Describing his second arrival at Ardis in June 1888, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) calls Percy de Prey (a country gentleman who courts Ada) "a stoutish, foppish, baldish young man:"
Van revisited Ardis Hall in 1888. He arrived on a cloudy June afternoon, unexpected, unbidden, unneeded; with a diamond necklace coiled loose in his pocket. As he approached from a side lawn, he saw a scene out of some new life being rehearsed for an unknown picture, without him, not for him. A big party seemed to be breaking up. Three young ladies in yellow-blue Vass frocks with fashionable rainbow sashes surrounded a stoutish, foppish, baldish young man who stood, a flute of champagne in his hand, glancing down from the drawing-room terrace at a girl in black with bare arms: an old runabout, shivering at every jerk, was being cranked up by a hoary chauffeur in front of the porch, and those bare arms, stretched wide, were holding outspread the white cape of Baroness von Skull, a grand-aunt of hers. Against the white cape Ada’s new long figure was profiled in black — the black of her smart silk dress with no sleeves, no ornaments, no memories. The slow old Baroness stood groping for something under one armpit, under the other — for what? a crutch? the dangling end of tangled bangles? — and as she half-turned to accept the cloak (now taken from her grandniece by a belated new footman) Ada also half-turned, and her yet ungemmed neck showed white as she ran up the porch steps. (1.31)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): Yellow-blue Vass: the phrase is consonant with ya lyublyu vas ('I love you' in Russian).
“A stoutish, foppish, baldish young man,” Count Percy de Prey brings to mind Akakiy Akakievich Bashmachkin, the pathetic main character in Gogol’s story Shinel’ (“The Overcoat,” 1841). Akakiy Akakievich is neskol'ko ryabovat, neskol'ko ryzhevat, neskol'ko na vid dazhe podslepovat, s nebol'shoy lysinoy na lbu (somewhat pock-marked, somewhat red-haired, even somewhat short-sighted in appearance, with a little bald spot on the forehead). One of Ada's lovers who goes to the Crimean War and dies on the second day of the invasion, Percy de Prey is associated with "Malbrook" (John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough, 1650-1722, a British military commander):
Everything appeared as it always used to be, the little nymphs and goats on the painted ceiling, the mellow light of the day ripening into evening, the remote dreamy rhythm of Blanche's 'linen-folding'
voice humming 'Malbrough' (...ne sait quand reviendra, ne sait quand reviendra) and the two lovely heads, bronze-black and copper-red, inclined over the table...
'Mon page, mon beau page,
- Mironton-mironton-mirontaine -
Mon page, mon beau page...' (1.40)
Only the other day from behind that row of thick firs, look there, to your right (but he did not look - sitting silent, both hands on the knob of his cane), she and her sister Madelon, with a bottle of wine between them, watched Monsieur le Comte courting the young lady on the moss, crushing her like a grunting bear as he also had crushed - many times! - Madelon who said she, Blanche, should warn him, Van, because she was a wee bit jealous but she also said - for she had a good heart - better put it off until 'Malbrook' s'en va t'en guerre, otherwise they would fight; he had been shooting a pistol at a scarecrow all morning and that's why she waited so long, and it was in Madelon's hand, not in hers. (1.41)
In Gogol's Myortvye dushi (Dead Souls, 1842) Nozdryov's barrel organ plays the song "Malbrough Went Off to War:"
Вслед за тем показалась гостям шарманка. Ноздрев тут же провертел пред ними кое-что. Шарманка играла не без приятности, но в средине ее, кажется, что-то случилось, ибо мазурка оканчивалась песнею: "Мальбруг в поход поехал", а «Мальбруг в поход поехал» неожиданно завершался каким-то давно знакомым вальсом. Уже Ноздрев давно перестал вертеть, но в шарманке была одна дудка очень бойкая, никак не хотевшая угомониться, и долго еще потому свистела она одна. Потом показались трубки — деревянные, глиняные, пенковые, обкуренные и необкуренные, обтянутые замшею и необтянутые, чубук с янтарным мундштуком, недавно выигранный, кисет, вышитый какою-то графинею, где-то на почтовой станции влюбившеюся в него по уши, у которой ручки, по словам его, были самой субдительной сюперфлю, — слово, вероятно, означавшее у него высочайшую точку совершенства.
After that, a barrel organ appeared before the guests. Nozdryov straightaway ground something out for them. The barrel organ played not unpleasantly, but something seemed to have happened inside it,
for the mazurka ended with the song "Malbrough Went Off to War," and "Malbrough Went Off to War" was unexpectedly concluded by some long-familiar waltz. Nozdryov had long stopped grinding, but there was one very perky reed in the organ that simply refused to quiet down, and for some time
afterwards went on tooting all by itself. Then pipes appeared—of wood, clay, meerschaum, broken in and un-broken-in, covered with chamois and not covered, a chibouk with an amber mouthpiece recently won at cards, a tobacco pouch embroidered by some countess who had fallen head over heels in love with him somewhere at a posting station, whose hands, according to him, were most subdiminally superflu—a phrase that for him probably meant the peak of perfection. (Chapter Four)
In Dostoevski's novel Prestuplenie i nakazanie ("Crime and Punishment," 1866) Sonya's mother mentions the children's song Malborough s'en va-t-en guerre:
Ах да! что же нам петь-то? Перебиваете вы все меня, а мы... видите ли, мы здесь остановились, Родион Романыч, чтобы выбрать, что петь, - такое, чтоб и Коле можно было протанцевать... потому все это у нас, можете представить, без приготовления; надо сговориться, так чтобы все совершенно прорепетировать, а потом мы отправимся на Невский, где гораздо больше людей высшего общества и нас тотчас заметят: Леня знает "Хуторок"... Только всё "Хуторок" да "Хуторок", и все-то его поют! Мы должны спеть что-нибудь гораздо более благородное... Ну, что ты придумала, Поля, хоть бы ты матери помогла! Памяти, памяти у меня нет, я бы вспомнила! Не "Гусара же на саблю опираясь" петь, в самом деле! Ах, споемте по-французски "Cinq sous! Я ведь вас учила же, учила же. И главное, так как это по-французски, то увидят тотчас, что вы дворянские дети, и это будет гораздо трогательнее... Можно бы даже: "Malborough s'en va-t-en guerre", так как это совершенно детская песенка и употребляется во всех аристократических домах, когда убаюкивают детей.
Malborough s'en va-t-en guerre,
Ne sait quand reviendra... - начала было она петь... - Но нет, лучше уж "Cinq sous"! Ну, Коля, ручки в боки, поскорей, а ты, Леня, тоже вертись в противоположную сторону, а мы с Полечкой будем подпевать и подхлопывать!
Ah, yes,... What are we to sing? You keep putting me out, but we... You see, we are standing here, Rodion Romanovich, to find something to sing and get money, something Kolya can dance to.... For, as you can fancy, our performance is all impromptu.... We must talk it over and rehearse it all thoroughly, and then we shall go to Nevsky, where there are far more people of good society, and we shall be noticed at once. Lida knows 'My Village' only, nothing but 'My Village,' and every one sings that. We must sing something far more genteel.... Well, have you thought of anything, Polenka? If only you'd help your mother! My memory's quite gone, or I should have thought of something. We really can't sing 'An Hussar. ' Ah, let us sing in French, 'Cinq sous,' I have taught it you, I have taught it you. And as it is in French, people will see at once that you are children of good family, and that will be much more touching.... You might sing 'Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre,' for that's quite a child's song and is sung as a lullaby in all the aristocratic houses.
Marlborough s'en va-t-en guerre
Ne sait quand reviendra...
She began singing. "But no, better sing 'Cinq sous. ' Now, Kolya, your hands on your hips, make haste, and you, Lida, keep turning the other way, and Polenka and I will sing and clap our hands! (Part Five, chapter 5)
When Nekrasov (a poet who read Dostoevski's first novel Poor Folk, 1846, in the manuscript) came to Belinski and told him "a new Gogol appeared," the critic replied: U vas Gogoli-to kak griby rastut ("with you the Gogols grow like mushrooms"). Describing the picnic on Ada's sixteenth birthday, Van mentions five red boletes that Ada holds in her hands:
Presently Greg overtook them, bringing the cufflink — a little triumph of meticulous detection, and with a trite ‘Attaboy!’ Percy closed his silk cuff, thus completing his insolent restoration.
Their dutiful companion, still running, got first to the site of the finished feast; he saw Ada, facing him with two stipple-stemmed red boletes in one hand and three in the other; and, mistaking her look of surprise at the sound of his thudding hooves for one of concern, good Sir Greg hastened to cry out from afar: ‘He’s all right! He’s all right, Miss Veen’ — blind compassion preventing the young knight from realizing that she could not possibly have known yet what a clash had occurred between the beau and the beast.
‘Indeed I am,’ said the former, taking from her a couple of her toadstools, the girl’s favorite delicacy, and stroking their smooth caps. ‘And why shouldn’t I be? Your cousin has treated Greg and your humble servant to a most bracing exhibition of Oriental Skrotomoff or whatever the name may be.’ (1.39)
At the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Ada mentions mushrooming:
Marina helped herself to an Albany from a crystal box of Turkish cigarettes tipped with red rose petal and passed the box on to Demon. Ada, somewhat self-consciously, lit up too.
‘You know quite well,’ said Marina, ‘that your father disapproves of your smoking at table.’
‘Oh, it’s all right,’ murmured Demon.
‘I had Dan in view,’ explained Marina heavily. ‘He’s very prissy on that score.’
‘Well, and I’m not,’ answered Demon.
Ada and Van could not help laughing. All that was banter — not of a high order, but still banter.
A moment later, however, Van remarked: ‘I think I’ll take an Alibi — I mean an Albany — myself.’
‘Please note, everybody,’ said Ada, ‘how voulu that slip was! I like a smoke when I go mushrooming, but when I’m back, this horrid tease insists I smell of some romantic Turk or Albanian met in the woods.’
‘Well,’ said Demon, ‘Van’s quite right to look after your morals.’ (1.38)
Darkbloom (‘Notes to Ada’): voulu: intentional.
Describing the family dinner, Van mentions Price, a typical, too typical, old retainer whom Marina (and G. A. Vronsky, during their brief romance) had dubbed, for unknown reasons, ‘Grib:’
Another Price, a typical, too typical, old retainer whom Marina (and G.A. Vronsky, during their brief romance) had dubbed, for unknown reasons, ‘Grib,’ placed an onyx ashtray at the head of the table for Demon, who liked to smoke between courses — a puff of Russian ancestry. A side table supported, also in the Russian fashion, a collection of red, black, gray, beige hors-d’oeuvres, with the serviette caviar (salfetochnaya ikra) separated from the pot of Graybead (ikra svezhaya) by the succulent pomp of preserved boletes, ‘white,’ and ‘subbetuline,’ while the pink of smoked salmon vied with the incarnadine of Westphalian ham. The variously flavored vodochki glittered, on a separate tray. The French cuisine had contributed its chaudfroids and foie gras. A window was open, and the crickets were stridulating at an ominous speed in the black motionless foliage. (ibid.)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): grib: Russ., mushroom.
vodochki: Russ., pl. of vodochka, diminutive of vodka.
There is a mushrooming scene in Tolstoy's Anna Karenin (1875-77):
Всё семейство сидело за обедом. Дети Долли с гувернанткой и Варенькой делали планы о том, куда итти за грибами. Сергей Иванович, пользовавшийся между всеми гостями уважением к его уму и учености, доходившим почти до поклонения, удивил всех, вмешавшись в разговор о грибах.
— И меня возьмите с собой. Я очень люблю ходить за грибами, — сказал он, глядя на Вареньку, — я нахожу, что это очень хорошее занятие.
— Что ж, мы очень рады, — покраснев отвечала Варенька. Кити значительно переглянулась с Долли. Предложение ученого и умного Сергея Ивановича итти за грибами с Варенькой подтверждало некоторые предположения Кити, в последнее время очень ее занимавшие. Она поспешила заговорить с матерью, чтобы взгляд ее не был замечен. После обеда Сергей Иванович сел со своею чашкой кофе у окна в гостиной, продолжая начатый разговор с братом и поглядывая на дверь, из которой должны были выйти дети, собиравшиеся за грибами. Левин присел на окне возле брата.
The whole family were sitting at dinner. Dolly’s children, with their governess and Varenka, were making plans for going to look for mushrooms. Sergey Ivanovich, who was looked up to by all the party for his intellect and learning, with a respect that almost amounted to awe, surprised everyone by joining in the conversation about mushrooms.
"Take me with you. I am very fond of picking mushrooms," he said, looking at Varenka; "I think it’s a very nice occupation."
"Oh, we shall be delighted," answered Varenka, coloring a little. Kitty exchanged meaningful glances with Dolly. The proposal of the learned and intellectual Sergey Ivanovitch to go looking for mushrooms with Varenka confirmed certain theories of Kitty’s with which her mind had been very busy of late. She made haste to address some remark to her mother, so that her look should not be noticed. After dinner Sergey Ivanovitch sat with his cup of coffee at the drawing-room window, and while he took part in a conversation he had begun with his brother, he watched the door through which the children would start on the mushroom-picking expedition. Lyovin was sitting in the window near his brother. (Part Six, chapter 1)
The surname de Prey seems to hint at Deprè, a wine dealer mentioned in Tolstoy's novel:
Войдя в гостиную, Степан Аркадьич извинился, объяснил, что был задержан тем князем, который был всегдашним козлом-искупителем всех его опаздываний и отлучек, и в одну минуту всех перезнакомил и, сведя Алексея Александровича с Сергеем Кознышевым, подпустил им тему об обрусении Польши, за которую они тотчас уцепились вместе с Песцовым. Потрепав по плечу Туровцына, он шепнул ему что-то смешное и подсадил его к жене и к князю. Потом сказал Кити о том, что она очень хороша сегодня, и познакомил Щербацкого с Карениным. В одну минуту он так перемесил все это общественное тесто, что стала гостиная хоть куда, и голоса оживленно зазвучали. Одного Константина Левина не было. Но это было к лучшему, потому что, выйдя в столовую, Степан Аркадьич к ужасу своему увидал, что портвейн и херес взяты от Депре, а не от Леве, и он, распорядившись послать кучера как можно скорее к Леве, направился опять в гостиную.
On entering the drawing room Stepan Arkadyevich apologized, explaining that he had been detained by that prince, who was always the scapegoat for all his absences and unpunctualities, and in one moment he had made all the guests acquainted with each other, and, bringing together Alexey Alexandrovich and Sergey Koznyshev, started them on a discussion of the Russification of Poland, into which they immediately plunged with Pestsov. Slapping Turovtsyn on the shoulder, he whispered something comic in his ear, and set him down by his wife and the old prince. Then he told Kitty she was looking very pretty that evening, and presented Shcherbatski to Karenin. In a moment he had so kneaded together the social dough that the drawing room became very lively, and there was a merry buzz of voices. Konstantin Levin was the only person who had not arrived. But this was so much the better, as going into the dining room, Stepan Arkadyevich found to his horror that the port and sherry had been procured from Deprè, and not from Levy, and, directing that the coachman should be sent off as speedily as possible to Levy’s, he was going back to the drawing room. (Part Four, chapter 9)
The author of Sevastopolskie rasskazy (The Sevastopol Sketches, 1855), Leo Tolstoy participated in the siege of Sevastopol in Crimea. Percy de Prey goes to the Crimean war and gets killed by an old Tartar:
Panting, Cordula said:
‘My mother rang me up from Malorukino’ (their country estate at Malbrook, Mayne): ‘the local papers said you had fought a duel. You look a tower of health, I’m so glad. I knew something nasty must have happened because little Russel, Dr Platonov’s grandson — remember? — saw you from his side of the train beating up an officer on the station platform. But, first of all, Van, net, pozhaluysta, on nas vidit (no, please, he sees us), I have some very bad news for you. Young Fraser, who has just been flown back from Yalta, saw Percy killed on the second day of the invasion, less than a week after they had left Goodson airport. He will tell you the whole story himself, it accumulates more and more dreadful details with every telling, Fraser does not seem to have shined in the confusion, that’s why, I suppose, he keeps straightening things out.’
(Bill Fraser, the son of Judge Fraser, of Wellington, witnessed Lieutenant de Prey’s end from a blessed ditch overgrown with cornel and medlar, but, of course, could do nothing to help the leader of his platoon and this for a number of reasons which he conscientiously listed in his report but which it would be much too tedious and embarrassing to itemize here. Percy had been shot in the thigh during a skirmish with Khazar guerillas in a ravine near Chew-Foot-Calais, as the American troops pronounced ‘Chufutkale,’ the name of a fortified rock. He had, immediately assured himself, with the odd relief of the doomed, that he had got away with a flesh wound. Loss of blood caused him to faint, as we fainted, too, as soon as he started to crawl or rather squirm toward the shelter of the oak scrub and spiny bushes, where another casualty was resting comfortably. When a couple of minutes later, Percy — still Count Percy de Prey — regained consciousness he was no longer alone on his rough bed of gravel and grass. A smiling old Tartar, incongruously but somehow assuagingly wearing American blue-jeans with his beshmet, was squatting by his side. ‘Bednïy, bednïy’ (you poor, poor fellow), muttered the good soul, shaking his shaven head and clucking: ‘Bol’no (it hurts)?’ Percy answered in his equally primitive Russian that he did not feel too badly wounded: ‘Karasho, karasho ne bol’no (good, good),’ said the kindly old man and, picking up the automatic pistol which Percy had dropped, he examined it with naive pleasure and then shot him in the temple. (One wonders, one always wonders, what had been the executed individual’s brief, rapid series of impressions, as preserved somewhere, somehow, in some vast library of microfilmed last thoughts, between two moments: between, in the present case, our friend’s becoming aware of those nice, quasi-Red Indian little wrinkles beaming at him out of a serene sky not much different from Ladore’s, and then feeling the mouth of steel violently push through tender skin and exploding bone. One supposes it might have been a kind of suite for flute, a series of ‘movements’ such as, say: I’m alive — who’s that? — civilian — sympathy — thirsty — daughter with pitcher — that’s my damned gun — don’t... et cetera or rather no cetera... while Broken-Arm Bill prayed his Roman deity in a frenzy of fear for the Tartar to finish his job and go. But, of course, an invaluable detail in that strip of thought would have been — perhaps, next to the pitcher peri — a glint, a shadow, a stab of Ardis.)
‘How strange, how strange,’ murmured Van when Cordula had finished her much less elaborate version of the report Van later got from Bill Fraser. (1.42)
In Tolstoy’s Haji Murad (1911) the hero wears a black beshmet (a kind of quilted jacket):
Он взял из-под подушки свой чёрный ватный бешмет и пошёл в помещение своих нукеров.
He took his black quilted beshmet from beneath the cushion and went to his nukers’ quarters. (chapter XXIII)
On Demonia (aka Antiterra, Earth's twin planet on which Ada is set) Haji Murat is a French general’s bastard:
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. (1.28)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): The Headless Horseman: Mayne 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.
Pushkin's poem Delibash ("The Delibash," 1829) ends in the line A kazak bez golovy (And the Cossack is headless):
Перестрелка за холмами;
Смотрит лагерь их и наш;
На холме пред казаками
Вьётся красный делибаш.
Делибаш! не суйся к лаве,
Пожалей своё житьё;
Вмиг аминь лихой забаве:
Попадешься на копьё.
Эй, казак! не рвися к бою:
Делибаш на всем скаку
Срежет саблею кривою
С плеч удалую башку.
Мчатся, сшиблись в общем крике...
Посмотрите! каковы?..
Делибаш уже на пике,
А казак без головы
With the hostile camp in skirmish
Our men once were changing shot,
Pranced the Delibash his charger
'Fore our ranks of Cossacks hot.
Trifle not with free-born Cossacks!
Nor too o'er foolhardy be!
Thy mad mood thou wilt atone for--
On his pike he'll skewer thee!
'Ware friend Cossack! Or at full bound,
Off thy head, at lightning speed
With his scimitar he'll sever
From thy trunk! He will indeed!
What confusion! What a roaring!
Halt! thou devil's pack, have care!
On the pike is lanced the horseman--
Headless stands the Cossack there!
(tr. Martha Bianchi)
Delibash is the Turkish synonym for Hotspur. Percy Hotspur (1364-1403) is a character in Shakespeare's history play Henry IV Part 1. The play's characters include Sir John Falstaff (with whom Percy de Prey has a lot in common). The author of War and Peace (1869), Leo Tolstoy loathed Shakespeare.
See also the updated full version of my previous post "Letters from Terra, Grib & sudak in Ada."