To Ye. M. Shavrova, 11 March 1891. Moscow.
Е. М. ШАВРОВОЙ, 11 марта 1891 г. Москва.
Headnote
Written from Moscow three days after his previous letter to her (8 March), on the eve of his departure for Petersburg and then abroad with Suvorin. Chekhov apologizes for a delayed reply, worn out from a committee meeting with the actor Alexander Yuzhin and the playwright Ippolit Shpazhinsky drafting statutes for the Griboyedov Prize. He reports on several of Yelena Mikhailovna Shavrova’s manuscripts in his care – he has located her "Kashtanka" and will read it in Petersburg, praises "At the Circus" (already sent on to the journal "Artist"), returns "Tsyganshchina" at her request, and promises to press Suvorin about her fee when he delivers "The Fortune-Teller." He teases her self-description as a "poor authoress," offering "the thorny path" as the fitter epithet for a writing career, and reassures her that she need never apologize for sending him her work. He closes with his summer and foreign addresses (via her brother, and poste restante in Paris or Naples).