According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Daniel Veen (the father of Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette) was prone to explain at great length — unless sidetracked by a bore-baiter — how in the course of American history an English ‘bull’ in the maiden name of his mother had become a New England ‘bell:’
On April 23, 1869, in drizzly and warm, gauzy and green Kaluga, Aqua, aged twenty-five and afflicted with her usual vernal migraine, married Walter D. Veen, a Manhattan banker of ancient Anglo-Irish ancestry who had long conducted, and was soon to resume intermittently, a passionate affair with Marina. The latter, some time in 1871, married her first lover’s first cousin, also Walter D. Veen, a quite as opulent, but much duller, chap.
The ‘D’ in the name of Aqua’s husband stood for Demon (a form of Demian or Dementius), and thus was he called by his kin. In society he was generally known as Raven Veen or simply Dark Walter to distinguish him from Marina’s husband, Durak Walter or simply Red Veen. Demon’s twofold hobby was collecting old masters and young mistresses. He also liked middle-aged puns.
Daniel Veen’s mother was a Trumbell, and he was prone to explain at great length — unless sidetracked by a bore-baiter — how in the course of American history an English ‘bull’ had become a New England ‘bell.’ Somehow or other he had ‘gone into business’ in his twenties and had rather rankly grown into a Manhattan art dealer. He did not have — initially at least — any particular liking for paintings, had no aptitude for any kind of salesmanship, and no need whatever to jolt with the ups and downs of a ‘job’ the solid fortune inherited from a series of far more proficient and venturesome Veens. Confessing that he did not much care for the countryside, he spent only a few carefully shaded summer weekends at Ardis, his magnificent manor near Ladore. He had revisited only a few times since his boyhood another estate he had, up north on Lake Kitezh, near Luga, comprising, and practically consisting of, that large, oddly rectangular though quite natural body of water which a perch he had once clocked took half an hour to cross diagonally and which he owned jointly with his cousin, a great fisherman in his youth. (1.1)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Durak: ‘fool’ in Russian.
Lake Kitezh: allusion to the legendary town of Kitezh which shines at the bottom of a lake in a Russian fairy tale.
The simplest interpretation of "how in the course of American history an English ‘bull’ had become a New England ‘bell’" is "from John Bull (national personification of the United Kingdom, especially in political cartoons and similar graphic works) to Liberty Bell (iconic symbol of American independence located in Philadelphia)." Daniel Veen's mother, a Trumbell, seems to blend Harry S. Truman (1884-1972), the 33rd President of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953 (the year of Stalin's death), with For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), a novel by Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). "A modern substitute of Mayne Reid" (as VN calls him in his "Postscript to the Russian Lolita," 1967), Hemingway is the author of Death in the Afternoon (1932), a non-fiction book about the history, ceremony and traditions of Spanish bullfighting. Ada's birthday, July 21, is also Hemingway's birthday.
Alexander Herzen (1812-70) and Nikolay Ogaryov (1813-77) published Kolokol (The Bell), the first Russian censorship-free weekly newspaper in Russian and French languages, in London (1857–1865) and Geneva (1865–1867). After the 1917 Revolution the Bolshaya Morskaya Street in St. Petersburg (where VN was born on April 23, 1899) was renamed the Herzen Street. VN was born a hundred years after Pushkin (1799-1837). Vol'nost' ("To Liberty," 1817) is Pushkin's first great ode. On Demonia (Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra), Pushkin's poem Mednyi vsadnik ("The Bronze Horseman," 1833) is known as The Headless Horseman:
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive — somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to be the most retentive and talented one in his long, too long, never too long life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West where the many-colored mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young Russians of genius. He could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart Pushkin’s ‘Headless Horseman’ poem in less than twenty minutes. With white-bloused, enthusiastically sweating Andrey Andreevich, he lolled for hours in the violet shade of pink cliffs, studying major and minor Russian writers — and puzzling out the exaggerated but, on the whole, complimentary allusions to his father’s volitations and loves in another life in Lermontov’s diamond-faceted tetrameters. He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah where he had written the tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general’s bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool. What a soprano Cora had been! Demon took Van to the world-famous Opera House in Telluride in West Colorado and there he enjoyed (and sometimes detested) the greatest international shows — English blank-verse plays, French tragedies in rhymed couplets, thunderous German musical dramas with giants and magicians and a defecating white horse. He passed through various little passions — parlor magic, chess, fluff-weight boxing matches at fairs, stunt-riding — and of course those unforgettable, much too early initiations when his lovely young English governess expertly petted him between milkshake and bed, she, petticoated, petititted, half-dressed for some party with her sister and Demon and Demon’s casino-touring companion, bodyguard and guardian angel, monitor and adviser, Mr Plunkett, a reformed card-sharper. (1.28)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): The Headless Horseman: Mayn Reid’s title is ascribed here to Pushkin, author of The Bronze Horseman.
Lermontov: author of The Demon.
Tolstoy etc.: Tolstoy’s hero, Haji Murad, (a Caucasian chieftain) is blended here with General Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, and with the French revolutionary leader Marat assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday.
Arthur James Plunkett, 8th Earl of Fingall (1759-1835) was an Irish peer. A prominent Roman Catholic, he was a leading supporter of the cause of Catholic Emancipation. In Irish Avatar (1821) Lord Byron violently attacks Fingall for accepting the Order of St. Patrick from George IV - wears Fingall thy trappings? - and for his deferential behavior during the Royal Visit in 1821. Byron is the author of the following epigram (to be found in Byron's letter of June 22, 1821, to Thomas Moore):
The world is a bundle of hay,
Mankind are the asses who pull;
Each tugs it a different way,
And the greatest of all is John Bull.
Hitler attacked the Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941 (120 years, day for day, after Byron wrote his letter to Moore). Young Moore is Van's groom:
She kissed him allover the face, she kissed his hands, then again his lips, his eyelids, his soft black hair. He kissed her ankles, her knees, her soft black hair.
‘When, my love, when again? In Luga? Kaluga? Ladoga? Where, when?’
‘That’s not the point,’ cried Van, ‘the point, the point, the point is — will you be faithful, will you be faithful to me?’
‘You spit, love,’ said wan-smiling Ada, wiping off the P’s and the F’s. ‘I don’t know. I adore you. I shall never love anybody in my life as I adore you, never and nowhere, neither in eternity, nor in terrenity, neither in Ladore, nor on Terra, where they say our souls go. But! But, my love, my Van, I’m physical, horribly physical, I don’t know, I’m frank, qu’y puis-je? Oh dear, don’t ask me, there’s a girl in my school who is in love with me, I don’t know what I’m saying —’
‘The girls don’t matter,’ said Van, ‘it’s the fellows I’ll kill if they come near you. Last night I tried to make a poem about it for you, but I can’t write verse; it begins, it only begins: Ada, our ardors and arbors — but the rest is all fog, try to fancy the rest.’
They embraced one last time, and without looking back he fled.
Stumbling on melons, fiercely beheading the tall arrogant fennels with his riding crop, Van returned to the Forest Fork. Morio, his favorite black horse, stood waiting for him, held by young Moore. He thanked the groom with a handful of stellas and galloped off, his gloves wet with tears. (1.25)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): qu’y puis-je? what can I do about it?
Stumbling on melons... arrogant fennels: allusions to passages in Marvell’s ‘Garden’ and Rimbaud’s ‘Mémoire’.
Van leaves Ardis, after his first summer there, on horseback. Van's favorite black horse, Morio brings to mind the Abbé Morio, a character in Leo Tolstoy's novel Voyna i mir ("War and Peace," 1869):
Гостиная Анны Павловны начала понемногу наполняться. Приехала высшая знать Петербурга, люди самые разнородные по возрастам и характерам, но одинаковые по обществу, в каком все жили; приехала дочь князя Василия, красавица Элен, заехавшая за отцом, чтобы с ним вместе ехать на праздник посланника. Она была в шифре и бальном платье. Приехала и известная, как la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg, молодая, маленькая княгиня Болконская, прошлую зиму вышедшая замуж и теперь не выезжавшая в большой свет по причине своей беременности, но ездившая еще на небольшие вечера. Приехал князь Ипполит, сын князя Василия, с Мортемаром, которого он представил; приехал и аббат Морио и многие другие.
Anna Pávlovna’s drawing room was gradually filling. The highest Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged. Prince Vasíli’s daughter, the beautiful Hélène, came to take her father to the ambassador’s entertainment; she wore a ball dress and her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess Bolkónskaya, known as la femme la plus séduisante de Pétersbourg, was also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small receptions. Prince Vasíli’s son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart, whom he introduced. The Abbé Morio and many others had also come. (Book One, chapter 2)
Anna Pavlovna Scherer asks Pierre Bezukhov (one of the main characters in Tolstoy's novel) if he knows the Abbé Morio and Pierre replies that he has heard of the abbé’s scheme for perpetual peace and begins explaining his reasons for thinking the abbé’s plan a khimera (chimerical):
– C’est bien aimable à vous, monsieur Pierre, d’être venu voir une pauvre malade, – сказала ему Анна Павловна, испуганно переглядываясь с тетушкой, к которой она подводила его. Пьер пробурлил что-то непонятное и продолжал отыскивать что-то глазами. Он радостно, весело улыбнулся, кланяясь маленькой княгине, как близкой знакомой, и подошел к тетушке. Страх Анны Павловны был не напрасен, потому что Пьер, не дослушав речи тетушки о здоровье ее величества, отошел от нее. Анна Павловна испуганно остановила его словами:
– Вы не знаете аббата Морио? он очень интересный человек… – сказала она.
– Да, я слышал про его план вечного мира, и это очень интересно, но едва ли возможно…
– Вы думаете?.. – сказала Анна Павловна, чтобы сказать что́-нибудь и вновь обратиться к своим занятиям хозяйки дома, но Пьер сделал обратную неучтивость. Прежде он, не дослушав слов собеседницы, ушел; теперь он остановил своим разговором собеседницу, которой нужно было от него уйти. Он, нагнув голову и расставив большие ноги, стал доказывать Анне Павловне, почему он полагал, что план аббата был химера.
– Мы после поговорим, – сказала Анна Павловна, улыбаясь.
“It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor invalid,” said Anna Pávlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her aunt as she conducted him to her.
Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate acquaintance.
Anna Pávlovna’s alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty’s health. Anna Pávlovna in dismay detained him with the words: “Do you know the Abbé Morio? He is a most interesting man.”
“Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very interesting but hardly feasible.”
“You think so?” rejoined Anna Pávlovna in order to say something and get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the abbé’s plan chimerical.
“We will talk of it later,” said Anna Pávlovna with a smile. (ibid.)