According to Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla), Samuel Shade (the poet’s father) had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton:
With commendable alacrity, Professor Hurley produced an Appreciation of John Shade's published works within a month after the poet's death. It came out in a skimpy literary review, whose name momentarily escapes me, and was shown to me in Chicago where I interrupted for a couple of days my automobile journey from New Wye to Cedarn, in these grim autumnal mountains.
A Commentary where placid scholarship should reign is not the place for blasting the preposterous defects of that little obituary. I have only mentioned it because that is where I gleaned a few meager details concerning the poet's parents. His father, Samuel Shade, who died at fifty, in 1902, had studied medicine in his youth and was vice-president of a firm of surgical instruments in Exton. His chief passion, however, was what our eloquent necrologist calls "the study of the feathered tribe," adding that "a bird had been named for him: Bombycilla Shadei" (this should be "shadei," of course). The poet's mother, née Caroline Lukin, assisted him in his work and drew the admirable figures of his Birds of Mexico, which I remember having seen in my friend's house. What the obituarist does not know is that Lukin comes from Luke, as also do Locock and Luxon and Lukashevich. It represents one of the many instances when the amorphous-looking but live and personal hereditary patronymic grows, sometimes in fantastic shapes, around the common pebble of a Christian name. The Lukins are an old Essex family. Other names derive from professions such as Rymer, Scrivener, Limner (one who illuminates parchments), Botkin (one who makes bottekins, fancy footwear) and thousands of others. My tutor, a Scotsman, used to call any old tumble-down building "a hurley-house." But enough of this. (note to Line 71)
A firm of surgical instruments in Exton brings to mind the right instrument pointed out by Gradus (Shade’s murderer):
The Zemblan Revolution provided Gradus with satisfactions but also produced frustrations. One highly irritating episode seems retrospectively most significant as belonging to an order of things that Gradus should have learned to expect but never did. An especially brilliant impersonator of the King, the tennis ace Julius Steinmann (son of the well-known philanthropist), had eluded for several months the police who had been driven to the limits of exasperation by his mimicking to perfection the voice of Charles the Beloved in a series of underground radio speeches deriding the government. When finally captured he was tried by a special commission, of which Gradus was a member, and condemned to death. The firing squad bungled their job, and a little later the gallant young man was found recuperating from his wounds at a provincial hospital. When Gradus learned of this, he flew into one of his rare rages – not because the fact presupposed royalist machinations, but because the clean, honest, orderly course of death had been interfered with in an unclean, dishonest, disorderly manner. Without consulting anybody he rushed to the hospital, stormed in, located Julius in a crowded ward and managed to fire twice, both times missing, before the gun was wrested from him by a hefty male nurse. He rushed back to headquarters and returned with a dozen soldiers but his patient had disappeared.
Such things rankle – but what can Gradus do? The huddled fates engage in a great conspiracy against Gradus. One notes with pardonable glee that his likes are never granted the ultimate thrill of dispatching their victim themselves. Oh, surely, Gradus is active, capable, helpful, often indispensable. At the foot of the scaffold, on a raw and gray morning, it is Gradus who sweeps the night's powder snow off the narrow steps; but his long leathery face will not be the last one that the man who must mount those steps is to see in this world. It is Gradus who buys the cheap fiber valise that a luckier guy will plant, with a time bomb inside, under the bed of a former henchman. Nobody knows better than Gradus how to set a trap by means of a fake advertisement, but the rich old widow whom it hooks is courted and slain by another. When the fallen tyrant is tied, naked and howling, to a plank in the public square and killed piecemeal by the people who cut slices out, and eat them, and distribute his living body among themselves (as I read when young in a story about an Italian despot, which made of me a vegetarian for life), Gradus does not take part in the infernal sacrament: he points out the right instrument and directs the carving. (note to Line 171)
Stein is German for “stone.” Kamen’ (“Stone,” 1915) is a collection of poetry by Osip Mandelshtam. One of the poems in “Stone” is Tennis (1913).
The tennis ace Julius Steinmann is a son of the well-known philanthropist. Der Philanthrop (“The Philanthropist,” 1853) is a poem by Heinrich Heine. Bombycilla Shadei brings to mind the merciful god Schaddey (Almighty) mentioned by Heine in his famous poem Nächtliche Fahrt ("The Night Voyage," 1851)
O steh mir bei, barmherziger Gott!
Barmherziger Gott Schaddey!
Da schollert’s hinab ins Meer - O Weh
Schaddey! Schaddey! Adonay!
The epigraph to Mandelshtam’s poem V tot vecher ne gudel strel’chatyi les organa… (“That evening the forest of organ pipes did not play…” 1918) is a line from Heine’s poem Still ist die Nacht, es ruhen die Gassen (1827): Du, Doppelgänger, du, bleicher Geselle!.. Heine's poem was translated into Russian as Dvoynik ("The Double," 1904) by Nik. T-o (I. Annenski's penname, "Mr. Nobody").
Shade’s murderer, Gradus is Kinbote’s double. The infernal sacrament in which Gradus does not take part brings to mind Himmel-Hergott-Sakrament!, an oath repeated by Heine at the end of each stanza of his poem Stoßseufzer ("Heartfelt Groan," 1830):
Unbequemer neuer Glauben!
Wenn sie uns den Herrgott rauben,
Hat das Fluchen auch ein End -
Himmel-Herrgott-Sakrament!
Wir entbehren leicht das Beten,
Doch das Fluchen ist von nöten,
Wenn man gegen Feinde rennt -
Himmel-Herrgott-Sakrament!
Nicht zum Lieben, nein zum Hassen,
Sollt ihr uns den Herrgott lassen,
Weil man sonst nicht fluchen könnt -
Himmel-Herrgott-Sakrament!
Heine complains that atheism is an uncomfortable new religion, because it deprives us not only of God, but also of a popular oath. Shade, whose God died young, is an atheist.