To A. F. Koni, 26 January 1891. Petersburg.

Checked against the source for genuine multi-item concatenation (the failure mode seen elsewhere in this corpus, e.g./854/1044) – none found; this is one coherent letter.

This appears to be Chekhov’s first surviving direct letter to Anatoly Fyodorovich Koni, the celebrated jurist. Koni had written proposing a meeting to discuss Sakhalin, and the visit itself is recorded a week later in the family letter of 18 January 1891, where Chekhov notes he called on Koni and that a joint visit to Yelizaveta Alekseyevna Naryshkina – to enlist her in approaching the Empress about funding a shelter for Sakhalin’s children – was being planned. Here Chekhov writes back to Koni directly: he apologizes for the delay in replying (he is not leaving Petersburg before Saturday, so in no hurry) and regrets not having called on Madame Naryshkina after all, preferring to wait until his Sakhalin book is finished and he can speak of the island with more command of his material.

The letter’s substance is an extended, unflinching account of the condition of children on Sakhalin, evidently written at Koni’s request as raw material either for Koni’s own advocacy or for Chekhov’s forthcoming book: child prostitution from the age of twelve; a transcribed interview with a ten-year-old boy about his parentage, in which the boy reveals, without affect, that his mother killed her first husband and is unmarried to her current "cohabitant," and that he himself was born illegitimate at the Kara hard labor prison; an observed scene of a shackled convict-murderer’s small daughter following him even to the ship’s water-closet under guard, and sleeping in a heap with convicts and soldiers; a funeral scene in which a four-year-old boy, Alyoshka, is asked where his mother is and replies "Buried!" with a careless laugh, after which the Circassian lodger asks what is to be done with the orphaned children, since he is not obliged to feed them. Chekhov surveys the near-absence of church and school provision, notes the general prevalence of illnesses of neglect rather than epidemic disease, and closes his report with a policy judgment: he declines to propose a solution but argues that reliance on charity and on leftover prison funds is inadequate and that a dedicated state treasury is needed. He gives his Moscow address (Malaya Dmitrovka, Firgang’s house – the same address as in neighboring 1890-91 letters, e.g.) and closes with thanks for Koni’s kindness and his promise to call.