To A. A. Suvorin, 7 September 1889. Moscow.
А. А. СУВОРИНУ, 7 сентября 1889 г. Москва.
Headnote
Date/Context: 7 September 1889, Moscow (Kudrinskaya-Sadovaya, Korneyev’s house). Addressee: Alexei Sergeyevich Suvorin (1834–1912), publisher, journalist, and owner of "Novoye Vremya," Chekhov’s principal correspondent and friend through the late 1880s–1890s. Chekhov had lived in this Moscow apartment since 1886; he writes here between the January 1889 Petersburg premiere of "Ivanov" and his departure that autumn for the Sumy area / on the way to what would become the Sakhalin journey the following spring.
A short business-and-banter letter. Chekhov relays a request that has been sitting since January: M. N. Ostrovskaya (sister of the late playwright Alexander Ostrovsky and of a sitting government minister) asked, via Chekhov, whether Suvorin would publish her children’s stories. Suvorin had agreed in principle but said the timing was wrong (children’s books sell for Christmas) and to send the manuscript in autumn. Now her brother Pyotr Nikolayevich Ostrovsky has come to Chekhov asking what to do next, since Suvorin is abroad; Chekhov forwards the question and asks whether Ostrovskaya should wait for Suvorin’s return or simply send the twenty-sheet manuscript to be typeset. Chekhov adds a wry aside on the mixed flattery of being sought out as a go-between for the relatives of the eminent, then pivots to lighter items: praise for the manager of Suvorin’s Odessa bookshop (unfavorably compared to one "Bogdanov," evidently a less impressive figure at another Suvorin outlet or in Suvorin’s circle), a one-line inquiry about the progress of Suvorin’s "Stoglav" (a historical/reference work Suvorin was preparing), and a closing note that Chekhov has just finished a novella (likely "A Boring Story" / "Скучная история," written in 1889) worth 600–700 rubles, being sent to the journal "Severny Vestnik" ("The Northern Herald"), where Chekhov jokes that he serves as "chief surgeon-general" – a comic riff on his medical background and his informal role advising/placing work at the journal.