Tongues Wagged
Donald Rayfield, 20 February 1997
When The News seeped out that Anton Chekhov, the most sought after of Russia’s eligible bachelors, had, in Moscow on 25 May 1901, married a Lutheran actress, Olga Knipper, at least a dozen women exclaimed: ‘Why not me?’ There were the painters: Maria Drozdova dropped her brushes and her palette when she heard the news, exclaiming that she thought God had reserved Chekhov as a reward for her modesty and that she hated Knipper; Aleksandra Khotiaintseva, who had entertained him when they were staying in Nice in 1898 and whom Chekhov’s youngest brother wanted him to marry, kept her disappointment to herself. There were actresses – Lidia Iavorskaia, Vera Komissarzhevskaia, and the recently widowed Daria Musina-Pushkina – who had had their sights on him for years, even decades. There were writers: Elena Shavrova, who would have been prepared to divorce her civil servant husband; Tatiana Shchepkina-Kupernik, despite her lesbian preferences. There were women of no definite profession, above all Lika Mizinova – the original Seagull – to whom Chekhov had proposed at least twice, only to retract.’