After Van’s and Ada’s death Ronald Oranger (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, old Van’s secretary, the editor of Ada) marries Violet Knox (old Van’s typist whom Ada calls Fialochka, 'little Violet'):
Violet Knox [now Mrs Ronald Oranger. Ed.], born in 1940, came to live with us in 1957. She was (and still is — ten years later) an enchanting English blonde with doll eyes, a velvet carnation and a tweed-cupped little rump [.....]; but such designs, alas, could no longer flesh my fancy. She has been responsible for typing out this memoir — the solace of what are, no doubt, my last ten years of existence. A good daughter, an even better sister, and half-sister, she had supported for ten years her mother’s children from two marriages, besides laying aside [something]. I paid her [generously] per month, well realizing the need to ensure unembarrassed silence on the part of a puzzled and dutiful maiden. Ada called her ‘Fialochka’ and allowed herself the luxury of admiring ‘little Violet’ ‘s cameo neck, pink nostrils, and fair pony-tail. Sometimes, at dinner, lingering over the liqueurs, my Ada would consider my typist (a great lover of Koo-Ahn-Trow) with a dreamy gaze, and then, quick-quick, peck at her flushed cheek. The situation might have been considerably more complicated had it arisen twenty years earlier. (5.4)
Violet Hunter is a character in The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, the last of the twelve short stories collected in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892). The collection's fifth story is entitled The Five Orange Pips. Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes (1912) is an article by Ronald Arbuthnott Knox (1888-1957), an English Catholic priest and author of several detective novels who is famous for being the precursor of the Sherlockiana. The very first Holmes mystery, A Study in Scarlet (1887), brings to mind Demon Veen's scarlet-silk-lined black cape:
At the Goodson Airport, in one of the gilt-framed mirrors of its old-fashioned waiting room, Van glimpsed the silk hat of his father who sat awaiting him in an armchair of imitation marblewood, behind a newspaper that said in reversed characters: ‘Crimea Capitulates.’ At the same moment a raincoated man with a pleasant, somewhat porcine, pink face accosted Van. He represented a famous international agency, known as the VPL, which handled Very Private Letters. After a first flash of surprise, Van reflected that Ada Veen, a recent mistress of his, could not have chosen a smarter (in all senses of the word) way of conveying to him a message whose fantastically priced, and prized, process of transmission insured an absoluteness of secrecy which neither torture nor mesmerism had been able to break down in the evil days of 1859. It was rumored that even Gamaliel on his (no longer frequent, alas) trips to Paris, and King Victor during his still fairly regular visits to Cuba or Hecuba, and, of course, robust Lord Goal, Viceroy of France, when enjoying his randonnies all over Canady, preferred the phenomenally discreet, and in fact rather creepy, infallibility of the VPL organization to such official facilities as sexually starved potentates have at their disposal for deceiving their wives. The present messenger called himself James Jones, a formula whose complete lack of connotation made an ideal pseudonym despite its happening to be his real name. A flurry and flapping had started in the mirror but Van declined to act hastily. In order to gain time (for, on being shown Ada’s crest on a separate card, he felt he had to decide whether or not to accept her letter), he closely examined the badge resembling an ace of hearts which J.J. displayed with pardonable pride. He requested Van to open the letter, satisfy himself of its authenticity, and sign the card that then went back into some secret pit or pouch within the young detective’s attire or anatomy. Cries of welcome and impatience from Van’s father (wearing for the flight to France a scarlet-silk-lined black cape) finally caused Van to interrupt his colloquy with James and pocket the letter (which he read a few minutes later in the lavatory before boarding the airliner).
‘Stocks,’ said Demon, ‘are on the zoom. Our territorial triumphs, et cetera. An American governor, my friend Bessborodko, is to be installed in Bessarabia, and a British one, Armborough, will rule Armenia. I saw you enlaced with your little Countess near the parking lot. If you marry her I will disinherit you. They’re quite a notch below our set.’
‘In a couple of years,’ said Van, ‘I’ll slide into my own little millions’ (meaning the fortune Aqua had left him). ‘But you needn’t worry, sir, we have interrupted our affair for the time being — till the next time I return to live in her girlinière’ (Canady slang).
Demon, flaunting his flair, desired to be told if Van or his poule had got into trouble with the police (nodding toward Jim or John who having some other delivery to make sat glancing through Crime Copulate Bessarmenia).
‘Poule,’ replied Van with the evasive taciturnity of the Roman rabbi shielding Barabbas.
‘Why gray?’ asked Demon, alluding to Van’s overcoat. ‘Why that military cut? It’s too late to enlist.’
‘I couldn’t — my draft board would turn me down anyway.’
‘How’s the wound?’
‘Komsi-komsa. It now appears that the Kalugano surgeon messed up his job. The rip seam has grown red and raw, without any reason, and there’s a lump in my armpit. I’m in for another spell of surgery — this time in London, where butchers carve so much better. Where’s the mestechko here? Oh, I see it. Cute (a gentian painted on one door, a lady fern on the other: have to go to the herbarium).’
He did not answer her letter, and a fortnight later John James, now got up as a German tourist, all pseudo-tweed checks, handed Van a second message, in the Louvre right in front of Bosch’s Bâteau Ivre, the one with a jester drinking in the riggings (poor old Dan thought it had something to do with Brant’s satirical poem!). There would be no answer — though answers were included, with the return ticket, in the price, as the honest messenger pointed out. (2.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): poule: tart.
komsi etc.: comme-ci comme-ça in Russ. mispronunciation: so-so.
mestechko: Russ., little place.
bateau ivre: ‘sottish ship’, title of Rimbaud’s poem here used instead of ‘ship of fools’.
In March 1905 Demon Veen (Van's and Ada's father) perishes in a mysterious airplane disaster above the Pacific (3.7). Van does not realize that his father died, because Ada (who could not pardon Demon his forcing Van to give her up) managed to persuade the pilot to destroy his machine in midair. In A Study in Scarlet the word RACHE (German for 'revenge') is written in blood red letters on the wall of an abandoned house on Brixton Road. The Adventure of the Copper Beeches brings to mind the oak tree and its leaf of copper in Ada's translation from François Coppée:
After she too had finished breakfasting, he waylaid her, gorged with sweet butter, on the landing. They had one moment to plan things, it was all, historically speaking, at the dawn of the novel which was still in the hands of parsonage ladies and French academicians, so such moments were precious. She stood scratching one raised knee. They agreed to go for a walk before lunch and find a secluded place. She had to finish a translation for Mlle Larivière. She showed him her draft. François Coppée? Yes.
Their fall is gentle. The woodchopper
Can tell, before they reach the mud,
The oak tree by its leaf of copper,
The maple by its leaf of blood.
‘Leur chute est lente,’ said Van, ‘on peut les suivre du regard en reconnaissant — that paraphrastic touch of "chopper" and "mud" is, of course, pure Lowden (minor poet and translator, 1815-1895). Betraying the first half of the stanza to save the second is rather like that Russian nobleman who chucked his coachman to the wolves, and then fell out of his sleigh.’
‘I think you are very cruel and stupid,’ said Ada. ‘This is not meant to be a work of art or a brilliant parody. It is the ransom exacted by a demented governess from a poor overworked schoolgirl. Wait for me in the Baguenaudier Bower,’ she added. ‘I’ll be down in exactly sixty-three minutes.’ (1.20)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): leur chute etc.: their fall is slow... one can follow them with one’s eyes, recognizing —
Lowden: a portmanteau name combining two contemporary bards.
baguenaudier: French name of bladder senna.
Before the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Van recites a different (his own) English version of the same four lines by Coppée:
‘Old storytelling devices,’ said Van, ‘may be parodied only by very great and inhuman artists, but only close relatives can be forgiven for paraphrasing illustrious poems. Let me preface the effort of a cousin — anybody’s cousin — by a snatch of Pushkin, for the sake of rhyme —’
‘For the snake of rhyme!’ cried Ada. ‘A paraphrase, even my paraphrase, is like the corruption of "snakeroot" into "snagrel" — all that remains of a delicate little birthwort.’
‘Which is amply sufficient,’ said Demon, ‘for my little needs, and those of my little friends.’
‘So here goes,’ continued Van (ignoring what he felt was an indecent allusion, since the unfortunate plant used to be considered by the ancient inhabitants of the Ladore region not so much as a remedy for the bite of a reptile, as the token of a very young woman’s easy delivery; but no matter). ‘By chance preserved has been the poem. In fact, I have it. Here it is: Leur chute est lente and one can know ‘em…’
‘Oh, I know ‘em,’ interrupted Demon:
‘Leur chute est lente. On peut les suivre
Du regard en reconnaissant
Le chêne à sa feuille de cuivre
L’érable à sa feuille de sang
‘Grand stuff!’
‘Yes, that was Coppée and now comes the cousin,’ said Van, and he recited:
‘Their fall is gentle. The leavesdropper
Can follow each of them and know
The oak tree by its leaf of copper,
The maple by its blood-red glow.’
‘Pah!’ uttered the versionist.
‘Not at all!’ cried Demon. ‘That "leavesdropper" is a splendid trouvaille, girl.’ He pulled the girl to him, she landing on the arm of his Klubsessel, and he glued himself with thick moist lips to her hot red ear through the rich black strands. Van felt a shiver of delight. (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): By chance preserved: The verses are by chance preserved
I have them, here they are:
(Eugene Onegin, Six: XXI: 1–2)
At the family dinner in "Ardis the Second" Demon mentions La fève de Diane (Diana's broad bean):
The roast hazel-hen (or rather its New World representative, locally called ‘mountain grouse’) was accompanied by preserved lingonberries (locally called ‘mountain cranberries’). An especially succulent morsel of one of those brown little fowls yielded a globule of birdshot between Demon’s red tongue and strong canine: ‘La fève de Diane,’ he remarked, placing it carefully on the edge of his plate. ‘How is the car situation, Van?’
‘Vague. I ordered a Roseley like yours but it won’t be delivered before Christmas. I tried to find a Silentium with a side car and could not, because of the war, though what connection exists between wars and motorcycles is a mystery. But we manage, Ada and I, we manage, we ride, we bike, we even jikker.’
‘I wonder,’ said sly Demon, ‘why I’m reminded all at once of our great Canadian’s lovely lines about blushing Irène:
‘Le feu si délicat de la virginité
Qui something sur son front...
‘All right. You can ship mine to England, provided —’
‘By the way, Demon,’ interrupted Marina, ‘where and how can I obtain the kind of old roomy limousine with an old professional chauffeur that Praskovia, for instance, has had for years?’
‘Impossible, my dear, they are all in heaven or on Terra. But what would Ada like, what would my silent love like for her birthday? It’s next Saturday, po razschyotu po moemu (by my reckoning), isn’t it? Une rivière de diamants?’
‘Protestuyu!’ cried Marina. ‘Yes, I’m speaking seriozno. I object to your giving her kvaka sesva (quoi que ce soit), Dan and I will take care of all that.’
‘Besides you’ll forget,’ said Ada laughing, and very deftly showed the tip of her tongue to Van who had been on the lookout for her conditional reaction to ‘diamonds.’ (1.38)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): le feu etc.: the so delicate fire of virginity
that on her brow...
po razschyotu po moemu: an allusion to Famusov (in Griboedov’s Gore ot uma), calculating the pregnancy of a lady friend.
protestuyu: Russ., I protest.
seriozno: Russ., seriously.
Describing Lucette's visit to Kingston (Van's American University), Van calls Ada "Adiana:"
Van, I’m boring you?’
‘Oh, nonsense, it’s a gripping and palpitating little case history.’
Because that was really not bad: bringing down three in as many years — besides winging a fourth. Jolly good shot — Adiana! Wonder whom she’ll bag next. (2.5)
Ada's next victim is Demon Veen. Because love is blind, Van fails to see that in the Night of the Burning Barn (when Van and Ada make love for the first time) Ada is not a virgin and that Ronald Oranger and Violet Knox are Ada's grandchildren.
In the fugitive rhymes that he composed to amuse Rita, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) mentions Diana (the Roman goddess of hunting):
I went to find Rita who introduced me with her vin triste smile to a pocket-sized wizened truculently tight old man saying this waswhat was the name again, son?a former schoolmate of hers. He tried to retain her, and in the slight scuffle that followed I hurt my thumb against his hard head. In the silent painted part where I walked her and aired her a little, she sobbed and said I would soon, soon leave her as everybody had, and I sang her a wistful French ballad, and strung together some fugitive rhymes to amuse her:
The place was called Enchanted Hunters. Query:
What Indian dyes, Diana, did thy dell
endorse to make of Picture Lake a very
blood bath of trees before the blue hotel?
She said: “Why blue when it is white, why blue for heaven’s sake?” and started to cry again, and I marched her to the car, and we drove on to New York, and soon she was reasonably happy again high up in the haze on the little terrace of our flat. I notice I have somehow mixed up two events, my visit with Rita to Briceland on our way to Carntrip, and our passing through Briceland again on our way back to New York, but such suffusions of swimming colors are not to be disdained by the artist in recollection. (2.26)
Ritochka (as Humbert calls Rita, a girl whom he picked up at a bar between Montreal and New York) brings to mind Fialochka (as Ada calls Violet Knox). In Ada Rita is a Crimean cabaret dancer, Van's partner when, as Mascodagama (Van's stage name), he dances tango on his hands. Describing his final reunion with Ada in 1922, Van mentions Mascodagama's disfigured thumb and the beautiful almond-shaped nails:
‘When I was a kid,’ said Van, ‘and stayed for the first — or rather, second — time in Switzerland, I thought that "Verglas" on roadway signs stood for some magical town, always around the corner, at the bottom of every snowy slope, never seen, but biding its time. I got your cable in the Engadine where there are real magical places, such as Alraun or Alruna — which means a tiny Arabian demon in a German wizard’s mirror. By the way, we have the old apartment upstairs with an additional bedroom, number five-zero-eight.’
‘Oh dear. I’m afraid you must cancel poor 508. If I stayed for the night, 510 would do for both of us, but I’ve got bad news for you. I can’t stay. I must go back to Geneva directly after dinner to retrieve my things and maids, whom the authorities have apparently put in a Home for Stray Females because they could not pay the absolutely medieval new droits de douane — isn’t Switzerland in Washington State, sort of, après tout? Look, don’t scowl’ — (patting his brown blotched hand on which their shared birthmark had got lost among the freckles of age, like a babe in autumn woods, on peut les suivre en reconnaissant only Mascodagama’s disfigured thumb and the beautiful almond-shaped nails) — ‘I promise to get in touch with you in a day or two, and then we’ll go on a cruise to Greece with the Baynards — they have a yacht and three adorable daughters who still swim in the tan, okay?’
‘I don’t know what I loathe more,’ he replied, ‘yachts or Baynards; but can I help you in Geneva?’
He could not. Baynard had married his Cordula, after a sensational divorce — Scotch veterinaries had had to saw off her husband’s antlers (last call for that joke). (Part Four)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): droits etc.: custom-house dues.
après tout: after all.
on peut etc.: see p.194.
The characters in Lolita include Shirley Holmes (the headmistress of Camp Q) and her son Charlie (Lolita's first lover who gets killed in Korea). Sherlock Holmes and Phileas Fogg (the hero of Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days) are the favorite characters of little Luzhin in VN's novel Zaschita Luzhina ("The Luzhin Defense," 1930). After he was rejected by Marina (Van's, Ada's and Lucette's mother), Demon Veen set off in a counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe:
Poor Dan’s erotic life was neither complicated nor beautiful, but somehow or other (he soon forgot the exact circumstances as one forgets the measurements and price of a fondly made topcoat worn on and off for at least a couple of seasons) he fell comfortably in love with Marina, whose family he had known when they still had their Raduga place (later sold to Mr Eliot, a Jewish businessman). One afternoon in the spring of 1871, he proposed to Marina in the Up elevator of Manhattan’s first ten-floor building, was indignantly rejected at the seventh stop (Toys), came down alone and, to air his feelings, set off in a counter-Fogg direction on a triple trip round the globe, adopting, like an animated parallel, the same itinerary every time. In November 1871, as he was in the act of making his evening plans with the same smelly but nice cicerone in a café-au-lait suit whom he had hired already twice at the same Genoese hotel, an aerocable from Marina (forwarded with a whole week’s delay via his Manhattan office which had filed it away through a new girl’s oversight in a dove hole marked RE AMOR) arrived on a silver salver telling him she would marry him upon his return to America. (1.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Counter-Fogg: Phileas Fogg, Jules Verne’s globetrotter, travelled from West to East.
The fact that he travels from West to East allows Fogg to save one day and win the wager. On a chess board there are sixty-four squares (8 × 8 = 64). Telling Van that she has to finish a translation for Mlle Larivière (Lucette’s governess), Ada says that she will be down in exactly sixty-three minutes. 63 = 7 × 9; 79 + 1 = 80
In the Conan Doyle stories Sherlock Holmes refers to himself as "a consultive detective." Describing his performance in variety shows as Mascodagama, Van mentions one of the special detectives at Chose (Van’s English University) who saved the psychiatrist P. O. Tyomkin from the dagger of Prince Potyomkin, a mixed-up kid from Sebastopol, Id.:
On February 5, 1887, an unsigned editorial in The Ranter (the usually so sarcastic and captious Chose weekly) described Mascodagama’s performance as ‘the most imaginative and singular stunt ever offered to a jaded music-hall public.’ It was repeated at the Rantariver Club several times, but nothing in the programme or in publicity notices beyond the definition ‘Foreign eccentric’ gave any indication either of the exact nature of the ‘stunt’ or of the performer’s identity. Rumors, carefully and cleverly circulated by Mascodagama’s friends, diverted speculations toward his being a mysterious visitor from beyond the Golden Curtain, particularly since at least half-a-dozen members of a large Good-will Circus Company that had come from Tartary just then (i.e., on the eve of the Crimean War) — three dancing girls, a sick old clown with his old speaking goat, and one of the dancers’ husbands, a make-up man (no doubt, a multiple agent) — had already defected between France and England, somewhere in the newly constructed ‘Chunnel.’ Mascodagama’s spectacular success in a theatrical club that habitually limited itself to Elizabethan plays, with queens and fairies played by pretty boys, made first of all a great impact on cartoonists. Deans, local politicians, national statesmen, and of course the current ruler of the Golden Horde were pictured as mascodagamas by topical humorists. A grotesque imitator (who was really Mascodagama himself in an oversophisticated parody of his own act!) was booed at Oxford (a women’s college nearby) by local rowdies. A shrewd reporter, who had heard him curse a crease in the stage carpet, commented in print on his ‘Yankee twang.’ Dear Mr ‘Vascodagama’ received an invitation to Windsor Castle from its owner, a bilateral descendant of Van’s own ancestors, but he declined it, suspecting (incorrectly, as it later transpired) the misprint to suggest that his incognito had been divulged by one of the special detectives at Chose — the same, perhaps, who had recently saved the psychiatrist P.O. Tyomkin from the dagger of Prince Potyomkin, a mixed-up kid from Sebastopol, Id. (1.30)
In Conan Doyle's story The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter (1894) Sherlock Holmes says that his grandmother was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. A French painter of battles, Horace Vernet (1789-1863) is the author of The Taking of the Malakoff Redoubt (1858). The Malakhov Kurgan (hill) was the site of heavy fighting during the Siege of Sevastopol (1854-1855). The Malakhov Kurgan (1893) is a painting by Ivan Aivazovsky, a master of marine art. Van's stage name hints at Vasco da Gama (1460s-1524), a Portuguese explorer, the first European to reach India by sea.
According to Van, a photograph of Mascodagama was reproduced by the Ladore, Ladoga, Laguna, Lugano and Luga newspapers:
Mascodagama’s fame reached inevitably the backwoods of America: a photograph of him, masked, it is true, but unable to mislead a fond relative or faithful retainer, was reproduced by the Ladore, Ladoga, Laguna, Lugano and Luga papers in the first week of 1888; but the accompanying reportage was not. The work of a poet, and only a poet (‘especially of the Black Belfry group,’ as some wit said), could have adequately described a certain macabre quiver that marked Van’s extraordinary act. (1.30)
In his sonnet Conan Doyle (1926) Igor Severyanin says that the author of Sherlock Holmes is revered both in Kamchatka and in Lugano:
Кумир сопливого ученика,
Банкира, сыщика и хулигана,
Он чтим и на Камчатке, и в Лугано,
Плод с запахом навозным парника.
Помилуй Бог меня от дневника,
Где детективы в фабуле романа
О преступленьях повествуют рьяно,
В них видя нечто вроде пикника…
«Он учит хладнокровью, сметке, риску,
А потому хвала и слава сыску!» —
Воскликнул бы любитель кровопийц,
Меня всегда мутило от которых…
Не ужас ли, что землю кроет ворох
Убийственных романов про убийц?
In his poem Fioletovyi trans (“The Violet Trance,” 1911) Severyanin mentions "the lily of liqueurs, Crème de Violette." Violet Knox is a great lover of Koo-Ahn-Trow (Cointreau, the orange-flavored liqueur). Severyanin is the author of Rosa oranzhevogo chasa ("The Dew of an Orange Hour," 1925), an autobiographical poem.
Igor Lotaryov's pseudonym, Severyanin ("Northerner") brings to mind the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii) mentioned by Van at the beginning of Ada:
Van’s maternal grandmother Daria (‘Dolly’) Durmanov was the daughter of Prince Peter Zemski, Governor of Bras d’Or, an American province in the Northeast of our great and variegated country, who had married, in 1824, Mary O’Reilly, an Irish woman of fashion. Dolly, an only child, born in Bras, married in 1840, at the tender and wayward age of fifteen, General Ivan Durmanov, Commander of Yukon Fortress and peaceful country gentleman, with lands in the Severn Tories (Severnïya Territorii), that tesselated protectorate still lovingly called ‘Russian’ Estoty, which commingles, granoblastically and organically, with ‘Russian’ Canady, otherwise ‘French’ Estoty, where not only French, but Macedonian and Bavarian settlers enjoy a halcyon climate under our Stars and Stripes. (1.1)
Darkbloom ('Notes to Ada'): Severnïya Territorii: Northern Territories. Here and elsewhere transliteration is based on the old Russian orthography.
granoblastically: in a tesselar (mosaic) jumble.