The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Miss Pratt (headmistress of the Beardsley School for Girls) and Miss Cormorant (one of the teachers):
At my first interview with headmistress Pratt, she approved of my child’s “nice blue eyes” (blue! Lolita!) and of my own friendship with that “French genius” (a genius! Gaston!) - and then, having turned Dolly over to a Miss Cormorant, she wrinkled her brow in a kind of recueillement and said:
“We are not so much concerned, Mr. Humbird, with having our students become bookworms or be able to reel off all the capitals of Europe which nobody knows anyway, or learn by heart the dates of forgotten battles. What we are concerned with is the adjustment of the child to group life. This is why we stress the four D’s: Dramatics, Dance, Debating and Dating. We are confronted by certain facts. Your delightful Dolly will presently enter an age groupwhere dates, dating, date dress, date book, date etiquette, mean as much to her as, say, business, business connections, business success, mean to you, or as much as [smiling] the happiness of my girls means to me. Dorothy Humbird is already involved in a whole system of social life which consists, whether we like ti or not, of hot-dog stands, corner drugstores, malts and cokes, movies, square-dancing, blanket parties on beaches, and even hair-fixing parties! Naturally at Beardsley School we disapprove of some of these activities; and we rechannel others into more constructive directions. But we do try to turn our backs on the fog and squarely face the sunshine. To put it briefly, while adopting certain teaching techniques, we are more interested in communication than in composition. That is, with due respect to Shakespeare and others, we want our girls to communicate freely with the live world around them rather than plunge into musty old books. We are still groping perhaps, but we grope intelligently, like a gynecologist feeling a tumor. We thing, Dr. Humburg, in organissmal and organizational terms. We have done away with the mass or irrelevant topics that have traditionally been presented to young girls, leaving no place, in former days, for the knowledges and the skills, and the attitudes they will need in managing their lives andas the cynic might addthe lives of their husbands. Mr. Humberson, let us put it this way: the position of a star is important, but the most practical spot for an icebox in the kitchen may be even more important to the budding housewife. You say that all you expect a child to obtain from school is a sound education. But what do we mean by education? In the old days it was in the main a verbal phenomenon; I mean, you could have a child learn by heart a good encyclopedia and he or she would know as much as or more than a school could offer. Dr. Hummer, do you realize that for the modern pre-adolescent child, medieval dates are of less vital value than weekend ones [twinkle]? - to repeat a pun that I heard the Beardsley college psychoanalyst permit herself the other day. We live not only in a world of thughts, but also in a world of things. Words without experience are meaningless. What on earth can Dorothy Hummerson care for Greece and the Orient with their harems and slaves?”
This program rather appalled me, but I spoke to two intelligent ladies who had been connected with the school, and they affirmed that the girls did quite a bit of sound reading and that the “communication” line was more or less ballyhoo aimed at giving old-fashioned Beardsley School a financially remunerative modern touch, though actually it remained as prim as a prawn. (2.4)
One Monday forenoon, in December I think, Pratt asked me to come over for a talk. Dolly’s last report had been poor, I knew. But instead of contenting myself with some such plausible explaination of this summons, I imagined all sort of horrors, and had to fortify myself with a pint of my “pin” before I could face the interview. Slowly, all Adam’s apple and heart, I went up the steps of the scaffold.
A huge women, gray-haired, frowsy, with a broad flat nose and small eyes behind black-rimmed glasses”Sit down,” she said, pointing to an informal and humiliating hassock, while she perched with ponderous spryness on the arm of an oak chair. For a moment or two, she peered at me with smiling curiosity. She had done it at our first meeting, I recalled, but I could afford then to scowl back. Her eye left me. She lapsed into thoughtprobably assumed. Making up her mind she rubbed, fold on fold, her dark gray flannel skirt at the knee, dispelling a trace of chalk or something. Then she said, still rubbing, not looking up:
“Let me ask a blunt question, Mr. Haze. You are an old-fashioned Continental father, aren’t you?”
“Why, no,” I said, “conservative, perhaps, but not what you would call old-fashioned.”
She sighed, frowned, then clapped her big plump hands together in a let’s-get-down-to-business manner, and again fixed her beady eyes upon me.
“Dolly Haze,” she said, “is a lovely child, but the onset of sexual maturing seems to give her trouble.”
I bowed slightly. What else could I do?
“She is still shuttling,” said Miss Pratt, showing how with her liver-spotted hands, “between the anal and genital zones of development. Basically she is a lovely”
“I beg your pardon,” I said, “what zones?”
“That’s the old-fashioned European in you!” cried Pratt delivering a slight tap on my wrist watch and suddenly disclosing her dentures. “All I mean is that biologic drivesdo you smoke?are not fused in Dolly, do not fall so to speak into ainto a rounded pattern.” Her hands held for a moment an invisible melon.
“She is attractive, birght though careless” (breathing heavily, without leaving her perch, the woman took time out to look at the lovely child’s report sheet on the desk at her right). “Her marks are getting worse and worse. Now I wonder, Mr. Haze” Again the false meditation.
“Well,” she went on with zest, “as for me, I do smoke, and, as dear Dr. Pierce used to say: I’m not proud of it but I jeest love it.” She lit up and the smoke she exhaled from her nostrils was like a pair of tusks.
“Let me give you a few details, it won’t take a moment. Now here let me see [rummaging among her papers]. She is defiant toward Miss Redcock and impossibly rude to Miss Cormorant. Now here is one of our special research reports: Enjoys singing with group in class though mind seems to wander. Crosses her knees and wags left leg to rhythm. Type of by-words: a two-hundred-forty-two word area of the commonest pubescent slang fenced in by a number of obviously European polysyllabics. Sighs a good deal in class. Let me see. Yes. Now comes the last week in November. Sighs a good deal in class. Chews gum vehemently. Does not bite her nails though if she did, this would conform better to her general patternscientifically speaking, of course. Menstruation, according to the subject, well established. Belongs at present to no church organization. By the way, Mr. Haze, her mother was? Oh, I see. And you are? Nobody’s business is, I suppose, God’s business. Something else we wanted to know. She was no regular home duties, I understand. Making a princess of your Dolly, Mr. Haze, he? Well, what else have we got here? Handles books gracefully. Voice pleasant. Giggles rather often. A little dreamy. Has private jokes of her own, transposing for instance the first letters of some of her teachers names. Hair light and dark brown, lustrouswell [laughing] you are aware of that , I suppose. Nose unobstructed, feet high-arched, eyes-let me see, I had here somewhere a still more recent report. Aha, here we are. Miss Gold says Dolly’s tennis form is excellent to superb, even better than Linda Hall’s, but concentration and point-accumulation are just “poor to fair.” Miss Cormorant cannot decide whether Dolly has exceptional emotional control or none at all. Miss Horn reports sheI mean, Dollycannot verbalize her emotions, while according to Miss Cole Dolly’s metabolic efficiency is superfine. Miss Molar thinks Dolly is myopic and should see a good ophthalmologist, but Miss Redcock insists that the girl simulates eye-strain to get away with scholastic incompetence. And to conclude, Mr. Haze, our researchers are wondering about something really crucial. Now I want to ask you something. I want to know if your poor wife, or yourself, or anyone else in the family - I understand she has several aunts and a maternal grandfather in California? - oh, had! I’m sorry - well, we all wonder if anybody in the family has instructed Dolly in the process of mammalian reproduction. The general impression is that fifteen-year-old Dolly remains morbidly uninterested in sexual matters, or to be exact, represses her curiosity in order to save her ignorance and self-dignity. All right-fourteen. You see, Mr. Haze, Beardsley School does not believe in bees and blossoms, and storks and love birds, but it does believe very strongly in preparing its students for mutually satisfactory mating and successful child rearing. We feel Dolly could make excellent progress if only she would put her mind to her work. Miss Cormorant’s report is significant in that respect. Dolly is inclined to be, mildly speaking impudent. But all feel that primo, you should have your family doctor tell her the facts of life and, secudno, that you allow her to enjoy the company of her schoolmates’ brothers at the Junior Club or in Dr. Rigger’s organization, or in the lovely homes of our parents.”
“She may meet boys at her own lovely home,” I said.
“I hope she will,” said Pratt buoyantly. “When we questioned her about her troubles, Dolly refused to discuss the home situation, but we have spoken to some of her friends and reallywell, for example, we insist you un-veto her nonparticiaption in the dramatic group. You just must allow her to tak part in The Hunted Enchanters . She was such a perfect little nymph in the try-out, and sometime in spring the author will stay for a few days at Beardsley College and may attend a rehearsal or two in our new auditorium. I mean it is all part of the fun of being young and alive and beautiful. You must understand”
“I always thought of myself,” I said, “as a very understanding father.”
“Oh, no doubt, no doubt, but Miss Cormorant thinks, and I am inclined to agree with her, that Dolly is obsessed by sexual thoughts for which she finds no outlet, and will tease and martyrize other girls, or even our younger instructors because they do have innocent dates with boys.”
“Shrugged my shoulders. A shabby émigré.
“Let us put our two heads together, Mr. Haze. What on earth is wrong with that child?”
“She seems quite normal and happy to me,” I said (disaster coming at last? Was I found out? Had they got some hypnotist?).
“What worries me,” said Miss Pratt looking at her watch and starting to go over the whole subject again, “is that both teachers and schoolmates find Dolly antagonistic, dissatisfied, cageyand everybody wonders why you are so firly opposed to all the natural recreations of a normal child.”
“Do you mean sex play?” I asked jauntily, in despair, a cornered old rat.
“Well, I certainly welcome this civilized terminology,” said Pratt with a grin. “But this is not quite the point. Under the auspices of Beardsley School, dramatics, dances and other natural activities are not technically sex play, though girls do meet boys, if that is what you object to.”
“All right,” I said, my hassock exhaling a weary sign. “You win. She can take part in that play. Provided male parts are taken by female parts.”
“I am always fascinated,” said Pratt, “by the admirable way foreignersor at least naturalized Americansuse our rich language. I’m sure Miss Gold, who conducts the play group, will be overjoyed. I notice she is one of the few teachers that seem to likeI mean who seem to find Dolly manageable. This takes care of general topics, I guess; now comes a special matter. We are in trouble again.”
Pratt paused truculently, then rubbed her index finger under her nostrils with such vigor that her nose performed a kind of war dance.
“I’m a frank person,” she said, “but conventions are conventions, and I find it difficult… Let me put it this way… The Walkers, who live in what we call around here the Duke’s Manor, you know the great gray house on the hillthey send their two girls to our school, and we have the niece of President Moore with us, a really gracious child, not to speak of a number of other prominent children. Well, under the circumstances, it is rather a jolt when Dolly, who looks like a little lady, uses words which you as a foreigner probably simply do not know or do not understand. Perhaps it might be betterWould you like me to have Dolly come up here right away to discuss things? No? You seeoh well, let’s have it out. Dolly has written a most obscene four-letter word which our Dr. Cutler tells me is low-Mexican for urinal with her lipstick on some health pamphlets which Miss Redcock, who is getting married in June, distributed among the girls, and we thought she should stay after hoursanother half hour at least. But if you like”
“No,” I said, “I don’t want to interfere with rules. I shall talk to her later. I shall thrash it out.”
“Do,” said the woman rising from her chair arm. “And perhaps we can get together again soon, and if things do not improve we might have Dr. Cutler analyze her.”
Should I marry Pratt and strangle her?
“…And perhaps your family doctor might like to examine her physically - just a routine check-up. She is in Mushroom - the last classroom along that passage.”
Beardsley School, it may be explained, copied a famous girls school in England by having “traditional” nicknames for its various classrooms: Mushroom, Room-In 8, B-Room, Room-BA and so on. Mushroom was smelly, with a sepia print of Reynolds’ “Age of Innocence” above the chalkboard, and several rows of clumsy-looking pupil desks. At one of these, my Lolita was reading the chapter on “Dialogue” in Baker’s Dramatic Technique, and all was very quiet, and there was another girl with a very naked, porcelain-white neck and wonderful platinum hair, who sat in front reading too, absolutely lost to the world and interminably winding a soft curl around one finger, and I sat beside Dolly just behind that neck and that hair, and unbuttoned my overcoat and for sixty-five cents plus the permission to participate in the school play, had Dolly put her inky, chalky, red-knuckled hand under the desk. Oh, stupid and reckless of me, no doubt, but after the torture I had been subjected to, I simply had to take advantage of a combination that I knew would never occur again. (2.11)
During the first interview Miss Pratt calls Humbert "Mr. Humbird." Cormorants are medium-sized aquatic birds known for their deep diving abilities to catch fish. During the second talk Miss Pratt calls Humbert (Lolita's stepfather) "Mr. Haze." In Memoirs of the Life of Walter Scott (1837), the seven-volume biography of his father-in-law, Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), J. G. Lockhart mentions the haze and the Cormorant cave:
"28th August, 1814.
—Carry our breakfast ashore—take that repast in the house of Mr. Maclean, the schoolmaster and cicerone of the island—and resume our investigation of the ruins of the cathedral and the cemetery. Of these monuments, more than of any other, it may be said with propriety,—
'You never tread upon them but you set
Your feet upon some ancient history.'
I do not mean to attempt a description of what is so well known as the ruins of Iona. Yet I think it has been as yet inadequately performed, for the vast number of carved tombs containing the reliques of the great exceeds credibility. In general, even in the most noble churches, the number of the vulgar dead exceed in all proportion the few of eminence who are deposited under monuments. Iona is in all respects the reverse: until lately, the inhabitants of the isle did not presume to mix their vulgar dust with that of chiefs, reguli, and abbots. The number, therefore, of carved and inscribed tombstones is quite marvellous, and I can easily credit the story told by Sacheverell, who assures us that 300 inscriptions had been collected, and were lost in the troubles of the seventeenth century. Even now, many more might be deciphered than have yet been made public, but the rustic step of the peasants and of Sassenach visitants is fast destroying these faint memorials of the valiant of the Isles. A skilful antiquary remaining here a week, and having (or assuming) the power of raising the half-sunk monuments, might make a curious collection. We could only gaze and grieve; yet had the day not been Sunday, we would have brought our seamen ashore, and endeavored to have raised some of these monuments. The celebrated ridges called Jomaire na'n Righrean, or Graves of the Kings, can now scarce be said to exist, though their site is still pointed out. Undoubtedly, the thirst of spoil, and the frequent custom of burying treasures with the ancient princes, occasioned their early violation; nor am I any sturdy believer in their being regularly ticketed off by inscriptions into the tombs of the Kings of Scotland, of Ireland, of Norway, and so forth. If such inscriptions ever existed, I should deem them the work of some crafty bishop or abbot, for the credit of his diocese or convent. Macbeth is said to have been the last King of Scotland here buried; sixty preceded him, all doubtless as powerful in their day, but now unknown— carent quia vate sacro. A few weeks' labor of Shakespeare, an obscure player, has done more for the memory of Macbeth than all the gifts, wealth, and monuments of this cemetery of princes have been able to secure to the rest of its inhabitants. It also occurred to me in Iona (as it has on many similar occasions) that the traditional recollections concerning the monks themselves are wonderfully faint, contrasted with the beautiful and interesting monuments of architecture which they have left behind them. In Scotland particularly, the people have frequently traditions wonderfully vivid of the persons and achievements of ancient warriors, whose towers have long been levelled with the soil. But of the monks of Melrose, Kelso, Aberbrothock, Iona, etc., etc., etc., they can tell nothing but that such a race existed, and inhabited the stately ruins of these monasteries. The quiet, slow, and uniform life of those recluse beings glided on, it may be, like a dark and silent stream, fed from unknown resources, and vanishing from the eye without leaving any marked trace of its course. The life of the chieftain was a mountain torrent thundering over rock and precipice, which, less deep and profound in itself, leaves on the minds of the terrified spectators those deep impressions of awe and wonder which are most readily handed down to posterity. "Among the various monuments exhibited at Iona is one where a Maclean lies in the same grave with one of the Macfies or Macduffies of Colonsay, with whom he had lived in alternate friendship and enmity during their lives. 'He lies above him during death,' said one of Maclean's followers, as his chief was interred, 'as he was above him during life.' There is a very ancient monument lying among those of the Macleans, but perhaps more ancient than any of them; it has a knight riding on horseback, and behind him a minstrel playing on a harp: this is conjectured to be Reginald Macdonald of the Isles, but there seems no reason for disjoining him from his kindred who sleep in the cathedral. A supposed ancestor of the Stewarts, called Paul Purser, or Paul the Purse-bearer (treasurer to the King of Scotland), is said to lie under a stone near the Lords of the Isles. Most of the monuments engraved by Pennant are still in the same state of preservation, as are the few ancient crosses which are left. What a sight Iona must have been, when 360 crosses, of the same size and beautiful workmanship, were ranked upon the little rocky ridge of eminences which form the background to the cathedral! Part of the tower of the cathedral has fallen since I was here. It would require a better architect than I am, to say anything concerning the antiquity of these ruins, but I conceive those of the nunnery and of the Reilig nan Oran, or Oran's chapel, are decidedly the most ancient. Upon the cathedral and buildings attached to it, there are marks of repairs at different times, some of them of a late date being obviously designed not to enlarge the buildings, but to retrench them. We take a reluctant leave of Iona, and go on board.
"The haze and dulness of the atmosphere seem to render it dubious if we can proceed, as we intended, to Staffa to-day—for mist among these islands is rather unpleasant. Erskine reads prayers on deck to all hands, and introduces a very apt allusion to our being now in sight of the first Christian Church from which Revelation was diffused over Scotland and all its islands. There is a very good form of prayer for the Lighthouse Service, composed by the Rev. Mr. Brunton. A pleasure vessel lies under our lee from Belfast, with an Irish party related to Macneil of Colonsay. The haze is fast degenerating into downright rain, and that right heavy— verifying the words of Collins:—
'And thither where beneath the showery west
The mighty Kings of three fair realms are laid.'
After dinner, the weather being somewhat cleared, sailed for Staffa, and took boat. The surf running heavy up between the island and the adjacent rock, called Booshala, we landed at a creek near the Cormorant's cave. The mist now returned so thick as to hide all view of Iona, which was our landmark; and although Duff, Stevenson, and I had been formerly on the isle, we could not agree upon the proper road to the cave. I engaged myself, with Duff and Erskine, in a clamber of great toil and danger, and which at length brought me to the Cannon-ball, as they call a round granite stone moved by the sea up and down in a groove of rock, which it has worn for itself, with a noise resembling thunder. Here I gave up my research, and returned to my companions, who had not been more fortunate. As night was now falling, we resolved to go aboard and postpone the adventure of the enchanted cavern until next day. The yacht came to an anchor with the purpose of remaining off the island all night, but the hardness of the ground, and the weather becoming squally, obliged us to return to our safer mooring at Y-Columb-Kill. (Chapter XXXII)
In the preceding entry of his diary J. G. Lockhart mentions a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor:
"27th August, 1814.—The wind, to which we resigned ourselves, proves exceedingly tyrannical, and blows squally the whole night, which, with the swell of the Atlantic, now unbroken by any islands to windward, proves a means of great combustion in the cabin. The dishes and glasses in the steward's cupboards become locomotive—portmanteaus and writing-desks are more active than necessary—it is scarce possible to keep one's self within bed, and impossible to stand upright if you rise. Having crept upon deck about four in the morning, I find we are beating to windward off the Isle of Tyree, with the determination on the part of Mr. Stevenson that his constituents should visit a reef of rocks called Skerry Vhor where he thought it would be essential to have a lighthouse.
Skerryvore is a remote island that lies off the west coast of Scotland, 11 nautical miles (20 kilometres) southwest of Tiree (Tyree). A Scottish designer and builder of lighthouses mentioned by J. G. Lockhart is Robert Stevenson (1772-1850). The Skerryvore Lighthouse was designed and built by his son Alan Stevenson (1807-65), R. L. Stevenson's uncle. R. L. Stevenson (1850-94) wrote Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) at Skerryvore, his house near Bournemouth, a coastal town in Dorset, England. In Stevenson's novella Dr. Jekyll discovers a chemical combination that releases an alternative personality, his baser side: “Mr. Hyde.” Humbert's landlord, Professor Chem, teaches chemistry at Beardsley College:
I really did not mind where to dwell provided I could lock my Lolita up somewhere; but I had, I suppose, in the course of my correspondence with vague Gaston, vaguely visualized a house of ivied brick. Actually the place bore a dejected resemblance to the Haze home (a mere 400 miles distant): it was the same sort of dull gray frame affair with a shingled roof and dull green drill awnings; and the rooms, though smaller and furnished in a more consistent plush-and-plate style, were arranged in much the same order. My study turned out to be, however, a much larger room, lined from floor to ceiling with some two thousand books on chemistry which my landlord (on sabbatical leave for the time being) taught at Beardsley College. (2.4)
Describing his quarrel with Lolita, Humbert compares himself to Mr. Hyde:
With people in movies I seem to share the services of the machina telephonica and its sudden god. This time it was an irate neighbor. The east window happened to be agape in the living room, with the blind mercifully down, however; and behind it the damp black night of a sour New England spring had been breathlessly listening to us. I had always thought that type of haddocky spinster with the obscene mind was the result of considerable literary inbreeding in modern fiction; but now I am convinced that prude and prurient Miss East – or to explode her incognito, Miss Finton Lebone – had been probably protruding three-quarter-way from her bedroom window as she strove to catch the gist of our quarrel.
“…This racket… lacks all sense of…” quacked the receiver, “we do not live in a tenement here. I must emphatically…”
I apologized for my daughter’s friends being so loud. Young people, you know - and cradled the next quack and a half.
Downstairs the screen door banged. Lo? Escaped?
Through the casement on the stairs I saw a small impetuous ghost slip through the shrubs; a silvery dot in the dark - hub of bicycle wheel - moved, shivered, and she was gone.
It so happened that the car was spending the night in a repair shop downtown. I had no other alternative than to pursue on foot the winged fugitive. Even now, after more than three years have heaved and elapsed, I cannot visualize that spring-night street, that already so leafy street, without a gasp of panic. Before their lighted porch Miss Lester was promenading Miss Fabian's dropsical dackel. Mr. Hyde almost knocked it over. Walk three steps and run three. A tepid rain started to drum on the chestnut leaves. At the next corner, pressing Lolita against an iron railing, a blurred youth held and kissed - no, not her, mistake. My talons still tingling, I flew on. (2.14)
Miss Pratt brings to mind Pradt (Abbé Dominique de Pradt, 1759-1837, a French clergyman and ambassador who was Napoleon's secretary in 1804-05; after the Napoleonic wars Pradt published a series of books which portrayed Russia as a "despotic" and "Asiatic" power hungry to conquer Europe). In Chapter Four (XLIII: 10) of Eugene Onegin Pushkin pairs Walter Scott with Pradt:
В глуши что делать в эту пору?
Гулять? Деревня той порой
Невольно докучает взору
Однообразной наготой.
Скакать верхом в степи суровой?
Но конь, притупленной подковой
Неверный зацепляя лед,
Того и жди, что упадет.
Сиди под кровлею пустынной,
Читай: вот Прадт, вот W. Scott.
Не хочешь? — поверяй расход,
Сердись иль пей, и вечер длинный
Кой-как пройдет, а завтра тож,
И славно зиму проведешь.
What can one do at this time in the wilds?
Walk? But the country at that time
is an involuntary eyesore
in its unbroken nakedness.
Go galloping in the harsh prairie?
But, catching with a blunted shoe
the treacherous ice, one's mount
is likely any moment to come down.
Stay under your desolate roof,
read; here is Pradt, here's Walter Scott!
Don't want to? Verify expenses,
grumble or drink, and the long evening
somehow will pass; and next day the same thing,
and famously you'll spend the winter.
The Cormorant cave mentioned by J. G. Lockhart brings to mind a cave in which thirteen-year-old Humbert attempted to make love to his first sweetheart, Annabel Leigh:
Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: “honey-colored skin,” “think arms,” “brown bobbed hair,” “long lashes,” “big bright mouth”); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark inner side of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).
Let me therefore primly limit myself, in describing Annabel, to saying she was a lovely child a few months my junior. Her parents were old friends of my aunt’s, and as stuffy as she. They had rented a villa not far from Hotel Mirana. Bald brown Mr. Leigh and fat, powdered Mrs. Leigh (born Vanessa van Ness). How I loathed them! At first, Annabel and I talked of peripheral affairs. She kept lifting handfuls of fine sand and letting it pour through her fingers. Our brains were turned the way those of intelligent European preadolescents were in our day and set, and I doubt if much individual genius should be assigned to our interest in the plurality of inhabited worlds, competitive tennis, infinity, solipsism and so on. The softness and fragility of baby animals caused us the same intense pain. She wanted to be a nurse in some famished Asiatic country; I wanted to be a famous spy.
All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do. After one wild attempt we made to meet at night in her garden (of which more later), the only privacy we were allowed was to be out of earshot but not out of sight on the populous part of the plage. There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would sprawl all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other’s salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief.
Among some treasures I lost during the wanderings of my adult years, there was a snapshot taken by my aunt which showed Annabel, her parents and the staid, elderly, lame gentleman, a Dr. Cooper, who that same summer courted my aunt, grouped around a table in a sidewalk café. Annabel did not come out well, caught as she was in the act of bending over her chocolat glacé, and her thin bare shoulders and the parting in her hair were about all that could be identified (as I remember that picture) amid the sunny blur into which her lost loveliness graded; but I, sitting somewhat apart from the rest, came out with a kind of dramatic conspicuousness: a moody, beetle-browed boy in a dark sport shirt and well-tailored white shorts, his legs crossed, sitting in profile, looking away. That photograph was taken on the last day of our fatal summer and just a few minutes before we made our second and final attempt to thwart fate. Under the flimsiest of pretexts (this was our very last chance, and nothing really mattered) we escaped from the café to the beach, and found a desolate stretch of sand, and there, in the violet shadow of some red rocks forming a kind of cave, had a brief session of avid caresses, with somebody’s lost pair of sunglasses for only witness. I was on my knees, and on the point of possessing my darling, when two bearded bathers, the old man of the sea and his brother, came out of the sea with exclamations of ribald encouragement, and four months later she died of typhus in Corfu. (1.3)
A Dr. Cooper who courted Humbert's Aunt Sybil brings to mind James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), an American writer. In his Eugene Onegin Commentary VN points out that Annette Olenin (whom in May 1828 Pushkin courted in Priyutino, the Olenins' estate near St. Petersburg) nicknamed Pushkin Red Rover (after The Red Rover, a 1827 novel by Fenimore Cooper).
As a boy, Humbert wanted to be a famous spy. The author of Walter Scott's biography, John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854) has the same surname as Bruce Lockhart (1887-1970), a British diplomat, journalist, author, and secret agent. His 1932 book Memoirs of a British Agent became an international bestseller by telling of his experiences in Russia in 1918 following the Bolshevik Revolution.
J. G. Lockhart mentions the haze and the Cormorant cave in the diary entry of August 28, 1814. August 28 is Leo Tolstoy's birthday. Tolstoy was born in 1828 and died on Nov. 7 (OS), 1910 (the year of Humbert's birth). In his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951) VN describes his first erotic experience and quotes the words of his father: "Tolstoy vient de mourir":
High-principled but rather simple Lenski, who was abroad for the first time, had some trouble keeping the delights of sightseeing in harmony with his pedagogical duties. We took advantage of this and guided him toward places where our parents might not have allowed us to go. He could not resist the Wintergarten, for instance, and so, one night, we found ourselves there, drinking ice-chocolate in an orchestra box. The show developed on the usual lines: a juggler in evening clothes; then a woman, with flashes of rhinestones on her bosom, trilling a concert aria in alternating effusions of green and red light; then a comic on roller skates. Between him and a bicycle act (of which more later) there was an item on the program called “The Gala Girls,” and with something of the shattering and ignominious physical shock I had experienced when coming that cropper on the rink, I recognized my American ladies in the garland of linked, shrill-voiced, shameless “girls,” all rippling from left to right, and then from right to left, with a rhythmic rising of ten identical legs that shot up from ten corollas of flounces. I located my Louise’s face—and knew at once that it was all over, that I had lost her, that I would never forgive her for singing so loudly, for smiling so redly, for disguising herself in that ridiculous way so unlike the charm of either “proud Creoles” or “questionable señoritas.” I could not stop thinking of her altogether, of course, but the shock seems to have liberated in me a certain inductive process, for I soon noticed that any evocation of the feminine form would be accompanied by the puzzling discomfort already familiar to me. I asked my parents about it (they had come to Berlin to see how we were getting along) and my father ruffled the German newspaper he had just opened and replied in English (with the parody of a possible quotation—a manner of speech he often adopted in order to get going): “That, my boy, is just another of nature’s absurd combinations, like shame and blushes, or grief and red eyes.” “Tolstoy vient de mourir,” he suddenly added, in another, stunned voice, turning to my mother.
“Da chto tï [something like “good gracious”]!” she exclaimed in distress, clasping her hands in her lap. “Pora domoy [Time to go home],” she concluded, as if Tolstoy’s death had been the portent of apocalyptic disasters. (Chapter Ten, 3)
When Humbert revisits Ramsdale in September 1852, Mrs. Chatfield (whose daughter Phyllis was Lolita’s classmate in the Ramsdale school) tells him that Charlie Holmes (Lolita's first lover, the son of Shirley Holmes, headmistress of Camp Q) has just been killed in Korea and Humbert says does not she think that “vient de,” with the infinitive, expresses recent events so much more neatly than the English “just:”
Feeling I was losing my time, I drove energetically to the downtown hotel where I had arrived with a new bag more than five years before. I took a room, made two appointments by telephone, shaved, bathed, put on black clothes and went down for a drink in the bar. Nothing had changed. The barroom was suffused with the same dim, impossible garnet-red light that in Europe years ago went with low haunts, but here meant a bit of atmosphere in a family hotel. I sat at the same little table where at the very start of my stay, immediately after becoming Charlotte’s lodger, I had thought fit to celebrate the occasion by suavely sharing with her half a bottle of champagne, which had fatally conquered her poor brimming heart. As then, a moon-faced waiter was arranging with stellar care fifty sherries on a round tray for a wedding party. Murphy-Fantasia, this time. It was eight minutes to three. As I walked though the lobby, I had to skirt a group of ladies who with mille grâces were taking leave of each other after a luncheon party. With a harsh cry of recognition, one pounced upon me. She was a stout, short woman in pearl-gray, with a long, gray, slim plume to her small hat. It was Mrs. Chatfield. She attacked me with a fake smile, all aglow with evil curiosity. (Had I done to Dolly, perhaps, what Frank Laselle, a fifty-year-old mechanic, had done o eleven-year-old Sally Horner in 1948?) Very soon I had that avid glee well under control. She thought I was in California. How was - ? With exquisite pleasure I informed her that my stepdaughter had just married a brilliant young mining engineer with a hush-hush job in the Northwest. She said she disapproved of such early marriages, she would never let her Phillys, who was now eighteen -
“Oh yes, of course,” I said quietly. “I remember Phyllis. Phyllis and Camp Q. Yes, of course. By the way, did she ever tell you how Charlie Holmes debauched there his mother’s little charges?”
Mrs. Chatfield’s already broken smile now disintegrated completely.
“For shame,” she cried, “for shame, Mr. Humbert! The poor boy has just been killed in Korea.”
I said didn’t she think “vient de,” with the infinitive, expressed recent events so much more neatly than the English “just,” with the past? But I had to be trotting off, I said. (2.33)
Btw., in the Russian version (1967) of Lolita Gumbert Gumbert's sarcasm is much more venomous:
"В самом деле", сказал я (пользуясь дивной свободою, свойственной сновидениям). "Вот так судьба! Бедный мальчик пробивал нежнейшие, невосстановимейшие перепоночки, прыскал гадючьим ядом - и ничего, жил превесело, да ещё получил посмертный орденок. Впрочем, извините меня, мне пора к адвокату".
Humbert is on his way to Mr. Windmuller, the lawyer. The characters in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde include Mr. Utterson, the lawyer.
According to Humbert, he once overheard Mona Dahl (Lolita’s friend and confidante at Beardsley School) say that the only virginal thing about Lolita was her sweater of virgin wool:
The reader knows what importance I attached to having a bevy of page girls, consolation prize nymphets, around my Lolita. For a while, I endeavored to interest my senses in Mona Dahl who was a good deal around, especially during the spring term when Lo and she got so enthusiastic about dramatics. I have often wondered what secrets outrageously treacherous Dolores Haze had imparted to Mona while blurting out to me by urgent and well-paid request various really incredible details concerning an affair that Mona had had with a marine at the seaside. It was characteristic of Lo that she chose for her closest chum that elegant, cold, lascivious, experienced young female whom I once heard (misheard, Lo swore) cheerfully say in the hallway to Lo – who had remarked that her (Lo’s) sweater was of virgin wool: “The only thing about you that is, kiddo…” She had a curiously husky voice, artificially waved dull dark hair, earrings, amber-brown prominent eyes and luscious lips. Lo said teachers had remonstrated with her on her loading herself with so much costume jewelry. Her hands trembled. She was burdened with a 150 I. Q. And I also knew she had a tremendous chocolate-brown mole on the womanish back which I inspected the night Lo and she had worn low-cut pastel-colored, vaporous dresses for a dance at the Butler Academy. (2.9)
“Virgin wool” seems to hint at Virginia Woolf, the author of To the Lighthouse (1927), a novel that centres on the Ramsay family and their visits to the Isle of Skye in Scotland between 1910 and 1920. Virginibus Puerisque (1881) is an essay by R. L. Stevenson. R. L. Stevenson's essay The Character of Dogs (1884) and his own black Skye terrier "Woggs" or "Bogue" bring to mind the dogs in Lolita. Lolita's mother Charlotte dies under the wheels of a truck because of a neighbor's hysterical dog. At the Elphinstone hospital Clare Quilty ("Mr. Gustave") calls for Lolita with a cocker spaniel pup. Cavall and Melampus are Jean Farlow's dogs.
Mona Dahl's boyfriend Roy makes one think of Rob Roy (1817), a historical novel by Walter Scott, one of the Waverley novels. Describing the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time), Ada (the heroine of VN's novel Ada, 1969) mentions a Rob Roy:
Van, kneeling at the picture window, watched the inflamed eye of the cigar recede and vanish. That multiple departure... Take over.
That multiple departure really presented a marvelous sight against the pale star-dusted firmament of practically subtropical Ardis, tinted between the black trees with a distant flamingo flush at the spot where the Barn was Burning. To reach it one had to drive round a large reservoir which I could make out breaking into scaly light here and there every time some adventurous hostler or pantry boy crossed it on water skis or in a Rob Roy or by means of a raft — typical raft ripples like fire snakes in Japan; and one could now follow with an artist’s eye the motorcar’s lamps, fore and aft, progressing east along the AB bank of that rectangular lake, then turning sharply upon reaching its B corner, trailing away up the short side and creeping back west, in a dim and diminished aspect, to a middle point on the far margin where they swung north and disappeared. (1.19)