My official wife

My Official Wife, by Colonel Richard Henry Savage (1891). This clever skit is permeated by a Russian atmosphere, in which visions of the secret police, the Nihilists, and social life in St. Petersburg, are blended like the vague fancies of a troubled dream.

 Colonel Arthur Lenox, with passports made out for himself and wife, meets at the Russian frontier a strikingly beautiful woman whom he is induced to pass over the border as his own wife, who has remained in Paris.

 At St. Petersburg, Hélène, the “official wife,” receives mail addressed to Mrs. Lenox, shares the Colonel’s apartments, and is introduced everywhere as his wife. But he has learned that she is a prominent and dangerous Nihilist, and is in daily fear of discovery and punishment.

Lenox frustrates her design to assassinate the Emperor; after which Hélène escapes by the aid of a Russian officer whom she has beguiled. Meantime the real wife has come on from Paris, and endless complications with the police ensue. The Colonel secures his wife’s release by threatening the chief of police that otherwise he will inform the Tsar of the inefficiency of the police department, in not unearthing the scheme for his assassination.