In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the svelte stilettos of a frozen stillicide:
All colors made me happy: even gray.
My eyes were such that literally they
Took photographs. Whenever I'd permit,
Or, with a silent shiver, order it,
Whatever in my field of vision dwelt -
An indoor scene, hickory leaves, the svelte
Stilettos of a frozen stillicide -
Was printed on my eyelids' nether side
Where it would tarry for an hour or two,
And while this lasted all I had to do
Was close my eyes to reproduce the leaves,
Or indoor scene, or trophies of the eaves. (ll. 29-40)
In his Commentary Kinbote (Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
How persistently our poet evokes images of winter in the beginning of a poem which he started composing on a balmy summer night! The mechanism of the associations is easy to make out (glass leading to crystal and crystal to ice) but the prompter behind it retains his incognito. One is too modest to suppose that the fact that the poet and his future commentator first met on a winter day somehow impinges here on the actual season. In the lovely line heading this comment the reader should note the last word. My dictionary defines it as "a succession of drops falling from the eaves, eavesdrop, cavesdrop." I remember having encountered it for the first time in a poem by Thomas Hardy. The bright frost has eternalized the bright eavesdrop. We should, also note the cloak-and-dagger hint-glint in the "svelte stilettos" and the shadow of regicide in the rhyme. (note to Lines 34-35)
Kinbote encountered the word “stillicide” in Thomas Hardy’s poem Friends Beyond:
William Dewey, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!
'Gone,' I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;
Yet at monthly curfew-tide,
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads,
They've a way of whispering to me--fellow-wight who yet abide--
In the muted, measured note
Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave's stillicide:
'We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
Unsuccesses to success.
Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.
'No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess.'
W.D.--'Ye may burn the old bass-viol that I set such value by.'
Squire.--'You may hold the manse in fee,
You may wed my spouse, may let my children's memory of me die.'
Lady S.--'You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household key;
Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;
Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me.'
Far.--'Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,
Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.'
Far. Wife.--'If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan't care of ho.'
All.--'We've no wish to hear the tidings, how the people's fortunes shift;
What your daily doings are;
Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.
'Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
If you quire to our old tune,
If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.'
--Thus, with very gods' composure, freed those crosses late and soon
Which, in life, the Trine allow
(Why none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,
William Dewey, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.
The Frozen Greenhouse is poem by Thomas Hardy:
(St Juliot)
" There was a frost
Last night!" she said,
" And the stove was forgot
When we went to bed,
And the greenhouse plants
Are frozen dead!"
By the breakfast blaze
Blank-faced spoke she,
Her scared young look
Seeming to be
The very symbol
Of tragedy.
The frost is fiercer
Than then to-day,
As I pass the place
Of her once dismay,
But the greenhouse stands
Warm, tight, and gay,
While she who grieved
At the sad lot
Of her pretty plants —
Cold, iced, forgot —
Herself is colder,
And knows it not.
St Juliot is a civil parish in north-east Cornwall, England. Shade writes his last poem in July. According to Kinbote, its Canto One was begun in the small hours of July 2 and completed on July 4, 1959.
Thomas Hardy is the author of “I have lived with shades:”
I
I have lived with shades so long,
And talked to them so oft,
Since forth from cot and croft
I went mankind among,
That sometimes they
In their dim style
Will pause awhile
To hear my say;
II
And take me by the hand,
And lead me through their rooms
In the To-be, where Dooms
Half-wove and shapeless stand:
And show from there
The dwindled dust
And rot and rust
Of things that were.
III
"Now turn," spake they to me
One day: "Look whence we came,
And signify his name
Who gazes thence at thee." -
--"Nor name nor race
Know I, or can,"
I said, "Of man
So commonplace.
IV
"He moves me not at all;
I note no ray or jot
Of rareness in his lot,
Or star exceptional.
Into the dim
Dead throngs around
He'll sink, nor sound
Be left of him."
V
"Yet," said they, "his frail speech,
Hath accents pitched like thine -
Thy mould and his define
A likeness each to each -
But go! Deep pain
Alas, would be
His name to thee,
And told in vain!"
In Thomas Hardy's novel The Hand of Ethelberta Brown: A Comedy in Chapters (1876) Ethelberta mentions her useless stiletto:
‘He came forward till he, like myself, was about twenty yards from the edge. I instinctively grasped my useless stiletto. How I longed for the assistance which a little earlier I had so much despised! Reaching the block or boulder upon which I had been sitting, he clasped his arms around from behind; his hands closed upon the empty seat, and he jumped up with an oath. This method of attack told me a new thing with wretched distinctness; he had, as I suppose, discovered my sex, male attire was to serve my turn no longer. The next instant, indeed, made it clear, for he exclaimed, “You don’t escape me, masquerading madam,” or some such words, and came on. My only hope was that in his excitement he might forget to notice where the grass terminated near the edge of the cliff, though this could be easily felt by a careful walker: to make my own feeling more distinct on this point I hastily bared my feet.’ (Chapter XIII "The Lodge (continued) - The Corpse Behind")