To A. Ya. Glame-Meshcherskaya, 9 November 1889. Moscow.

A short, lightly flirtatious note of thanks dated 9 November 1889, written from Moscow to Alexandra Yakovlevna Glama-Meshcherskaya (1856-1942), a well-known Russian stage actress of the period. Chekhov apologizes for the delay in thanking her for a letter and an inscribed photograph she had sent him, explains the delay (his own photographs had been slow to arrive from Petersburg, and he had hoped to deliver his in person but was kept indoors by bad weather and doctor’s orders – Chekhov’s own tuberculosis-era health caution is the likely subtext of “medicine forbids me to leave the house”), and encloses his photograph now instead, with self-deprecating remarks about its quality next to hers. The note closes with a playful compliment on her handwriting, read as a sign of a courageous, bold, and magnanimous character, and a hope that she has forgiven him – for what exactly is not specified in this letter, only gestured at, consistent with an ongoing light social correspondence rather than any serious offense.

Register: warm, courtly, self-mocking society banter typical of Chekhov’s correspondence with actresses and society women in this period – compare his letters to Lika Mizinova, Kleopatra Karatygina, and other stage/social acquaintances of the late 1880s. Nothing sensitive or requiring a content flag; the self-description as a “моветон” (rendered here as “ill-mannered friend” – literally a French loanword, mauvais ton, meaning someone of bad form or poor manners/etiquette) is self-mocking gallantry, not a genuine confession.