To I. P. Chekhov, 10 December 1890. Moscow.
И. П. ЧЕХОВУ, 10 декабря 1890 г. Москва.
Headnote
This letter is a genuine single item, not concatenated material: it is written throughout in the hand of Mikhail Pavlovich Chekhov, Anton’s youngest brother, addressed to their elder brother Ivan Pavlovich Chekhov, with two final lines – a one-line send-off and a bare signature – added by Anton himself. Chekhov"), and Anton adds his own two-word postscript ("Come soon.") with his own signature. This is the same convention already used elsewhere in the corpus for a letter that changes hands mid-document.
Dated 10 December 1890, Moscow. Anton Chekhov had reached Moscow on 8 December 1890 (per Mikhail’s account here, arriving at the station to be met by their father and sister Masha), completing his return from the Sakhalin expedition by way of the long sea route and then rail from the south. Mikhail, who was staying nearby at Aleksin in Tula province in his post as a tax inspector, describes rushing to Tula to meet Anton’s train when it passed through, the joyful reunion, and the trip back to the family’s Moscow apartment on Malaya Dmitrovka.
Content: a lively, affectionate family narrative rather than a working letter – the meeting at the Tula station, the crowded railway carriage with "two charming little beasts with sharp little muzzles" (likely mongooses or similar animals Anton brought back as curiosities), a "broad-faced Buryat from Sakhalin" traveling with Anton who turns out to be a Christian missionary of Buryat origin (a former "heathen," in Mikhail’s phrasing, now himself a convert and converter), the arrival in Moscow, the distribution of gifts (a tussore-silk jacket and a Japanese silver ruble for Mikhail, tussore silk and Japanese kerchiefs for their sister Masha), and Mikhail’s own report on settling into his household at Aleksin, with an invitation for Ivan to come stay, either as a visitor or as a permanent housemate. Anton’s own closing lines are a brief, warm "Come soon."