During her second road trip with Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Lolita, 1955) across the USA Lolita falls ill and on June 28, 1949, is hospitalized in Elphinstone (a small town in the Rocky Mountains):
An additional, abominable, and perfectly gratuitous worry was lovingly prepared for me in Elphinstone. Lo had been dull and silent during the last lap - two hundred mountainous miles uncontaminated by smoke-gray sleuths or zigzagging zanies. She hardly glanced at the famous, oddly shaped, splendidly flushed rock which jutted above the mountains and had been the take-off for nirvana on the part of a temperamental show girl. The town was newly built, or rebuilt, on the flat floor of a seven-thousand-foot-high valley; it would soon bore Lo, I hoped, and we would spin on to California, to the Mexican border, to mythical bays, saguaro desserts, fatamorganas. José Lizzarrabengoa, as you remember, planned to take his Carmen to the Etats Unis. I conjured up a Central American tennis competition in which Dolores Haze and various Californian schoolgirl champions would dazzlingly participate. Good-will tours on that smiling level eliminate the distinction between passport and sport. Why did I hope we would be happy abroad? A change of environment is the traditional fallacy upon which doomed loves, and lungs, rely.
Mrs. Hays, the brisk, briskly rouged, blue-eyed widow who ran the motor court, asked me if I were Swiss perchance, because her sister had married a Swiss ski instructor. I was, whereas my daughter happened to be half Irish. I registered, Hays gave me the key and a tinkling smile, and, still twinkling, showed me where to park the car; Lo crawled out and shivered a little: the luminous evening air was decidedly crisp. Upon entering the cabin, she sat down on a chair at a card table, buried her face in the crook of her arm and said she felt awful. Shamming, I thought, shamming, no doubt, to evade my caresses; I was passionately parched; but she began to whimper in an unusually dreary way when I attempted to fondle her. Lolita ill. Lolita dying. Her skin was scalding hot! I took her temperature, orally, then looked up a scribbled formula I fortunately had in a jotter and after laboriously reducing the, meaningless to me, degrees Fahrenheit to the intimate centigrade of my childhood, found she had 40.4, which at least made sense. Hysterical little nymphs might, I knew, run up all kinds of temperature - even exceeding a fatal count. And I would have given her a sip of hot spiced wine, and two aspirins, and kissed the fever away, if, upon an examination of her lovely uvula, one of the gems of her body, I had not seen that it was a burning red. I undressed her. Her breath was bittersweet. Her brown rose tasted of blood. She was shaking from head to toe. She complained of a painful stiffness in the upper vertebrae - and I thought of poliomyelitis as any American parent would. Giving up all hope of intercourse, I wrapped her in a laprobe and carried her into the car. Kind Mrs. Hays in the meantime had alerted the local doctor. “You are lucky it happened here,” she said; for not only was Blue the best man in the district, but the Elphinstone hospital was as modern as modern could be, despite its limited capacity. With a heterosexual Erlkönig in pursuit, thither I drove, half-blinded by a royal sunset on the lowland side and guided by a little old woman, a portable witch, perhaps his daughter, whom Mrs. Hays had lent me, and whom I was never to see again. Dr. Blue, whose learning, no doubt, was infinitely inferior to his reputation, assured me it was a virus infection, and when I alluded to her comparatively recent flu, curtly said this was another bug, he had forty such cases on his hands; all of which sounded like the “ague” of the ancients. I wondered if I should mention, with a casual chuckle, that my fifteen-year-old daughter had had a minor accident while climbing an awkward fence with her boy friend, but knowing I was drunk, I decided to withhold the information till later if necessary. To an unsmiling blond bitch of a secretary I gave my daughter’s age as “practically sixteen.” While I was not looking, my child was taken away from me! In vain I insisted I be allowed to spend the night on a “welcome” mat in a corner of their damned hospital. I ran up constructivistic flights of stairs, I tried to trace my darling so as to tell her she had better not babble, especially if she felt as lightheaded as we all did. At one point, I was rather dreadfully rude to a very young and very cheeky nurse with overdeveloped gluteal parts and blazing black eyes - of Basque descent, as I learned. Her father was an imported shepherd, a trainer of sheep dogs. Finally, I returned to the car and remained in it for I do not know how many hours, hunched up in the dark, stunned by my new solitude, looking out open-mouthed now at the dimly illumined, very square and low hospital building squatting in the middle of its lawny block, now up at the wash of stars and the jagged silvery ramparts of the haute montagne where at the moment Mary’s father, lonely Joseph Lore was dreaming of Oloron, Lagore, Rolas - que sais-je! or seducing a ewe. Such-like fragrant vagabond thoughts have been always a solace to me in times of unusual stress, and only when, despite liberal libations, I felt fairly numbed by the endless night, did I think of driving back to the motel. The old woman had disappeared, and I was not quite sure of my way. Wide gravel roads criss-crossed drowsy rectangual shadows. I made out what looked like the silhouette of gallows on what was probably a school playground; and in another waste - like black there rose in domed silence the pale temple of some local sect. I found the highway at last, and then the motel, where millions of so-called “millers,” a kind of insect, were swarming around the neon contours of “No Vacancy”; and, when, at 3 a. m., after one of those untimely hot showers which like some mordant only help to fix a man’s despair and weariness, I lay on her bed that smelled of chestnuts and roses, and peppermint, and the very delicate, very special French perfume I latterly allowed her to use, I found myself unable to assimilate the simple fact that for the first time in two years I was separated from my Lolita. All at once it occurred to me that her illness was somehow the development of a theme - that it had the same taste and tone as the series of linked impressions which had puzzled and tormented me during our journey; I imagined that secret agent, or secret lover, or prankster, or hallucination, or whatever he was, prowling around the hospital - and Aurora had hardly “warmed her hands,” as the pickers of lavender way in the country of my birth, when I found myself trying to get into that dungeon again, knocking upon its green doors, breakfastless, stool-less, in despair.
This was Tuesday, and Wednesday or Thursday, splendidly reacting like the darling she was to some “serum” (sparrow’s sperm or dugong’s dung), she was much better, and the doctor said that in a couple of days she would be “skipping” again. (2.22)
The symptoms of Lolita's illness mentioned by Dr. Blue sound to Humbert like "the ague" of the ancients. Byron's poem Written After Swimming from Sestos to Abydos (1810) ends in the line "For he was drowned, and I've the ague:"
1.
If, in the month of dark December,
Leander, who was nightly wont
(What maid will not the tale remember?)
To cross thy stream, broad Hellespont!
2.
If, when the wintry tempest roared,
He sped to Hero, nothing loth,
And thus of old thy current poured,
Fair Venus! how I pity both!
3.
For me, degenerate modern wretch,
Though in the genial month of May,
My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat to-day.
4.
But since he crossed the rapid tide,
According to the doubtful story,
To woo,—and—Lord knows what beside,
And swam for Love, as I for Glory;
5.
'Twere hard to say who fared the best:
Sad mortals! thus the Gods still plague you!
He lost his labour, I my jest:
For he was drowned, and I've the ague.
Before Lord Byron was married (Byron married Annabella Milbanke on January 2, 1815), he enjoyed a passing flirtation with Margaret Mercer Elphinstone (1788-1867), the daughter of Admiral Lord Keith (1746-1823) and Jane Mercer, a close friend of Princess Charlotte of Wales (1796-1817), daughter of the Prince Regent. Elphinstone was careful to keep Byron at arm’s length and they remained friends, and it has been suggested that his poem Love and Gold (written c.1812-13) could have been about her. In May 1814, Byron decided to send Elphinstone a present, writing in a letter:
“I send you the Arnaout [Albanian] garments, which will make an admirable costume for a Dutch Dragoon... It is put off & on in a few minutes – If you like the dress – keep it – I shall be very glad to get rid of it – as it reminds me of one of two things I don’t wish to remember. - - - To make it more acceptable – I have worn this very little – and never in England except for half an hour to Phillips – I had more of the same description but parted with them when my Arnouts went back to Tepalen and I returned to England, it will do for a masquerade.”
The costume, the very one Byron had posed in for his Phillips portrait, was now Elphinstone’s to do with as she pleased. On January 1, 1950, Humbert mails Lolita's old clothes as an anonymous gift to a home for orphaned girls on a windy lake, on the Canadian border:
Other things of hers were harder to relinquish. Up to the end of 1949, I cherished and adored, and stained with my kisses and merman tears, a pair of old sneakers, a boy’s shirt she had worn, some ancient blue jeans I found in the trunk compartment, a crumpled school cap, suchlike wanton treasures. Then, when I understood my mind was cracking, I collected those sundry belongings, added to them what had been stored in Beardsley - a box of books, her bicycle, old coats, galoshes - and on her fifteenth birthday mailed everything as an anonymous gift to a home for orphaned girls on a windy lake, on the Canadian border. (2.24)
Elphinstone (thankfully) did not marry Byron, going on instead to marry Charles, the Comte de Flahaut (1785-1870), Napoleon’s aide-de-camp, in 1817. Lord Byron died on April 19, 1824, at age 36 in Missolonghi, Greece. He died from a severe fever, likely exacerbated by medical bloodletting, while aiding the Greek war for independence. In a footnote to his parodic Ode to Count Khvostov (1825) Pushkin says that the cause of Byron's death was goryachka (ague, fever):
Султан ярится? 1. Кровь Эллады
И peзвocкачет 2, и кипит.
Открылись грекам древни клады 3,
Трепещет в Стиксе лютый Пит 4.
И се — летит продерзко судно
И мещет громы обоюдно.
Се Бейрон, Феба образец.
Притек, но недуг быстропарный 5,
Строптивый и неблагодарный
Взнес смерти на него резец.
Певец бессмертный и маститый,
Тебя Эллада днесь зовет
На место тени знаменитой,
Пред коей Цербер днесь ревет.
Как здесь, ты будешь там сенатор,
Как здесь, почтенный литератор,
Но новый лавр тебя ждет там,
Где от крови земля промокла:
Перикла лавр, лавр Фемистокла;
Лети туда, Хвостов наш! сам.
Вам с Бейроном шипела злоба,
Гремела и правдива лесть.
Он лорд — граф ты! Поэты оба!
Се, мнится, явно сходство есть. —
Никак! Ты с верною супругой 6
Под бременем Судьбы упругой
Живешь в любви — и наконец
Глубок он, но единобразен,
А ты глубок, игрив и разен,
И в шалостях ты впрям певец.
А я, неведомый Пиита,
В восторге новом воспою
Во след Пиита знаменита
Правдиву похвалу свою,
Моляся кораблю бегущу,
Да Бейрона он узрит кущу 7,
И да блюдут твой мирный сон 8
Нептун, Плутон, Зевс, Цитерея,
Гебея, Псиша, Крон, Астрея,
Феб, Игры, Смехи, Вакх, Харон.
- Подражание г. Петрову, знаменитому нашему лирику.
- Слово, употребленное весьма счастливо Вильгельмом Карловичем Кюхельбекером в стихотворном его письме к г. Грибоедову.
- Под словом клады должно разуметь правдивую ненависть нынешних Леонидов, Ахиллесов и Мильтиадов к жестоким чалмоносцам.
- Г. Питт, знаменитый английский министр и известный противник Свободы.
- Горячка.
- Графиня Хвостова, урожденная княжна Горчакова, достойная супруга маститого нашего Певца. Во многочисленных своих стихотворениях везде называет он ее Темирою (см. последн. замеч. в оде «Заздравный кубок»).
- Подражание его высокопр. действ. тайн. сов. Ив. Ив. Дмитриеву, знаменитому другу гр. Хвостова:К тебе я руки простиралУже из отческия кущи,Взирая на суда бегущи.
- Здесь поэт, увлекаясь воображением, видит уже Великого нашего лирика, погруженного в сладкий сон и приближающегося к берегам благословенной Эллады. Нептун усмиряет пред ним продерзкие волны; Плутон исходит из преисподней бездны, дабы узреть того, кто ниспошлет ему в непродолжительном времени богатую жатву теней поклонников Лжепророка; Зевес улыбается ему с небес; Цитерея (Венера) осыпает цветами своего любимого певца; Геба подъемлет кубок за здравие его; Псиша, в образе Иполита Богдановича, ему завидует; Крон удерживает косу, готовую разить; Астрея предчувствует возврат своего царствования; Феб ликует; Игры, Смехи, Вакх и Харон веселою толпою следуют за судном нашего бессмертного Пииты.
In the Russian Lolita (1967) VN renders "the “ague” of the ancients" as "goryachka" u starykh belletristov:
Я не люблю вас, доктор Блю, а почему вас не люблю, я сам не знаю, доктор Блю. Не сомневаюсь, что его ученость значительно уступала его репутации. Он уверил меня, что у нее "вирусная инфекция", и, когда я упомянул о ее недавней инфлуэнце, сухо сказал, что это другой микроб и что у него уже сорок таких пациентов на руках (все это звучит, конечно, как "горячка" у старых беллетристов).
The characters in Lolita include Dr. Byron (the Haze family physician in Ramsdale). According to John Ray, Jr., Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” (Lolita's married name) outlived Humbert by forty days and died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest:
For the benefit of old-fashioned readers who wish to follow the destinies of the “real” people beyond the “true” story, a few details may be given as received from Mr. “Windmuller,” of “Ramsdale,” who desires his identity suppressed so that “the long shadow of this sorry and sordid business” should not reach the community to which he is proud to belong. His daughter, “Louise,” is by now a college sophomore, “Mona Dahl” is a student in Paris. “Rita” has recently married the proprietor of a hotel in Florida. Mrs. “Richard F. Schiller” died in childbed, giving birth to a stillborn girl, on Christmas Day 1952, in Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest. “Vivian Darkbloom” has written a biography, “My Cue,” to be publshed shortly, and critics who have perused the manuscript call it her best book. The caretakers of the various cemeteries involved report that no ghosts walk.
But it seems that, actually, Lolita dies of ague on July 4, 1949, in the Elphinstone hospital. Everything what happens after her sudden death (Lolita's escape from the hospital, Humbert's affair with Rita, Lolita's marriage and pregnancy, the murder of Clare Quilty and Humbert's death in prison) was invented by John Ray, Jr. (Humbert Humbert's "real" name). John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) and John Ray, Jr. bring to mind "One shade the more, one ray the less" (a line in Byron's poem She Walks in Beauty (1814):
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
The chief physician in the Elphinstone hospital, Dr. Blue reminds one of Byron's poem The Dark, Blue Sea (1816). In his poem Byron says: "I love not man the less, but nature more:"
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.-