward flees a battlefield, not knowing whether Egor Mikhailovich is at Luka or still in the capital.

2 He passes on regards for another Lintvarev sibling, Elena Mikhailovna, said to be away in Kiev, and then turns to the summer’s real business: the family (Chekhov’s own household) has been debating where to take its dacha for the season, and has largely settled on returning to Luka, which pleases him. He asks Natalya to confirm this is agreeable to the Lintvarevs and, in a playful aside, waves off any grand building improvements – no terrace, no rococo columns, no balustrades or statues – teasingly warning her not to believe whatever "the kindest Lidiya Fedorovna" (apparently another member of or figure close to the Lintvarev household, otherwise unidentified in this letter) may have promised or proposed; a simple door from the outbuilding (fligel) into the garden would, he says, already be more than generous.

3 The letter closes with warm regards to the family, a note that Chekhov plans to leave Moscow for the south in April and might stop at Luka for a day or two, and a friendly, informal sign-off. A brief postscript returns to Lidiya Fedorovna, calling her "an angel" who lacks only wings – a closing joke whose object is affectionate rather than ironic, continuing the light, teasing tone of the terrace/rococo remark above.