"Twat" both then and now is vulgar slang for a woman's external
genitals. When the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary inquired decades later where
Browning had picked up the word, he directed them to a rhyme from 1660 that went
thus: "They talk’t of his having a Cardinall’s Hat/They’d send him as soon an
Old Nun’s Twat." Browning apparently missed the vulgar joke and took "twat" to
mean part of a nun's habit, pairing it in his poem with a priest's cowl.
The
town of Pippa Passes, Kentucky, is named for Browning's poem. (Kentucky!!!)
Samples of delightful humor in "Lolita" for renewed delectation:
1."She watched the listless pale
fountain girl put in the ice...— and my heart was bursting with love-ache. That
childish wrist. My lovely child. You have a lovely child, Mr. Humbert. We always
admire her as she passes by. Mr. Pim watched Pippa suck in the
concoction."
2. "We had breakfast in the township of
Soda, pop. 1001." [...] "Judging by the terminal figure," I remarked,
"Fatface is already here."
3. "Vivian is quite a woman. I am sure we saw her yesterday in
that restaurant, in Soda pop."
4. "Good, come on, we'll grill the soda jerk."
Browning's Concotion:
"This was the spot where the good farmer invariably stopped, and once, when they happened to be accompanied by his little boy, the latter, as he trotted beside them, pointed and remarked informatively: "Here Papa pisses." Another, less pointless, story awaited me at the top of the hill, where a square plot invaded with willow herb, milkweed and ironweed, and teeming with butterflies, contrasted sharply with the goldenrod all around it."