A playwright and pornographer whom Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) murders for abducting Lolita from the Elphinstone hospital, Clare Quilty tells Humbert Humbert "You have a funny accent, Captain:"
“People,” he said, “people in general, I’m not accusing you, Brewster, but you know it’s absurd the way people invade this damned house without even knocking. They use the vaterre, they use the kitchen, they use the telephone. Phil calls Philadelphia. Pat calls Patagonia. I refuse to pay. You have a funny accent, Captain.”
“Quilty,” I said, “do you recall a little girl called Dolores Haze, Dolly Haze? Dolly called Dolores, Colo.?”
“Sure, she may have made those calls, sure. Any place. Paradise, Wash., Hell Canyon. Who cares?”
“I do, Quilty. You see, I am her father.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “You are not. You are some foreign literary agent. A Frenchman once translated my Proud Flesh as La Fierté de la Chair. Absurd.”
“She was my child, Quilty.” (2.35)
Humbert Humbert's funny accent can be explained by his foreignness; but why does Clare Quilty call him "Captain?" Captain Lebyadkin is a character in Dostoevski's novel Besy ("The Possessed," 1872), a sot who writes verses (Lebyadkin's poem To a Star Amazon brings to mind Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest where, according to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952) and who imagines that he lost one arm in the Crimean War (in which he did not actually take part; in fact, he is not a Captain and never has been to Crimea). Nikolay Stavrogin's brother-in-law, Ignat Lebyadkin makes one think of Yakov Petrovich Golyadkin, the main character in Dostoevski's short novel Dvoynik ("The Double," 1846).
Golyadkin's physician, Doctor Rutenspitz (a play on Spitzruten or Spießruten, long, flexible wooden rods or switches used for corporal punishment), fears for Golyadkin's sanity and tells him that his behaviour is dangerously antisocial. He prescribes "cheerful company" as the remedy. Golyadkin resolves to try this. Though uninvited, he proceeds to the birthday party of Klara Olsufyevna, the daughter of his office manager. A series of social blunders leads to his expulsion from the party. On his way home through a snowstorm, he encounters a man who looks exactly like him, his double ("Golyadkin Jr.").
At first, Golyadkin and his double are friends, but Golyadkin Jr. proceeds to attempt to take over Sr.'s life, and they become bitter enemies. Because Golyadkin Jr. has all the charm, unctuousness and social skills that Golyadkin Sr. lacks, he is very well-liked among the office colleagues. At the story's conclusion, Golyadkin Sr. begins to see many replicas of himself, has a psychotic break, and is dragged off to an asylum by Doctor Rutenspitz.
Humbert Humbert's double, Clare Quilty was born in Ocean City in 1911 (a year after Humbert Humbert's birth in Paris). Humbert Humbert is a year Clare Quilty's senior. On the other hand, Golyadkin Jr. brings to mind John Ray, Jr., the author of the foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript. John M'Alister Ray, senior is the author of the afternote in Arthur Conan Doyle's story The Captain of the Pole-Star (1883):
[NOTE by Dr. John M'Alister Ray, senior.--I have read over the strange events connected with the death of the Captain of the Pole-Star, as narrated in the journal of my son. That everything occurred exactly as he describes it I have the fullest confidence, and, indeed, the most positive certainty, for I know him to be a strong-nerved and unimaginative man, with the strictest regard for veracity. Still, the story is, on the face of it, so vague and so improbable, that I was long opposed to its publication. Within the last few days, however, I have had independent testimony upon the subject which throws a new light upon it. I had run down to Edinburgh to attend a meeting of the British Medical Association, when I chanced to come across Dr. P----, an old college chum of mine, now practising at Saltash, in Devonshire. Upon my telling him of this experience of my son's, he declared to me that he was familiar with the man, and proceeded, to my no small surprise, to give me a description of him, which tallied remarkably well with that given in the journal, except that he depicted him as a younger man. According to his account, he had been engaged to a young lady of singular beauty residing upon the Cornish coast. During his absence at sea his betrothed had died under circumstances of peculiar horror.]