Steven,
I don’t think D. Barton Johnson, a major figure in Nabokov studies and a founder of the N-list, was asking for the name of a real life model for the nymph. He was asking for an identification of the toiletry inside “an altar in a wood.”
I was born in 1954 and, using my earliest memories, I picture the “altar” to be a decorative sink countertop surmounted by a shell-shaped mirror, larger and more elaborate than a mere medicine cabinet mirror. In the cabinetry adjacent to the mirror one would find commercial beauty and health care products from Chanel and Revlon, as well as facial creams by Pacquins (my mother’s favorite, and a scent that, to me, has a Proustian mnemonic power) to “medicine’s” such as Miltown or Seconal, for one’s beauty sleep, and Benzedrine for keeping that youthful figure nice and slim.
Andrew
On 10/30/06 10:51 PM, "Steven" <mcquaryq@COMCAST.NET> wrote:
I was born in '54 and so don't qualify as an expert on the tv of the early 50s.... but -- Why are you so sure that there's a real life model for the image? Like a lot of the names and such in his American triptych, there was a lot of fun had by the author, generalizing from the specifics of American culture.
On Oct 25, 2006, at 1:48 PM, D. Barton Johnson wrote:
Can some one in my aged age group (or older) identify the toiletry in this description in a TV commercial circa the early fifties? The winner will be immortalized in a footnote. Don Johnson
Line 412ff The Cause of Poetry on Channel 8.
A nymph came pirouetting, under white
Rotating petals, in a vernal rite
To kneel before an altar in a wood
Where various articles of toilet stood.
Steven
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