Describing his meetings with Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) in October 1905, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions Dorothy Vinelander (Ada's sister-in-law) and her contralto:
Several rieuses, a few of which were still wearing their tight black summer bonnets, had settled on the vermilion railing along the lakeside, with their tails to the path and watched which of them would stay staunchly perched at the approach of the next passerby. The majority flapped waterward as Ada and Van neared; one twitched its tail feathers and made a movement analogous to ‘bending one’s knees’ but saw it through and remained on the railing.
‘I think we noticed that species only once in Arizona — at a place called Saltsink — a kind of man-made lake. Our common ones have quite different wing tips.’
A Crested Grebe, afloat some way off, slowly, slowly, very slowly started to sink, then abruptly executed a jumping fish plunge, showing its glossy white underside, and vanished.
‘Why on earth,’ asked Van, ‘didn’t you let her know, in one way or another, that you were not angry with her? Your phoney letter made her most unhappy!’
‘Pah!’ uttered Ada. ‘She put me in a most embarrassing situation. I can quite understand her being mad at Dorothy (who meant well, poor stupid thing — stupid enough to warn me against possible "infections" such as "labial lesbianitis." Labial lesbianitis!) but that was no reason for Lucette to look up Andrey in town and tell him she was great friends with the man I had loved before my marriage. He didn’t dare annoy me with his revived curiosity, but he complained to Dorothy of Lucette’s neopravdannaya zhestokost’ (unjustified cruelty).’
‘Ada, Ada,’ groaned Van, ‘I want you to get rid of that husband of yours, and his sister, right now!’
‘Give me a fortnight,’ she said, ‘I have to go back to the ranch. I can’t bear the thought of her poking among my things.’
At first everything seemed to proceed according to the instructions of some friendly genius.
Much to Van’s amusement (the tasteless display of which his mistress neither condoned nor condemned), Andrey was laid up with a cold for most of the week. Dorothy, a born nurser, considerably surpassed Ada (who, never being ill herself, could not stand the sight of an ailing stranger) in readiness of sickbed attendance, such as reading to the sweating and suffocating patient old issues of the Golos Feniksa; but on Friday the hotel doctor bundled him off to the nearby American Hospital, where even his sister was not allowed to Visit him ‘because of the constant necessity of routine tests’ — or rather because the poor fellow wished to confront disaster in manly solitude.
During the next few days, Dorothy used her leisure to spy upon Ada. The woman was sure of three things: that Ada had a lover in Switzerland; that Van was her brother; and that he was arranging for his irresistible sister secret trysts with the person she had loved before her marriage. The delightful phenomenon of all three terms being true, but making nonsense when hashed, provided Van with another source of amusement.
The Three Swans overwinged a bastion. Anyone who called, flesh or voice, was told by the concierge or his acolytes that Van was out, that Madame André Vinelander was unknown, and that all they could do was to take a message. His car, parked in a secluded bosquet, could not betray his presence. In the forenoon he regularly used the service lift that communicated directly with the backyard. Lucien, something of a wit, soon learned to recognize Dorothy’s contralto: ‘La voix cuivrée a téléphoné,’ ‘La Trompette n’était pas contente ce matin,’ et cetera. Then the friendly Fates took a day off. (3.8)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): rieuses: black-headed gulls.
Golos etc.: Russ., The Phoenix Voice, Russian language newspaper in Arizona.
la voix etc.: the brassy voice telephoned... the trumpet did not sound pleased this morning.
In his narrative poem Beppo (1818) Byron mentions soprano, basso, even the contra-alto:
And then he was a Count, and then he knew
Music, and dancing, fiddling, French and Tuscan;
The last not easy, be it known to you.
For few Italians speak the right Etruscan.
He was a critic upon operas, too,
And knew all niceties of the sock and buskin;
And no Venetian audience could endure a
Song, scene, or air, when he cried "seccatura!"
His "bravo" was decisive, for that sound
Hush'd "Academie" sigh'd in silent awe;
The fiddlers trembled as he look'd around,
For fear of some false note's detected flaw;
The "prima donna's" tuneful heart would bound,
Dreading the deep damnation of his "bah!"
Soprano, basso, even the contra-alto,
Wish'd him five fathom under the Rialto. (XXXI-XXXII)
The Count's "bah!" brings to mind "Pah!" - Ada's favorite expletive (the first word that Van hears Ada say during Van's first tea party at Ardis). Describing his meetings with Ada in Mont Roux, Van mentions the Château de Byron (or ‘She Yawns Castle’):
A boxwood-lined path, presided over by a nostalgic-looking sempervirent sequoia (which American visitors mistook for a ‘Lebanese cedar’ — if they remarked it at all) took them to the absurdly misnamed rue du Mûrier, where a princely paulownia (‘mulberry tree!’ snorted Ada), standing in state on its incongruous terrace above a public W.C., was shedding generously its heart-shaped dark green leaves, but retained enough foliage to cast arabesques of shadow onto the south side of its trunk. A ginkgo (of a much more luminous greenish gold than its neighbor, a dingily yellowing local birch) marked the corner of a cobbled lane leading down to the quay. They followed southward the famous Fillietaz Promenade which went along the Swiss side of the lake from Valvey to the Château de Byron (or ‘She Yawns Castle’). The fashionable season had ended, and wintering birds, as well as a number of knickerbockered Central Europeans, had replaced the English families as well as the Russian noblemen from Nipissing and Nipigon. (3.8)
‘She Yawns Castle’ hints at Byron poem The Prisoner of Chillon (1816). Describing his conversation with Mona Dahl (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, Lolita’s schoolmate at Beardsley) over the telephone, Humbert Humbert mentions Mona’s humblest, sexiest contralto:
Because it supposedly tied up with her interest in dance and dramatics, I had permitted Lo to take piano lessons with a Miss Emperor (as we French scholars may conveniently call her) to whose blue-shuttered little white house a mile or so beyond Beardsley Lo would spin off twice a week. One Friday night toward the end of May (and a week or so after the very special rehearsal Lo had not had me attend) the telephone in my study, where I was in the act of mopping up Gustave’s - I mean Gaston’s - king’s side, rang and Miss Emperor asked if Lo was coming next Tuesday because she had missed last Tuesday’s and today’s lessons. I said she would by all meansand went on with the game. As the reader may well imagine, my faculties were now impaired, and a move or two later, with Gaston to play, I noticed through the film of my general distress that he could collect my queen; he noticed it too, but thinking it might be a trap on the part of his tricky opponent, he demurred for quite a minute, and puffed and wheezed, and shook his jowls, and even shot furtive glances at me, and made hesitating half-thrusts with his pudgily bunched fingers - dying to take that juicy queen and not daring - and all of a sudden he swooped down upon it (who knows if it did not teach him certain later audacities?), and I spent a dreary hour in achieving a draw. He finished his brandy and presently lumbered away, quite satisfied with this result (mon pauvre ami, je ne vous ai jamais revu et quoiqu’il y ait bien peu de chance que vous voyiez mon livre, permiettez-moi de vous dire que je vous serre la main bien cordialement, et que toutes mes fillettes vous saluent). I found Dolores Haze at the kitchen table, consuming a wedge of pie, with her eyes fixed on her script. They rose to meet mine with a kind of celestial vapidity. She remained singularly unruffled when confronted with my discovery, and said d’un petit air faussement contrit that she knew she was a very wicked kid, but simply had not been able to resist the enchantment, and had used up those music hours - O Reader, My Reader! - in a nearby public park rehearsing the magic forest scene with Mona. I said “fine” - and stalked to the telephone. Mona’s mother answered: “Oh yes, she’s in” and retreated with a mother’s neutral laugh of polite pleasure to shout off stage “Roy calling!” and the very next moment Mona rustled up, and forthwith, in a low monotonous not untender voice started berating Roy for something he had said or done and I interrupted her, and presently Mona was saying in her humblest, sexiest contralto, “yes, sir,” “surely, sir” “I am alone to blame, sir, in this unfortunate business,” (what elocution! what poise!) “honest, I feel very bad about it” - and so on and so forth as those little harlots say. (2.14)
Mona is the Venetian slang word for female genitalia. The action in Byron's Beppo takes place in Venice. The name of Mona’s boyfriend, Roy brings to mind snovideniy lozhnyi roy (the false swarm of dreams), the last line of Pushkin’s poem Proserpina (1824). In his poem Pushkin calls Proserpina (the wife of Pluto, the ruler of the underworld in ancient Greek mythology) Ada gordaya tsaritsa (the proud queen of Hades).