To A. I. Smagin, 24 November 1891. Moscow.
А. И. СМАГИНУ, 24 ноября 1891 г. Москва.
Headnote
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A short, ten-section letter, dated 24 November 1891, from Moscow, to Alexander Ivanovich Smagin – the same Poltava-province landowner and family friend addressed in the companion run of letters from November 1891, through whom the Chekhov family was pursuing a small country property (the "khutor") in the south.
Content: Chekhov confirms that the famine-relief "Sbornik" ("Miscellany" – likely the literary miscellany "Pomoshch golodayushchim" that Chekhov helped organize in aid of famine victims) has been sent out to 15 recipients, with a 16th copy going to Smagin himself, and that it will appear in print in December. He declines, with rueful humor, an invitation to visit Smagin’s estate at Bakumovka, citing overwhelming work and a bout of influenza that has confined him indoors. He presses Smagin for a sketch plan of the prospective khutor property – room dimensions, garden features, and above all whether the house sits high enough to avoid seasonal damp – continuing the practical property-scouting thread from the companion letters. He reports that his sister Masha will leave Moscow on 20 December, with money and a power of attorney to follow in January and his own visit planned for March. He closes with an anecdote about the journalist and outdoorsman Vladimir Gilyarovsky’s feats of hunting and endurance, sends regards to Elena Ivanovna, signs off, and appends one final practical question about the house’s construction (stone or wood).
Tone: warm and joking throughout, in the same register as the other Smagin correspondence – mock-solemn ("glad would I be to go to heaven, but my sins won’t let me in"), affectionately teasing about the fantastical garden features he imagines for the khutor, and admiring of Gilyarovsky’s exploits, closing on a brisk, practical note.