In Nabokov's short-story entitled "Time and Ebb", written in English and included in Nabokov's Dozen I found:

"For those who have been born since the staggering discoveries of the seventies, and who thus have seen nothing in the nature of flying things save perhaps a kite or a toy balloon ( still permitted, I understand, in several states in spite of Dr. de Sutton's recent articles on the subject), it is not easy to imagine airplanes..."

(I could not find out the exact date when "Time and Ebb" was written.)

Comparison and Query: Could this Dr. de Sutton bear any relation to one of the doctors "Sutton", mentioned in Pale Fire?

Apparently the one mentioned by Shade in his poem is Mrs. Starr's father and the latter is Sybill's friend but I could not ascertain now the different references to these doctors following Kinbote's note on Dr.Sutton. ( I hope this issue has not been explored exhaustively at our List, or in special articles)

Perhaps there is no relation bt. the name in "Time and Ebb" and those in "Pale Fire".

Even so, the coincidence helped me to wonder at Kinbote's note on line 119.

In this note Kinbote mentions his various entries on Dr.Sutton ( the Dr.Sutton he visualizes...), but omits his other references to a Dr. Sutton, as we find them in his notes on lines 47-48,230,347. I conclude the other is a psychiatrist, called in to help Hazel and never mentioned by Shade.

1. Line 119 That’s Dr. Sutton’s light. That’s the Great Bear (followed by:... A thousand years ago five minutes were/ Equal to forty ounces of fine sand.)

2. Lines 985-6 But it’s not bedtime yet. The sun attains/ Old Dr. Sutton’s last two windowpanes.

3. Higher up on the same wooded hill stood, and still stands I trust, Dr. Sutton’s old clapboard house and, at the very top, eternity shall not dislodge... (Kinbote, lines 47-48)

4.Line 119: Dr. Sutton: This is a recombination of letters taken from two names, one beginning in "Sut," the other ending in "ton." Two distinguished medical men, long retired from practice, dwelt on our hill. Both were very old friends of the Shades; one had a daughter, president of Sybil’s club — and this is the Dr. Sutton I visualize in my notes to lines 181 and 1000. He is also mentioned in Line 986. ( Kinbote, on line 119)

5. I saw ancient Dr. Sutton, a snowy-headed, perfectly oval little gentleman arrive in a tottering Ford with his tall daughter, Mrs. Starr, a war widow.( Kinbote on line 181, "Today")

6.... they disliked modern voodoo-psychiatry, but mainly because they were afraid of Hazel, and afraid to hurt her. They had however a secret interview with old-fashioned and learned Dr. Sutton, and this put them in better spirits. ( Kinbote, line 230, "A domestic ghost")

7. One can well imagine how the Shades dreaded a recrudescence of the poltergeist nuisance but the ever-sagacious Dr. Sutton affirmed — on what authority I cannot tell — that cases in which the same person was again involved in the same type of outbreaks after a lapse of six years were practically unknown. (Kinbote, line 347, old barn)

8. and then there was the awful moment when Dr. Sutton’s daughter drove up with Sybil Shade.(Kinbote, line 1000)