To M. P. Chekhova, 14 January 1891. Petersburg.

A short, restless letter of 14 January 1891, from Petersburg, to Chekhov’s sister Maria Pavlovna ("Masha"), written during the same extended winter stay in Petersburg as the surrounding letters of this period – rounds of dinners, society calls, and fundraising talk for the Sakhalin schools, staying in the Suvorins’ orbit. Here the tone turns sharply from the earlier letters’ comic breeziness: Chekhov complains at length of being exhausted and of a vague, ill-defined hostility he senses around him, naming specific literary sniping (the critic Burenin, the writer Maslov/Bezhetsky, the writer Shcheglov) before moving, in the letter’s characteristic swerve, straight into small domestic and social items – a woman he’s tracking down in his building, a royalty payment, his health, an instruction about his sister’s employment, greetings and gossip, and finally the arrival of visitors.

Notable items: he reports the second edition of his story collection "Detvora" ("Children") and its 100-ruble payment; he tells Masha flatly that she will not go to work for Suvorin, "that is my will", and notes Suvorin’s fondness for her alongside his infatuation with Olga Kundasova; he sends a joking message to Lidia Yegorovna Mizyukova about avoiding pastries and the painter Levitan; and he records visits from the writer Ivan Shcheglov, the elder writer Grigorovich (reminiscing and pressing Chekhov for stories about Japanese women, a callback to his round-the-world voyage home from Sakhalin), and an arrival named Irakli whom he cannot yet reach because his telephone is broken. The "ballet" of is a wry self-description of the exhausting round of Petersburg social obligations, not a literal performance; "Ivan in Sudorogino" refers to his brother Ivan Pavlovich’s post at the village school there.