The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Vivian Darkbloom (anagram of Vladimir Nabokov), a lady writer, Clare Quilty's coauthor. From John Ray, Jr. (the author of the Foreword to Humbert's manuscript) we know that she has written a biography, "My Cue," to be published shortly:
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.
Vivian is one of the names of The Lady of the Lake, a name or a title used by several either fairy or fairy-like but human enchantresses in the Matter of Britain, the body of medieval literature and mythology associated with the legend of King Arthur. Vivian (or Viviane) was a daughter of the knight Dionas (Dyonas) and a niece of the Duke of Burgundy. She was born in Dionas' domain that included the fairy forests of Briosque (Brocéliande) and Darnantes, and it was an enchantment of her fairy godmother, Diana the Huntress Goddess, that caused Viviane to be so alluring to Merlin when she first met him there as a young teenager. The Vulgate Lancelot informs the reader that, back "in the time of Virgil", Diana had been a Queen of Sicily that was considered a goddess by her subjects. The Post-Vulgate Suite de Merlin describes how Viviane was born and lived in a magnificent castle at the foot of a mountain in Brittany as a daughter of the King of Northumbria. She is initially known as the beautiful 12-year-old Damsel Huntress (Damoiselle Cacheresse) in her introductory episode, in which she serves the role of a damsel in distress in the adventure of the three knights separately sent by Merlin to rescue her from kidnapping; the quest is soon completed by King Pellinore who tracks down and kills her abductor. The Post-Vulgate rewrite also describes how Diana had killed her partner Faunus to be with a man named Felix, but then she was herself killed by her lover at that lake, which came to be called the Lake of Diana (Lac Diane). This is presumably the place where Lancelot du Lac ("of the Lake") is later raised, at first not knowing his real parentage, by Viviane. Nevertheless, in the French romances only the narration of the Vulgate Lancelot actually makes it clear that its Lady of the Lake and Viviane are in fact the one and same character. There, she also uses other names, including Elaine.
Dolores Haze is twelve when Humbert Humbert (who is thirty-seven) first meets her in Ramsdale (where she lives with her mother) and falls in love with her. In a little poem that he composes for Rita (a girl whom Humbert picked up at a roadside bar between Montreal and New York after Lolita was abducted from him) Humbert mentions Diana and the Picture Lake:
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. (2.26)
The Enchanted Hunters is a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together. Briceland seems to hint at Brycelinde, as in his poem Under the Moon included in his collection In the Seven Woods (1903) W. B. Yeats spells Brocéliande (earlier known as Brécheliant and Brécilien), a legendary enchanted forest that had a reputation in the medieval European imagination as a place of magic and mystery. Vivian (The Lady of the Lake) was born in Dionas' domain that included the fairy forests of Briosque (Brocéliande) and Darnantes. Dar ("The Gift," 1937) is a novel by VN; Nantes is a city in France.