At the end of her letter to Lolita Mona Dahl (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, Lolita's best friend at Beardsley) sends her best regards to the Governor (i. e. Humbert Humbert):
With Lo’s knowledge and assent, the two post offices given to the Beardsley postmaster as forwarding addresses were P. O. Wace and P. O. Elphinstone. Next morning we visited the former and had to wait in a short but slow queue. Serene Lo studied the rogues’ gallery. Handsome Bryan Bryanski, alias Anthony Bryan, alias Tony Brown, eyes hazel, complexion fair, was wanted for kidnapping. A sad-eyed old gentleman’s faux-pas was mail fraud, and, as if that were not enough, he was cursed with deformed arches. Sullen Sullivan came with a caution: Is believed armed, and should be considered extremely dangerous. If you want to make a movie out of my book, have one of these faces gently melt into my own, while I look. And moreover there was a smudgy snapshot of a Missing Girl, age fourteen, wearing brown shoes when last seen, rhymes. Please notify Sheriff Buller.
I forget my letters; as to Dolly’s, there was her report and a very special-looking envelope. This I deliberately opened and perused its contents. I concluded I was doing the foreseen since she did not seem to mind and drifted toward the newsstand near the exit.
“Dolly-Lo: Well, the play was a grand success. All three hounds lay quiet having been slightly drugged by Cutler, I suspect, and Linda knew all your lines. She was fine, she had alertness and control, but lacked somehow the responsiveness, the relaxed vitality, the charm of my – and the author’s – Diana; but there was no author to applaud us as last time, and the terrific electric storm outside interfered with our own modest offstage thunder. Oh dear, life does fly. Now that everything is over, school, play, the Roy mess, mother’s confinement (our baby, alas, did not live!), it all seems such a long time ago, though practically I still bear traces of the paint.
“We are going to New York after tomorrow, and I guess I can’t manage to wriggle out of accompanying my parents to Europe. I have even worse news for you. Dolly-Lo! I may not be back at Beardsley if and when you return. With one thing and another, one being you know who, and the other not being who you think you know, Dad wants me to go to school in Paris for one year while he and Fullbright are around.
“As expected, poor Poet stumbled in Scene III when arriving at the bit of French nonsense. Remember? Ne manque pas de dire à ton amant, Chimène, comme le lac est beau car il faut qu’il t’y mène. Lucky beau! Qu’il t’y – What a tongue-twister! Well, be good, Lollikins. Best love from your Poet, and best regards to the Governor. Your Mona. P. S. Because of one thing and another, my correspondence happens to be rigidly controlled. So better wait till I write you from Europe.” (She never did as far as I know. The letter contained an element of mysterious nastiness that I am too tired today to analyze. I found it later preserved in one of the Tour Books, and give it here titre documentaire. I read it twice.) (2.19)
In James Joyce's novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) Vincent Heron calls Stephen Dedalus's father "your governor:"
The imitation was prevented by a mild expression of anger from Wallis in whose mouthpiece the cigarette had become too tightly wedged.
—Damn this blankety blank holder, he said, taking it from his mouth and smiling and frowning upon it tolerantly. It's always getting stuck like that. Do you use a holder?
—I don't smoke, answered Stephen.
—No, said Heron, Dedalus is a model youth. He doesn't smoke and he doesn't go to bazaars and he doesn't flirt and he doesn't damn anything or damn all.
Stephen shook his head and smiled in his rival's flushed and mobile face, beaked like a bird's. He had often thought it strange that Vincent Heron had a bird's face as well as a bird's name. A shock of pale hair lay on the forehead like a ruffled crest: the forehead was narrow and bony and a thin hooked nose stood out between the close-set prominent eyes which were light and inexpressive. The rivals were school friends. They sat together in class, knelt together in the chapel, talked together after beads over their lunches. As the fellows in number one were undistinguished dullards, Stephen and Heron had been during the year the virtual heads of the school. It was they who went up to the rector together to ask for a free day or to get a fellow off.
—O by the way, said Heron suddenly, I saw your governor going in.
The smile waned on Stephen's face. Any allusion made to his father by a fellow or by a master put his calm to rout in a moment. He waited in timorous silence to hear what Heron might say next. Heron, however, nudged him expressively with his elbow and said:
—You're a sly dog.
—Why so? said Stephen.
—You'd think butter wouldn't melt in your mouth said Heron. But I'm afraid you're a sly dog.
—Might I ask you what you are talking about? said Stephen urbanely.
—Indeed you might, answered Heron. We saw her, Wallis, didn't we? And deucedly pretty she is too. And inquisitive! AND WHAT PART DOES STEPHEN TAKE, MR DEDALUS? AND WILL STEPHEN NOT SING, MR DEDALUS? Your governor was staring at her through that eyeglass of his for all he was worth so that I think the old man has found you out too. I wouldn't care a bit, by Jove. She's ripping, isn't she, Wallis?
—Not half bad, answered Wallis quietly as he placed his holder once more in a corner of his mouth. (Chapter 2)
Stephen Dedalus does not smoke. On the porch of the Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland where Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) Quilty offers Humbert a smoke:
I left the loud lobby and stood outside, on the white steps, looking at the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black night, full of ripple and stir. All I would do - all I would dare do - would amount to such a trifle… Suddenly I was aware that in the darkness next to me there was somebody sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. I could not really see him but what gave him away was the rasp of a screwing off, then a discreet gurgle, then the final note of a placid screwing on. I was about to move away when his voice addressed me:
“Where the devil did you get her?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: the weather is getting better.”
“Seems so.”
“Who’s the lassie?”
“My daughter.”
“You lie - she’s not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I said: July was hot. Where’s her mother?”
“Dead.”
“I see. Sorry. By the way, why don’t you two lunch with me tomorrow. That dreadful crowd will be gone by then.”
“We’ll be gone too. Good night.”
“Sorry. I’m pretty drunk. Good night. That child of yours needs a lot of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say. Smoke?”
“Not now.”
He struck a light, but because he was drunk, or because the wind was, the flame illumined not him but another person, a very old man, one of those permanent guests of old hotelsand his white rocker. Nobody said anything and the darkness returned to its initial place. Then I heard the old-timer cough and deliver himself of some sepulchral mucus. (1.28)
When Humbert visits Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller) in Coalmont in September 1952, she offers him a smoke:
She took from the mantelpiece a concave glossy snapshot. Old woman in white, stout, beaming, bowlegged, very short dress; old man in his shirtsleeves, drooping mustache, watch chain. Her in-laws. Living with Dick’s brother’s family in Juneau.
“Sure you don’t want to smoke?”
She was smoking herself. First time I saw her doing it. Streng verboten under Humbert the Terrible. Gracefully, in a blue mist, Charlotte Haze rose from her grave. I would find him through Uncle Ivory if she refused.
“Betrayed you? No.” She directed the dart of her cigarette, index rapidly tapping upon it, toward the hearth exactly as her mother used to do, and then, like her mother, oh my God, with her fingernail scratched and removed a fragment of cigarette paper from her underlip. No. She had not betrayed me. I was among friends. Edusa had warned her that Cue liked little girls, had been almost jailed once, in fact (nice fact), and he knew she knew. Yes… Elbow in palm, puff, smile, exhaled smoke, darting gesture. Waxing reminiscent. He saw - smiling - through everything and everybody, because he was not like me and her but a genius. A great guy. Full of fun. Had rocked with laughter when she confessed about me and her, and said he had thought so. It was quite safe, under the circumstances, to tell him…
Well, Cue - they all called him Cue.
Her camp five years ago. Curious coincidence… took her to a dude ranch about a day’s drive from Elephant (Elphinstone). Named? Oh, some silly name - Duk Duk Ranch you know just plain silly but it did not matter now, anyway, because the place had vanished and disintegrated. Really, she meant, I could not imagine how utterly lush that ranch was, she meant it had everything but everything, even an indoor waterfall. Did I remember the red-haired guy we (“we” was good) had once had some tennis with? Well, the place really belonged to Red’s brother, but he had turned it over to Cue for the summer. When Cue and she came, the others had them actually go through a coronation ceremony and then a terrific ducking, as when you cross the Equator. You know.
Her eyes rolled in synthetic resignation.
“Go on, please.”
Well. The idea was he would take her in September to Hollywood and arrange a tryout for her, a bit part in the tennis-match scene of a movie picture based on a play of his Golden Guts and perhaps even have her double one of its sensational starlets on the Klieg-struck tennis court. Alas, it never came to that.
“Where is the hog now?”
He was not a hog. He was a great guy in many respects. But it was all drink and drugs. And, of course, he was a complete freak in sex matters, and his friends were his slaves. I just could not imagine (I, Humbert, could not imagine!) what they all did at Duk Duk Ranch. She refused to take part because she loved him, and he threw her out.
“What things?”
“Oh, weird, filthy, fancy things. I mean, he had two girls and tow boys, and three or four men, and the idea was for all of us to tangle in the nude while an old woman took movie pictures.” (Sade’s Justine was twelve at the start.)
“What things exactly?”
“Oh, things… Oh, I - really I” - she uttered the “I” as a subdued cry while she listened to the source of the ache, and for lack of words spread the five fingers of her angularly up-and-down-moving hand. No, she gave it up, she refused to go into particulars with that baby inside her.
That made sense.
“It is of no importance now,” she said pounding a gray cushing with her fist and then lying back, belly up, on the divan. “Crazy things, filthy things. I said no, I’m just not going to [she used, in all insouciance really, a disgusting slang term which, in a literal French translation, would be souffler] your beastly boys, because I want only you. Well, he kicked me out.”
There was not much else to tell. That winter 1949, Fay and she had found jobs. For almost two years she hadoh, just drifted, oh, doing some restaurant work in small places, and then she had met Dick. No, she did not know where the other was. In New York, she guessed. Of course, he was so famous she would have found him at once if she had wanted. Fay had tried to get back to the Ranch - and it just was not there any more - it had burned to the ground, nothing remained, just a charred heap of rubbish. It was so strange, so strange. (2.29)
In Joyce's novel Finnegans Wake (1939) Jaunty Jaun mentions Mona Vera Toutou Ipostila, his lady of Lyons:
Sis dearest, Jaun added, with voise somewhit murky, what though still high fa luting, as he turned his dorse to her to pay court to it, and ouverleaved his booseys to give the note and score, phonoscopically incuriosited and melancholic this time whiles, as on the fulmament he gaped in wulderment, his onsaturncast eyes in stellar attraction followed swift to an imaginary swellaw, O, the vanity of Vanissy! All ends vanishing! Pursonally, Grog help me, I am in no violent hurry. If time enough lost the ducks walking easy found them. I’ll nose a blue fonx with any tristys blinking upon this earthlight of all them that pass by the way of the deerdrive, conconey’s run or wilfrid’s walk, but I’d turn back as lief as not if I could only spoonfind the nippy girl of my heart’s appointment, Mona Vera Toutou Ipostila, my lady of Lyons, to guide me by gastronomy under her safe conduct. That’s more in my line. I’d ask no kinder of fates than to stay where I am, with my tinny of brownie’s tea, under the invocation of Saint Jamas Hanway, servant of Gamp, lapidated, and Jacobus a Pershawm, intercissous, for my thurifex, with Peter Roche, that frind of my boozum, leaning on my cubits, at this passing moment by localoption in the birds’ lodging, me pheasants among, where I’ll dreamt that I’ll dwealth mid warblers’ walls when throstles and choughs to my sigh hiehied, with me hares standing up well and me longlugs dittoes, where a maurdering row, the fox! has broken at the coward sight till well on into the beausome of the exhaling night, pinching stopandgo jewels out of the hedges and catching dimtop brilliants on the tip of my wagger but for that owledclock (fast cease to it!) has just gone twoohoo the hour and that yen breezes zipping round by Drumsally do be devils to play fleurt. I could sit on safe side till the bark of Saint Grouseus for hoopoe’s hours, till heoll’s hoerrisings, laughing lazy at the sheep’s lightning and turn a widamost ear dreamily to the drummling of snipers, hearing the wireless harps of sweet old Aerial and the mails across the nightrives (peepet! peepet!) and whippoor willy in the woody (moor park! moor park!) as peacefed as a philopotamus, and crekking jugs at the grenoulls, leaving tealeaves for the trout and belleeks for the wary till I’d followed through my upfielded neviewscope the rugaby moon cumuliously godrolling himself westasleep amuckst the cloudscrums for to watch how carefully my nocturnal goosemother would lay her new golden sheegg for me down under in the shy orient. What wouldn’t I poach—the rent in my riverside, my otther shoes, my beavery, honest!—ay, and melt my belt for a dace feast of grannom with the finny ones, those happy greppies in their minnowahaw, flashing down the swansway, leaps ahead of the swift MacEels, the big Gillaroo redfellows and the pursewinded carpers, rearin antis rood perches astench of me, or, when I’d like own company best, with the help of a norange and bear, to be reclined by the lasher on my logansome, my g.b.d. in my f.a.c.e., solfanelly in my shellyholders and lov’d latakia, the benuvolent, for my nosethrills, with the jealosomines wilting away to their heart’s deelight and the king of saptimber letting down his humely odours for my consternation, dapping my griffeen, burning water in the spearlight or catching trophies of the king’s royal college of sturgeone by the armful for to bake pike ahd pie while, O twined me abower in L’Alouette’s Tower, all Adelaide’s naughtingerls juckjucking benighth me, I’d gamut my twittynice Dorian blackbudds chthonic solphia off my singasongapiccolo to pipe musicall airs on numberous fairyaciodes. I give, a king, to me, she does, alone, up there, yes see, I double give, till the spinney all eclosed asong with them. Isn’t that lovely though? I give to me alone I trouble give! I may have no mind to lamagnage the forte bits like the pianage but you can’t cadge me off the key. I’ve a voicical lilt too true. Nomario! And bemolly and jiesis! For I sport a whatyoumacormack in the latcher part of my throughers. And the lark that I let fly (olala!) is as cockful of funantics as it’s tune to my fork. Naturale you might lower register me as diserecordant, but I’m athlone in the lillabilling of killarnies. That’s flat. Yet ware the wold, you! What’s good for the gorse is a goad for the garden. Lethals lurk heimlocked in logans. Loathe laburnums. Dash the gaudy deathcup! Bryony O’Bryony, thy name is Belladama! But enough of greenwood’s gossip. Birdsnests is birdsnests. Thine to wait but mine to wage. And now play sharp to me. Doublefirst I’ll head foremost through all my examhoops. And what sensitive coin I’d be possessed of at Latouche’s, begor, I’d sink it sumtotal, every dolly farting, in vestments of subdominal poteen at prime cost and I bait you my chancey oldcoat against the whole ounce you half on your backboard (if madamaud strips mesdamines may cold strafe illglands!) that I’m the gogetter that’d make it pay like cash registers as sure as there’s a pot on a pole. And, what with one man’s fish and a dozen men’s poissons, sowing my wild plums to reap ripe plentihorns mead, lashings of erbole and hydromel and bragget, I’d come out with my magic fluke in close time, fair, free and frolicky, zooming tophole on the mart as a factor. And I tell you the Bective’s wouldn’t hold me. By the unsleeping Solman Annadromus, ye god of little pescies, nothing would stop me for mony makes multimony like the brogues and the kishes. Not the Ulster Rifles and the Cork Milice and the Dublin Fusees and Connacht Rangers ensembled! I’d axe the channon and leip a liffey and drink annyblack water that rann onme way. Yip! How’s thats for scats, mine shatz, for a lovebird? To funk is only peternatural its daring feers divine. Bebold! Like Varian’s balaying all behind me. And before you knew where you weren’t, I stake my ignitial’s divy, cash-and-cash-can-again, I’d be staggering humanity and loyally rolling you over, my sowwhite sponse, in my tons of red clover, nighty nigh to the metronome, fiehigh and fiehigher and fiehighest of all. Holy petter and pal, I’d spoil you altogether, my sumptuous Sheila! Mumm all to do brut frull up fizz and unpop a few shortusians or shake a pale of sparkling ice, hear it swirl, happy girl! Not a spot of my hide but you’d love to seek and scanagain! There’d be no standing me, I tell you. And, as gameboy as my pagan name K.C. is what it is, I’d never say let fly till we shot that blissup and swumped each other, manawife, into our sever nevers where I’d plant you, my Gizzygay, on the electric ottoman in the lap of lechery, simpringly stitchless with admiracion, among the most uxuriously furnished compartments, with sybarate chambers, just as I’d run my shoestring into near a million or so of them as a firstclass dealer and everything. Only for one thing that, howover famiksed I would become, I’d be awful anxious, you understand, about shoepisser pluvious and in assideration of the terrible luftsucks woabling around with the hedrolics in the coold amstophere till the borting that would perish the Dane and his chapter of accidents to be atramental to the better half of my alltoolyrical health, not considering my capsflap, and that’s the truth now out of the cackling bag for truly sure, for another thing, I never could tell the leest falsehood that would truthfully give sotisfiction. I’m not talking apple sauce eithou. Or up in my hat. I earnst. Schue! (Book III, episode 2)
Shaun ("Jaunty Jaun") is a postman who has to deliver Anna Livia Plurabelle's letter. Shaun's brother Shem brings to mind Professor Chem (Humbert's and Lolita's landlord at Beardsley, a Professor of chemistry on sabbatical leave for the time being).
Describing a play that he and Lolita saw in Wace, Humbert says that the idea of children-colors had been lifted by authors Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom from a passage in James Joyce:
Oh, disaster. Some confusion had occurred, she had misread a date in the Tour Book, and the Magic Cave ceremonies were over! She took it bravely, I must admit - and, when we discovered there was in kurortish Wace a summer theatre in full swing, we naturally drifted toward it one fair mid-June evening. I really could not tell you the plot of the play we saw. A trivial affair, no doubt, with self-conscious light effects and a mediocre leading lady. The only detail that pleased me was a garland of seven little graces, more or less immobile, prettily painted, bare-limbed - seven bemused pubescent girls in colored gauze that had been recruited locally (judging by the partisan flurry here and there among the audience) and were supposed to represent a living rainbow, which lingered throughout the last act, and rather teasingly faded behind a series of multiplied veils. I remember thinking that this idea of children-colors had been lifted by authors Clare Quilty and Vivian Darkbloom from a passage in James Joyce, and that two of the colors were quite exasperatingly lovely - Orange who kept fidgeting all the time, and Emerald who, when her eyes got used to the pitch-black pit where we all heavily sat, suddenly smiled at her mother or her protector. (2.18)
According to Gerard de Vries, after her death in childbirth in Gray Star (a settlement in the remotest Northwest), on Christmas Day 1952, Lolita was turned into a blue bird. In Joyce's "Portrait" Stephen Dedalus had often thought it strange that Vincent Heron had a bird's face as well as a bird's name.