To A. I. Smagin, 1891. Moscow.
А. И. СМАГИНУ, Ноябрь, после 26, 1891 г. Москва.
Headnote
A short, seven-section letter, dated late November 1891 (after the 26th), 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 purchase of a small country property (the "khutor") in the south.
Content: Chekhov forwards a letter he has received from the newspaper "Russkiye Vedomosti," which has resolved not to send items cash-on-delivery; he has offered to stand personally responsible (and even post a deposit) so that the famine-relief literary "Sbornik" ("Miscellany") can still be sent to Smagin, joking that the paper’s editorial board are all civilized people "even if You do not eat oysters." If the paper’s "synod" nonetheless declines to make an exception, he will simply advance the cost from the khutor-purchase funds and settle up in person. He repeats that his sister (Marya Pavlovna) leaves Moscow on the 20th, offers to send money at once, and says that if the khutor purchase goes through he will arrive on 1 March. He reports a small personal change – influenza has ruined his taste for the two glasses of vodka he used to take at supper, which now taste to him like medicine – then closes with regards from the actress Leshkovskaya and a warm sign-off.
Tone: mock-formal opening address ("My most gracious sovereign!") giving way to the same warm, joking register as the rest of the Smagin correspondence – teasing bureaucratic mimicry of the newspaper’s "synod" and its "characteristic pedantry," a self-mocking note about his newfound aversion to vodka ("misfortune of a special kind!"), and an affectionate, slightly formal close ("Be well a thousand times over").