To M. V. Kiseleva, 17 February 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 17 February 1889 to Maria Vladimirovna Kiseleva, the Babkino estate-owner, writer, and family friend to whom Chekhov addressed a long, affectionate series of letters throughout the 1880s (see, among many others, letters 353, 392, 407, 484, 485, 3-508, 3-516, and 3-548). The occasion is domestic complaint dressed as comedy: Chekhov is stuck in Moscow, unable to get away to Babkino, because the journal "Severny Vestnik" is sending him the proofs of his play "Ivanov" in dribs and drabs through Butter Week (Maslenitsa) instead of all at once, with the March issue’s press deadline looming. He reports having fired off an angry letter to the editors, to no practical relief, and laments that the whole winter’s demands of "the dearest little plays" have kept him from a single visit to the Kiselevs’ estate.

2 He turns briefly to mock-scolding Kiseleva herself, in his characteristic teasing register as a fellow (if far more reluctant) literary professional: she should not let flattery from a "cross-eyed Voinakhovsky" or praise from "the Oryol cooks" – both otherwise unidentified in this letter – tempt her toward literature, since a writer’s life is one of constant deadlines, missed meals, and empty pockets. He then reports, with evident satisfaction and a touch of self-mockery, that "Ivanov" continues to be a sensation in Petersburg, joking that he and Henryk Siemiradzki’s scandalous painting "Phryne at the Feast of Poseidon" (exhibited in Petersburg that same season) are the two talked-about spectacles of the day – "Semiradsky’s naked Phryne, and I, clothed." Despite the success he professes himself bored and eager to escape to Babkino.

3 The letter closes with a cascade of affectionate greetings to the Babkino household in Chekhov’s habitual bantering nickname register: the "blini-eating Squire" (Alexei Sergeyevich Kiselev, Kiseleva’s husband, per the established rendering in letters 377, 442, 3-508, and 3-516), "the fair Vasilisa" (the Kiselevs’ daughter, per), "the most amiable Kotofei Kotofeich" (an affectionate mock-formal nickname – "Kotofei" evokes the Russian word for "tomcat" and the folktale figure Kotofei Ivanovich, so this is almost certainly a Babkino cat or kitten addressed with comic ceremony, though it is not otherwise established in this corpus), and Elizaveta Alexandrovna (a recurring Babkino household member in the Kiseleva correspondence, e.g. letters 3-516 and 3-548). He then adds a last comic aside to "Tyshechka" (a recurring nickname in this circle, previously appearing, always "in her little cap" or "without her little cap," in letters 306, 243, and 751) and an otherwise unattested "Arishechka," joking that he will henceforth avoid the Voskresensk road to Babkino in favor of a route through Dukhonino, to spare himself the risk of being shot by an "ell-long revolver" – apparently a joking reference to some local hazard or rumor on the Voskresensk road, not otherwise explained in this letter.