To Ye. M. Shavrova, 11 January 1891. Petersburg.
Е. М. ШАВРОВОЙ, 11 января 1891 г. Петербург.
Headnote
Yelena Mikhailovna Shavrova was a young writer Chekhov had mentored since meeting her in Yalta in 1889, reading her drafts, placing some with Suvorin’s paper, and teasing her steadily about both her writing and her private life. Written from Petersburg, this short letter is his verdict, in proof, on her latest story: warm praise ("big progress"), delivered with the running joke that he will soon have nothing left to teach her.
Two threads recur from their other correspondence. One is Fedotov, an actor evidently connected to Shavrova’s own flirtation with a stage career, which Chekhov – pointedly declining to discuss Fedotov at all – clearly disapproves of, urging her instead to trust the literary talent he rates above most actresses’. The other is editorial housekeeping: he vetoes her chosen pseudonym "Shastunov" as sounding like a grocer’s shop sign near the Triumphal Gates, rejects her title "The Brides" ("Невесты"), and asks after a separate story, "In vino," apparently still owed him.
The "calico ball" (ситцевый бал) was a charity fancy-dress ball held in Yalta, evidently one Shavrova had helped organize or attend, which lost 1500 rubles – Chekhov needles her about its failure while insisting, against her evident suggestion that he seemed changed since their Yalta days, that the ball and the resort are not the same thing and his dullness at one says nothing about the other.