To A. S. Suvorin, 15 November 1889. Moscow.
А. С. СУВОРИНУ, Около 15 ноября 1889 г. Москва.
Headnote
A short, casual note to Alexei Suvorin, the wealthy newspaper publisher (editor of Novoye Vremya) who was Chekhov’s closest correspondent and confidant through the late 1880s and 1890s – their surviving correspondence runs to hundreds of letters and is one of the richest windows onto Chekhov’s private mind. This one is little more than a cover note and a personal aside, written from Moscow in mid-November 1889.
Content: Chekhov forwards a letter he has received from one V. S. Mamyshev, concerning some kind of machine or apparatus – the letter gives no further description, only that a doctor had recommended it and that a shop had sold it. Chekhov disclaims any ability to help himself (he has not seen the machine) and asks Suvorin to lean on whoever purchased it to see that Mamyshev’s request is carried out, with the mildly wry observation that "the sick are impatient." He then turns to a brief, warmer personal note – regret that he can only write rather than speak to Suvorin in person, and that he badly wants to see him – before a conventional pious sign-off ("do not forget me in your holy prayers") and signature.
Textual note: the source’s second sentence of begins "Пинту Вам и жалею..." – "Пинту" is not a standard Russian word in this context. This is almost certainly an OCR/transcription corruption of "Пишу Вам" ("I write to you"), which is the only reading that scans grammatically and semantically with what follows ("...and am sorry that it is a pen speaking with you, and not my tongue"). Translated here as "I write to you" on that basis; flagging for anyone auditing against a cleaner source edition.