In VN's novel Lolita (1955), John Ray, Jr.'s Foreword to Humbert Humbert's manuscript ends as follows:
As a case history, “Lolita” will become, no doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles. As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects; and still more important to us than scientific significance and literary worth, is the ethical impact the book should have on the serious reader; for in this poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson; the wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac - these are not only vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils. “Lolita” should make all of us - parents, social workers, educators - apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world.
John Ray, Jr., Ph. D.
Widworth, Mass
Widworth, Mass seems to hint at Widworthy, a village, parish and former manor in East Devon, England. Conan Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) featuring the private detective Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson is set largely on the gloomy Dartmoor moors in Devonshire, England. The primary antagonist in The Hound of the Baskervilles, Jack Stapleton is an entomologist and schoolmaster. In his Foreword to Humbert's manuscript John Ray, Jr. mentions the Poling Prize he had just been awarded for a modest work (“Do the Senses make Sense?”) wherein certain morbid states and perversions had been discussed. Otho C. Poling was an American entomologist whom VN mentions in his 1942 paper Some new or little known Nearctic Neonympha (as pointed out by Alain Champlain). The characters in Conan Doyle's (pre-Holmesian) story The Captain of the Pole-Star (1883) include Dr. John M'Alister Ray, senior (the author of the note appended to the story). The ship's name in Conan Doyle's story brings to mind Sir William Pole (1561–1635), a historian and antiquarian of the County of Devon.
According to John Ray, Jr., as a case history, “Lolita” will become, no doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles. A case history makes one think of Conan Doyle's story (one of the 56 short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes) A Case of Identity (1891). Its characters, Mr Windibank (Miss Sutherland's stepfather who is only five years older than his stepdaughter) and Mr Hosmer Angel (Miss Sutherland's fiancé who disappears on the day of the wedding) turn out to be one and the same person. It seems that John Ray, Jr. is Humbert Humbert's "real" name. According to Humbert Humbert, it took him 56 days (eight weeks) to write Lolita:
This then is my story. I have reread it. It has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe. I have camouflaged what I could so as not to hurt people. And I have toyed with many pseudonyms for myself before I hit on a particularly apt one. There are in my notes “Otto Otto” and “Mesmer Mesmer” and “Lambert Lambert,” but for some reason I think my choice expresses the nastiness best.
When I started, fifty-six days ago, to write Lolita, first in the psychopathic ward for observation, and then in this well-heated, albeit tombal, seclusion, I thought I would use these notes in toto at my trial, to save not my head, of course, but my soul. In mid-composition, however, I realized that I could not parade living Lolita. I still may use parts of this memoir in hermetic sessions, but publication is to be deferred.
For reasons that may appear more obvious than they really are, I am opposed to capital punishment; this attitude will be, I trust, shared by the sentencing judge. Had I come before myself, I would have given Humbert at least thirty-five years for rape, and dismissed the rest of the charges. But even so, Dolly Schiller will probably survive me by many years. The following decision I make with all the legal impact and support of a signed testament: I wish this memoir to be published only when Lolita is no longer alive.
Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H. H., and one wanted H. H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita. (2.36)
Otto Otto (one of the pseudonyms Humbert has toyed with) brings to mind the entomologist Otho C. Poling. Otto means in Italian "eight." In an interview VN remarked that the Vanessa alalanta was known in Russia as the “butterfly of doom” because it first appeared in 1881, the year Tsar Alexander II was assassinated and the markings on the underside of its two hind wings seems to read ‘1881’. Describing his childhood romance with Annabel Leigh, Humbert mentions the maiden name of Annabel's mother, Vanessa van Ness:
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,” “thin 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 tuned the way those of intelligent European pre-adolescents 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. (1.3)