To A. S. Suvorin, 11 April 1890. Moscow.
А. С. СУВОРИНУ, 11 апреля 1890 г. Москва.
Headnote
1 Written from Moscow on 11 April 1890 to Alexey Sergeyevich Suvorin, Chekhov’s publisher and closest correspondent, one week before Chekhov left Moscow (18 April, per) on the journey east that would take him to Sakhalin. The letter is dense with the practical business of departure – money, proofs, errands, and above all a long report on the health of "Alexey Alexeyevich," Suvorin’s son, whom Chekhov (a physician) had been informally looking after in Moscow.
2 and form a single extended medical report: Chekhov describes daily contact with Alexey Alexeyevich ("A A"), explains why he judged a visit to the eminent Moscow clinician Zakharyin unnecessary, and instead arranged for his own trusted doctor, "Korneyev," to be available if needed. He gives an organ-by-organ clean bill of health (lungs, liver, brain, heart, no catarrh) and sets up a urine test to be arranged for Alexey Alexeyevich in Feodosia before he begins sea-bathing, explicitly tying this to Suvorin’s worry, expressed in two prior letters, about "sugar disease" (diabetes). The tone throughout is confident, brisk, and reassuring – Chekhov the doctor managing an anxious father from a distance.
5 and turn to money and business: Chekhov’s own departure date and travel funds (he asks Suvorin for 1,000 rubles against future work, on top of 100 rubles already given to Nikolai Mikhailovich Yezhov on Alexey Alexeyevich’s behalf), a note on the fourth edition of his story collection "In the Twilight" ("В сумерках"), the return of borrowed journal issues to Pavel Skalkovsky, and an urgent, comically emphatic plea for word on Ostrovsky (likely business relating to the Suvorin theatre or a related matter Chekhov does not spell out here).
8 report family and social news: his sister Maria Pavlovna’s anxiety at his impending departure and a planned two-week trip to the Crimea to occupy her, then an extended, sardonic account of a late supper party after a theatrical performance of "The Seville Seducer" ("Севильский обольститель"), naming the writer Modest Ivanovich Pisarev’s circle – Alexey Petrovich (Chekhov’s brother-in-law-to-be figure or a family friend, not further identified here), the singer Mikhail (Misha) Ivanov, Plyushchik-Plyushchevsky, Ivanov’s brother, and "Alexey Alexeyevich" again – and Chekhov’s dry defense of Moscow theatrical etiquette against Misha Ivanov’s reproach that Muscovites don’t "support" their fellow writers with applause.
10 close the letter proper: a mock-solemn blessing, a dream image (a wolf chasing him in his sleep), regards to Suvorin’s family, and the signature "Ваш А. Чехов" / "Yours, A. Chekhov."
13 is a further paragraph after the signature, continuing in the same letter rather than beginning a new one – introducing Ye. K. Markova, a woman formerly of the Suvorin household, now married to a painter named Sakharov who wants to accompany Chekhov to Sakhalin as an illustrator. Chekhov asks Suvorin, half-comically, to talk Sakharov out of it by telling him Chekhov is a drunkard, a swindler, a nihilist, and a brawler – self-deprecating hyperbole, not a literal self-description – and notes with some irritation that Sakharov wants at least a thousand rubles to illustrate Chekhov’s book, which killed his interest in the idea. This signature-then-postscript pattern (a further paragraph of business/social requests continuing after "Ваш А. Чехов") is the same structure already documented elsewhere in this corpus (e.g. letter 4-760,); it is not a sign of concatenated or spliced documents.