person
Baroness Vykhukhol
also: баронесса Выхухоль, Vykhukhol
A society contact in the capital to whom Chekhov had appealed for help before his Sakhalin journey and who, like Galkin, provided none. "Выхухоль" is the ordinary Russian word for the Russian desman (a small semi-aquatic, musk-scented mole relative), not an attested aristocratic surname -- almost certainly an ironic nickname Chekhov applies to a real baroness whose actual name is withheld or forgotten in favor of the joke, continuous with his habit elsewhere of skewering unhelpful grandees with a mocking epithet rather than naming them plainly. No documentary trace of a baroness bearing this name as a real surname has been found; treated here as Chekhov's own coinage/nickname for an otherwise unidentified society figure, flagged in the glossary rather than presented as a confirmed historical name.
Reading notes
- To A. S. Suvorin, 9 December 1890. Moscow. §10 с сыном баронессы Икскуль (она же Выхухоль), морским офицером
Baroness Varvara Ivanovna Ikskul von Hildenbandt, a well-known St. Petersburg society figure whom Chekhov had earlier (and unsuccessfully) approached for help before setting out for Sakhalin (see, 11 September 1890, where she and "Galkin" are named together as well-placed contacts who provided no assistance). "Vykhukhol" (literally the Russian desman, a small musk-scented semi-aquatic mammal) is Chekhov's own private punning nickname for her, apparently coined on the strength of some perceived resemblance between the sound or shape of "Икскуль" and "выхухоль," or simply as an affectionate/mocking private joke -- preserved here as-is rather than normalized, per this corpus's practice for Chekhov's invented nicknames. Her real surname is independently confirmed later in this same correspondence: (19 December 1890) has Chekhov asking Suvorin to send books "to Varvara Ivanovna Ikskul" at an address on Alarchin Bridge in St. Petersburg, explaining that he had promised to act as her literary patron -- so despite the earlier entity note flagging "Vykhukhol" as possibly an entirely invented cover-name for an unidentified baroness, the corpus itself supplies her documented real name within days of this letter.
- To V. O. Kononovich, 19 February 1891. Moscow. §54 Баронесса В. И. Икскуль
Baroness Varvara Ivanovna Ikskul von Hildenbandt, named here by her real surname in full (compare the private joke-nickname \"Baroness Vykhukhol\" Chekhov uses for her in and, both glossed in this corpus as referring to the same woman) -- she donates six copies each of nine short works, one set per school, continuing the literary patronage Chekhov describes taking on for her in.
- To V. G. Chertkov, 2 May 1891. Moscow. §6 Baroness V. I. Ikskul, who publishes books for the common people
Baroness Varvara Ivanovna Ikskul von Hildenbandt, named here by her real surname (compare the private joke-nickname "Baroness Vykhukhol" Chekhov uses for her elsewhere in this corpus, e.g. -- all glossed as the same woman), who ran her own line of cheap popular editions. She had already asked for and been promised "Vanka" the previous December, creating the overlap Chekhov discloses here rather than resolves.