To F. O. Shekhtel, 19 April 1889. Moscow.

1 A very short note of 19 April 1889 from Moscow to the architect and family friend Fyodor Osipovich Shekhtel, written on the eve of Chekhov’s departure south with his brother Nikolai ("Nikolka"), the painter, who had been gravely ill that spring with typhoid fever complicated by chronic lung disease. The letter belongs to the same close run of correspondence as the letter to Elena Lintvaryova of two days earlier, which lays out the same medical picture in fuller clinical detail and the same travel plan.

2 After the dateline (1), Chekhov tells Shekhtel that if he still means to see "Nikolka" before he and Chekhov leave for the south this coming Saturday, now is the time (2). He reports that the invalid is up and walking about the rooms, that the typhus itself has passed but the lungs are still "misbehaving" as before (3), wishes Shekhtel good health, and wonders whether they might meet in the Caucasus, where he expects to be in June or July (4) – a plan tied to the possible Kislovodsk trip floated conditionally in. The letter closes with a bare sign-off (5), followed by the envelope docketing: "On the reverse" (6), the addressee’s own city ("Here," i.e. Moscow,), the street address "Tverskaya, Porokhovshchikov’s house" (8), the honorific "To His High Nobility" (9), and the addressee’s name in full, "Franz Osipovich Shekhtel" (10).