To L. S. Mizinova, 20 June 1891. Bogimovo.

Written on 20 June 1891 from Bogimovo, the Kaluga province estate the Chekhov family was renting for the summer, to Lidiya (Lika) Stepanovna Mizinova, a close friend of Chekhov’s sister Maria and the object of a long, unresolved flirtation with Chekhov himself. Mizinova was apparently unwell; the letter opens with Maria’s relayed request that she delay her visit until early July, when Natalya Lintvaryova – another family friend, staying with the Chekhovs that summer – will have returned from Sumy, followed by a long mock-medical regimen (rich in cream, bitters, and comic overkill) that plays on Chekhov’s own medical training. The tone throughout is teasing rather than solicitous, consistent with the rest of this stretch of the correspondence.

Levitan is the painter Isaak Levitan, a mutual friend then also a guest in the area and a recurring rival figure in Chekhov’s letters to Mizinova. Kolosovsky is the Bylim-Kolosovsky family, neighboring landowners at Bogimovo; "Amenaisa Erastovna," nicknamed Semiramis or Muir-and-Mirrielees (after the fashionable Moscow department store), is a young woman in that household, mentioned again in. The "Grandmother" of and is a running nickname in this circle rather than a literal relation; her identity is not established from this letter alone.