To M. P. Chekhova, 28 April 1889. Sumy.

1 Written from the Lintvaryova estate at Sumy on 28 April 1889 to Chekhov’s sister Maria ("Masha") Chekhova in Moscow, during the family’s 1889 summer stay at Luka on the Psyol river. Like its neighbors in this stretch, it is a household errand list rather than a proper letter, but here it is a genuinely multi-hand document: Anton opens with a list of things to fetch and bring down from Moscow (2), his brother Nikolai Pavlovich Chekhov – the painter, gravely ill with the tuberculosis that would kill him some ten weeks later – adds his own short request in his own hand (3-4), their mother Evgenia Chekhova appends a blessing that Anton writes out for her since she could not write herself (5), and Nikolai adds a final line repeating his request (6), before the closing address block (7-10).

3 No corruption or editorial gap markers appear in the source; the letter is short but complete and internally coherent as a single multi-hand document (Anton, then Nikolai, then their mother via Anton, then Nikolai again), with no sign of archival concatenation with unrelated back-matter.