Acqua Toffana (or Aqua Tofana) is not related to Lucrezia Borgia* and,
needless to add, to the other Lucrezia.** It makes its appearance right at
the start of "Ada," in connection to Dolly (Daria Zemski, married to Ivan
Durmanov), not necessarily to her daughter, Aqua.***
"...Dolly had inherited her mother’s beauty and temper
but also an older ancestral strain of whimsical, and not seldom deplorable,
taste, well reflected, for instance, in the names she gave her daughters: Aqua
and Marina (‘Why not Tofana?’ wondered the good and sur-royally antlered
general...)
There are hints that Ada poisoned Krolik, and her lover Rack
before Van got to him.# ( I'm only superficially aware of this
hypothesis, ellaborated by Carolyn Kunin in past N-L postings).
In Mlle Larivière's "The Young and the Damned"describes a pair
of twins adept to poisons. The word "colline" serves not only to
indicate the opera "La Bohème" but, perhaps, to one of the components
of "belladona." (acetylcholine) ##
Is there any role played by the maid Blanche (La Tourbière and
Torfyanuyu) in the poisonings? "torfyanuyu" and
"tofana"?###
* "...even Popes and their children have been involved in notorious
poisonings. The most famous case is of the 15th and 16th century family of
Borgias which flourished in Italy. The most notorious poisoners of this family
were Cesare Borgia (1476-1507) and Lucrezia Borgia (1480-1519) who dispatched
several of their rivals with a secret poison, then known as "La Cantarella".
Their name is so inseparable with 15th and 16th century Italy, that whenever
there is a mention of this time and location, the name of Borgias immediately
springs to one's mind. Most people associate them with murder-by-poison plots.
They were the illegitimate son and daughter of one Rodrigo Lenzuoli Borgia
(1431-1503), who went on to become Pope Alexander VI from 1492 onwards till his
death. He is said to have had five children by his mistress Vanozza de Cattanei,
out of which two - Cesare and Lucrezia - proved to be most notorious. La
Cantarella, often known as "the poison of the Borgias", was a secret poison and
no one seems to know its composition today, but it most probably was a mixture
of subacetate of copper, arsenic and crude phosphorus..."
** Lucrezia de' Medici (14 February 1545 – 21 April 1561)was the daughter
of Cosimo I de' Medici and Eleanor of Toledo.
Born in Florence, she was the
first wife of Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Modena and Ferrara, whom she married on
3 July 1558. She moved to Ferrara only two years later, after being abandoned by
her husband, who preferred the court of Henry II of France. Her sudden death
spurred rumours that she was poisoned, but it is more likely that she instead
died of tuberculosis..After the ground-breaking book of Louis S. Friedland of
1936, experts claim she is the Duchess on the painting referred to in Robert
Browning's poem My Last Duchess. (wiki)
*** "Van’s maternal grandmother Daria (‘Dolly’) Durmanov was the daughter
of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d’Or...who had married, in 1824, Mary
O’Reilly, an Irish woman of fashion. Dolly, an only child,...(married)at the
tender and wayward age of fifteen, General Ivan Durmanov..."
# (Rack)..."Ward Five was where hopeless cases were kept...a poison
had seeped into his system; the local ‘lab’ could not identify it and they were
now waiting for a report..."
##"Mlle Larivière’s Enfants Maudits (1887) finally degenerated! She had had
two adolescents, in a French castle, poison their widowed mother who had seduced
a young neighbor, the lover of one of her twins...G.A. Vronsky, had told her
(Ada) she was always pretty enough to serve one day as a stand-in for
Lenore Colline."..
### "...Ada, with a deep sigh of pleasure, composed: the adjective
TORFYaNUYu which went through a brown square at F and through two red squares
(37 x 9 = 333 points) and got a bonus...(and) she recounted her monstrous points
in a smug, melodious tone of voice like a princess narrating the poison-cup
killing of a superfluous lover..."