To F. O. Shekhtel, 18 June 1889. Sumy.
Ф. О. ШЕХТЕЛЮ, 18 июня 1889 г. Сумы.
Headnote
1 A brief, grief-stricken note written from Sumy on 18 June 1889 to Franz (Fyodor) Osipovich Schechtel, the architect and close friend of the Chekhov family, informing him that Chekhov’s brother Nikolai had died the day before. It is one of the shortest and starkest items in this corpus: a dateline, a single paragraph of a few sentences, a signature, and the address written out for the envelope.
2 After the double dateline (1-2), Chekhov reports that Nikolai died of consumption the previous day, 17 June, describes him as lying in his coffin with a beautiful expression on his face, and closes the sentence with a wish of the kingdom of heaven for Nikolai and of health and happiness for Schechtel as his friend (3), followed by the signature (4). The remainder of the letter (5-8) is not epistolary prose but the envelope address as preserved in the source – "On the reverse," then Moscow, the street and house, and the addressee’s name.
4 No corrupted or garbled text was found in this letter; no editorial gap markers appear in the source.