In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen (the narrator and main character) learns card tricks from Mr Plunkett (a reformed card-sharper):
The year 1880 (Aqua was still alive — somehow, somewhere!) was to prove to be the most retentive and talented one in his long, too long, never too long life. He was ten. His father had lingered in the West where the many-colored mountains acted upon Van as they had on all young Russians of genius. He could solve an Euler-type problem or learn by heart Pushkin’s ‘Headless Horseman’ poem in less than twenty minutes. With white-bloused, enthusiastically sweating Andrey Andreevich, he lolled for hours in the violet shade of pink cliffs, studying major and minor Russian writers — and puzzling out the exaggerated but, on the whole, complimentary allusions to his father’s volitations and loves in another life in Lermontov’s diamond-faceted tetrameters. He struggled to keep back his tears, while AAA blew his fat red nose, when shown the peasant-bare footprint of Tolstoy preserved in the clay of a motor court in Utah where he had written the tale of Murat, the Navajo chieftain, a French general’s bastard, shot by Cora Day in his swimming pool. What a soprano Cora had been! Demon took Van to the world-famous Opera House in Telluride in West Colorado and there he enjoyed (and sometimes detested) the greatest international shows — English blank-verse plays, French tragedies in rhymed couplets, thunderous German musical dramas with giants and magicians and a defecating white horse. He passed through various little passions — parlor magic, chess, fluff-weight boxing matches at fairs, stunt-riding — and of course those unforgettable, much too early initiations when his lovely young English governess expertly petted him between milkshake and bed, she, petticoated, petititted, half-dressed for some party with her sister and Demon and Demon’s casino-touring companion, bodyguard and guardian angel, monitor and adviser, Mr Plunkett, a reformed card-sharper.
Mr Plunkett had been, in the summer of his adventurous years, one of the greatest shuler’s, politely called ‘gaming conjurers,’ both in England and America. At forty, in the middle of a draw-poker session he had been betrayed by a fainting fit of cardiac origin (which allowed, alas, a bad loser’s dirty hands to go through his pockets), and spent several years in prison, had become reconverted to the Roman faith of his forefathers and, upon completing his term, had dabbled in missionary work, written a handbook on conjuring, conducted bridge columns in various papers and done some sleuthing for the police (he had two stalwart sons in the force). The outrageous ravages of time and some surgical tampering with his rugged features had made his gray face not more attractive but at least unrecognizable to all but a few old cronies, who now shunned his chilling company, anyway. To Van he was even more fascinating than King Wing. Gruff but kindly Mr Plunkett could not resist exploiting that fascination (we all like to be liked) by introducing Van to the tricks of an art now become pure and abstract, and therefore genuine. Mr Plunkett considered the use of all mechanical media, mirrors and vulgar ‘sleeve rakes’ as leading inevitably to exposure, just as jellies, muslin, rubber hands, and so on sully and shorten a professional medium’s career. He taught Van what to look for when suspecting the cheater with bright objects around him (‘Xmas tree’ or ‘twinkler,’ as those amateurs, some of them respectable clubmen, are called by professionals). Mr Plunkett believed only in sleight-of-hand; secret pockets were useful (but could be turned inside out and against you). Most essential was the ‘feel’ of a card, the delicacy of its palming, and digitation, the false shuffle, deck-sweeping, pack-roofing, prefabrication of deals, and above all a finger agility that practice could metamorphose into veritable vanishing acts or, conversely, into the materialization of a joker or the transformation of two pairs into four kings. One absolute requisite, if using privately an additional deck, was memorizing discards when hands were not pre-arranged. For a couple of months Van practiced card tricks, then turned to other recreations. He was an apprentice who learned fast, and kept his labeled phials in a cool place. (1.28)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): The Headless Horseman: Mayn Reid’s title is ascribed here to Pushkin, author of The Bronze Horseman.
Lermontov: author of The Demon.
Tolstoy etc.: Tolstoy’s hero, Haji Murad, (a Caucasian chieftain) is blended here with General Murat, Napoleon’s brother-in-law, and with the French revolutionary leader Marat assassinated in his bath by Charlotte Corday.
Arthur James Plunkett, 8th Earl of Fingall (1759-1835) was an Irish peer. A prominent Roman Catholic, he was a leading supporter of the cause of Catholic Emancipation. In Irish Avatar (1821) Lord Byron violently attacks Fingall for accepting the Order of St. Patrick from George IV - wears Fingall thy trappings? - and for his deferential behavior during the Royal Visit in 1821.
Fingal (accented on the second syllable) is a Russian slang word for “black eye, shiner.” A handful of cards and chips that Van hurls into Dick’s face make Dick’s eyes bleed:
Van felt pretty sure of his skill — and of milord’s stupidity — but doubted he could keep it up for any length of time. He was sorry for Dick, who, apart from being an amateur rogue, was an amiable indolent fellow, with a pasty face and a flabby body — you could knock him down with a feather, and he frankly admitted that if his people kept refusing to pay his huge (and trite) debt. he would have to move to Australia to make new ones there and forge a few checks on the way.
He now constatait avec plaisir, as he told his victims, that only a few hundred pounds separated him from the shoreline of the minimal sum he needed to appease his most ruthless creditor. whereupon he went on fleecing poor Jean and Jacques with reckless haste, and then found himself with three honest aces (dealt to him lovingly by Van) against Van’s nimbly mustered four nines. This was followed by a good bluff against a better one; and with Van’s generously slipping the desperately flashing and twinkling young lord good but not good enough hands, the latter’s martyrdom came to a sudden end (London tailors wringing their hands in the fog, and a moneylender, the famous St Priest of Chose, asking for an appointment with Dick’s father). After the heaviest betting Van had yet seen, Jacques showed a forlorn couleur (as he called it in a dying man’s whisper) and Dick surrendered with a straight flush to his tormentor’s royal one. Van, who up to then had had no trouble whatever in concealing his delicate maneuvers from Dick’s silly lens, now had the pleasure of seeing him glimpse the second joker palmed in his, Van’s, hand as he swept up and clasped to his bosom the ‘rainbow ivory’ — Plunkett was full of poetry. The twins put on their ties and coats and said they had to quit.
‘Same here, Dick,’ said Van. ‘Pity you had to rely on your crystal balls. I have often wondered why the Russian for it — I think we have a Russian ancestor in common — is the same as the German for "schoolboy," minus the umlaut’ — and while prattling thus, Van refunded with a rapidly written check the ecstatically astonished Frenchmen. Then he collected a handful of cards and chips and hurled them into Dick’s face. The missiles were still in flight when he regretted that cruel and commonplace bewgest, for the wretched fellow could not respond in any conceivable fashion, and just sat there covering one eye and examining his damaged spectacles with the other — it was also bleeding a little — while the French twins were pressing upon him two handkerchiefs which he kept good-naturedly pushing away. Rosy aurora was shivering in green Serenity Court. Laborious old Chose.
(There should be a sign denoting applause. Ada’s note.) (1.28)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): constatait etc.: noted with pleasure.
Shivering aurora, laborious old Chose: a touch of Baudelaire.
Van plays poker with Dick C. and the French twins at Chose (Van’s English University). Five or six years later, when Van meets Dick in Monte Carlo, Dick repeats the phrase “Mark ‘em!” three times:
He did not ‘twinkle’ long after that. Five or six years later, in Monte Carlo, Van was passing by an open-air café when a hand grabbed him by the elbow, and a radiant, ruddy, comparatively respectable Dick C. leaned toward him over the petunias of the latticed balustrade:
‘Van,’ he cried, ‘I’ve given up all that looking-glass dung, congratulate me! Listen: the only safe way is to mark ‘em! Wait, that’s not all, can you imagine, they’ve invented a microscopic — and I mean microscopic — point of euphorion, a precious metal, to insert under your thumbnail, you can’t see it with the naked eye, but one minuscule section of your monocle is made to magnify the mark you make with it, like killing a flea, on one card after another, as they come along in the game, that’s the beauty of it, no preparations, no props, nothing! Mark ‘em! Mark ‘em!’ good Dick was still shouting, as Van walked away. (1.28)
In Mark Aldanov’s novel Chyortov most (“The Devil's Bridge,” 1924) Ivanchuk points to Staal and Nastenka an old shuler (cardsharp) among the gamblers:
Игроки с неудовольствием переглянулись, тотчас собрали веера карт и демонстративно положили их на стол. Один из них накрыл даже свою игру пепельницей. Грузный господин укоризненно покачал головой и еще раз внушительно протянул:
— Тсс…
Иванчук успел шепотом объяснить Настеньке и Штаалю, что это старый шулер, когда-то гремевший по всей России, но давно поконченный и отпетый. С ним решается играть один Женя… (он назвал титулованную фамилию), но и то лишь в комнате без зеркал, своими картами и с условием, чтобы партнер был без манжет и не имел в руках ни часов, ни табакерки, ни других предметов с блестящей отражающей поверхностью. Настенька с ужасом уставилась на шулера. (Part One, chapter XIII)
The main character of Mark Aldanov’s novella Mogila voina (“A Soldier’s Grave,” 1939) is Lord Byron. The novella’s title was borrowed from the last lines of Byron’s last poem, On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year (1824):
Seek out -- less often sought than found
A soldier's grave, for thee the best,
Then look around and choose thy ground,
And take thy rest.
The name of Van’s University, Chose is a homophone of “chose,” simple past of “choose” (the verb used by Byron in the poem’s penultimate line). On the other hand, Chose seems to hint at the French phrase quelque chose (something). In Eugene Onegin (One: V: 1-2) Pushkin says:
Мы все учились понемногу
Чему-нибудь и как-нибудь
All of us had a bit of schooling
in something and somehow.
The names of the French twins who play poker with Van and Dick, Jean and Jacques, seem to hint at Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In Chapter One (XXIV: 9) of EO Pushkin mentions Rousseau:
Янтарь на трубках Цареграда,
Фарфор и бронза на столе,
И, чувств изнеженных отрада,
Духи в граненом хрустале;
Гребенки, пилочки стальные,
Прямые ножницы, кривые
И щетки тридцати родов
И для ногтей и для зубов.
Руссо (замечу мимоходом)
Не мог понять, как важный Грим
Смел чистить ногти перед ним,
Красноречивым сумасбродом.6
Защитник вольности и прав
В сем случае совсем неправ.
Amber on Tsargrad's pipes,
porcelain and bronzes on a table,
and — joyance of the pampered senses —
perfumes in crystal cut with facets;
combs, little files of steel,
straight scissors, curvate ones, and brushes
of thirty kinds —
these for the nails, those for the teeth.
Rousseau (I shall observe in passing) was unable
to understand how the dignified Grimm
dared clean his nails in front of him,
the eloquent crackbrain.6
The advocate of liberty and rights
was in the present case not right at all.
“Tout le monde sut qu'il mettoit du blanc, et moi qui n'en croyois rien je commençai de le croire, non seulement par l'embellissement de son teint, et pour avoir trouvé des tasses de blanc sur sa toilette, mais sur ce qu'entrant un matin dans sa chambre, je le trouvai brossant ses ongles avec une petite vergette faite exprès, ouvrage qu'il continua fi+èrement devant moi. Je jugeai qu'un homme qui passe deux heures tous les matins à brosser ses ongles peut bien passer quelques instans à remplir de blanc les creux de sa peau.”
(Les Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau.)
Grimm was ahead of his age: nowadays people all over enlightened Europe clean their nails with a special brush. (Pushkin’s note 6)
In the next stanza of EO (One: XXV: 12) Pushkin compares Onegin to giddy Venus:
Быть можно дельным человеком
И думать о красе ногтей:
К чему бесплодно спорить с веком?
Обычай деспот меж людей.
Второй Чадаев, мой Евгений,
Боясь ревнивых осуждений,
В своей одежде был педант
И то, что мы назвали франт.
Он три часа по крайней мере
Пред зеркалами проводил
И из уборной выходил
Подобный ветреной Венере,
Когда, надев мужской наряд,
Богиня едет в маскарад.
One can be an efficient man —
and mind the beauty of one's nails:
why vainly argue with the age?
Custom is despot among men.
My Eugene, a second [Chadáev],
being afraid of jealous censures,
was in his dress a pedant
and what we've called a fop.
Three hours, at least,
he spent in front of glasses,
and from his dressing room came forth
akin to giddy Venus
when, having donned a masculine attire,
the goddess drives to a masqued ball.
In his essay “Pushkin” (1896) Merezhkovski points out that Pushkin is closer to Goethe (the author of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a ballad, and “Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship,” a novel) than to Byron (whom Merezhkovski compares to Euphorion, the son of Faust and Helen of Troy in Part Two of Goethe’s Faust):
С этой точки зрения становится вполне ясной ошибка тех, которые ставят Пушкина в связь не с Гёте, а с Байроном. Правда, Байрон увеличил силы Пушкина, но не иначе как побежденный враг увеличивает силы победителя. Пушкин поглотил Евфориона, преодолел его крайности, его разлад, претворил его в своем сердце, и устремился дальше, выше — в те ясные сферы всеобъемлющей гармонии, куда звал Гёте и куда за Гёте никто не имел силы пойти, кроме Пушкина.
Русский поэт сам сознавал себя гораздо ближе к создателю «Фауста», чем к певцу Дон-Жуана. «Гений Байрона бледнел с его молодостью, — пишет двадцатипятилетний Пушкин Вяземскому вскоре после смерти Байрона; — в своих трагедиях, не исключая и «Каина», он уже не тот пламенный демон, который создал «Гяура» и «Чайльд Гарольда». Первые две песни «Дон-Жуана» выше следующих . Его поэзия, видимо, изменилась. Он весь создан был навыворот. Постепенности в нем не было; он вдруг созрел и возмужал — пропел и замолчал, и первые звуки его уже ему не возвратились» (ibid.)
"Milord’s stupidity" (of which Van feels pretty sure) bring to mind Rousseau's Les amours de Milord Edouard Bomston. In Drugie berega ("Other Shores," 1954), the Russian version of his autobiography Speak, Memory (1951), VN renames 'Nesbit' (as VN calls his Cambridge friend) 'Bomston.' On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) Pasternak's novel Doktor Zhivago (1957) is known as Les amours du Docteur Mertvago, a mystical romance by a pastor (1.8), and Mertvago forever (2.5). Pasternak is the author of a Russian translation of Goethe's Faust.