To E. M. Shavrova, 19 November 1891. Moscow.
E. M. ШАВРОВОЙ, 19 ноября 1891 г. Москва.
Headnote
Written from Moscow, this short letter opens with Chekhov smoothing over a social misstep: Shavrova had called on him and been turned away, apparently taking it as a snub. He explains himself at some length – he was ill and half-dressed when her card arrived, with visitors in his study whose presence would have embarrassed her, so he sent his brother Mikhail to explain rather than receive her – and gently chides her for having taken offense at what was, he insists, physical impossibility rather than any want of welcome.
The letter then turns to business: an inventory of nine Shavrova manuscripts he is holding, two of which ("Mikhail Ivanovich" and "The Little Young Lady") he judges publishable outright, one ("At the Circus") already rejected elsewhere, and the remaining titles too faded in his memory for him to render a verdict – a small window onto how much unsolicited apprentice work passed across Chekhov’s desk and how bluntly he tracked it. He needles her for her slow output ("only 15 stories" by this point) before closing with a brief note on his own poor health – a month housebound with influenza and a cough – and a request for twenty more stories, framed as necessary exercise for her.
The envelope address given at the end – Arbat, Bolshoy Afanasyevsky Lane, the Lachinova house – is her Moscow address at the time, distinct from the Kislovka address on his 16 September letter to her, suggesting a move in the intervening months.