JM: In the article about the Westminster dog show
there's a quote from "Speak, Memory," in which Vlladimir Nabokov
describes, among other issues, his mother's dachs, Box[...] and
observes that he "...is so old and
thickly padded with dreams (about chewable slippers and a few last
smells) that he does not stir when faint bells jingle outside.”
Soon afterwards Anton Chekhov's dachshunds, Quinine and Bromine.,
are mentioned but there's no reference to the blood-connection between
Box and one of Chekhov's dogs (I think this story is told in Nabokov's
memoirs).
Alexander Nazaryan observes that "perhaps because of their
distinctive personalities, dachshunds often appear in fiction: from the
“dropsical dackel” of a neighbor spotted by Humbert Humbert in 'Lolita'
to Sherman McCoy’s Marshall, with whom he famously struggles in the
opening of 'The Bonfire of the Vanities.' It must be said,
unfortunately, that the titular character in Chekhov’s 'Lady with
Lapdog' owns a Pomeranian."
French writer Victor Hugo's grandson once tried to "wed"
his dackel, named "Lolita," to Pablo Picasso's guest-dog, "Lump".*
Although I'd forgotten all about "Lolita" and a neighbor's "dropsical
dackel," I decided to investigate more the abundant references I
remembered from "Ada."
I hadn't noticed before that a dachshund is closely
associated to Lucette.** nor that there was a reference to Chekhov in
the same paragraph in which Marina's restless dackel makes one of his
appearances*** - and the context of Van's confession of his
"dackelophobia."# among other unexpected connections...
.............................................................................................................................................................................
* - "Lolita" and "Lump" must have met in 1957. Cf. David Douglas
Duncan's "Lump the Dog who ate a Picasso" Ed.Thames and Hudson,2006.
(quote p.62-63: "Silversmith François Hugo, grandson of Victor, arrived
with two massive Picasso-designed platters, his wife and a friend - and
his svelte lady dachshund, Lolita. Asked by Picasso whether Lump had
ever been married, I replied "No!" Hugo responded to the same query
about Lolita - "No!". The next platter delivery was delayed to coincide
with their marriage. She returned jewel-eyed, with dish-doily wedding
necklace around her throat, Picasso their helpful godfather. To no
avail. Lum and Lolita remained childless." .
** "Lucette
was rocking the glum dackel, or looking up at an imaginary woodpecker,
or with various pretty contortions unhurriedly mounting the gray-looped
board and swinging gently and gingerly as if never having done it yet,
while idiot Dack barked at the locked pavilion door. She increased her
momentum..."
" She did not see her whole life
flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red
rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes
of an unanalyzable brook; but she did see a few odds and ends as she
swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful
torpor. She saw a pair of new vair-furred bedroom slippers, which
Brigitte had forgotten to pack; she saw Van wiping his mouth before
answering, and then, still withholding the answer, throwing his napkin
on the table as they both got up; and she saw a girl with long black
hair quickly bend in passing to clap her hands over a dackel in a
half-tom wreath."
Strangely it's doomed Greg who mentions Ada's
film, marriage, Lucette's dackel and a death by drowning:" ‘Oh, that would be terrible, I declare — to switch on
the dorotelly, and suddenly see her. Like a drowning man seeing his
whole past, and the trees, and the flowers, and the wreathed dachshund.
She must have been terribly affected by her mother’s terrible death.’
"
*** - "The corridor was dark,
somewhere the dachshund was barking ecstatically...the so-called
‘baronial barn,’ ...was on fire. Fifty cows would have been without hay
and Larivière without her midday coffee cream had it happened later in
the season. Van felt slighted. They’ve all gone and left me behind, as
old Fierce mumbles at the end of the Cherry Orchard (Marina was an
adequate Mme Ranevski)...Uncle Dan, a cigar in his teeth, and
kerchiefed Marina with Dack in her clutch deriding the watchdogs, were
in the process of setting out between raised arms and swinging lanterns
in the runabout "
# - "The dog
came in, turned up a brimming brown eye Vanward, toddled up to the
window, looked at the rain like a little person, and returned to his
filthy cushion in the next room.
‘I could never stand that breed,’ remarked Van. ‘Dackelophobia.’ ‘But
girls — do you like girls, Van, do you have many girls? You are not a
pederast, like your poor uncle, are you?"