According to Humbert Humbert, the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita (1955), Rita was so kind that she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion:
She was twice Lolita’s age and three quarters of mine: a very slight, dark-haired, pale-skinned adult, weighing a hundred and five pounds, with charmingly asymmetrical eyes, and angular, rapidly sketched profile, and a most appealing ensellure to her supple back – I think she had some Spanish or Babylonian blood. I picked her up one depraved May evening somewhere between Montreal and New York, or more narrowly, between Toylestown and Blake, at a drakishly burning bar under the sign of the Tigermoth, where she was amiably drunk: she insisted we had gone to school together, and she placed her trembling little hand on my ape paw. My senses were very slightly stirred but I decided to give her a try; I did – and adopted her as a constant companion. She was so kind, was Rita, such a good sport, that I daresay she would have given herself to any pathetic creature or fallacy, an old broken tree or a bereaved porcupine, out of sheer chumminess and compassion. (2.26)
Rita is a short form of Margarita, a feminine given name that means “pearl.” It brings to mind the saying [nolite mittere] margaritas ante porcos ([don't throw] pearls before swine). This saying is based on the verse found in the Bible (Matthew 7:6): "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”
A bereaved porcupine mentioned by Humbert may hint at porcos in the Latin proverb. Dogs are prohibited by the management of The Enchanted Hunters (“the blue hotel” in a little poem that Humbert composed for Rita):
A curious urge to relive my stay there with Lolita had got hold of me. I was entering a phase of existence where I had given up all hope of tracing her kidnapper and her. I now attempted to fall back on old settings in order to save what still could be saved in the way of souvenir, souvenir que me veux-tu? Autumn was ringing in the air. To a post card requesting twin beds Professor Hamburg got a prompt expression of regret in reply. They were full up. They had one bathless basement room with four beds which they thought I would not want. Their note paper was headed:
The Enchanted Hunters
Near Churches
No Dogs
All legal beverages
I wondered if the last statement was true. All? Did they have for instance sidewalk grenadine? I also wondered if a hunter, enchanted or otherwise, would not need a pointer more than a pew, and with a spasm of pain I recalled a scene worthy of a great artist: petite nymphe accroupie; but that silky cocker spaniel had perhaps been a baptized one. NoI felt I could not endure the throes of revisiting that lobby. There was a much better possibility of retrievable time elsewhere in soft, rich-colored, autumnal Briceland. Leaving Rita in a bar, I made for the town library. A twittering spinster was only too glad to help me disinter mid-August 1947 from the bound Briceland Gazette , and presently, in a secluded nook under a naked light, I was turning the enormous and fragile pages of a coffin-black volume almost as big as Lolita.
Reader! Bruder! What a foolish Hamburg that Hamburg was! Since his supersensitive system was loath to face the actual scene, he thought he could at least enjoy a secret part of itwhich reminds one of the tenth or twentieth soldier in the raping queue who throws the girl’s black shawl over her white face so as not to see those impossible eyes while taking his military pleasure in the sad, sacked village. What I lusted to get was the printed picture that had chanced to absorb my trespassing image while the Gazette’s photographer was concentrating on Dr. Braddock and his group. Passionately I hoped to find preserved the portrait of the artist as a younger brute. An innocent camera catching me on my dark way to Lolita’s bedwhat a magnet for Mnemosyne! I cannot well explain the true nature of that urge of mine. It was allied, I suppose, to that swooning curiosity which impels one to examine with a magnifying glass bleak little figuresstill life practically, and everybody about to throw upat an early morning execution, and the patient’s expression impossible to make out in the print. Anyway, I was literally gasping for breath, and one corner of the book of doom kept stabbing me in the stomach while I scanned and skimmed… Brute Force and Possessed were coming on Sunday, the 24th, to both theatres. Mr. Purdom, independent tobacco auctioneer, said that ever since 1925 he had been an Omen Faustum smoker. Husky Hank and his petite bride were to be the guests of Mr. and Mrs. Reginald G. Gore, 58 Inchkeith Ave. The size of certain parasites is one sixth of the host. Dunkerque was fortified in the tenth century. Misses’ socks, 39 c. Saddle Oxfords 3.98. Wine, wine, wine, quipped the author of Dark Age who refused to be photographed, may suit a Persuan bubble bird, but I say give me rain, rain, rain on the shingle roof for roses and inspiration every time. Dimples are caused by the adherence of the skin to the deeper tissues. Greeks repulse a heavy guerrilla assault - and, ah, at last, a little figure in white, and Dr. Braddock in black, but whatever spectral shoulder was brushing against his ample form – nothing of myself could I make out.
I went to find Rita who introduced me with her vin triste smile to a pocket-sized wizened truculently tight old man saying this was - what was the name again, son? - a former schoolmate of hers. He tried to retain her, and in the slight scuffle that followed I hurt my thumb against his hard head. In the silent painted part where I walked her and aired her a little, she sobbed and said I would soon, soon leave her as everybody had, and I sang her a wistful French ballad, and strung together some fugitive rhymes to amuse her:
The place was called Enchanted Hunters. Query:
What Indian dyes, Diana, did thy dell
endorse to make of Picture Lake a very
blood bath of trees before the blue hotel?
She said: “Why blue when it is white, why blue for heaven’s sake?” and started to cry again, and I marched her to the car, and we drove on to New York, and soon she was reasonably happy again high up in the haze on the little terrace of our flat. I notice I have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Cantrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection. (ibid.)
One of the receptionists in The Enchanted Hunters is Mr. Swine:
“Wow! Looks swank,” remarked my vulgar darling squinting at the stucco as she crept out into the audible drizzle and with a childish hand tweaked loose the frock-fold that had struck in the peach-cleft – to quote Robert Browning. Under the arclights enlarged replicas of chestnut leaves plunged and played on white pillars. I unlocked the trunk compartment. A hunchbacked and hoary Negro in a uniform of sorts took our bags and wheeled them slowly into the lobby. It was full of old ladies and clergy men. Lolita sank down on her haunches to caress a pale-faced, blue-freckled, black-eared cocker spaniel swooning on the floral carpet under her handas who would not, my heartwhile I cleared my throat through the throng to the desk. There a bald porcine old man – everybody was old in that old hotel – examined my features with a polite smile, then leisurely produced my (garbled) telegram, wrestled with some dark doubts, turned his head to look at the clock, and finally said he was very sorry, he had held the room with the twin beds till half past six, and now it was gone. A religious convention, he said, had clashed with a flower show in Briceland, and “The name,” I said coldly, “is not Humberg and not Humbug, but Herbert, I mean Humbert, and any room will do, just put in a cot for my little daughter. She is ten and very tired.”
The pink old fellow peered good-naturedly at Lostill squatting, listening in profile, lips parted, to what the dog’s mistress, an ancient lady swathed in violet veils, was telling her from the depths of a cretonne easy chair.
Whatever doubts the obscene fellow had, they were dispelled by that blossom-like vision. He said, he might still have a room, had one, in factwith a double bed. As to the cot –
“Mr. Potts, do we have any cots left?” Potts, also pink and bald, with white hairs growing out of his ears and other holes, would see what could be done. He came and spoke while I unscrewed my fountain pen. Impatient Humbert!
“Our double beds are really triple,” Potts cozily said tucking me and my kid in. “One crowded night we had three ladies and a child like yours sleep together. I believe one of the ladies was a disguised man [my static]. However – would there be a spare cot in 49, Mr. Swine?
“I think it went to the Swoons,” said Swine, the initial old clown.
“We’ll manage somehow,” I said. “My wife may join us later – but even then, I suppose, we’ll manage.”
The two pink pigs were now among my best friends. In the slow clear hand of crime I wrote: Dr. Edgar H. Humbert and daughter, 342 Lawn Street, Ramsdale. A key (342!) was half-shown to me (magician showing object he is about to palm)and handed over to Uncle tom. Lo, leaving the dog as she would leave me some day, rose from her haunches; a raindrop fell on Charlotte’s grave; a handsome young Negress slipped open the elevator door, and the doomed child went in followed by her throat-clearing father and crayfish Tom with the bags.
Parody of a hotel corridor. Parody of silence and death.
“Say, it’s our house number,” said cheerful Lo.
There was a double bed, a mirror, a double bed in the mirror, a closet door with mirror, a bathroom door ditto, a blue-dark window, a reflected bed there, the same in the closet mirror, two chairs, a glass-topped table, two bedtables, a double bed: a big panel bed, to be exact, with a Tuscan rose chenille spread, and two frilled, pink-shaded nightlamps, left and right.
I was tempted to place a five-dollar bill in that sepia palm, but thought the largesse might be misconstrued, so I placed a quarter. Added another. He withdrew. Click. Enfin seuls. (1.27)
In Chekhov's story Volodya bolshoy i Volodya malenkiy ("The Two Volodyas," 1893) Little Voodya often whispered to his visitors “Pardon, je ne suis pas seul:”
Отец Софьи Львовны был военным доктором и служил когда-то в одном полку с Ягичем. Отец Володи тоже был военным доктором и тоже служил когда-то в одном полку с ее отцом и с Ягичем. Несмотря на любовные приключения, часто очень сложные и беспокойные, Володя учился прекрасно; он кончил курс в университете с большим успехом и теперь избрал своею специальностью иностранную литературу и, как говорят, пишет диссертацию. Живет он в казармах, у своего отца, военного доктора, и не имеет собственных денег, хотя ему уже тридцать лет. В детстве Софья Львовна и он жили в разных квартирах, но под одною крышей, и он часто приходил к ней играть, и их вместе учили танцевать и говорить по-французски; но когда он вырос и сделался стройным, очень красивым юношей, она стала стыдиться его, потом полюбила безумно и любила до последнего времени, пока не вышла за Ягича. Он тоже имел необыкновенный успех у женщин, чуть ли не с четырнадцати лет, и дамы, которые для него изменяли своим мужьям, оправдывались тем, что Володя маленький. Про него недавно кто-то рассказывал, будто бы он, когда был студентом, жил в номерах, поближе к университету, и всякий раз, бывало, как постучишься к нему, то слышались за дверью его шаги и затем извинение вполголоса: «Pardon, je ne suis pas seul». Ягич приходил от него в восторг и благословлял его на дальнейшее, как Державин Пушкина, и, по-видимому, любил его. Оба они по целым часам молча играли на бильярде или в пикет, и если Ягич ехал куда-нибудь на тройке, то брал с собою и Володю, и в тайны своей диссертации Володя посвящал только одного Ягича. В первое время, когда полковник был помоложе, они часто попадали в положение соперников, но никогда не ревновали друг к другу. В обществе, где они бывали вместе, Ягича прозвали Володей большим, а его друга — Володей маленьким.
Sofia Lvovna's father was an army doctor, and had at one time served in the same regiment with Colonel Yagich. Volodya's father was an army doctor too, and he, too, had once been in the same regiment as her father and Colonel Yagich. In spite of many amatory adventures, often very complicated and disturbing, Volodya had done splendidly at the university, and had taken a very good degree. Now he was specializing in foreign literature, and was said to be writing a thesis. He lived with his father, the army doctor, in the barracks, and had no means of his own, though he was thirty. As children Sofia and he had lived under the same roof, though in different flats. He often came to play with her, and they had dancing and French lessons together. But when he grew up into a graceful, remarkably handsome young man, she began to feel shy of him, and then fell madly in love with him, and had loved him right up to the time when she was married to Yagich. He, too, had been renowned for his success with women almost from the age of fourteen, and the ladies who deceived their husbands on his account excused themselves by saying that he was only a boy. Some one had told a story of him lately that when he was a student living in lodgings so as to be near the university, it always happened if one knocked at his door, that one heard his footstep, and then a whispered apology: "Pardon, je ne suis pas seul." Yagich was delighted with him, and blessed him as a worthy successor, as Derzhavin blessed Pushkin; he appeared to be fond of him. They would play billiards or picquet by the hour together without uttering a word, if Yagich drove out on any expedition he always took Volodya with him, and Yagich was the only person Volodya initiated into the mysteries of his thesis. In earlier days, when Yagich was rather younger, they had often been in the position of rivals, but they had never been jealous of one another. In the circle in which they moved Yagich was nicknamed Big Volodya, and his friend Little Volodya.
The characters in Chekhov's story include Rita, a spinster who can drink any amount of wine and liquor without being drunk and who loves to tell scandalous anecdotes in a languid and tasteless way:
В санях, кроме Володи большого, Володи маленького и Софьи Львовны, находилась еще одна особа — Маргарита Александровна, или, как ее все звали, Рита, кузина госпожи Ягич, девушка уже за тридцать, очень бледная, с черными бровями, в pince-nez, курившая папиросы без передышки, даже на сильном морозе; всегда у нее на груди и на коленях был пепел. Она говорила в нос, растягивая каждое слово, была холодна, могла пить ликеры и коньяк, сколько угодно, и не пьянела, и двусмысленные анекдоты рассказывала вяло, безвкусно. Дома она от утра до вечера читала толстые журналы, обсыпая их пеплом, или кушала мороженые яблоки.
Besides Big Volodya, Little Volodya, and Sofya Lvovna, there was a fourth person in the sledge -- Margarita Alexandrovna, or, as every one called her, Rita, a cousin of Madame Yagitch -- a very pale girl over thirty, with black eyebrows and a pince-nez, who was for ever smoking cigarettes, even in the bitterest frost, and who always had her knees and the front of her blouse covered with cigarette ash. She spoke through her nose, drawling every word, was of a cold temperament, could drink any amount of wine and liquor without being drunk, and used to tell scandalous anecdotes in a languid and tasteless way. At home she spent her days reading thick magazines, covering them with cigarette ash, or eating frozen apples.
According to Humbert, Rita proposed playing Russian roulette with his automatic:
She had a natty little coupé; and in it we traveled to California so as to give my venerable vehicle a rest. Her natural speed was ninety. Dear Rita! We cruised together for two dim years, from summer 1950 to summer 1952, and she was the sweetest, simplest, gentles, dumbest Rita imaginable. In comparison to her, Valechka was a Schlegel, and Charlotte a Hegel. There is no earthly reason why I should dally with her in the margin of this sinister memoir, but let me say (hi, Rita - wherever you are, drunk or hangoverish, Rita, hi!) that she was the most soothing, the most comprehending companion that I ever had, and certainly saved me from the madhouse. I told her I was trying to trace a girl and plug that girl’s bully. Rita solemnly approved of the planand in the course of some investigation she undertook on her own (without really knowing a thing), around San Humbertino, got entangled with a pretty awful crook herself; I had the devil of a time retrieving herused and bruised but still cocky. Then one day she proposed playing Russian roulette with my sacred automatic; I said you couldn’t, it was not a revolver, and we struggled for it, until at last it went off, touching off a very thin and very comical spurt of hot water from the hole it made in the wall of the cabin room; I remember her shrieks of laughter. (2.26)
Humbert picks up Rita “in depraved May,” a phrase used by T. S. Eliot (the author of Sweeney Agonistes) in Gerontion:
Signs are taken for wonders. ‘We would see a sign!’
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fräulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door.
As a young man in Paris, Humbert composed parodies of Eliot:
The days of my youth, as I look back on them, seem to fly away from me in a flurry of pale repetitive scraps like those morning snow storms of used tissue paper that a train passenger sees whirling in the wake of the observation car. In my sanitary relations with women I was practical, ironical and brisk. While a college student, in London and Paris, paid ladies sufficed me. My studies were meticulous and intense, although not particularly fruitful. At first, I planned to take a degree in psychiatry and many manqué talents do; but I was even more manqué than that; a peculiar exhaustion, I am so oppressed, doctor, set in; and I switched to English literature, where so many frustrated poets end as pipe-smoking teachers in tweeds. Paris suited me. I discussed Soviet movies with expatriates. I sat with uranists in the Deux Magots. I published tortuous essays in obscure journals. I composed pastiches:
…Fräulen von Kulp
may turn, her hand upon the door;
I will not follow her. Nor Fresca. Nor
that Gull.
A paper of mine entitled “The Proustian theme in a letter from Keats to Benjamin Bailey” was chuckled over by the six or seven scholars who read it. I launched upon an “Histoire abrégée de la poésie anglaise ” for a prominent publishing firm, and then started to compile that manual of French literature for English-speaking students (with comparisons drawn from English writers) which was to occupy me throughout the forties - and the last volume of which was almost ready for press by the time of my arrest. (1.5)
According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert’s manuscript), Rita has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” or “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore, “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. “Vivian Darkbloom” has written a biography, “My Cue,” to be published shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” is Lolita's married name. Humbert writes Lolita in legal captivity after murdering Quilty (whose address in Parkington is Grimm Road). Describing Lolita's illness and her abduction from the Elphinstone hospital, Humbert mentions Goethe's Erlkönig. A character in Goethe's Faust, Gretchen (a diminutive of Margarete) drowns her illegitimate child and is convicted of the murder. Faust tries to save Gretchen from death by attempting to free her from prison. Finding that she refuses to escape, Faust and Mephistopheles flee the dungeon, while voices from Heaven announce that Gretchen shall be saved – "Sie ist gerettet" – this differs from the harsher ending of Urfaust – "Sie ist gerichtet!" – "she is condemned."
Goethe and Schiller are German poets, brothers Grimm are German lexicographers and authors of fairy tales. Comparing Rita to his wives, Humbert mentions Schlegel (German critic) and Hegel (German philosopher):
In comparison to her, Valechka was a Schlegel, and Charlotte a Hegel.
In Goethe's Leiden des jungen Werthers ("The Sorrows of Young Werther") Werther is hopelessly in love with Charlotte (a married woman).
In the Russian Lolita (1967) "Mr. Swine" becomes "Mr. Schwein" (the name in German spelling).