To A. I. Sumbatov, 10–11 March 1890. Moscow.

A letter dated only approximately – "10 or 11 March 1890" in the source itself – to the actor and playwright Prince Alexander Ivanovich Sumbatov, who wrote under the stage name Yuzhin, a leading figure at the Maly Theatre, addressed here with the affectionate diminutive "milyi knyazyushka" ("dear little prince"), a play on Sumbatov’s actual princely title. This is a fuller, warmer letter than the terse 8 March cancellation note to the same addressee written just two days earlier, and covers several small threads at once: a gift of stationery, a report on a colleague’s excuse-making, a committee-logistics recommendation, an apology for standing Sumbatov up at dinner, and a closing weather note The letter is followed by its surviving envelope address panel (sections 8-11), consistent with this corpus’s established convention for short notes/letters that survive with their address intact (compare).

Content: Chekhov has chosen stationery decorated with swallows for Sumbatov, noting the season. He reports a letter just received from Tikhonov, who begs off attending during Holy Week for lack of travel money – and, Chekhov adds pointedly, seemingly little wish to come either. Chekhov’s practical conclusion: the (theatrical/literary) commission the two men both serve on should meet before Holy Week rather than wait on the Petersburg members, since Tikhonov’s refusal has made their letter moot. He then apologizes for missing a dinner at Sumbatov’s, citing the mountain of work ahead of his departure for Sakhalin (about a month off at time of writing) and admitting he only backed out because he hadn’t known a committee meeting had been called for that evening. He promises, in playful compensation, to bring Sumbatov back a Buddha figure and a nude Japanese woman carved in ivory from his travels – Chekhov’s Sakhalin itinerary in 1890 went via Siberia and included a stop in Japan that in the end he did not make (illness kept him from disembarking), so this is a jest about a souvenir he in fact never delivered. He closes with a note on the fine weather and a wish, Sakhalin aside, to go dacha-hunting.