A bagatelle. Stytchkin, a bloviating and self-satisfied railway guard approaching old age, engages a matchmaker to find himself a wife. After a little too much wine, he and the matchmaker make a match–themselves.
This is a decent, minor work.
Chekhov is just having some fun. It was published in 1887, pretty much Chekhov’s last year of writing stories at a breakneck pace, selling story upon story to support himself and his family as well, even as his reputation as an artist, and not merely an entertainer, was growing. He pumped out more than 40 stories that year, while working as a doctor–and not only that, he performed a variety of additional medical services (examinations of local sex workers, death certifications) as well.
It’s hard to imagine being so productive as a writer while simultaneously working as a doctor. But Chekhov referred to writing as his “mistress,” and you can see the pleasure he took in writing a story like this. He’s clearly delighted by the conceited Stytchkin and the sly matchmaker, who also, it is hinted, is a procurer of call girls. Writing, in its way, really was a pastime for Chekhov.
READ THIS? READ THAT!
Another bagatelle, purely entertaining, is “An Inadvertence.” Like, “A Happy Ending,” I can imagine Chekhov smiling to himself as he knocked the story out in an hour or two, perhaps while sitting in a bathing hut. (He admitted to doing just that–writing “The Huntsman” in a cabana–in a letter to a well-known writer, Dmitry Grigorovich, in 1886!)
A Chekhov Circus 