To A. S. Suvorin, 8 April 1889. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow on 8 April 1889, this short holiday note goes to Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher of "Novoye Vremya" and Chekhov’s close friend and patron, well established throughout this corpus, identified by the source’s own archival heading ("А. С. СУВОРИНУ") and by the letter’s warm, informal tone. It falls in the immediate aftermath of the preceding letter in the source sequence (, to N. N. Obolonsky), which reports on the fever of "the well-known artist N. P. Chekhov" – Chekhov’s brother Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov, a painter – and explains the "artist" referred to here without further introduction (4,).

2 Chekhov opens with an Easter-season greeting to Suvorin, his wife, and two of their children, wishing them wealth, fame, honor, peace, and merriment for life (3). He then describes the foul Moscow weather – mud, cold, rain – and reports that "the artist" (his brother Nikolai) is still running a stubborn fever of 39°C, requiring two visits a day; he says his own mood matches the weather, that he isn’t working but instead reading or pacing, and reflects half-wistfully, half-ironically that forty more years of reading and learning to write "briefly" might let him someday astonish everyone, though for now he is as small as anyone (4). He closes with a glimpse of the household in Easter preparation – cleaning, baking, cooking, beating dust from rugs, running up and down the stairs – notes he is off again to see the artist, wishes Suvorin good health, and invites him to visit so they might go together to the Volga or to Poltava (5), signing off "Yours, A. Chekhov" (6).