At the end of her letter to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), written a month before Demon's death in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific, Ada (now married to Andrey Vinelander) mentions cretinous critics, especially lower-upper-middle-class Englishmen, who accuse Van's style of being ‘coy’ and ‘arch:’
He greeted the dawn of a placid and prosperous century (more than half of which Ada and I have now seen) with the beginning of his second philosophic fable, a ‘denunciation of space’ (never to be completed, but forming in rear vision, a preface to his Texture of Time). Part of that treatise, a rather mannered affair, but nasty and sound, appeared in the first issue (January, 1904) of a now famous American monthly, The Artisan, and a comment on the excerpt is preserved in one of the tragically formal letters (all destroyed save this one) that his sister sent him by public post now and then. Somehow, after the interchange occasioned by Lucette’s death such nonclandestine correspondence had been established with the tacit sanction of Demon:
And o’er the summits of the Tacit
He, banned from Paradise, flew on:
Beneath him, like a brilliant’s facet,
Mount Peck with snows eternal shone.
It would seem indeed that continued ignorance of each other’s existence might have looked more suspicious than the following sort of note:
Agavia Ranch
February 5, 1905
I have just read Reflections in Sidra, by Ivan Veen, and I regard it as a grand piece, dear Professor. The ‘lost shafts of destiny’ and other poetical touches reminded me of the two or three times you had tea and muffins at our place in the country about twenty years ago. I was, you remember (presumptuous phrase!), a petite fille modèle practicing archery near a vase and a parapet and you were a shy schoolboy (with whom, as my mother guessed, I may have been a wee bit in love!), who dutifully picked up the arrows I lost in the lost shrubbery of the lost castle of poor Lucette’s and happy, happy Adette’s childhood, now a ‘Home for Blind Blacks’ — both my mother and L., I’m sure, would have backed Dasha’s advice to turn it over to her Sect. Dasha, my sister-in-law (you must meet her soon, yes, yes, yes, she’s dreamy and lovely, and lots more intelligent than I), who showed me your piece, asks me to add she hopes to ‘renew’ your acquaintance — maybe in Switzerland, at the Bellevue in Mont Roux, in October. I think you once met pretty Miss ‘Kim’ Blackrent, well, that’s exactly dear Dasha’s type. She is very good at perceiving and pursuing originality and all kinds of studies which I can’t even name! She finished Chose (where she read History — our Lucette used to call it ‘Sale Histoire,’ so sad and funny!). For her you’re le beau ténébreux, because once upon a time, once upon libellula wings, not long before my marriage, she attended — I mean at that time, I’m stuck in my ‘turnstyle’ — one of your public lectures on dreams, after which she went up to you with her latest little nightmare all typed out and neatly clipped together, and you scowled darkly and refused to take it. Well, she’s been after Uncle Dementiy to have him admonish le beau ténébreux to come to Mont Roux Bellevue Hotel, in October, around the seventeenth, I guess, and he only laughs and says it’s up to Dashenka and me to arrange matters.
So ‘congs’ again, dear Ivan! You are, we both think, a marvelous, inimitable artist who should also ‘only laugh,’ if cretinic critics, especially lower-upper-middle-class Englishmen, accuse his turnstyle of being ‘coy’ and ‘arch,’ much as an American farmer finds the parson ‘peculiar’ because he knows Greek.
P.S.
Dushevno klanyayus’ (‘am souledly bowing’, an incorrect and vulgar construction evoking the image of a ‘bowing soul’) nashemu zaochno dorogomu professoru (‘to our "unsight-unseen" dear professor’), o kotorom mnogo slïshal (about whom have heard much) ot dobrago Dementiya Dedalovicha i sestritsï (from good Demon and my sister).
S uvazheniem (with respect),
Andrey Vaynlender (3.7)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): And o’er the summits of the Tacit etc.: parody of four lines in Lermontov’s The Demon (see also p.115).
le beau ténébreux: wrapt in Byronic gloom.
In The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) George Orwell (an English writer, penname of Eric Blair, 1903-50) says that he was born into what you might describe as the lower-upper-middle class:
I was born into what you might describe as the lower-upper-middle class. The upper-middle class, which had its heyday in the eighties and nineties, with Kipling as its poet laureate, was a sort of mound of wreckage left behind when the tide of Victorian prosperity receded. Or perhaps it would be better to change the metaphor and describe it not as a mound but as a layer — the layer of society lying between £2000 and £300 a year: my own family was not far from the bottom. You notice that I define it in terms of money, because that is always the quickest way of making yourself understood. Nevertheless, the essential point about the English class-system is that it is not entirely explicable in terms of money. Roughly speaking it is a money-stratification, but it is also interpenetrated by a sort of shadowy caste-system; rather like a jerrybuilt modem bungalow haunted by medieval ghosts. Hence the fact that the upper-middle class extends or extended to incomes as low as £300 a year — to incomes, that is, much lower than those of merely middle-class people with no social pretensions. Probably there are countries where you can predict a man’s opinions from his income, but it is never quite safe to do so in England; you have always got to take his traditions into consideration as well... (Part Two, chapter 8)
Ada's sister-in-law, Dorothy (Dasha) Vinelander is a namesake of Dorothy Hare, the main chcaracter of Orwell's novel A Clergyman's Daughter (1935). Its French title, Une fille de pasteur, brings to mind charming Monsieur de Pastrouil (one of the two seconds in Demon's sword duel with Baron d'Onsky):
Upon being questioned in Demon’s dungeon, Marina, laughing trillingly, wove a picturesque tissue of lies; then broke down, and confessed. She swore that all was over; that the Baron, a physical wreck and a spiritual Samurai, had gone to Japan forever. From a more reliable source Demon learned that the Samurai’s real destination was smart little Vatican, a Roman spa, whence he was to return to Aardvark, Massa, in a week or so. Since prudent Veen preferred killing his man in Europe (decrepit but indestructible Gamaliel was said to be doing his best to forbid duels in the Western Hemisphere — a canard or an idealistic President’s instant-coffee caprice, for nothing was to come of it after all), Demon rented the fastest petroloplane available, overtook the Baron (looking very fit) in Nice, saw him enter Gunter’s Bookshop, went in after him, and in the presence of the imperturbable and rather bored English shopkeeper, back-slapped the astonished Baron across the face with a lavender glove. The challenge was accepted; two native seconds were chosen; the Baron plumped for swords; and after a certain amount of good blood (Polish and Irish — a kind of American ‘Gory Mary’ in barroom parlance) had bespattered two hairy torsoes, the whitewashed terrace, the flight of steps leading backward to the walled garden in an amusing Douglas d’Artagnan arrangement, the apron of a quite accidental milkmaid, and the shirtsleeves of both seconds, charming Monsieur de Pastrouil and Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel, the latter gentlemen separated the panting combatants, and Skonky died, not ‘of his wounds’ (as it was viciously rumored) but of a gangrenous afterthought on the part of the least of them, possibly self-inflicted, a sting in the groin, which caused circulatory trouble, notwithstanding quite a few surgical interventions during two or three years of protracted stays at the Aardvark Hospital in Boston — a city where, incidentally, he married in 1869 our friend the Bohemian lady, now keeper of Glass Biota at the local museum. (1.2)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Aardvark: apparently, a university town in New England.
Gamaliel: a much more fortunate statesman than our W.G. Harding.
The name and personality of another second (Colonel St Alin, a scoundrel) clearly hint at Stalin (Joseph Dzhugashvili, the leader of Soviet Russia in 1924-53). In a letter to Yvonne Davet, George Orwell described his fairy story Animal Farm (1945) as a satirical tale against Stalin ("un conte satirique contre Staline"). The characters in Orwell's allegorical novella include a pig named Napoleon. By pretty Miss ‘Kim’ Blackrent Ada means Kim Beauharnais, a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada (2.11). The Empress of the French, Josephine Beauharnais (1763-1814) was Napoleon's first wife. During Van's first tea party at Ardis Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) tells Van that she loved to identify herself with famous beauties - Lincoln’s second wife or Queen Josephine:
They now had tea in a prettily furnished corner of the otherwise very austere central hall from which rose the grand staircase. They sat on chairs upholstered in silk around a pretty table. Ada’s black jacket and a pink-yellow-blue nosegay she had composed of anemones, celandines and columbines lay on a stool of oak. The dog got more bits of cake than it did ordinarily. Price, the mournful old footman who brought the cream for the strawberries, resembled Van’s teacher of history, ‘Jeejee’ Jones.
‘He resembles my teacher of history,’ said Van when the man had gone.
‘I used to love history,’ said Marina, ‘I loved to identify myself with famous women. There’s a ladybird on your plate, Ivan. Especially with famous beauties — Lincoln’s second wife or Queen Josephine.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed — it’s beautifully done. We’ve got a similar set at home.’
‘Slivok (some cream)? I hope you speak Russian?’ Marina asked Van, as she poured him a cup of tea.
‘Neohotno no sovershenno svobodno (reluctantly but quite fluently),’ replied Van, slegka ulïbnuvshis’ (with a slight smile). ‘Yes, lots of cream and three lumps of sugar.’
‘Ada and I share your extravagant tastes. Dostoevski liked it with raspberry syrup.’
‘Pah,’ uttered Ada. (1.5)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): with a slight smile: a pet formula of Tolstoy’s denoting cool superiority, if not smugness, in a character’s manner of speech.
Ada's "lower-upper-middle-class Englishmen" bring to mind upper-upper-class families (in the British and Brazilian sense) to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong:
Van regretted that because Lettrocalamity (Vanvitelli’s old joke!) was banned allover the world, its very name having become a ‘dirty word’ among upper-upper-class families (in the British and Brazilian sense) to which the Veens and Durmanovs happened to belong, and had been replaced by elaborate surrogates only in those very important ‘utilities’ — telephones, motors — what else? — well a number of gadgets for which plain folks hanker with lolling tongues, breathing faster than gundogs (for it’s quite a long sentence), such trifles as tape recorders, the favorite toys of his and Ada’s grandsires (Prince Zemski had one for every bed of his harem of schoolgirls) were not manufactured any more, except in Tartary where they had evolved ‘minirechi’ (‘talking minarets’) of a secret make. Had our erudite lovers been allowed by common propriety and common law to knock into working order the mysterious box they had once discovered in their magic attic, they might have recorded (so as to replay, eight decades later) Giorgio Vanvitelli’s arias as well as Van Veen’s conversations with his sweetheart. Here, for example, is what they might have heard today — with amusement, embarrassment, sorrow, wonder.
(Narrator: on that summer day soon after they had entered the kissing phase of their much too premature and in many ways fatal romance, Van and Ada were on their way to the Gun Pavilion alias Shooting Gallery, where they had located, on its upper stage, a tiny, Oriental-style room with bleary glass cases that had once lodged pistols and daggers — judging by the shape of dark imprints on the faded velvet — a pretty and melancholy recess, rather musty, with a cushioned window seat and a stuffed Parluggian Owl on a side shelf, next to an empty beer bottle left by some dead old gardener, the year of the obsolete brand being 1842.)
‘Don’t jingle them,’ she said, ‘we are watched by Lucette, whom I’ll strangle some day.’
They walked through a grove and past a grotto.
Ada said: ‘Officially we are maternal cousins, and cousins can marry by special decree, if they promise to sterilize their first five children. But, moreover, the father-in-law of my mother was the brother of your grandfather. Right?’
‘That’s what I’m told,’ said Van serenely.
‘Not sufficiently distant,’ she mused, ‘or is it?’
‘Far enough, fair enough.’
‘Funny — I saw that verse in small violet letters before you put it into orange ones — just one second before you spoke. Spoke, smoke. Like the puff preceding a distant cannon shot.’
‘Physically,’ she continued, ‘we are more like twins than cousins, and twins or even siblings can’t marry, of course, or will be jailed and "altered," if they persevere.’
‘Unless,’ said Van, ‘they are specially decreed cousins.’ (1.24)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Lettrocalamity: a play on Ital. elettrocalamita, electromagnet.
‘Minirechi’ (‘talking minarets’) of a secret make that they had evolved in Tartary (a country that occupies on Demonia the territory of Soviet Russia) seem to hint at miniluv (the ministry of love in George Orwell's novel Ninenteen Eighty-Four, 1949), combining it with Lermontov's poem Est’ rechi – znachen’ye / temno il’ nichtozhno (“There are talks whose meaning / is obscure or insignificant,” 1840). The verse (‘Far enough, fair enough') that Ada saw in small violet letters before Van put it into orange ones seems to foreshadow Violet Knox (old Van's typist whom Ada calls Fialochka, 'little Violet') and Ronald Oranger (old Van's secretary and editor of Ada who marries Violet Knox after Van's and Ada's death). Because love is blind, Van fails to see that Andrey Vinelander and Ada have at least two children (in February 1905, when she writes her letter to Van and gets stuck in her 'turnstyle,' Ada is big with child) and that Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox are Ada's grandchildren.
In his Proposed Preface to Animal Farm George Orwell says that at any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts:
Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news – things which on their own merits would get the big headlines – being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ʻit wouldn't doʼ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ʻnot doneʼ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ʻnot doneʼ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.
The action in Ada takes place on Demonia (Earth's twin planet also known as Antiterra). At the end of his essay Why I Write (1946) George Orwell uses the metaphor of a "demon" to describe the driving force behind writing:
Looking back through the last page or two, I see that I have made it appear as though my motives in writing were wholly public-spirited. I don’t want to leave that as the final impression. All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist or understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. I cannot say with certainty which of my motives are the strongest, but I know which of them deserve to be followed. And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.