When writing his comments to lines 86-90 ("Aunt Maud"), Charles Kinbote informs that she was "Samuel Shade's sister. At her death, Hazel (born 1934) was not exactly a "babe" as implied in line 90."
The reader has only access to the (not always reliable) Kinbote's informations.Apparently the idea that Hazel is the implied babe stems from him.
John Shade was killed in July l959, during his writing of "Pale Fire," when he reminisces about his daughter's swing in the garden (the poet lets us know that the tree where it hung has grown significantly since then)* - and refers
to the aforementioned "babe."** Kinbote's note informs us that Aunt Maud died when Hazel was 16, so it must have taken place in 1950.
Hazel, herself, died in March 1957, when she was 23***. All these invented dates must form a pattern that eludes my understanding (as it often (too often) happens.
........................................................................................................................
*
"I had a favorite young shagbark there/..../ It is now stout and rough;
it has done well." (49-54)
"White
butterflies turn lavender as they/Pass through its shade where gently seems to sway/The
phantom of my little daughter’s swing." (55-57)
The same tree that's mentioned in Shade's first canto, reappears in the end (lines 990-991), closely associated with shades, phantoms,
shadows
"Where are you? In the garden. I can see/
Part of your shadow near the shagbark tree."
I associate these phantom shades not to supernatural ghosts, but to Shade's (and VN's?) experiences of loss being relived in the process of remembering the past.
**
:I wonder if it is relevant that, in close proximity to the crying baby, Shade chose to apply the verb "impregnate" (meaning "to saturate" or "to imbue", not "fertilize" or "to make pregnant"...) while he describes a poltergeist's pranks related
to Maud's identity?
***
"...in October 1958, a year and a half after Hazel's death, he has his own near-death experience during a sudden collapse after giving a public lecture. Returning from this blackout, he feels sure he has slipped into death and back, and has
seen there, "dreadfully distinct / Against the dark, a tall white fountain."(C)
1999 Brian Boyd All rights reserved. ISBN: 0-691-00959-7. Cf. Nabokov's Pale Fire www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/boyd-pale.html -