The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Clare Quilty, the playwright and pornographer whom Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character) tracks down and murders for abducting Lolita. As has been pointed out before, Quilty is a small fishing village in County Clare, Ireland. The local Catholic church, belonging to Kilmurry Ibrickane parish, has a round tower which is visible from the surrounding countryside. It was built in remembrance of the Leon XIII (shipwrecked on Sept. 30, 1907) rescue. The French sail ship Leon XIII was named for Pope Leo XIII (Gioacchino Vincenzo Raffaele Luigi Pecci; 1810-1903), head of the Catholic Church from Febr. 20, 1878, until his death in July 1903. His successor as head of the Catholic Church was Pope Pius X. In Canto One of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes his childhood and mentions the Canadian maid and her niece Adéle who had seen the Pope:
A preterist: one who collects cold nests.
Here was my bedroom, now reserved for guests.
Here, tucked away by the Canadian maid,
I listened to the buzz downstairs and prayed
For everybody to be always well,
Uncles and aunts, the maid, her niece Adéle
Who'd seen the Pope, people in books, and God. (ll. 79-85)
In his commentary to Shade's poem Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) writes:
Line 85: Who'd seen the Pope
Pius X, Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto, 1835-1914; Pope 1903-1914.
The Canadian maid's niece brings to mind Mrs. Z.'s niece whom Shade mentions in Canto Three of his poem:
"I can't believe," she said, "that it is you!
I loved your poem in the Blue Review.
That one about Mon Blon. I have a niece
Who's climbed the Matterhorn. The other piece
I could not understand. I mean the sense.
Because, of course, the sound--But I'm so dense!" (ll. 781-786)
In Deucalion (1886) John Ruskin (1819-1900) claims to have been the first to take a photograph of the Matterhorn, or indeed of any Swiss mountain, on August 8, 1849. "A preterist: one who collects cold nests" (a line in Canto One of Shade's poem) brings to mind Praeterita (1885–89), Ruskin's autobiography and his last major work, and The Eagle's Nest (1872), Ruskin's Ten Lectures on the Relation of Natural Science to Art.
Kinbote's Zembla is a land of reflections, of 'resemblers.' Clare Quilty resembles Gustave Trapp, Humbert’s Swiss uncle:
Being a murderer with a sensational but incomplete and unorthodox memory, I cannot tell you, ladies and gentlemen, the exact day when I first knew with utter certainty that the red convertible was following us. I do remember, however, the first time I saw its driver quite clearly. I was proceeding slowly one afternoon through torrents of rain and kept seeing that red ghost swimming and shivering with lust in my mirror, when presently the deluge dwindled to a patter, and then was suspended altogether. With a swishing sound a sunburst swept the highway, and needing a pair of new sunglasses, I puss - led up at a filling station. What was happening was a sickness, a cancer, that could not be helped, so I simply ignored the fact that our quiet pursuer, in his converted state, stopped a little behind us at a cafe or bar bearing the idiotic sign: The Bustle: A Deceitful Seatful. Having seen to the needs of my car, I walked into the office to get those glasses and pay for the gas. As I was in the act of signing a traveler’s check and wondered about my exact whereabouts, I happened to glance through a side window, and saw a terrible thing. A broad-backed man, baldish, in an oatmeal coat and dark-brown trousers, was listening to Lo who was leaning out of the car and talking to him very rapidly, her hand with outspread fingers going up and down as it did when she was very serious and emphatic. What struck me with sickening force was - how should I put it? - the voluble familiarity of her way, as if they had known each other - oh, for weeks and weeks. I saw him scratch his cheek and nod, and turn, and walk back to his convertible, a broad and thickish man of my age, somewhat resembling Gustave Trapp, a cousin of my father’s in Switzerland - same smoothly tanned face, fuller than mine, with a small dark mustache and a rosebud degenerate mouth. Lolita was studying a road map when I got back into the car.
“What did that man ask you, Lo?”
“Man? Oh, that man. Oh yes. Oh, I don’t know. He wondered if I had a map. Lost his way, I guess.”
We drove on, and I said:
“Now listen, Lo. I do not know whether you are lying or not, and I do not know whether you are insane or not, and I do not care for the moment; but that person has been following us all day, and his car was at the motel yesterday, and I think he is a cop. You know perfectly well what will happen and where you will go if the police find out about things. Now I want to know exactly what he said to you and what you told him.”
She laughed.
“If he’s really a cop,” she said shrilly but not illogically, “the worst thing we could do, would be to show him we are scared. Ignore him, Dad. ”
“Did he ask where we were going?”
“Oh, he knows that ” (mocking me).
“Anyway,” I said, giving up, “I have seen his face now. He is not pretty. He looks exactly like a relative of mine called Trapp.”
“Perhaps he is Trapp. If I were you - Oh, look, all the nines are changing into the next thousand. When I was a little kid,” she continued unexpectedly, “I used to think they’d stop and go back to nines, if only my mother agreed to put the car in reverse.”
It was the first time, I think, she spoke spontaneously of her pre-Humbertian childhood; perhaps, the theatre had taught her that trick; and silently we traveled on, unpursued. (2.18)
On April 16, 1877, in the Restaurant Trapp near the Gare St. Lazare, a dinner was given by the group of young writers who for publicity's sake had baptized themselves “Naturalists.” Among the guests of honor were Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola. The Russian title of Zola's novel L'Assommoir (1877) is Zapadnya. In zapadnya (a trap) there is zapad (west). Zembla is a distant northern land. Mrs. Richard F. Schiller (Lolita's married name) dies in childbed in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest.
The Quilty Church was dedicated on Oct. 9, 1911, by Bishop Michael Fogarty, Bishop of Killaloe, and named “Stella Maris” – “Star of the Sea” and subsequently referred to as “Our Lady Star of the Sea Church.” Clare Quilty was born in 1911, in Ocean City, N. J.:
Quilty, Clare, American dramatist. Born in Ocean City, N. J., 1911. Educated at Columbia University. Started on a commercial career but turned to playwriting. Author of The Little Nymph, The Lady Who Loved Lightning (in collaboration with Vivian Darkbloom), Dark Age, The strange Mushroom, Fatherly Love, and others. His many plays for children are notable. Little Nymph (1940) traveled 14,000 miles and played 280 performances on the road during the winter before ending in New York. Hobbies: fast cars, photography, pets. (1.8)