In VN’s novel Lolita (1955) Lolita is abducted from Humbert Humbert on July 4, 1949 (the Independence Day).
On 4 July 1862 the Reverend Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a professor of mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford, set out on a rowing expedition up the Thames. With him on his rowing trip were the three young daughters of the University’s Vice-Chancellor. The middle child was Alice Liddell, then aged 10. As he rowed up the river Dodgson began to tell the girls a story about a bored child called Alice who follows a white rabbit and ends up having a series of surreal adventures. The story, as recorded in Dodgson’s diary, was initially called ‘Alice’s Adventures Under Ground’. One year later, under his pen name of Lewis Carroll, the story was published in an expanded form with the new title Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
The original manuscript of ‘Alice’s Adventure’s Under Ground’ was ultimately presented to Alice Liddell herself, with the dedication: ‘A Christmas Gift to a Dear Child in Memory of a Summer’s Day’.
According to John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert’s manuscript), Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita’s married name) died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadows 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.
In the Introductory poem (“All in the golden afternoon”) Carroll gives an account of the day he first told the story that would become Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In the second introductory poem, Christmas-Greetings [From a Fairy to a Child], composed on Christmas Day, 1867, Carroll mentions “cunning tricks and elfish play:”
Lady dear, if Fairies may
For a moment lay aside
Cunning tricks and elfish play,
'Tis at happy Christmas-tide.
We have heard the children say -
Gentle children, whom we love -
Long ago, on Christmas Day,
Came a message from above.
Still, as Christmas-tide comes round,
They remember it again -
Echo still the joyful sound
'Peace on earth, good-will to men!'
Yet the hearts must childlike be
Where such heavenly guests abide:
Unto children, in their glee,
All the year is Christmas-tide!
Thus, forgetting tricks and play
For a moment, Lady dear,
We would wish you, if we may,
Merry Christmas, glad New Year!
A cunning trick is played by Quilty (who abducts Lolita from the hospital, telling the staff that he is Humbert’s brother) in Elphinstone.
Describing the day (Sept. 22, 1952) on which he received a letter from Lolita, Humbert mentions a half-naked nymphet stilled in the act of combing her Alice-in-Wonderland hair:
My letterbox in the entrance hall belonged to the type that allows one to glimpse something of its contents through a glassed slit. Several times already, a trick of harlequin light that fell through the glass upon an alien handwriting had twisted it into a semblance of Lolita’s script causing me almost to collapse as I leant against an adjacent urn, almost my own. Whenever that happened - whenever her lovely, childish scrawl was horribly transformed into the dull hand of one of my few correspondents - I used to recollect, with anguished amusement, the times in my trustful, pre-dolorian past when I would be misled by a jewel-bright window opposite wherein my lurking eye, the ever alert periscope of my shameful vice, would make out from afar a half-naked nymphet stilled in the act of combing her Alice-in-Wonderland hair. There was in the fiery phantasm a perfection which made my wild delight also perfect, just because the vision was out of reach, with no possibility of attainment to spoil it by the awareness of an appended taboo; indeed, it may well be that the very attraction immaturity has for me lies not so much in the limpidity of pure young forbidden fairy child beauty as in the security of a situation where infinite perfections fill the gap between the little given and the great promised - the great rose-grey never-to-be-had. Mes fenêtres! Hanging above blotched sunset and welling night, grinding my teeth, I would crowd all the demons of my desire against the railing of a throbbing balcony: it would be ready to take off in the apricot and black humid evening; did take off - whereupon the lighted image would move and Even would revert to a rib, and there would be nothing in the window but an obese partly clad man reading the paper. (2.27)
In VN’s Russian version (1967) of Lolita Humbert calls this nymphet “the little enchantress of the more fortunate colleague” (an allusion to Carroll who loved to photograph little girls):
Почтовый ящичек с моим именем, в вестибюле дома, позволял получателю разглядеть сквозь застекленную щель кое-что из того, что всунул туда почтальон. Уже несколько раз случалось, что арлекинская игра света, упавшего сквозь стекло на чей-нибудь почерк, так искажала его, что получалось сходство с Лолитиной рукой, и это приводило меня в состояние чуть ли не обморока, так что приходилось ! прислоняться к ближней урне, - едва не оказывавшейся моей. Всякий раз, что это случалось, всякий раз, что на миг привидевшиеся мне любимые, петлистые, детские каракули превращались опять, с отвратительной простотой, в скучный почерк одного из немногих моих или Ритиных корреспондентов, я вспоминал, с болезненной усмешкой, далекое мое, доверчивое, Додолоресовое былое, когда я бывал обманут драгоценно освещенным окном, за которым высматривало мое рыщущее око - неусыпный перископ постыдного порока - полуголую, застывшую, как на кинопленке, нимфетку с длинными волосами Алисы в Стране Чудес (маленькой прелестницы более счастливого собрата), которые она как раз, по-видимому, начинала или кончала расчесывать. От совершенства огненного видения становилось совершенным и мое дикое блаженство - ибо видение находилось вне досягаемости, и потому блаженству не могло помешать сознание запрета, тяготевшее над достижимым. Кто знает, может быть, истинная сущность моего "извращения" зависит не столько от прямого обаяния прозрачной, чистой, юной, запретной, волшебной красоты девочек, сколько от сознания пленительной неуязвимости I положения, при котором бесконечные совершенства заполняют пробел между тем немногим, что дарится, и всем тем, что обещается, всем тем, что таится в дивных красках несбыточных бездн. Mes fenêtres! Повисая между закатными облаками и приливающей ночью, скрежеща зубами, я собирал и притискивал всех демонов моей страсти к перилам уже пульсирующего балкона: еще миг, и он снимется - прямо в абрикосовую мглу влажного вечера; он снимался - после чего, бывало, освещенный облик в дальнем окне сдвигался, - и Ева опять превращалась в ребро, которое опять обрастало плотью, и ничего в окне уже не было, кроме наполовину раздетого мужлана, читающего газету.
In her letter (dated Sept. 18, 1952) Lolita tells Humbert that she is pregnant:
I remember letting myself into my flat and starting to say: Well, at least we shall now track them down - when the other letter began talking to me in a small matter-of-fact voice:
Dear Dad:
How’s everything? I’m married. I’m going to have a baby. I guess he’s going to be a big one. I guess he’ll come right for Christmas. This is a hard letter to write. I’m going nuts because we don’t have enough to pay our debts and get out of here. Dick is promised a big job in Alaska in his very specialized corner of the mechanical field, that’s all I know about it but it’s really grand. Pardon me for withholding our home address but you may still be mad at me, and Dick must not know. This town is something. You can’t see the morons for the smog. Please do send us a check, Dad. We could manage with three or four hundred or even less, anything is welcome, you might sell my old things, because once we go there the dough will just start rolling in. Write, please. I have gone through much sadness and hardship.
Yours expecting,
Dolly (Mrs. Richard F. Schiller)
January 6, 2021, сочельник (Russian Christmas Eve)