person
Countess Keller
also: графине Келлер, графиня Келлер
A Moscow society lady in whose household Chekhov, joking that he is following the fashionable court physician Botkin's example, reports making an informal house call -- in fact to treat her cook, not the countess herself.
Reading notes
- To Al. P. Chekhov, 29 October 1887. Moscow. §10 Countess Keller
A Moscow society lady; the joke's payoff is that Chekhov's grand-sounding house call is in fact to treat her cook, not the countess herself -- deflating the mock-aristocratic pretension of the passage.
- To Al. P. Chekhov, 24 March 1888. Moscow. §19 Countess Keller's
A Moscow society lady in whose household Chekhov, in his medical capacity, treated a servant rather than the countess herself.
- To M. V. Kiseleva, 25 March 1888. Moscow. §12 Countess Keller's nanny
Countess Keller, a Moscow society lady previously mentioned at and; as before, Chekhov's medical house call is to a servant of the household, not to the countess herself.
- To Ye. M. Lintvareva, 6 September 1889. Moscow. §4 I told loud stories about how I had once served as cook to Countess Keller
A real Moscow society lady Chekhov elsewhere reports actually visiting as a physician, to treat her cook. Here he inverts the joke for Masha's benefit, loudly play-acting as if HE had once been Countess Keller's servant-cook, an invented comic anecdote rather than a factual claim; the humor depends on Storozhenko, a stranger, overhearing this absurd performance in the train carriage.