Lidia Stakhiyevna Mizinova

Reading notes

• To the Chekhovs, 23 April 1890. Volga, parokhod "Aleksandr Nevsky". §11 Lidia Stakhiyevna

  Lidia Stakhiyevna Mizinova, known to the Chekhov household as "Lika," was a close friend of Chekhov's sister Maria and became one of Chekhov's own most important friends and correspondents through the 1890s. She is addressed here, in the family's typical register, by given name and patronymic (a mock-formal, affectionate habit also seen with "Papasha"/"Mamasha" in the same section) and then immediately teased by the more familiar short form "Lidia Stakh" -- the tonal slide from formal to intimate within a single breath is characteristic of how the household addressed its inner circle.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 16 January 1891. Petersburg. §7 Lidia Stakhiyevna

  Lidia Stakhiyevna Mizinova ("Lika"), a close friend of the Chekhov family circle and one of Chekhov's closest women correspondents through the 1890s; the rumor of a spite-marriage reported here is treated by Chekhov as fodder for teasing rather than confirmed fact.

• To L. S. Mizinova, 21 January 1891. Petersburg. §3 most esteemed Lidia Stakhiyevna

  The mock-formal full name and patronymic is the letter's running joke -- an exaggeratedly ceremonious form of address for a close family friend Chekhov elsewhere calls "Lika," repeated at \S4 to frame the letter as a pair of stiff, self-important announcements (a gift, then a delay).

• To M. P. Chekhova, 16 March 1891. Petersburg. §13 Give Lika the writing paper, or else it, that is, the paper, will go moldy

  A small, deadpan domestic errand concerning Lika (Lidia Stakhiyevna) Mizinova, close friend of the Chekhov family and then close to Masha; the mock-solemn parenthetical clarification ("that is, the paper") is characteristic of Chekhov's habit of over-explaining trivial instructions for comic effect.

• To M. P. Chekhova, 16 March 1891. Petersburg. §3 Likisha

  "Likisha," a diminutive of Lika, Chekhov's habitual pet name in this period for Lidia Stakhiyevna Mizinova, a close friend of the family circle and object of his long teasing flirtation.

• To the Chekhovs, 1891. Venice. §11 golden-haired Lika

  \textit{златокудрой Лике} -- the epithet "golden-haired" was a recurring, half-teasing description of Lidia (Lika) Mizinova in the Chekhov circle's correspondence, alluding to her fair hair and often-remarked good looks.

• To the Chekhovs, April 1891. Naples. §5 about Lika Lenskaya

  "Лика Ленская" -- Chekhov here appends the teasing surname "Lenskaya" to Lika's usual nickname, playing on the fashionable Maly Theatre actor Alexander Lensky and his family circle, part of the household's running repertoire of joking pet-names for Lidia Stakhiyevna Mizinova, the family friend and object of Chekhov's flirtatious epistolary banter through the early 1890s. her direct address alongside Masha in the immediately preceding letter \S5 ("You, Masha, and you, Lika, would go out of your minds with delight").

• To A. A. Dolzhenko, 14 May 1891. Aleksin. §4 I asked Lidia Stakhievna to give you ten rubles

  Lidia Stakhiyevna Mizinova, the close family friend known within the household as "Lika," here entrusted with passing along household money -- a small domestic errand consistent with her established closeness to the Chekhov circle at this period.

• To I. P. Chekhov, 15 May 1891. Aleksin. §5 Lidia Stakhiyevna, who stayed with us

  Identified as Lidia (Lika) Stakhiyevna Mizinova, the family friend already established in this corpus, on the following grounds: (1) the name and patronymic given here, "Лидия Стахиевна"/"Lidia Stakhiyevna," match Mizinova's confirmed full patronymic exactly, as recorded in this corpus's own apparatus (e.g. the headnote glosses her as "Lidia (Lika) Stakhiyevna Mizinova"); (2) the description here -- a recent guest at the family's Aleksin dacha, close enough to the household to brief Ivan on "the particulars about the dacha" -- fits Mizinova's established closeness with the Chekhov family circle (a schoolfriend of Chekhov's sister Maria); (3) external corroboration from the immediate correspondence: Chekhov's very next two surviving letters to Ivan's addressee-adjacent circle are in fact to Mizinova herself -- (sent from this same Aleksin dacha) and (sent six days later from Bogimovo, after the family's move) -- placing her in close, recent contact with the Aleksin household at exactly this moment, consistent with a visit shortly before 15 May 1891. Taken together, the exact patronymic match plus the immediate correspondence context make the identification confident, not merely plausible.

• To L. S. Mizinova, 23 May 1891. Bogimovo. §3 Much-esteemed Lidia Stakhiyevna

  \textit{Многоуважаемая} -- a formal, almost official salutation ("much-esteemed" / "highly respected"), the standard opening of a polite but distant nineteenth-century letter. It stands in pointed contrast to the florid, mock-amorous apostrophes Chekhov usually addresses to Mizinova (cf., \S3: "Golden, mother-of-pearl, and lisle-stockinged Lika!"); the shift from intimate nickname to formal patronymic in the space of six days is itself the letter's chief comic and tonal effect, likely a deliberate deflation rather than a real cooling of the friendship.

• To L. S. Mizinova, 20 June 1891. Bogimovo. §3 Poor, sick Likisha!

  "Ликиша" (Likisha) is a diminutive-of-diminutive of "Lika," the household nickname for Lidia Stakhiyevna Mizinova, used here as an extra-tender form given her reported illness.