Describing the difference between Terra and Antiterra (Earth’s twin planet also known as Demonia), Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the Amerussia of Abraham Milton:
The details of the L disaster (and I do not mean Elevated) in the beau milieu of last century, which had the singular effect of both causing and cursing the notion of ‘Terra,’ are too well-known historically, and too obscene spiritually, to be treated at length in a book addressed to young laymen and lemans — and not to grave men or gravemen.
Of course, today, after great anti-L years of reactionary delusion have gone by (more or less!) and our sleek little machines, Faragod bless them, hum again after a fashion, as they did in the first half of the nineteenth century, the mere geographic aspect of the affair possesses its redeeming comic side, like those patterns of brass marquetry, and bric-à-Braques, and the ormolu horrors that meant ‘art’ to our humorless forefathers. For, indeed, none can deny the presence of something highly ludicrous in the very configurations that were solemnly purported to represent a varicolored map of Terra. Ved’ (‘it is, isn’t it’) sidesplitting to imagine that ‘Russia,’ instead of being a quaint synonym of Estoty, the American province extending from the Arctic no longer vicious Circle to the United States proper, was on Terra the name of a country, transferred as if by some sleight of land across the ha-ha of a doubled ocean to the opposite hemisphere where it sprawled over all of today’s Tartary, from Kurland to the Kuriles! But (even more absurdly), if, in Terrestrial spatial terms, the Amerussia of Abraham Milton was split into its components, with tangible water and ice separating the political, rather than poetical, notions of ‘America’ and ‘Russia,’ a more complicated and even more preposterous discrepancy arose in regard to time — not only because the history of each part of the amalgam did not quite match the history of each counterpart in its discrete condition, but because a gap of up to a hundred years one way or another existed between the two earths; a gap marked by a bizarre confusion of directional signs at the crossroads of passing time with not all the no-longers of one world corresponding to the not-yets of the other. It was owing, among other things, to this ‘scientifically ungraspable’ concourse of divergences that minds bien rangés (not apt to unhobble hobgoblins) rejected Terra as a fad or a fantom, and deranged minds (ready to plunge into any abyss) accepted it in support and token of their own irrationality. (1.3)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): beau milieu: right in the middle.
Faragod: apparently, the god of electricity.
braques: allusion to a bric-à-brac painter.
Abraham Milton seems to be a cross between Abraham Lincoln (the 16th president of the United States, 1809-65) and John Milton (an English poet, 1609-74), the author of Paradise Lost (1667). A character in VN's novel Dar ("The Gift," 1937), the writer Shirin is blind like Milton, deaf like Beethoven, and a blockhead to boot:
Фёдор Константинович собрался было восвояси, когда его сзади окликнул шепелявый голос: он принадлежал Ширину, автору романа "Седина" (с эпиграфом из книги Иова), очень сочувственно встреченного эмигрантской критикой. ("Господи, отче -- --? По Бродвею, в лихорадочном шорохе долларов, гетеры и дельцы в гетрах, дерясь, падая, задыхаясь, бежали за золотым тельцом, который, шуршащими боками протискиваясь между небоскребами, обращал к электрическому небу изможденный лик свой и выл. В Париже, в низкопробном притоне, старик Лашез, бывший пионер авиации, а ныне дряхлый бродяга, топтал сапогами старуху-проститутку Буль-де-Сюиф. Господи отчего -- --? Из московского подвала вышел палач и, присев у конуры, стал тюлюкать мохнатого щенка: Махонький, приговаривал он, махонький... В Лондоне лорды и лэди танцевали джими и распивали коктейль, изредка посматривая на эстраду, где на исходе восемнадцатого ринга огромный негр кнок-оутом уложил на ковер своего белокурого противника. В арктических снегах, на пустом ящике из-под мыла, сидел путешественник Эриксен и мрачно думал: Полюс или не полюс?.. Иван Червяков бережно обстригал бахрому единственных брюк. Господи, отчего Вы дозволяете все это?"). Сам Ширин был плотный, коренастый человек, с рыжеватым бобриком, всегда плохо выбритый, в больших очках, за которыми, как в двух аквариумах, плавали два маленьких, прозрачных глаза, совершенно равнодушных к зрительным впечатлениям. Он был слеп как Мильтон, глух как Бетховен, и глуп как бетон. Святая ненаблюдательность (а отсюда – полная неосведомленность об окружающем мире -- и полная неспособность что-либо именовать) -- свойство, почему-то довольно часто встречающееся у русского литератора-середняка, словно тут действует некий благотворный рок, отказывающий безталанному в благодати чувственного познания, дабы он зря не изгадил материала. Бывает, конечно, что в таком темном человеке играет какой-то собственный фонарик, -- не говоря о том, что известны случаи, когда по прихоти находчивой природы, любящей неожиданные приспособления и подмены, такой внутренний свет поразительно ярок -- на зависть любому краснощекому таланту. Но даже Достоевский всегда как-то напоминает комнату, в которой днём горит лампа.
Fyodor was about to walk home when a lisping voice called him from behind: it belonged to Shirin, author of the novel The Hoary Abyss (with an Epigraph from the Book of Job) which had been received very sympathetically by the émigré critics. (“Oh Lord, our Father! Down Broadway in a feverish rustle of dollars, hetaeras and businessmen in spats, shoving, falling and out of breath, were running after the golden calf, which pushed its way, rubbing against walls between the skyscrapers, then turned its emaciated face to the electric sky and howled. In Paris, in a low-class dive, the old man Lachaise, who had once been an aviation pioneer but was now a decrepit vagabond, trampled under his boots an ancient prostitute, Boule de Suif. Oh Lord, why—? Out of a Moscow basement a killer came out, squatted by a kennel and began to coax a shaggy pup: little one, he repeated, little one… In London, lords and ladies danced the Jimmie and imbibed cocktails, glancing from time to time at a platform where at the end of the eighteenth ring a huge Negro had laid his fair-haired opponent on the carpet with a knockout. Amid arctic snows the explorer Ericson sat on an empty soapbox and thought gloomily: The pole or not the pole?… Ivan Chervyakov carefully trimmed the fringe of his only pair of pants. Oh Lord, why dost Thou permit all this?”) Shirin himself was a thickset man with a reddish crew cut, always badly shaved and wearing large spectacles behind which, as in two aquariums, swam two tiny, transparent eyes—which were completely impervious to visual impressions. He was blind like Milton, deaf like Beethoven, and a blockhead to boot. A blissful incapacity for observation (and hence complete uninformedness about the surrounding world—and a complete inability to put a name to anything) is a quality quite frequently met with among the average Russian literati, as if a beneficent fate were at work refusing the blessing of sensory cognition to the untalented so that they will not wantonly mess up the material. It happens, of course, that such a benighted person has some little lamp of his own glimmering inside him—not to speak of those known instances in which, through the caprice of resourceful nature that loves startling adjustments and substitutions, such an inner light is astonishingly bright—enough to make the envy of the ruddiest talent. But even Dostoevski always brings to mind somehow a room in which a lamp burns during the day. (Chapter Five)
Chronologically, the Antiterran L disaster in the beau milieu of the 19th century seems to correspond to the mock execution of Dostoevski and the Petrashevskians on Jan. 3, 1850 (NS), in our world. During Van's first tea party at Ardis Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother) mentions Dostoevski:
They now had tea in a prettily furnished corner of the otherwise very austere central hall from which rose the grand staircase. They sat on chairs upholstered in silk around a pretty table. Ada’s black jacket and a pink-yellow-blue nosegay she had composed of anemones, celandines and columbines lay on a stool of oak. The dog got more bits of cake than it did ordinarily. Price, the mournful old footman who brought the cream for the strawberries, resembled Van’s teacher of history, ‘Jeejee’ Jones.
‘He resembles my teacher of history,’ said Van when the man had gone.
‘I used to love history,’ said Marina, ‘I loved to identify myself with famous women. There’s a ladybird on your plate, Ivan. Especially with famous beauties — Lincoln’s second wife or Queen Josephine.’
‘Yes, I’ve noticed — it’s beautifully done. We’ve got a similar set at home.’
‘Slivok (some cream)? I hope you speak Russian?’ Marina asked Van, as she poured him a cup of tea.
‘Neohotno no sovershenno svobodno (reluctantly but quite fluently),’ replied Van, slegka ulïbnuvshis’ (with a slight smile). ‘Yes, lots of cream and three lumps of sugar.’
‘Ada and I share your extravagant tastes. Dostoevski liked it with raspberry syrup.’
‘Pah,’ uttered Ada. (1.5)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): with a slight smile: a pet formula of Tolstoy’s denoting cool superiority, if not smugness, in a character’s manner of speech.
Unlike John Milton (the author of The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce who had three successive wives), Abraham Lincoln was married once. The maiden name of Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd, brings to mind "nine hundred ninety-nine, Todd Rodd," in VN's novel Pnin (1957) Pnin's address in Waindell:
On the day of his party, as he was finishing a late lunch in Frieze Hall, Wynn, or his double, neither of whom had ever appeared there before, suddenly sat down beside him and said: 'I have long wanted to ask you something--you teach Russian, don't you? Last summer I was reading a magazine article on birds--'
('Vin! This is Vin!' said Pnin to himself, and forthwith perceived a decisive course of action).
'--well, the author of that article--I don't remember his name, I think it was a Russian one -mentioned that in the Skoff region, I hope I pronounce it right, a local cake is baked in the form of a bird. Basically, of course, the symbol is phallic, but I was wondering if you knew of such a custom?'
It was then that the brilliant idea flashed in Pnin's mind.
'Sir, I am at your service,' he said with a note of exultation quivering in his throat--for he now saw his way to pin down definitely the personality of at least the initial Wynn who liked birds. 'Yes, sir. I know all about those zhavoronki, those alouettes, those--we must consult a dictionary for the English name. So I take the opportunity to extend a cordial invitation to you to visit me this evening. Half past eight, post meridiem. A little house-heating soirée, nothing more. Bring also your spouse--or perhaps you are a Bachelor of Hearts?'
(Oh, punster Pnin!)
His interlocutor said he was not married. He would love to come. What was the address?
'It is nine hundred ninety-nine, Todd Rodd, very simple! At the very very end of the rodd, where it unites with Cleef Ahvnue. A leetle breek house and a beeg blahk cleef.' (Chapter Six, 5)
In his poem "The Nature of Electricity" John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the streetlamp number nine-hundred-ninety-nine:
The light never came back but it gleams again in a short poem "The Nature of Electricity", which John Shade had sent to the New York magazine The Beau and the Butterfly, some time in 1958, but which appeared only after his death:
The dead, the gentle dead - who knows?
In tungsten filaments abide,
And on my bedside table flows
Another man's departed bride.
And maybe Shakespeare floods a whole
Town with innumerable lights,
And Shelley's incandescent soul
Lures the pale moths of starless nights.
Streetlamps are numbered; and maybe
Number nine-hundred-ninety-nine
(So brightly beaming through a tree
So green) is an old friend of mine.
And when above the livid plain
Forked lightning plays, therein may dwell
The torments of a Tamerlane,
The roar of tyrants torn in hell.
Science tells us, by the way, that the Earth would not merely fall apart, but vanish like a ghost, if Electricity were suddenly removed from the world. (Kinbote's note to Line 347)
After the L disaster electricity was banned on Antiterra and even its name became unmentionable. Versuch einer Theorie der elektrischen Erscheinungen ("Attempt of a Theory of Electrical Phenomena," 1799) is the first major work of Achim von Arnim (a German poet and novelist, 1781-1831), the compiler (together with Clemens Brentano, 1778-1842) of Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn, 1808), a collection of German folk poems and songs. In 1811 Achim von Arnim (whose surname brings to mind Villa Armina where Van was conceived) married Bettina Brentano (Clemens' younger sister, the author of Goethe's Correspondence with a Child, 1835). In a letter of May 28, 1810, to J. W. von Goethe Bettina Brentano attributes to Ludwig van Beethoven (a German composer, 1770-1827) the following words:
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electric soil in which the spirit thinks, lives and invents. All that’s electrical stimulates the mind to flowing surging musical creation. I am electrical by nature."
The first scholarly biography of Beethoven, The Life of Ludwig van Beethoven (1866-79), was written by Alexander Wheelock Thayer (1817-97), an American librarian and journalist. In VN's novel Lolita (1955) 14 Thayer Street is Humbert's and Lolita's address at Beardsley:
When, through decorations of light and shade, we drove to 14 Thayer Street, a grave little lad met us with the keys and a note from Gaston who had rented the house for us. My Lo, without granting her new surroundings one glance, unseeingly turned on the radio to which instinct led her and lay down on the living room sofa with a batch of old magazines which in the same precise and blind manner she landed by dipping her hand into the nether anatomy of a lamp table. (2.4)
In his farewell letter to Marina Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) mentions his aunt’s ranch near Lolita, Texas:
‘Adieu. Perhaps it is better thus,’ wrote Demon to Marina in mid-April, 1869 (the letter may be either a copy in his calligraphic hand or the unposted original), ‘for whatever bliss might have attended our married life, and however long that blissful life might have lasted, one image I shall not forget and will not forgive. Let it sink in, my dear. Let me repeat it in such terms as a stage performer can appreciate. You had gone to Boston to see an old aunt — a cliché, but the truth for the nonce — and I had gone to my aunt’s ranch near Lolita, Texas. Early one February morning (around noon chez vous) I rang you up at your hotel from a roadside booth of pure crystal still tear-stained after a tremendous thunderstorm to ask you to fly over at once, because I, Demon, rattling my crumpled wings and cursing the automatic dorophone, could not live without you and because I wished you to see, with me holding you, the daze of desert flowers that the rain had brought out. Your voice was remote but sweet; you said you were in Eve’s state, hold the line, let me put on a penyuar. Instead, blocking my ear, you spoke, I suppose, to the man with whom you had spent the night (and whom I would have dispatched, had I not been overeager to castrate him). Now that is the sketch made by a young artist in Parma, in the sixteenth century, for the fresco of our destiny, in a prophetic trance, and coinciding, except for the apple of terrible knowledge, with an image repeated in two men’s minds. Your runaway maid, by the way, has been found by the police in a brothel here and will be shipped to you as soon as she is sufficiently stuffed with mercury.’ (1.2)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Lolita, Texas: this town exists, or, rather, existed, for it has been renamed, I believe, after the appearance of the notorious novel.
penyuar: Russ., peignoir.
Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon mentions his aunt Kitty, who married the Banker Bolenski after divorcing that dreadful old wencher Lyovka Tolstoy, the writer:
‘I don’t know if you know,’ said Van, resuming his perch on the fat arm of his father’s chair. ‘Uncle Dan will be here with the lawyer and Lucette only after dinner.’
‘Capital,’ said Demon.
‘Marina and Ada should be down in a minute — ce sera un dîner à quatre.’
‘Capital,’ he repeated. ‘You look splendid, my dear, dear fellow — and I don’t have to exaggerate compliments as some do in regard to an aging man with shoe-shined hair. Your dinner jacket is very nice — or, rather it’s very nice recognizing one’s old tailor in one’s son’s clothes — like catching oneself repeating an ancestral mannerism — for example, this (wagging his left forefinger three times at the height of his temple), which my mother did in casual, pacific denial; that gene missed you, but I’ve seen it in my hairdresser’s looking-glass when refusing to have him put Crêmlin on my bald spot; and you know who had it too — my aunt Kitty, who married the Banker Bolenski after divorcing that dreadful old wencher Lyovka Tolstoy, the writer.’
Demon preferred Walter Scott to Dickens, and did not think highly of Russian novelists. As usual, Van considered it fit to make a corrective comment:
‘A fantastically artistic writer, Dad.’
‘You are a fantastically charming boy,’ said Demon, shedding another sweet-water tear. He pressed to his cheek Van’s strong shapely hand. Van kissed his father’s hairy fist which was already holding a not yet visible glass of liquor. Despite the manly impact of their Irishness, all Veens who had Russian blood revealed much tenderness in ritual overflows of affection while remaining somewhat inept in its verbal expression. (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): ce sera etc.: it will be a dinner for four.
Wagging his left forefinger: that gene did not miss his daughter (see p.178, where the name of the cream is also prefigured).
Lyovka: derogative or folksy diminutive of Lyov (Leo).
Describing the last game of Flavita (the Russian Scrabble) that he played with Ada and Lucette (Van's and Ada's half-sister) at Ardis, Van mentions a gesture that Ada inherited from Demon:
Soon after that, as so often occurs with games, and toys, and vacational friendships, that seem to promise an eternal future of fun, Flavita followed the bronze and blood-red trees into the autumn mists; then the black box was mislaid, was forgotten — and accidentally rediscovered (among boxes of table silver) four years later, shortly before Lucette’s visit to town where she spent a few days with her father in mid-July, 1888. It so happened that this was to be the last game of Flavita that the three young Veens were ever to play together. Either because it happened to end in a memorable record for Ada, or because Van took some notes in the hope — not quite unfulfilled — of ‘catching sight of the lining of time’ (which, as he was later to write, is ‘the best informal definition of portents and prophecies’), but the last round of that particular game remained vividly clear in his mind.
‘Je ne peux rien faire,’ wailed Lucette, ‘mais rien — with my idiotic Buchstaben, REMNILK, LINKREM...’
‘Look,’ whispered Van, ‘c’est tout simple, shift those two syllables and you get a fortress in ancient Muscovy.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Ada, wagging her finger at the height of her temple in a way she had. ‘Oh, no. That pretty word does not exist in Russian. A Frenchman invented it. There is no second syllable.’
‘Ruth for a little child?’ interposed Van.
‘Ruthless!’ cried Ada.
‘Well,’ said Van, ‘you can always make a little cream, KREM or KREME — or even better — there’s KREMLI, which means Yukon prisons. Go through her ORHIDEYA.’
‘Through her silly orchid,’ said Lucette.
‘And now,’ said Ada, ‘Adochka is going to do something even sillier.’ And taking advantage of a cheap letter recklessly sown sometime before in the seventh compartment of the uppermost fertile row, Ada, with a deep sigh of pleasure, composed: the adjective TORFYaNUYu which went through a brown square at F and through two red squares (37 x 9 = 333 points) and got a bonus of 50 (for placing all seven blocks at one stroke) which made 383 in all, the highest score ever obtained for one word by a Russian scrambler. ‘There!’ she said, ‘Ouf! Pas facile.’ And brushing away with the rosy knuckles of her white hand the black-bronze hair from her temple, she recounted her monstrous points in a smug, melodious tone of voice like a princess narrating the poison-cup killing of a superfluous lover, while Lucette fixed Van with a mute, fuming appeal against life’s injustice — and then looking again at the board emitted a sudden howl of hope:
‘It’s a place name! One can’t use it! It’s the name of the first little station after Ladore Bridge!’
‘That’s right, pet,’ sang out Ada. ‘Oh, pet, you are so right! Yes, Torfyanaya, or as Blanche says, La Tourbière, is, indeed, the pretty but rather damp village where our Cendrillon’s family lives. But, mon petit, in our mother’s tongue — que dis-je, in the tongue of a maternal grandmother we all share — a rich beautiful tongue which my pet should not neglect for the sake of a Canadian brand of French — this quite ordinary adjective means "peaty," feminine gender, accusative case. Yes, that one coup has earned me nearly 400. Too bad — ne dotyanula (didn’t quite make it).’
‘Ne dotyanula!’ Lucette complained to Van, her nostrils flaring, her shoulders shaking with indignation. (1.36)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Je ne peux etc.: I can do nothing, but nothing.
Buchstaben: Germ., letters of the alphabet.
c’est tout simple: it’s quite simple.
pas facile: not easy.
Cendrillon: Cinderella.
mon petit... qui dis-je: darling... in fact.
The surname Veen, of almost all main characters in Ada, means in Dutch what Neva (the name of the river that flows through St. Petersburg, VN’s home city renamed Petrograd in 1914 and Leningrad in 1924) means in Finnish: peat bog. In one of her letters to Van written after Van left Ardis forever Ada mentions the legendary river of Old Rus:
[Los Angeles, 1889]
We are still at the candy-pink and pisang-green albergo where you once stayed with your father. He is awfully nice to me, by the way. I enjoy going places with him. He and I have gamed at Nevada, my rhyme-name town, but you are also there, as well as the legendary river of Old Rus. Da. Oh, write me, one tiny note, I’m trying so hard to please you! Want some more (desperate) little topics? Marina’s new director of artistic conscience defines Infinity as the farthest point from the camera which is still in fair focus. She has been cast as the deaf nun Varvara (who, in some ways, is the most interesting of Chekhov’s Four Sisters). She sticks to Stan’s principle of having lore and role overflow into everyday life, insists on keeping it up at the hotel restaurant, drinks tea v prikusku (‘biting sugar between sips’), and feigns to misunderstand every question in Varvara’s quaint way of feigning stupidity — a double imbroglio, which annoys strangers but which somehow makes me feel I’m her daughter much more distinctly than in the Ardis era. She’s a great hit here, on the whole. They gave her (not quite gratis, I’m afraid) a special bungalow, labeled Marina Durmanova, in Universal City. As for me, I’m only an incidental waitress in a fourth-rate Western, hip-swinging between table-slapping drunks, but I rather enjoy the Houssaie atmosphere, the dutiful art, the winding hill roads, the reconstructions of streets, and the obligatory square, and a mauve shop sign on an ornate wooden façade, and around noon all the extras in period togs queuing before a glass booth, but I have nobody to call.
Speaking of calls, I saw a truly marvelous ornithological film the other night with Demon. I had never grasped the fact that the paleotropical sunbirds (look them up!) are ‘mimotypes’ of the New World hummingbirds, and all my thoughts, oh, my darling, are mimotypes of yours. I know, I know! I even know that you stopped reading at ‘grasped’ — as in the old days. (2.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Da: yes (Russ.).
Nevada = Neva + da (yes). Brentano = Brenta + no. In Chapter One (XLIX: 2) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions the Brenta (a river that runs from Trentino to the Adriatic Sea just south of the Venetian lagoon in the Veneto region, in the north-east of Italy):
Адриатические волны,
О Брента! нет, увижу вас
И, вдохновенья снова полный,
Услышу ваш волшебный глас!
Он свят для внуков Аполлона;
По гордой лире Альбиона
Он мне знаком, он мне родной.
Ночей Италии златой
Я негой наслажусь на воле,
С венецианкою младой,
То говорливой, то немой,
Плывя в таинственной гондоле;
С ней обретут уста мои
Язык Петрарки и любви.
Adrian waves,
O Brenta! Nay, I'll see you
and, filled anew with inspiration,
I'll hear your magic voice!
'Tis sacred to Apollo's nephews;
through the proud lyre of Albion
to me 'tis known, to me 'tis kindred.
In the voluptuousness of golden
Italy's nights at liberty I'll revel,
with a youthful Venetian,
now talkative, now mute,
swimming in a mysterious gondola;
with her my lips will find
the tongue of Petrarch and of love.
In the next stanza (L: 12) Pushkin mentions somber Russia:
Придет ли час моей свободы?
Пора, пора! — взываю к ней;
Брожу над морем, жду погоды,10
Маню ветрила кораблей.
Под ризой бурь, с волнами споря,
По вольному распутью моря
Когда ж начну я вольный бег?
Пора покинуть скучный брег
Мне неприязненной стихии
И средь полуденных зыбей,
Под небом Африки моей,11
Вздыхать о сумрачной России,
Где я страдал, где я любил,
Где сердце я похоронил.
Will the hour of my freedom come?
'Tis time, 'tis time! To it I call;
I roam above the sea,10
I wait for the right weather,
I beckon to the sails of ships.
Under the cope of storms, with waves disputing,
on the free crossway of the sea
when shall I start on my free course?
'Tis time to leave the dull shore of an element
inimical to me,
and sigh, 'mid the meridian swell, beneath the
sky of my Africa,11
for somber Russia, where
I suffered, where I loved,
where I buried my heart.
10. Written in Odessa. (Pushkin's note)
11. See the first edition of Eugene Onegin. [One: L: 10-11; see Appendix I.]
As pointed out by Van's Russian tutor, Pushkin and Dumas had African blood. According to Van, the first navigators who reached the Gulf of Mexico came from West Africa:
‘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.’
‘That’s very black of you, Dad,’ said pleased Van, using a slang phrase he had learned from his tender young nurse, Ruby, who was born in the Mississippi region where most magistrates, public benefactors, high priests of various so-called’ denominations,’ and other honorable and generous men, had the dark or darkish skin of their West-African ancestors, who had been the first navigators to reach the Gulf of Mexico. (1.38)
On January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free." In Russia, the serfs were emancipated (by a decree of Alexander II) on February 19, 1861. Lincoln and Alexander II both died by assassination.