During Humbert Humbert's and Lolita's second road trip across the USA, Lolita (the title character of a novel, 1955, by VN) is hospitalized in Elphinstone and abducted from the hospital by Clare Quilty (the playwright who tells the hospital staff that he is Humbert's brother):
“Okey-dokey,” big Frank sang out, slapped the jamb, and whistling, carried my message away, and I went on drinking, and by morning the fever was gone, and although I was as limp as a toad, I put on the purple dressing gown over my maize yellow pajamas, and walked over to the office telephone. Everything was fine. A bright voice informed me that yes, everything was fine, my daughter had checked out the day before, around two, her uncle, Mr. Gustave, had called for her with a cocker spaniel pup and a smile for everyone, and a black Caddy Lack, and had paid Dolly’s bill in cash, and told them to tell me I should not worry, and keep warm, they were at Grandpa’s ranch as agreed.
Elphinstone was, and I hope still is, a very cute little town. It was spread like a maquette, you know, with its neat greenwool trees and red-roofed houses over the valley floor and I think I have alluded earlier to its model school and temple and spacious rectangular blocks, some of which were, curiously enough, just unconventional pastures with a mule or a unicorn grazing in the young July morning mist. Very amusing: at one gravelgroaning sharp turn I sideswiped a parked car but said to myself telestically - and, telepathically (I hoped), to its gesticulating owner - that I would return later, address Bird School, Bird, New Bird, the gin kept my heart alive but bemazed my brain, and after some lapses and losses common to dream sequences, I found myself in the reception room, trying to beat up the doctor, and roaring at people under chairs, and clamoring for Mary who luckily for her was not there; rough hands plucked at my dressing gown, ripping off a pocket, and somehow I seem to have been sitting on a bald brown-headed patient, whom I had mistaken for Dr. Blue, and who eventually stood up, remarking with a preposterous accent: “Now, who is neurotic, I ask?”and then a gaunt unsmiling nurse presented me with seven beautiful, beautiful books and the exquisitely folded tartan lap robe, and demanded a receipt; and in the sudden silence I became aware of a policeman in the hallway, to whom my fellow motorist was pointing me out, and meekly I signed the very symbolic receipt, thus surrendering my Lolita to all those apes. But what else could I do? One simple and stark thought stood out and this was: “Freedom for the moment is everything.” One false move - and I might have been made to explain a life of crime. So I simulated a coming out of a daze. To my fellow motorist I paid what he thought was fair. To Dr. Blue, who by then was stroking my hand, I spoke in tears of the liquor I bolstered too freely a tricky but not necessarily diseased heart with. To the hospital in general I apologized with a flourish that almost bowled me over, adding however that I was not on particularly good terms with the rest of the Humbert clan. To myself I whispered that I still had my gun, and was still a free man - free to trace the fugitive, free to destroy my brother. (2.22)
John Elphinstone (1722-85) was a senior British naval officer who worked closely with the Russian Navy after 1770, during the period of naval reform under Russian Empress Catherine II. Together with the Scottish-born Samuel Greig (who was known in Russia as Samuil Karlovich Greig) and Admiral Sir Charles Knowles, Elphinstone was a member of the naval staff, headed by Count Alexey Orlov, which defeated the Turkish fleet at the battle of Chesma Bay, near Chios Island, off the far western coast of Turkey. In the Post Scriptum to his poem Moya Rodoslovnaya ("My Pedigree," 1830) Pushkin mentions his black grandsire Hannibal who, according to Bulgarin, was bought for a bottle of rum and whose son, Osip Abramovich Gannibal (a naval officer, the poet's maternal grandfather, 1744-1806) participated in the battle of Chesma (Jule 5, 1770):
Решил Фиглярин, сидя дома,
Что чёрный дед мой Ганнибал
Был куплен за бутылку рома
И в руки шкиперу попал.
Сей шкипер был тот шкипер славный,
Кем наша двигнулась земля,
Кто придал мощно бег державный
Рулю родного корабля.
Сей шкипер деду был доступен,
И сходно купленный арап
Возрос усерден, неподкупен,
Царю наперсник, а не раб.
И был отец он Ганнибала,
Пред кем средь чесменских пучин
Громада кораблей вспылала,
И пал впервые Наварин.
Решил Фиглярин вдохновенный:
Я во дворянстве мещанин.
Что ж он в семье своей почтенной?
Он?.. он в Мещанской дворянин.
In his poem Pushkin mentions chesmenskie puchiny (the Chesma sea abyss). When they leave Wace (where they saw a play by Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom), Lolita tells Humbert that Clare is a woman and that she has Negro blood:
Oh, disaster. Some confusion had occurred, she had misread a date in the Tour Book, and the Magic Cave ceremonies were over! She took it bravely, I must admit - and, when we discovered there was in kurortish Wace a summer theatre in full swing, we naturally drifted toward it one fair mid-June evening. I really could not tell you the plot of the play we saw. A trivial affair, no doubt, with self-conscious light effects and a mediocre leading lady. The only detail that pleased me was a garland of seven little graces, more or less immobile, prettily painted, bare-limbed - seven bemused pubescent girls in colored gauze that had been recruited locally (judging by the partisan flurry here and there among the audience) and were supposed to represent a living rainbow, which lingered throughout the last act, and rather teasingly faded behind a series of multiplied veils. I remember thinking that this idea of children-colors had been lifted by authors Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom from a passage in James Joyce, and that two of the colors were quite exasperatingly lovely - Orange who kept fidgeting all the time, and Emerald who, when her eyes got used to the pitch-black pit where we all heavily sat, suddenly smiled at her mother or her protector.
As soon as the thing was over, and manual applause - a sound my nerves cannot stand - began to crash all around me, I started to pull and push Lo toward the exit, in my so natural amorous impatience to get her back to our neon-blue cottage in the stunned, starry night: I always say nature is stunned by the sights she sees. Dolly-Lo, however, lagged behind, in a rosy daze, her pleased eyes narrowed, her sense of vision swamping the rest of her senses to such an extent that her limp hands hardly came together at all in the mechanical action of clapping they still went through. I had seen that kind of thing in children before but, by God, this was a special child, myopically beaming at the already remote stage where I glimpsed something of the joint authors - a man’s tuxedo and the bare shoulders of a hawk-like, black-haired, strikingly tall woman.
“You’ve again hurt my wrist, you brute,” said Lolita in a small voice as she slipped into her car seat.
“I am dreadfully sorry, my darling, my own ultraviolet darling,” I said, unsuccessfully trying to catch her elbow, and I added, to change the conversation - to change the direction of fate, oh God, oh God: “Vivian is quite a woman. I am sure we saw her yesterday in that restaurant, in Soda pop.”
“Sometimes,” said Lo, “you are quite revoltingly dumb. First, Vivian is the male author, the gal author is Clare; and second, she is forty, married and has Negro blood.”
“I thought,” I said kidding her, “Quilty was an ancient flame of yours, in the days when you loved me, in sweet old Ramsdale.”
“What?” countered Lo, her features working. “that fat dentist? You must be confusing me with some other fast little article.”
And I thought to myself how those fast little articles forget everything, everything, while we, old lovers, treasure every inch of their nymphancy. (2.18)
Humbert finds out Clare Quilty's address from his uncle Ivor (the fat Ramsdale dentist):
A white-smocked, gray-haired man, with a crew cut and the big flat cheeks of a politician, Dr. Quilty perched on the corner of his desk, one foot dreamily and seductively rocking as he launched on a glorious long-range plan. He would first provide me with provisional plates until the gums settled. Then he would make me a permanent set. He would like to have a look at that mouth of mine. He wore perforated pied shoes. He had not visited with the rascal since 1946, but supposed he could be found at his ancestral home, Grimm Road, not far from Parkington. It was a noble dream. His foot rocked, his gaze was inspired. It would cost me around six hundred. He suggested he take measurements right away, and make the first set before starting operations. My mouth was to him a splendid cave full of priceless treasures, but I denied him entrance.
“No,” I said. “On second thoughts, I shall have it all done by Dr. Molnar. His price is higher, but he is of course a much better dentist than you.” (Part Two, chapter 33)
Moy dyadya samykh chestnykh pravil ("My uncle has most honest principles") is the first line of Chapter One of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. Skazhi-ka, dyadya, ved' nedarom ("Say, uncle, it was not in vain, was it?") is the first line of Lermontov's poem Borodino (1837). Lermontov is the author of Smert' poeta ("Death of the Poet," 1837), a poem on Pushkin's death. In an attempt to save his life Quilty offers Humbert his collection of erotica and mentions the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss:
“Oh, another thing - you are going to like this. I have an absolutely unique collection of erotica upstairs. Just to mention one item: the in folio de-luxe Bagration Island by the explorer and psychoanalyst Melanie Weiss, a remarkable lady, a remarkable work - drop that gun - with photographs of eight hundred and something male organs she examined and measured in 1932 on Bagration, in the Barda Sea, very illuminating graphs, plotted with love under pleasant skies - drop that gun - and moreover I can arrange for you to attend executions, not everybody knows that the chair is painted yellow -” (2.35)
Prince Pyotr Bagration was felled in the battle of Borodino (Sept. 7, 1812). Btw., the Duk Duk Ranch to which Quilty takes Lolita after her abduction from the Elphinstone hospital brings to mind Kuda, kuda vy udalilis' (Whither, ah! whither are ye fled), in Pushkin's EO (Six: XXI: 3) the first line of Lenski's last poem:
Стихи на случай сохранились,
Я их имею; вот они:
«Куда, куда вы удалились,
Весны моей златые дни?
Что день грядущий мне готовит?
Его мой взор напрасно ловит,
В глубокой мгле таится он.
Нет нужды; прав судьбы закон.
Паду ли я, стрелой пронзенный,
Иль мимо пролетит она,
Всё благо: бдения и сна
Приходит час определенный;
Благословен и день забот,
Благословен и тьмы приход!
«Блеснет заутра луч денницы
И заиграет яркий день;
А я, быть может, я гробницы
Сойду в таинственную сень,
И память юного поэта
Поглотит медленная Лета,
Забудет мир меня; но ты
Придешь ли, дева красоты,
Слезу пролить над ранней урной
И думать: он меня любил,
Он мне единой посвятил
Рассвет печальный жизни бурной!..
Сердечный друг, желанный друг,
Приди, приди: я твой супруг!..»
The verses chanced to be preserved;
I have them; here they are:
Whither, ah! whither are ye fled,
my springtime's golden days?
“What has the coming day in store for me?
In vain my gaze attempts to grasp it;
in deep gloom it lies hidden.
It matters not; fate's law is just.
Whether I fall, pierced by the dart, or whether
it flies by — all is right:
of waking and of sleep
comes the determined hour;
blest is the day of cares,
blest, too, is the advent of darkness!
“The ray of dawn will gleam tomorrow,
and brilliant day will scintillate;
whilst I, perhaps — I shall descend
into the tomb's mysterious shelter,
and the young poet's memory
slow Lethe will engulf;
the world will forget me; but thou,
wilt thou come, maid of beauty,
to shed a tear over the early urn
and think: he loved me,
to me alone he consecrated
the doleful daybreak of a stormy life!...
Friend of my heart, desired friend, come,
come: I'm thy spouse!”
Luch dennitsy (the ray of dawn) reminds one of John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript). According to John Ray, Jr., after her coauthor's death, Vivian Darkbloom (anagram of Vladimir Nabokov) has written a biography, My Cue:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore. “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. ‘Vivian Darkbloom’ has written a biography, ‘My Cue,’ to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
Lolita's best friend and confidant at Beardsley, Mona Dahl had an affair with a marine at the seaside:
Her girlfriends, whom I looked forward to meet, proved on the whole disappointing. There was Opal Something, and Linda Hall, and Avis Chapman, and Eva Rosen, and Mona Dahl (save one, all these names are approximations, of course). Opal was a bashful, formless, bespectacled, bepimpled creature who doted on Dolly who bullied her. With Linda Hall the school tennis champion, Dolly played singles at least twice a week: I suspect Linda was a true nymphet, but for some unknown reason she did not comewas perhaps not allowed to cometo our house; so I recall her only as a flash of natural sunshine on an indoor court. Of the rest, none had any claims to nymphetry except Eva Rosen. Avis ws a plump lateral child with hairy legs, while Mona, though handsome in a coarse sensual way and only a year older than my aging mistress, had obviously long ceased to be a nymphet, if she ever had been one. Eva Rosen, a displaced little person from France, was on the other hand a good example of a not strikingly beautiful child revealing to the perspicacious amateur some of the basic elements of nymphet charm, such as a perfect pubescent figure and lingering eyes and high cheekbones. Her glossy copper hair had Lolita’s silkiness, and the features of her delicate milky-white face with pink lips and silverfish eyelashes were less foxy than those of her likes - the great clan of intra-racial redheads; nor did she sport their green uniform but wore, as I remember her, a lot of black or cherry darka very smart black pullover, for instance, and high-heeled black shoes, and garnet-red fingernail polish. I spoke French to her (much to Lo’s disgust). The child’s tonalities were still admirably pure, but for school words and play words she resorted to current American and then a slight Brooklyn accent would crop up in her speech, which was amusing in a little Parisian who went to a select New England school with phoney British aspirations. Unfortunately, despite “that French kid’s uncle” being “a millionaire,” Lo dropped Eva for some reason before I had had time to enjoy in my modest way her fragrant presence in the Humbert open house. The reader knows what importance I attached to having a bevy of page girls, consolation prize nymphets, around my Lolita. For a while, I endeavored to interest my senses in Mona Dahl who was a good deal around, especially during the spring term when Lo and she got so enthusiastic about dramatics. I have often wondered what secrets outrageously treacherous Dolores Haze had imparted to Mona while blurting out to me by urgent and well-paid request various really incredible details concerning an affair that Mona had had with a marine at the seaside. It was characteristic of Lo that she chose for her closest chum that elegant, cold, lascivious, experienced young female whom I once heard (misheard, Lo swore) cheerfully say in the hallway to Lo - who had remarked that her (Lo’s) sweater was of virgin wool: “The only thing about you that is, kiddo…” She had a curiously husky voice, artificially waved dull dark hair, earrings, amber-brown prominent eyes and luscious lips. Lo said teachers had remonstrated with her on her loading herself with so much costume jewelry. Her hands trembled. She was burdened with a 150 I. Q. And I also knew she had a tremendous chocolate-brown mole on he womanish back which I inspected the night Lo and she had worn low-cut pastel-colored, vaporous dresses for a dance at the Butler Academy. (2.9)
Eva Rosen = Neva + rose/Eros/sore. Like Pushkin's Onegin, VN was born upon the Neva's banks.