To A. I. Sumbatov, 25 November 1889. Moscow.

A brief, businesslike note to Alexander Ivanovich Sumbatov (stage and pen name "Yuzhin"; 1857-1927), the actor, playwright, and later director of the Maly Theatre in Moscow, with whom Chekhov was on warm, joking terms throughout the late 1880s and 1890s. Sumbatov came from an old Georgian princely family (the Sumbatashvili), which explains the mock-formal style of address on the envelope, "His Excellency" ("Его сиятельству" – literally "To His Illustriousness/Serenity," the honorific proper to a prince), used here affectionately rather than in earnest.

The occasion is trivial: A. S. Suvorin – the wealthy publisher of Novoye Vremya and Chekhov’s own patron and frequent correspondent – had apparently misunderstood some request of Sumbatov’s and sent, via his news agency, a clipping ("piece") of the London illustrated weekly The Graphic instead of whatever book Sumbatov actually wanted. Chekhov, evidently acting as an intermediary between the two men, forwards the clipping, notes the mix-up, and offers to have the library search properly if Sumbatov specifies the book. He closes with an exuberant, characteristic bit of banter – wishing Sumbatov health "ten thousand times over" and giving him joking "permission" to put on weight – and signs off.

Sections 5-8 are not part of the letter’s body but the address written on the reverse of the sheet/envelope ("На обороте" = "On the reverse"), recording Sumbatov’s street address in Moscow (Leontyevsky Lane, the Sorokoumovsky house) and his name and honorific. This is a standard archival feature of Chekhov’s letters as preserved in the PSS and is kept here as its own sections rather than folded into the body.