Varvara Aleksandrovna Bakhmeteva (Варва́ра Алекса́ндровна Бахме́тева; 1815 – 9 September 1851), birth name Varvara Alexandrovna Lopukhina, was a Russian noblewoman who was the beloved and tragic muse of the great Romantic poet Mikhail Lermontov.
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Biography
Born into the ancient noble Lopukhin family, Varvara Lopukhina was the seventh of eight children. She and her brother Alexei and sister Maria were close friends of Mikhail Lermontov from 1828, when Lermontov came to Moscow for his secondary school education – and in time Varvara and Mikhail fell in love. At the age of 18, Lermontov wrote these lines to Lopukhin:
According to recollections of the relatives of the poet, Lermontov retained this love for Lopukhina until his death. But the Lopukhin family opposed their marriage, particularly Varvara's father, Aleksandr Lopukhin, and her sister and Lermontov's friend, Mariya.
In 1835 Varvara Lopukhina married Nikolay Fyodorovich Bakhmetev, a wealthy landowner and an Active State Councillor. Nikolay was then 37 and Varvara 20. According to Lermontov's second cousin Akim Shan-Girey, at the news of Lopukhina's impending marriage Lermontov's "face changed and grew pale".
Lermontov found difficulty in accepting Varvara's new surname. Sending her a new version of "Demon" (a long poem featuring some of the most resonant lines in the Russian language, which he rewrote several times), he several times crossed out the initials ВАБ and wrote instead ВАЛ in the dedication sent to the copyist. One may note that "Л" also happens to be the poet's own initial, implying that Lermontov had had intentions of marrying her.