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ALS in Russian, signed “A. Chekhov,” four pages on two adjoining sheets, 5.25 x 8.25, April 27, [1899]. A rambling, witty handwritten letter to Capitolina Mikhailovna. Chekhov writes that he has recently returned to Moscow, where the weather "was warm, then cold again." He has rented a new apartment, "taking it with the doubtful assumption that Isaac Naumovich will allow me to spend December and January in Moscow…There have been so many visitors, that I am nearly dead; on the second day of the holiday I was receiving the public from, eight in the morning until ten at night and got so exhausted that after ten I practically collapsed, stretched out on the sofa like a lifeless corpse. L N. Tolstoy has been to visit me, I have visited him and dined there…In short, I am besieged by celebrities like a virtuous maiden with angels while she sleeps. I have not seen my play [The Seagull] and shall not, but the actors who perform it, 'the seagullers,' visit me every day and I have even been photographed with them in a group…What am I doing in Moscow? I receive callers, I eat smoked ham, I buy furniture, new suits, hats, I go for walks; it would be thoroughly amusing if it wasn't for the cold and the fact that I am drawn to Yalta. I will come there but not before June…Your telegram and letter both arrived, and I thank you. I send you a low bow, down to the ground. The trees in Moscow are not yet in bud, the sky is frigid-looking, everything is melancholy, letters from the south are especially welcome."
He chats about mutual friends, Professor Ostroumov, Kovalevsky, Potapenko, Urussov and Kika, and comments that if Nadezhda Alexandrovna has pleurisy, "she must have gotten it from Figner. Obviously, it's much less dangerous to consort with literary men than with singers." He speculates on doctors, and reports that he has "had a letter from an archbishop, asking for my photograph." In fine condition.
Written at a pivotal moment in Anton Chekhov’s career, this lively letter captures the author in Moscow amid the sudden celebrity that followed the triumphant revival of The Seagull at the Moscow Art Theatre. The play’s disastrous 1896 St. Petersburg premiere had deeply discouraged Chekhov, but Konstantin Stanislavsky’s celebrated 1898 production transformed its reputation and helped establish both the play and the fledgling theatre. Chekhov’s joking reference here to the actors as “the seagullers,” his refusal to see the production, and his bemusement at being photographed with the company reveal his characteristically ironic response to acclaim. His report of visits exchanged with Leo Tolstoy—and his quip that he is “besieged by celebrities”—likewise evokes the remarkable literary and artistic circle in which he now moved.
The letter is equally revealing on a personal level. By 1899 Chekhov’s tuberculosis had made the warmer climate of Yalta increasingly necessary, and his comments about Moscow’s cold, his exhaustion from receiving visitors, and his longing for the south give the humor an unmistakable undertone of physical fragility. Yet the letter remains quintessentially Chekhovian: affectionate, observant, self-mocking, and crowded with literary friends, physicians, actors, and other figures from contemporary Russian cultural life. Its combination of references to Tolstoy, the Moscow Art Theatre, The Seagull, and Chekhov’s life between Moscow and Yalta makes it an unusually rich personal document.
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