To Al. P. Chekhov, 9 September 1889. Moscow.

Written 9 September 1889 from Moscow to Chekhov’s elder brother Alexander Pavlovich Chekhov (“Al. P. Chekhov”), who at this time worked as a journalist and editor for Alexei Suvorin’s newspaper Novoye Vremya in St. Petersburg and was chronically disorganized about money, drink, and domestic responsibility – the recurring target of Anton’s needling, half-comic scoldings throughout their correspondence. Anton had just returned to Moscow (he had spent the summer at the Lintvaryov estate, Luka, in Ukraine, working on The Wood Demon and recovering from the death of his brother Nikolai in June).

The letter is a rapid-fire list of business, mock as much as it is stern. Chekhov dismisses Alexander’s excuse for a debt (owed less to Anton than to their sister Maria, “Masha”), rebuts his attempt to blame their employer Suvorin for a shortfall (Anton has heard Alexander himself asked for salary two months in advance), notes a further debt to an aunt that has their mother lamenting, and reports his own return to Moscow. He adds that a mutual acquaintance, “Glebych,” had visited and that the debt left by their late brother Nikolai (who died 17 June 1889) has been divided among four people – a small, businesslike trace of the family’s grief being handled as practical accounting. The closing lines are characteristic Chekhov comic deflection: a mock-tender instruction to pass along an enclosed letter to Alexander’s common-law wife with a beating for the children and an absurd command to “go to the fire” himself, followed by a joking pseudonymous sign-off (“your acquaintance N.N.”) and a brisk request for Alexander’s current address.