The characters in VN’s novel Lolita (1955) include Professor Chem (as Humbert dubs him), Humbert's and Lolita's landlord in Beardsley who teaches chemistry at Beardsley University:
When, through decorations of light and shade, we drove to 14 Thayer Street, a grave little lad met us with the keys and a note from Gaston who had rented the house for us. My Lo, without granting her new surroundings one glance, unseeingly turned on the radio to which instinct led her and lay down on the living room sofa with a batch of old magazines which in the same precise and blind manner she landed by dipping her hand into the nether anatomy of a lamp table.
I really did not mind where to dwell provided I could lock my Lolita up somewhere; but I had, I suppose, in the course of my correspondence with vague Gaston, vaguely visualized a house of ivied brick. Actually the place bore a dejected resemblance to the Haze home (a mere 400 miles distant): it was the same sort of dull gray frame affair with a shingled roof and dull green drill awnings; and the rooms, though smaller and furnished in a more consistent plush-and-plate style, were arranged in much the same order. My study turned out to be, however, a much larger room, lined from floor to ceiling with some two thousand books on chemistry which my landlord (on sabbatical leave for the time being) taught at Beardsley College. (2.4)
The brakes were relined, the waterpipes unclogged, the valves ground, and a number of other repairs and improvements were paid for by not very mechanically-minded but prudent papa Humbert, so that the late Mrs. Humbert’s car was in respectable shape when ready to undertake a new journey.
We had promised Beardsley School, good old Beardsley School, that we would be back as soon as my Hollywood engagement came to an end (inventive Humbert was to be, I hinted, chief consultant in the production of a film dealing with “existentialism,” still a hot thing at the time). Actually I was toying with the idea of gently trickling across the Mexican border - I was braver now than last year - and there deciding what to do with my little concubine who was now sixty inches tall and weighed ninety pounds. We had dug out our tour books and maps. She had traced our route with immense zest. Was it thanks to those theatricals that she had now outgrown her juvenile jaded airs and was so adorably keen to explore rich reality? I experienced the queer lightness of dreams that pale but warm Sunday morning when we abandoned Professor Chem’s puzzled house and sped along Main Street toward the four-lane highway. My Love’s striped, black-and-white cotton frock, jauntry blue with the large beautifully cut aquamarine on a silver chainlet, which gemmed her throat: a spring rain gift from me. We passed the New Hotel, and she laughed. “A penny for your thoughts,” I said and she stretched out her palm at once, but at that moment I had to apply the breaks rather abruptly at a red light. As we pulled up, another car came to a gliding stop alongside, and a very striking looking, athletically lean young woman (where had I seen her?) with a high complexion and shoulder-length brilliant bronze hair, greeted Lo with a ringing “Hi!” - and then, addressing me, effusively, edusively (placed!), stressing certain words, said: “What a shame it was to tear Dolly away from the play - you should have heard the author raving about her after that rehearsal - ” “Green light, you dope,” said Lo under her breath, and simultaneously, waving in bright adieu a bangled arm, Joan of Arc (in a performance we saw at the local theatre) violently outdistanced us to swerve into Campus Avenue.
“Who was it exactly? Vermont or Rumpelmeyer?”
“No - Edusa Gold - the gal who coaches us.”
“I was not referring to her. Who exactly concocted that play?”
“Oh! Yes, of course. Some old woman, Clare Something, I guess. There was quite a crowd of them there.”
“So she complimented you?”
“Complimented my eye - she kissed me on my pure brow” - and my darling emitted that new yelp of merriment which - perhaps in connection with her theatrical mannerisms - she had lately begun to affect.
“You are a funny creature, Lolita,” I saidor some such words. “Naturally, I am overjoyed you gave up that absurd stage business. But what is curious is that you dropped the whole thing only a week before its natural climax. Oh, Lolita, you should be careful of those surrenders of yours. I remember you gave up Ramsdale for camp, and camp for a joyride, and I could list other abrupt changes in your disposition. You must be careful. There are things that should never be given up. You must persevere. You should try to be a little nicer to me, Lolita. You should also watch your diet. The tour of your thigh, you know, should not exceed seventeen and a half inches. More might be fatal (I was kidding, of course). We are now setting out on a long happy journey. I remember…” (2.15)
In The Theosophical Glossary Helena Blavatsky (a Russian and American mystic, the cofounder of the Theosophical Society, born Helena von Hahn, 1831-1891) points out that Chem is the name of Egypt in the Qabbalah:
Ham ham (Hebrew) Ḥām [from ḥām hot, warm, heat, warmth] In the Bible, one of the three sons of Noah, from whom a great majority of the southern nations were supposed to trace their descent (Genesis 10). Some scholars have suggested that ham is equivalent to khem (black), the native name of Egypt, for Chem is the name of Egypt in the Qabbalah.
Noah and his sons in some instances represent the fifth root-race, in others the third root-race; or cosmically the collective symbol of the lower quaternary, “Ham being the Chaotic principle” (SD 2:597n).
Chemistry [from Greek chemeia] An ancient art or science relating to the extraction of medicinal juices from plants, or of metals from their earths, or the transmutation of physical elements, as of base metals into gold, the preparation of elixirs, and other things usually connected with alchemy, from which modern chemistry is a derivative along specialized line.
In The Secret Doctrine chemistry is mentioned as being, together with biology, one of the magicians of the future, especially in its form of chemical physics, when it is no longer the mechanistic science into which it has degenerated. “In Esoteric Philosophy, every physical particle corresponds to and depends on its higher noumenon — the Being to whose essence it belongs; and above as below, the Spiritual evolves from the Divine, the psycho-mental from the Spiritual — tainted from its lower plane by the astral — the whole animate and (seemingly) inanimate Nature evolving on parallel lines, and drawing its attributes from above as well as from below” (SD 1:218).
Colias edusa is an obsolete name of the Clouded Yellow butterfly (Colias crocea). In The Theosophical Glossary there is the following entry:
Gold The king of metal, symbol of perfection, durability, and purity; of the real sun, the great masculine principle, the Father, the positive side of the solar cosmic life. Alchemists considered gold as being a deposit of solar light, regarding light as the emanative fire from the sun. The gold of human nature, which has to be purified by fire from its dross, is manas, the self-conscious element, when purified from contamination with the dross of the lower principles and united with buddhi. While divine alchemy seeks to purify the gold of human nature, physical alchemy seeks to derive gold by transmutation from baser metals. In contrast with gold, brass is mentioned as signifying the baser elements or the world of passional matter; and by another contrast, silver is the analog of the watery or feminine principle, whose planetary counterpart is the moon.
The first and purest of the four Hesiodic races in Greece was golden and gave the name to their age. In Hindu writings the world is evolved from a golden egg or germ (hiranyagarbha).