To I. P. Chekhov, 1891. Moscow.
И. П. ЧЕХОВУ, Февраль, после 7, 1891 г. Москва.
Headnote
A short letter of after 7 February 1891, from Moscow, to Chekhov’s brother Ivan Pavlovich ("Ivan," a schoolteacher), written soon after Chekhov’s return from Petersburg to Moscow.
Chekhov reports on his effort to get the pedagogue D. I. Tikhomirov and the Literacy Committee to assemble a library for the planned Sakhalin schools, notes the size of the resulting shipment of donated books, and mentions a 666-ruble debt to his publisher Suvorin for textbooks – a bill he dined with the wealthy Varvara Morozova hoping, but failing, to nerve himself to ask her to cover. He gives a brief report of home and work (writing is going easily for the moment), asks after the newspaper subscription, and closes with a mock-solicitous warning to Ivan about broken glass underfoot if he comes home drunk at night. A postscript reports that his mongoose, recently ill, has recovered and is back to its usual mischief.