Why would he explicitly tell his son of his low opinion of theories that Shade and Kinbote are the same person if he intended them to be a Jekyll-and-Hyde combination? This is my simple point.
Dear Anthony
I think you are confusing my theory with other theories regarding the relationship of Kinbote and Shade.
No one on this List came up with the Shade = Kinbote solution until I did - - and that was many years after Nabokov had died. I was not the first one to come up with this solution, but I'll return to that.
The theories that were propounded on this List or by other academics centered around two ideas: the single author and the dual author theories. Among those who argued for the single author theory the Shadeans believed that Shade had "faked" his death and wrote the commentary as a character he invented (Kinbote) and the Kinboteans said Shade was the invention, Kinbote the only author.
It was to these ideas that Nabokov was making the comments you refer to.
The only other person that I know of who appears to have come to the same conclusion I did is Harry M Geduld, the editor of "The Definitive Jekyll and Hyde Companion" (1983). My memory is that in his introduction to the book he simply refers to Pale Fire as one of the many sequels and retellings of the J & H story. Even this obscure reference was made five years after Nabokov's death.
Carolyn