To A. S. Suvorin, 6 March 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 6 March 1889 to Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, the wealthy newspaper publisher (Novoye Vremya) who was by this date Chekhov’s closest correspondent and de facto patron. A short, bantering personal note mixing a bit of literary business (a gift manuscript, theatrical royalties, his brother’s graduation) with private jokes whose full sense depends on earlier letters in the Suvorin correspondence not present in this file.

2 After the double dateline (1-2), Chekhov tells Suvorin he is sending him "that very cheap and useless present" he had promised – apparently a short piece of his own writing, dashed off quickly, which jokingly reuses one of Suvorin’s own titles, and which he tells Suvorin to burn, or even discard unread (3). He reports that the theater directorate has paid him 997 roubles for "Ivanov" and "The Bear," with a joke that the money earned from his ("dead") bear-titled play outstrips what a live bear and its gypsy handler could earn on the street (4). He notes that his brother Mikhail has just finished his university course, which also closes out Chekhov’s own secondhand exposure to law lectures, since Mikhail’s law-school notes will no longer be lying around the house for him to read out of boredom (5). He complains briefly about the lingering cold and looks forward to summer (6-7), then adds a private joke that "Stiva Oblonsky" – i.e., Suvorin himself, cast in the role of Tolstoy’s amiable, easygoing Anna Karenina character – has forgotten about "the boats," an allusion whose specific referent (some boating plan or promise between the two men) is not recoverable from this letter alone (8). The letter closes with a general greeting (9) and the signature "Yours, A. Chekhov" (10).