Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

Describing Ada's dramatic career, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions Dawn de Laire, an actress of the Yakima Academy of Drama who played Natasha (Andrey Prozorov's wife) in a somewhat abridged stage version of Four Sisters (as Chekhov’s play The Three Sisters, 1901, is known on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set):

Describing his visit to Brownhill (Ada's school for girls), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions soft-toned Miss Cleft, the headmistress:

About to leave Van's Manhattan flat, Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) asks Van to give him his gloves and cloak:

‘My gloves! Cloak! Thank you. Can I use your W.C.? No? All right. I’ll find one elsewhere. Come over as soon as you can, and we’ll meet Marina at the airport around four and then whizz to the wake, and —’

In March, 1905, Demon Veen (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's father) perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific. Half a year later Van and Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) meet in Mont Roux, Switzerland, after the thirteen-year-long separation. On October 24, 1905, Ada leaves Mont Roux with her sick husband and reunites with Van only in 1922, after Andrey's death:

In VN's novel Pale Fire (1962) the poet Shade and his commentator Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) live in New Wye in Dulwich Road:

Lines 47-48: the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith

During her visit to Kingston (Van's American University) Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) mentions Grandmother’s scrutoir and the gueridon:

‘Do you remember Grandmother’s scrutoir between the globe and the gueridon? In the library?’

‘I don’t even know what a scrutoir is; and I do not visualize the gueridon.’

‘But you remember the globe?’

Dusty Tartary with Cinderella’s finger rubbing the place where the invader would fall.

In his apologetic note to Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) written after the dinner in ‘Ursus’ and debauch à trois in Van’s Manhattan flat Van says "we apollo" (meaning that he and Ada apologize for coaxing Lucette into their lovemaking):

Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:

Poor L. 

At the end of his Commentary Kinbote (in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade's mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) says that, history permitting, he may sail back to his recovered kingdom, and with a great sob greet the gray coastline and the gleam of a roof in the rain:

At the patio party in "Ardis the Second" Ada tells Pedro (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, a young Latin actor whom Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother Marina had brought from Mexico) "On ne parle pas comme ça devant un chien" ("one does not speak like that in front of a dog"):

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Demon Veen (Van’s and Ada’s father) hopes that Cordula de Prey will recompense Van for playing Blindman’s Buff all summer with the babes of Ardis Wood (Ada and Lucette):