According to Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969), Mlle Larivière (Lucette’s governess) had been platonically and irrevocably in love with Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) ever since she had seen her in ‘Bilitis:’
Yes! Wasn’t that a scream? blossoming forth, bosoming forth as a great writer! A sensational Canadian bestselling author! Her story ‘The Necklace’ (La rivière de diamants) had become a classic in girls’ schools and her gorgeous pseudonym ‘Guillaume de Monparnasse’ (the leaving out of the ‘t’ made it more intime) was well-known from Quebec to Kaluga. As she put it in her exotic English: ‘Fame struck and the roubles rolled, and the dollars poured’ (both currencies being used at the time in East Estotiland); but good Ida, far from abandoning Marina, with whom she had been platonically and irrevocably in love ever since she had seen her in ‘Bilitis,’ accused herself of neglecting Lucette by overindulging in Literature; consequently she now gave the child, in spurts of vacational zeal, considerably more attention than poor little Ada (said Ada) had received at twelve, after her first (miserable) term at school. Van had been such an idiot; suspecting Cordula! Chaste, gentle, dumb, little Cordula de Prey, when Ada had explained to him, twice, thrice, in different codes, that she had invented a nasty tender schoolmate, at a time when she had been literally torn from him, and only assumed — in advance, so to speak — such a girl’s existence. A kind of blank check that she wanted from him; ‘Well, you got it,’ said Van, ‘but now it’s destroyed and will not be renewed; but why did you run after fat Percy, what was so important?’
‘Oh, very important,’ said Ada, catching a drop of honey on her nether lip, ‘his mother was on the dorophone, and he said please tell her he was on his way home, and I forgot all about it, and rushed up to kiss you!’ (1.31)
In Le réveil ("Waking Up"), the second poem in Les chansons de Bilitis (“The Songs of Bilitis,” 1894), Pierre Louÿs mentions la chaleur du lit (bed’s warmth):
Il fait déjà grand jour. Je devrais être levée,
mais le sommeil du matin est doux
et la chaleur du lit me retient blottie.
Je veux rester couchée encore.
Tout à l'heure j'irai dans l'étable.
Je donnerai aux chèvres de l'herbe et des fleurs,
et l'outre d'eau fraîche tirée du puits,
où je boirai en même temps qu'elles.
Puis je les attacherai au poteau
pour traire leurs douces mamelles tièdes;
et si les chevreaux n'en sont pas jaloux,
je sucerai avec eux les tettes assouplies.
Amaltheia n'a-t-elle pas nourri Dzeus ?
J'irai donc. Mais pas encore.
Le soleil s'est levé trop tôt
et ma mère n'est pas éveillée.
Mlle Larivière knows by experience that nothing keeps up the itch of inspiration so well as la chaleur du lit:
All went well until Mlle Larivière decided to stay in bed for five days: she had sprained her back on a merry-go-round at the Vintage Fair, which, besides, she needed as the setting for a story she had begun (about a town mayor’s strangling a small girl called Rockette), and knew by experience that nothing kept up the itch of inspiration so well as la chaleur du lit. During that period, the second upstairs maid, French, whose moods and looks did not match the sweet temper and limpid grace of Blanche, was supposed to look after Lucette, and Lucette did her best to avoid the lazy servant’s surveillance in favor of her cousin’s and sister’s company. The ominous words: ‘Well, if Master Van lets you come,’ or ‘Yes, I’m sure Miss Ada won’t mind your mushroom-picking with her,’ became something of a knell in regard to love’s freedom. (1.23)
In his Pravila dlya nachinayushchikh avtorov ("Rules for Beginning Authors," 1885) Chekhov says that pisatel'skiy zud (the itch of writing) is incurable:
Всякого только что родившегося младенца следует старательно омыть и, давши ему отдохнуть от первых впечатлений, сильно высечь со словами: «Не пиши! Не пиши! Не будь писателем!» Если же, несмотря на такую экзекуцию, оный младенец станет проявлять писательские наклонности, то следует попробовать ласку. Если же и ласка не поможет, то махните на младенца рукой и пишите «пропало». Писательский зуд неизлечим.
In his "Rules" Chekhov quotes Bookseller's words in Pushkin's Razgovor knigoprodavtsa s poetom ("Conversation of Bookseller with Poet," 1824), "fame is a gaudy patch upon the songster's threadbare rags:"
4) Слава есть яркая заплата на ветхом рубище певца, литературная же известность мыслима только в тех странах, где за уразумением слова «литератор» не лезут в «Словарь 30 000 иностранных слов».
According to Mlle Larivière, "fame struck and the roubles rolled, and the dollars poured." In Pushkin's Razgovor Bookseller says: ne prodayotsya vdokhnoven'ye, no mozhno rukopis’ prodat’ ( "not salable is inspiration, but one can sell a manuscript").
Mlle Larivière writes under the penname Guillaume de Monparnasse. In his "Rules for Beginning Authors" Chekhov mentions people who clamber up Parnassus:
5) Пытаться писать могут все без различия званий, вероисповеданий, возрастов, полов, образовательных цензов и семейных положений. Не запрещается писать даже безумным, любителям сценического искусства и лишенным всех прав. Желательно, впрочем, чтобы карабкающиеся на Парнас были по возможности люди зрелые, знающие, что слова «ехать» и «хлеб» пишутся через «ять».
Mlle Larivière sleeps through the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time). Lucette's name for her governess, Belle brings to mind "Reveillez-vous, belle endormie," an air to children known in Chapter Five (XXVII: 5-8) of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin:
С семьей Панфила Харликова
Приехал и мосье Трике,
Остряк, недавно из Тамбова,
В очках и в рыжем парике.
Как истинный француз, в кармане
Трике привез куплет Татьяне
На голос, знаемый детьми:
Réveillez-vous, belle endormie.
Меж ветхих песен альманаха
Был напечатан сей куплет;
Трике, догадливый поэт,
Его на свет явил из праха,
И смело вместо belle Nina
Поставил belle Tatiana.
With the family of Panfíl Harlikóv
there also came Monsieur Triquét,
a wit, late from Tambóv,
bespectacled and russet-wigged.
As a true Frenchman, in his pocket
Triquet has brought a stanza for Tatiana
fitting an air to children known:
“Réveillez-vous, belle endormie.”
Among an almanac's decrepit songs
this stanza had been printed;
Triquet — resourceful poet —
out of the dust brought it to light
and boldly in the place of “belle Niná”
put “belle Tatianá.”
L´Endormeuse (“The Putter-to-Sleep,” 1889) is a story by Maupassant (the author of La Parure, 1884, who does not exist on Demonia, aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set). Its Spanish title, La Dormilona, brings to mind "a fey character out of some Dormilona novel for servant maids" (as Van calls Blanche):
It was only nine p.m. in late summer; he would not have been surprised if told it was midnight in October. He had had an unbelievably long day. The mind could hardly grasp the fact that this very morning, at dawn, a fey character out of some Dormilona novel for servant maids had spoken to him, half-naked and shivering, in the toolroom of Ardis Hall. He wondered if the other girl still stood, arrow straight, adored and abhorred, heartless and heartbroken, against the trunk of a murmuring tree. He wondered if in view of tomorrow’s partie de plaisir he should not prepare for her a when-you-receive-this-note, flippant, cruel, as sharp as an icicle. No. Better write to Demon.
Dear Dad,
in consequence of a trivial altercation with a Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, whom I happened to step upon in the corridor of a train, I had a pistol duel this morning in the woods near Kalugano and am now no more. Though the manner of my end can be regarded as a kind of easy suicide, the encounter and the ineffable Captain are in no way connected with the Sorrows of Young Veen. In 1884, during my first summer at Ardis, I seduced your daughter, who was then twelve. Our torrid affair lasted till my return to Riverlane; it was resumed last June, four years later. That happiness has been the greatest event in my life, and I have no regrets. Yesterday, though, I discovered she had been unfaithful to me, so we parted. Tapper, I think, may be the chap who was thrown out of one of your gaming clubs for attempting oral intercourse with the washroom attendant, a toothless old cripple, veteran of the first Crimean War. Lots of flowers, please!
Your loving son, Van
He carefully reread his letter — and carefully tore it up. The note he finally placed in his coat pocket was much briefer.
Dad,
I had a trivial quarrel with a stranger whose face I slapped and who killed me in a duel near Kalugano. Sorry!
Van (1.42)
The name of Van's adversary in a pistol duel, Captain Tapper (a member of the Do-Re-La country club) seems to hint at Chekhov's story Tapyor ("The Ballroom Pianist," 1885). Describing the Night of the Burning Barn, Van compares himself to Firs, the old retainer in Chekhov's play Vishnyovyi sad ("The Cherry Orchard," 1904), and Marina to Mme Ranevski:
A sort of hoary riddle (Les Sophismes de Sophie by Mlle Stopchin in the Bibliothèque Vieux Rose series): did the Burning Barn come before the Cockloft or the Cockloft come first. Oh, first! We had long been kissing cousins when the fire started. In fact, I was getting some Château Baignet cold cream from Ladore for my poor chapped lips. And we both were roused in our separate rooms by her crying au feu! July 28? August 4?
Who cried? Stopchin cried? Larivière cried? Larivière? Answer! Crying that the barn flambait?
No, she was fast ablaze — I mean, asleep. I know, said Van, it was she, the hand-painted handmaid, who used your watercolors to touch up her eyes, or so Larivière said, who accused her and Blanche of fantastic sins.
Oh, of course! But not Marina’s poor French — it was our little goose Blanche. Yes, she rushed down the corridor and lost a miniver-trimmed slipper on the grand staircase, like Ashette in the English version.
‘And do you remember, Van, how warm the night was?’
‘Eschchyo bï! (as if I did not!). That night because of the blink —’
That night because of the bothersome blink of remote sheet lightning through the black hearts of his sleeping-arbor, Van had abandoned his two tulip trees and gone to bed in his room. The tumult in the house and the maid’s shriek interrupted a rare, brilliant, dramatic dream, whose subject he was unable to recollect later, although he still held it in a saved jewel box. As usual, he slept naked, and wavered now between pulling on a pair of shorts, or draping himself in his tartan lap robe. He chose the second course, rattled a matchbox, lit his bedside candle, and swept out of his room, ready to save Ada and all her larvae. The corridor was dark, somewhere the dachshund was barking ecstatically. Van gleaned from subsiding cries that the so-called ‘baronial barn,’ a huge beloved structure three miles away, was on fire. Fifty cows would have been without hay and Larivière without her midday coffee cream had it happened later in the season. Van felt slighted. They’ve all gone and left me behind, as old Fierce mumbles at the end of the Cherry Orchard (Marina was an adequate Mme Ranevski). (1.19)