To A. S. Suvorin, 10 October 1891. Moscow.
А. С. СУВОРИНУ, 10 октября 1891 г. Москва.
Headnote
a short, occasional note dated 10 October 1891, from Moscow, to Aleksey Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher/editor of "Novoye Vremya."
Chekhov’s foreign passport (needed for the Continental travel he did often in these years) has expired after its standard six-month term, and his building’s porter/caretaker is pressing him daily to sort out the paperwork. He asks Suvorin, who evidently has some contact or errand-running capacity at the foreign office in St. Petersburg ("Питер"), to exchange the enclosed expired passport for a renewed one and send it back without delay, framing the request half-apologetically as a triviality he would otherwise have asked his brother to handle, except that the brother is currently dealing with a fire or some comparable disruption. He notes Suvorin’s habit of driving out on Bolshaya Morskaya (a fashionable Petersburg street, and presumably near the relevant office), suggesting he could pick up and dispatch the passport in the course of an outing he was going to make anyway. The note closes with a one-line aside – lunch that day at Sobolevsky’s, with details promised for the next letter – and the standard sign-off.
The tone is light, practical, and mildly self-deprecating ("I resort to your mercy,forgive me for troubling you with trifles").