To A. S. Suvorin, 13 July 1891. Bogimovo.

A letter of 13 July 1891 from Bogimovo to Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin, publisher of Novoye Vremya: dateline, a repeated date fragment, an errand-and-accounts paragraph, a run of teasing questions about Suvorin’s trip, travel plans, instructions for forwarded mail, a comic set piece about the zoologist Wagner’s aunts, a note on a visiting painter, closing greetings, a weather note, family whereabouts, signature, and a postscript on tobacco. Written some three weeks after, in which Chekhov had declined to join Suvorin on a proposed trip to Odessa (and Batum) as too great a claim on his time – Suvorin evidently went without him, since here is Chekhov asking after the Odessa trip itself, request for news of a ship and its passenger, and a joking roll call of Suvorin’s Odessa/Crimean circle. This letter is not itself the record of Chekhov joining the trip; it is a later letter written from Bogimovo asking how it went.