Before the family dinner in “Ardis the Second” Demon Veen (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s and Ada’s father) calls Blanche (a French handmaid at Ardis) “a remarkably pretty soubrette:”
‘I must warn Marina,’ said Demon after a gum-rinse and a slow swallow, ‘that her husband should stop swilling tittery, and stick to French and Califrench wines — after that little stroke he had. I met him in town recently, near Mad Avenue, saw him walking toward me quite normally, but then as he caught sight of me, a block away, the clockwork began slowing down and he stopped — oh, helplessly! — before he reached me. That’s hardly normal. Okay. Let our sweethearts never meet, as we used to say, up at Chose. Only Yukonians think cognac is bad for the liver, because they have nothing but vodka. Well, I’m glad you get along so well with Ada. That’s fine. A moment ago, in that gallery, I ran into a remarkably pretty soubrette. She never once raised her lashes and answered in French when I — Please, my boy, move that screen a little, that’s right, the stab of a sunset, especially from under a thunderhead, is not for my poor eyes. Or poor ventricles. Do you like the type, Van — the bowed little head, the bare neck, the high heels, the trot, the wiggle, you do, don’t you?’
‘Well, sir —’
(Tell him I’m the youngest Venutian? Does he belong, too? Show the sign? Better not. Invent.)
‘— Well, I’m resting after my torrid affair, in London, with my tango-partner whom you saw me dance with when you flew over for that last show — remember?’
‘Indeed, I do. Curious, you calling it that.’
‘I think, sir, you’ve had enough brandy.’
‘Sure, sure,’ said Demon, wrestling with a subtle question which only the ineptitude of a kindred conjecture had crowded out of Marina’s mind, granted it could have entered by some back door; for ineptitude is always synonymous with multitude, and nothing is fuller than an empty mind.
‘Naturally,’ continued Demon, ‘there is a good deal to be said for a restful summer in the country...’
‘Open-air life and all that,’ said Van.
‘It is incredible that a young boy should control his father’s liquor intake,’ remarked Demon, pouring himself a fourth shallow. ‘On the other hand,’ he went on, nursing the thin-stemmed, gold-rimmed cup, ‘open-air life may be pretty bleak without a summer romance, and not many decent girls haunt the neighborhood, I agree. There was that lovely Erminin girl, une petite juive très aristocratique, but I understand she’s engaged. By the way, the de Prey woman tells me her son has enlisted and will soon be taking part in that deplorable business abroad which our country should have ignored. I wonder if he leaves any rivals behind?’
‘Goodness no,’ replied honest Van. ‘Ada is a serious young lady. She has no beaux — except me, ça va seins durs. Now who, who, who, Dad, who said that for "sans dire"?’
‘Oh! King Wing! When I wanted to know how he liked his French wife. Well, that’s fine news about Ada. She likes horses, you say?’
‘She likes,’ said Van, ‘what all our belles like — balls, orchids, and The Cherry Orchard.’ (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): kameristochka: Russ., young chambermaid.
In Konstantin Leontiev’s novel V svoyom krayu (“In the Native Land,” 1864) Mme Novosilski’s gornichnaya (the handmaid) is nastoyashchaya subretka (a real soubrette):
Горничная самой Новосильской – настоящая субретка; слегка рябоватая, но милая, стройная, везде порхает с улыбкой и ловко одетая. Муж ее, повар – молодец, из хохлов; лихой охотник, выпить не прочь, но боится жены и любит ее так, что выскакивает из кухни, когда она идет мимо, чтобы поцаловать ее руку. Нянюшка, которая ехала когда-то на линеечке с Рудневым и заступалась за Милькеева против капитана – седая, скромно и со вкусом одетая, тонкая, скорей дельная классная дама, чем нянька. (Part Two, chapter I)
Gornichnaya brings to mind gornishon (as Van mentally calls Blanche):
‘Your new car sounds wonderful,’ said Van.
‘Doesn’t it? Yes.’ (Ask Van about that gornishon — Franco-Russian slang of the meanest grade for a cute kameristochka). ‘And how is everything, my dear boy? I saw you last the day you returned from Chose. We waste life in separations! We are the fools of fate! Oh let’s spend a month together in Paris or London before the Michaelmas term!’
Demon shed his monocle and wiped his eyes with the modish lace-frilled handkerchief that lodged in the heart pocket of his dinner jacket. His tear glands were facile in action when no real sorrow made him control himself. (1.38)
A real soubrette, Mme Novosilski’s handmaid is married to a cook. Blanche is a niece of the cook at Ardis:
But the shag of the couch was as tickly as the star-dusted sky. Before anything new happened, Ada went on all fours to rearrange the lap robe and cushions. Native girl imitating rabbit. He groped for and cupped her hot little slew from behind, then frantically scrambled into a boy’s sandcastle-molding position; but she turned over, naïvely ready to embrace him the way Juliet is recommended to receive her Romeo. She was right. For the first time in their love story, the blessing, the genius of lyrical speech descended upon the rough lad, he murmured and moaned, kissing her face with voluble tenderness, crying out in three languages — the three greatest in all the world — pet words upon which a dictionary of secret diminutives was to be based and go through many revisions till the definitive edition of 1967. When he grew too loud, she shushed, shushingly breathing into his mouth, and now her four limbs were frankly around him as if she had been love-making for years in all our dreams — but impatient young passion (brimming like Van’s overflowing bath while he is reworking this, a crotchety gray old wordman on the edge of a hotel bed) did not survive the first few blind thrusts; it burst at the lip of the orchid, and a bluebird uttered a warning warble, and the lights were now stealing back under a rugged dawn, the firefly signals were circumscribing the reservoir, the dots of the carriage lamps became stars, wheels rasped on the gravel, all the dogs returned well pleased with the night treat, the cook’s niece Blanche jumped out of a pumpkin-hued police van in her stockinged feet (long, long after midnight, alas) — and our two naked children, grabbing lap robe and nightdress, and giving the couch a parting pat, pattered back with their candlesticks to their innocent bedrooms. (1.19)
Describing the Night of the Burning Barn (when he and Ada make love for the first time), Van compares himself to Firs (the old servant in Chekhov’s play The Cherry Orchard, 1904) and Marina (Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) to Mme Ranevski:
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). (ibid.)
In Vishnyovyi sad (“The Cherry Orchard”), chapter III of his memoir essay Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1912), Amfiteatrov mentions gornichnaya (the handmaid) Dunyasha, a countryside soubrette of a rather commonplace type (a character in The Cherry Orchard played by Mme Adurski):
Сверх этих лиц центрального дйствия в пьесе имеются еще: горничная Дуняша (г-жа Адурская) - деревенская субретка довольно шаблонного, общетеатрального типа и малонужная в пьесе; и, - наоборот, чрезвычайно важные для нее, - два эпизодических лица: гувернантка Шарлотта Ивановна (г-жа Муратова) и Прохожий (г. Громов).
Mme Adurski (who played Dunyasha in Stanislavski’s stage version of Chekhov’s play) brings to mind the Adour in one of Ada’s jingles:
‘Please, Van, do glance! These are our willows, remember?’
‘"The castle bathed by the Adour:
The guidebooks recommend that tour."’
‘It happens to be the only one in color. The willows look sort of greenish because the twigs are greenish, but actually they are leafless here, it’s early spring, and you can see our red boat Souvenance through the rushes. And here’s the last one: Kim’s apotheosis of Ardis.’
The entire staff stood in several rows on the steps of the pillared porch behind the Bank President Baroness Veen and the Vice President Ida Larivière. Those two were flanked by the two prettiest typists, Blanche de la Tourberie (ethereal, tearstained, entirely adorable) and a black girl who had been hired, a few days before Van’s departure, to help French, who towered rather sullenly above her in the second row, the focal point of which was Bouteillan, still wearing the costume sport he had on when driving off with Van (that picture had been muffed or omitted). On the butler’s right side stood three footmen; on his left, Bout (who had valeted Van), the fat, flour-pale cook (Blanche’s father) and, next to French, a terribly tweedy gentleman with sightseeing strappings athwart one shoulder: actually (according to Ada), a tourist, who, having come all the way from England to see Bryant’s Castle, had bicycled up the wrong road and was, in the picture, under the impression of accidentally being conjoined to a group of fellow tourists who were visiting some other old manor quite worth inspecting too. The back rows consisted of less distinguished menservants and scullions, as well as of gardeners, stableboys, coachmen, shadows of columns, maids of maids, aids, laundresses, dresses, recesses — getting less and less distinct as in those bank ads where limited little employees dimly dimidiated by more fortunate shoulders, but still asserting themselves, still smile in the process of humble dissolve.
‘Isn’t that wheezy Jones in the second row? I always liked the old fellow.’
‘No,’ answered Ada, ‘that’s Price. Jones came four years later. He is now a prominent policeman in Lower Ladore. Well, that’s all.’
Nonchalantly, Van went back to the willows and said:
‘Every shot in the book has been snapped in 1884, except this one. I never rowed you down Ladore River in early spring. Nice to note you have not lost your wonderful ability to blush.’
‘It’s his error. He must have thrown in a fotochka taken later, maybe in 1888. We can rip it out if you like.’
‘Sweetheart,’ said Van, ‘the whole of 1888 has been ripped out. One need not be a sleuth in a mystery story to see that at least as many pages have been removed as retained. I don’t mind — I mean I have no desire to see the Knabenkräuter and other pendants of your friends botanizing with you; but 1888 has been withheld and he’ll turn up with it when the first grand is spent.’
‘I destroyed 1888 myself,’ admitted proud Ada; ‘but I swear, I solemnly swear, that the man behind Blanche, in the perron picture, was, and has always remained, a complete stranger.’
‘Good for him,’ said Van. ‘Really it has no importance. It’s our entire past that has been spoofed and condemned. On second thoughts, I will not write that Family Chronicle. By the way, where is my poor little Blanche now?’
‘Oh, she’s all right. She’s still around. You know, she came back — after you abducted her. She married our Russian coachman, the one who replaced Bengal Ben, as the servants called him.’
‘Oh she did? That’s delicious. Madame Trofim Fartukov. I would never have thought it.’
‘They have a blind child,’ said Ada.
‘Love is blind,’ said Van.
‘She tells me you made a pass at her on the first morning of your first arrival.’
‘Not documented by Kim,’ said Van. ‘Will their child remain blind? I mean, did you get them a really first-rate physician?’
‘Oh yes, hopelessly blind. But speaking of love and its myths, do you realize — because I never did before talking to her a couple of years ago — that the people around our affair had very good eyes indeed? Forget Kim, he’s only the necessary clown — but do you realize that a veritable legend was growing around you and me while we played and made love?’ (2.7)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Knabenkräuter: Germ., orchids (and testicles).
perron: porch.
Because love is blind, Van does not notice that it was Ada who bribed Kim Beauharnais (a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada) to set the barn on fire.
For Van Ardis is he château que baignait la Dore:
‘I say,’ exclaimed Demon, ‘what’s happened — your shaftment is that of a carpenter’s. Show me your other hand. Good gracious’ (muttering:) ‘Hump of Venus disfigured, Line of Life scarred but monstrously long...’ (switching to a gipsy chant:) ‘You’ll live to reach Terra, and come back a wiser and merrier man’ (reverting to his ordinary voice:) ‘What puzzles me as a palmist is the strange condition of the Sister of your Life. And the roughness!’
‘Mascodagama,’ whispered Van, raising his eyebrows.
‘Ah, of course, how blunt (dumb) of me. Now tell me — you like Ardis Hall?’
‘I adore it,’ said Van. ‘It’s for me the château que baignait la Dore. I would gladly spend all my scarred and strange life here. But that’s a hopeless fancy.’
‘Hopeless? I wonder. I know Dan wants to leave it to Lucile, but Dan is greedy, and my affairs are such that I can satisfy great greed. When I was your age I thought that the sweetest word in the language rhymes with "billiard," and now I know I was right. If you’re really keen, son, on having this property, I might try to buy it. I can exert a certain pressure upon my Marina. She sighs like a hassock when you sit upon her, so to speak. Damn it, the servants here are not Mercuries. Pull that cord again. Yes, maybe Dan could be made to sell.’ (1.38)
Btw., Mme Novosilski (a character in Leontiev's novel In the Native Land) brings to mind Novostabia, a subarctic monastery town to which Dorothy Vinelander (Ada's sister-in-law) retires and where she marries a Mr Brod or Bred:
So she did write as she had promised? Oh, yes, yes! In seventeen years he received from her around a hundred brief notes, each containing around one hundred words, making around thirty printed pages of insignificant stuff — mainly about her husband’s health and the local fauna. After helping her to nurse Andrey at Agavia Ranch through a couple of acrimonious years (she begrudged Ada every poor little hour devoted to collecting, mounting, and rearing!), and then taking exception to Ada’s choosing the famous and excellent Grotonovich Clinic (for her husband’s endless periods of treatment) instead of Princess Alashin’s select sanatorium, Dorothy Vinelander retired to a subarctic monastery town (Ilemna, now Novostabia) where eventually she married a Mr Brod or Bred, tender and passionate, dark and handsome, who traveled in eucharistials and other sacramental objects throughout the Severnïya Territorii and who subsequently was to direct, and still may be directing half a century later, archeological reconstructions at Goreloe (the ‘Lyaskan Herculanum’); what treasures he dug up in matrimony is another question. (3.8)