To A. P. Lensky, 16 March 1890. Moscow.

1 Written from Moscow and dated 16 March 1890, this short letter to the actor and director Alexander Pavlovich Lensky accompanies a gift (a feuilleton by the actor and writer Ivan Fyodorovich Gorbunov), explains why Chekhov has not yet come to see Lensky in person about an unspecified matter, and closes with news of his own imminent departure and a postscript about a letter just received from the painter Isaac Levitan, then in Paris.

2 After the dateline (1-2), Chekhov sends Lensky a feuilleton (a short topical prose piece) by Ivan Fyodorovich Gorbunov, calling it interesting and suggesting actors ought to write this way more often, for the benefit of future historians of the Russian theater – with the caveat that Gorbunov sometimes distorts the facts and lapses into tendentiousness (3). He explains that he has been meaning every day to call on Lensky in person about some matter, but has been buried in work on the Sakhalin project alongside his literary and other work, leaving him no free time at all (4, with the idiomatic "no time even to blow my nose" for total overload). He notes he is leaving Moscow in early April (5) – consistent with his departure for the Sakhalin journey that spring – sends respects to Lensky’s wife (6), and closes with a brief valediction and signature (7). A final section, set off as a postscript-like addendum after the signature, reports that he has received a letter from Isaac Levitan, writing from Paris mostly about women, whom (per Levitan) he does not like (8).