Describing one of his last days at Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the remote dreamy rhythm of Blanche’s ‘linen-folding’ voice humming ‘Malbrough’ (...ne sait quand reviendra, ne sait quand reviendra):
The novelistic theme of written communications has now really got into its stride. When Van went up to his room he noticed, with a shock of grim premonition, a slip of paper sticking out of the heart pocket of his dinner jacket. Penciled in a large hand, with the contour of every letter deliberately whiffled and rippled, was the anonymous injunction: ‘One must not berne you.’ Only a French-speaking person would use that word for ‘dupe.’ Among the servants, fifteen at least were of French extraction — descendants of immigrants who had settled in America after England had annexed their beautiful and unfortunate country in 1815. To interview them all — torture the males, rape the females — would be, of course, absurd and degrading. With a puerile wrench he broke his best black butterfly on the wheel of his exasperation. The pain from the fang bite was now reaching his heart. He found another tie, finished dressing and went to look for Ada.
He found both girls and their governess in one of the ‘nursery parlors,’ a delightful sitting room with a balcony on which Mlle Larivière was sitting at a charmingly ornamented Pembroke table and reading with mixed feelings and furious annotations the third shooting script of Les Enfants Maudits. At a larger round table in the middle of the inner room, Lucette under Ada’s direction was trying to learn to draw flowers; several botanical atlases, large and small, were lying about. Everything appeared as it always used to be, the little nymphs and goats on the painted ceiling, the mellow light of the day ripening into evening, the remote dreamy rhythm of Blanche’s ‘linen-folding’ voice humming ‘Malbrough’ (...ne sait quand reviendra, ne sait quand reviendra) and the two lovely heads, bronze-black and copper-red, inclined over the table. Van realized that he must simmer down before consulting Ada — or indeed before telling her he wished to consult her. She looked gay and elegant; she was wearing his diamonds for the first time; she had put on a new evening dress with jet gleams, and — also for the first time — transparent silk stockings.
He sat down on a little sofa, took at random one of the open volumes and stared in disgust at a group of brilliantly pictured gross orchids whose popularity with bees depended, said the text, ‘on various attractive odors ranging from the smell of dead workers to that of a tomcat.’ Dead soldiers might smell even better.
In the meantime obstinate Lucette kept insisting that the easiest way to draw a flower was to place a sheet of transparent paper over the picture (in the present case a red-bearded pogonia, with indecent details of structure, a plant peculiar to the Ladoga bogs) and trace the outline of the thing in colored inks. Patient Ada wanted her to copy not mechanically but ‘from eye to hand and from hand to eye,’ and to use for model a live specimen of another orchid that had a brown wrinkled pouch and purple sepals; but after a while she gave in cheerfully and set aside the crystal vaselet holding the Lady’s Slipper she had picked. Casually, lightly, she went on to explain how the organs of orchids work — but all Lucette wanted to know, after her whimsical fashion, was: could k boy bee impregnate a girl flower through something, through his gaiters or woolies or whatever he wore?
‘You know,’ said Ada in a comic nasal voice, turning to Van, ‘you know, that child has the dirtiest mind imaginable and now she is going to be mad at me for saying this and sob on the Larivière bosom, and complain she has been pollinated by sitting on your knee.’
‘But I can’t speak to Belle about dirty things,’ said Lucette quite gently and reasonably.
‘What’s the matter with you, Van?’ inquired sharp-eyed Ada.
‘Why do you ask?’ inquired Van in his turn.
‘Your ears wiggle and you clear your throat.’
‘Are you through with those horrible flowers?’
‘Yes. I’m going to wash my hands. We’ll meet downstairs. Your tie is all crooked.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Van.
‘Mon page, mon beau page,
— Mironton-mironton-mirontaine —
Mon page, mon beau page...’
Downstairs, Jones was already taking down the dinner gong from its hook in the hall.
‘Well, what’s the matter?’ she asked when they met a minute later on the drawing-room terrace.
‘I found this in my jacket,’ said Van.
Rubbing her big front teeth with a nervous forefinger, Ada read and reread the note.
‘How do you know it’s meant for you?’ she asked, giving him back the bit of copybook paper.
‘Well, I’m telling you,’ he yelled.
‘Tishe (quiet!)!’ said Ada.
‘I’m telling you I found it here,’ (pointing at his heart).
‘Destroy and forget it,’ said Ada.
‘Your obedient servant,’ replied Van. (1.40)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): ne sais quand etc.: knows not when he’ll come back.
mon beau page: my pretty page.
A French handmaid at Ardis who placed the anonymous note in Van's jacket, Blanche is the cook's niece. In Chapter Ten (II: 1-4) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin mentions not our cooks who plucked the two-headed eagle (in the Russian coat of arms) near Bonaparte's tent. ‘One must not berne you’ seems to hint at Conan Doyle's novel Uncle Bernac. A Memory of the Empire (1896). According to General Murat (a character in Conan Doyle's novel), Napoleon (who was whistling "Malbrook" all the time that he was dressing this morning) does not know the difference between the "Malbrook" and the "Marseillaise:"
The famous soldier had paused opposite to us, and shook hands with my companion. His elegant well-knit figure, large fiery eyes, and noble bearing made this innkeeper’s boy a man who would have drawn attention and admiration to himself in any assembly in Europe. His mop of curly hair and thick red lips gave that touch of character and individuality to his appearance which redeem a handsome face from insipidity.
’I am told that it is devilish bad country for cavalry--all cut up into hedges and ditches,’ said he. ’The roads are good, but the fields are impossible. I hope that we are going soon, Monsieur de Caulaincourt, for our men will all settle down as gardeners if this continues. They are learning more about watering-pots and spuds than about horses and sabres.’
’The army, I hear, is to embark to-morrow.’
’Yes, yes, but you know very well that they will disembark again upon the wrong side of the Channel. Unless Villeneuve scatters the English fleet, nothing can be attempted.’
’Constant tells me that the Emperor was whistling "Malbrook" all the time that he was dressing this morning, and that usually comes before a move.’
’It was very clever of Constant to tell what tune it was which the Emperor was whistling,’ said Murat, laughing. ’For my part I do not think that he knows the difference between the "Malbrook" and the "Marseillaise." Ah, here is the Empress--and how charming she is looking!’
Josephine had entered, with several of her ladies in her train, and the whole assembly rose to do her honour. The Empress was dressed in an evening gown of rose-coloured tulle, spangled with silver stars--an effect which might have seemed meretricious and theatrical in another woman, but which she carried off with great grace and dignity. A little sheaf of diamond wheat-ears rose above her head, and swayed gently as she walked. No one could entertain more charmingly than she, for she moved about among the people with her amiable smile, setting everybody at their ease by her kindly natural manner, and by the conviction which she gave them that she was thoroughly at her ease herself. ’How amiable she is!’ I exclaimed. ’Who could help loving her?’
’There is only one family which can resist her,’ said de Caulaincourt, glancing round to see that Murat was out of hearing. ’Look at the faces of the Emperor’s sisters.’
I was shocked when I followed his direction to see the malignant glances with which these two beautiful women were following the Empress as she walked about the room. They whispered together and tittered maliciously. Then Madame Murat turned to her mother behind her, and the stern old lady tossed her haughty head in derision and contempt.
’They feel that Napoleon is theirs and that they ought to have everything. They cannot bear to think that she is Her Imperial Majesty and they are only Her Highness. They all hate her, Joseph, Lucien--all of them. When they had to carry her train at the coronation they tried to trip her up, and the Emperor had to interfere. Oh yes, they have the real Corsican blood, and they are not very comfortable people to get along with.’
But in spite of the evident hatred of her husband’s family, the Empress appeared to be entirely unconcerned and at her ease as she strolled about among the groups of her guests with a kindly glance and a pleasant word for each of them. A tall, soldierly man, brown-faced and moustached, walked beside her, and she occasionally laid her hand with a caressing motion upon his arm.
’That is her son, Eugene de Beauharnais,’ said my companion.
’Her son!’ I exclaimed, for he seemed to me to be the older of the two.
De Caulaincourt smiled at my surprise.
’You know she married Beauharnais when she was very young--in fact she was hardly sixteen. She has been sitting in her boudoir while her son has been baking in Egypt and Syria, so that they have pretty well bridged over the gap between them. Do you see the tall, handsome, clean-shaven man who has just kissed Josephine’s hand. That is Talma the famous actor. He once helped Napoleon at a critical moment of his career, and the Emperor has never forgotten the debt which the Consul contracted. That is really the secret of Talleyrand’s power. He lent Napoleon a hundred thousand francs before he set out for Egypt, and now, however much he distrusts him, the Emperor cannot forget that old kindness. I have never known him to abandon a friend or to forgive an enemy. If you have once served him well you may do what you like afterwards. There is one of his coachmen who is drunk from morning to night. But he gained the cross at Marengo, and so he is safe.’ (Chapter XV. The Reception Of The Empress).
The characters in Ada include Kim Beauharnais, a kitchen boy and photographer at Ardis whom Van blinds for spying on him and Ada and attempting to blackmail Ada. According to Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother), she loved to identify herself with famous beauties - Lincoln's second wife or Queen Josephine. Blanche eventually marries Trofim Fartukov (the Russian coachman in "Ardis the Second"), and they have a blind child. The English coachman in "Ardis the First," Ben Wright (a heavy drinker nicknamed Bengal Ben because of his petards) is a namesake of Ben Wright (Benjamin Huntington Wright, 1915-89), an English actor who was cast as Sherlock Holmes in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, an American radio show broadcasted between 1949-1950 on ABC Network (WJZ New York).
Conan Doyle is the author of The White Company (Fr. La Compagnie Blanche, 1891), a historical novel set during the Hundred Years' War.
Louis Constant Wairy (1778–1845) was valet to Napoleon. He has the same surname as Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), the author of Adolphe (1816).
In his apologetic note to Lucette written after the dinner in 'Ursus' and debauch à trois in Van's Manhattan flat Van mentions coarse, smelly coachmen and repeats the phrase (favored by Ada) "destroy and forget:"
Van walked over to a monastic lectern that he had acquired for writing in the vertical position of vertebrate thought and wrote what follows:
Poor L.
We are sorry you left so soon. We are even sorrier to have inveigled our Esmeralda and mermaid in a naughty prank. That sort of game will never be played again with you, darling firebird. We apollo [apologize]. Remembrance, embers and membranes of beauty make artists and morons lose all self-control. Pilots of tremendous airships and even coarse, smelly coachmen are known to have been driven insane by a pair of green eyes and a copper curl. We wished to admire and amuse you, BOP (bird of paradise). We went too far. I, Van, went too far. We regret that shameful, though basically innocent scene. These are times of emotional stress and reconditioning. Destroy and forget.
Tenderly yours A & V.
(in alphabetic order).
‘I call this pompous, puritanical rot,’ said Ada upon scanning Van’s letter. ‘Why should we apollo for her having experienced a delicious spazmochka? I love her and would never allow you to harm her. It’s curious — you know, something in the tone of your note makes me really jealous for the first time in my fire [thus in the manuscript, for "life." Ed.] Van, Van, somewhere, some day, after a sunbath or dance, you will sleep with her, Van!’
‘Unless you run out of love potions. Do you allow me to send her these lines?’
‘I do, but want to add a few words.’
Her P.S. read:
The above declaration is Van’s composition which I sign reluctantly. It is pompous and puritanical. I adore you, mon petit, and would never allow him to hurt you, no matter how gently or madly. When you’re sick of Queen, why not fly over to Holland or Italy?
A. (2.8)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): spazmochka: Russ., little spasm.
In June 1901 Van's and Ada's half-sister Lucette commits suicide by jumping from Admiral Tobakoff into the Atlantic. In his essay The Texture of Time (1924) Van calls Lucette "a mermaid in the groves of Atlantis:"
Does the ravage and outrage of age deplored by poets tell the naturalist of Time anything about Time’s essence? Very little. Only a novelist’s fancy could be caught by this small oval box, once containing Duvet de Ninon (a face powder, with a bird of paradise on the lid), which has been forgotten in a not-quite-closed drawer of the bureau’s arc of triumph — not, however, triumph over Time. The blue-green-orange thing looked as if he were meant to be deceived into thinking it had been waiting there seventeen years for the bemused, smiling finder’s dream-slow hand: a shabby trick of feigned restitution, a planted coincidence — and a bad blunder, since it had been Lucette, now a mermaid in the groves of Atlantis (and not Ada, now a stranger somewhere near Morges in a black limousine) who had favored that powder. Throw it away lest it mislead a weaker philosopher; what I am concerned with is the delicate texture of Time, void of all embroidered events. (Part Four)
Conan Doyle's short novel The Maracot Deep (1929) is about the discovery of a sunken city of Atlantis by a team of explorers led by Professor Maracot. He is accompanied by Cyrus Headley, a young research zoologist, and Bill Scanlan, an expert mechanic working with an iron works in Philadelphia who is in charge of the construction of the submersible which the team takes to the bottom of the Atlantic.