To A. I. Sumbatov, 28 January 1890. Petersburg.
А. И. СУМБАТОВУ (ЮЖИНУ), 28 января 1890 г. Петербург.
Headnote
Written 28 January 1890 from Petersburg to Alexander Ivanovich Sumbatov, better known by his stage name Yuzhin – an actor at the Maly Theatre in Moscow, playwright, and one of Chekhov’s regular correspondents. This is early 1890, the winter before Chekhov’s journey to Sakhalin (he would leave Moscow that April); the letter finds him in Petersburg on one of his periodic stays, working with Suvorin’s circle at “Novoye Vremya.”
The occasion is practical and social rather than literary business: Chekhov relays a request from a translator named Tatishchev, who is rendering Victor Hugo’s verse drama “Hernani” and needs to know the Maly’s Shrovetide-week performance schedule. From there the letter turns to a piece of gossip – word that Sumbatov and the actress Maria Yermolova have received the French Republic’s academic palms (decorations/honors), reportedly for their work on “Hernani” – which Chekhov greets with genial, glancing skepticism (wondering aloud whether Tatishchev’s report was itself embellished by champagne) before offering sincere congratulations. He closes with regards to Sumbatov’s wife (referred to as “the princess,” i.e. Princess Sumbatova) and to a Vladimir Ivanovich, a nod to the Lensky family, his own uncertain travel plans, and his Petersburg mailing address care of the newspaper. Two postscript-like final sections report on Petersburg theatre-going: unfavorable notice of “The Poor Bride” (Ostrovsky) and “The Bachelor” (Turgenev) for wooden, bureaucratic-feeling acting, and warmer, terser praise (“Good”) for a private performance of Tolstoy’s “The Power of Darkness” at the Priselkovs’.
it carries a full salutation (“Милый Александр Иванович”), a discursive multi-topic body, a formal close (“Будьте здоровы и небом хранимы”), and a signed sign-off (“Ваш А. Чехов”) followed by an address line and further substantive postscript remarks – none of the telegram markers (bare surname-only signature, absence of salutation, extreme terseness throughout) apply here.