In his commentary and index to Shade's poem Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions Sylvia O’Donnell (née O'Connell), a wealthy socialite with several ex-husbands who helps the ex-king immigrate to America and gets him a job at Wordsmith University:
John Shade's heart attack (Oct. 17, 1958) practically coincided with the disguised king's arrival in America where he descended by parachute from a chartered plane piloted by Colonel Montacute, in a field of hay-feverish, rank-flowering weeds, near Baltimore whose oriole is not an oriole. It had all been perfectly timed, and he was still wrestling with the unfamiliar French contraption when the Rolls-Royce from Sylvia O'Donnell's manor turned toward his green silks from a road and approached along the mowntrop, its fat wheels bouncing disapprovingly and its black shining body slowly gliding along. Fain would I elucidate this business of parachuting but (it being a matter of mere sentimental tradition rather than a useful manner of transportation) this is not strictly necessary in these notes to Pale Fire. While Kingsley, the British chauffeur, an old and absolutely faithful retainer, was doing his best to cram the bulky and ill-folded parachute into the boot, I relaxed on a shooting stick he had supplied me with, sipping a delightful Scotch and water from the car bar and glancing (amid an ovation of crickets and that vortex of yellow and maroon butterflies that so pleased Chateaubriand on his arrival in America) at an article in The New York Times in which Sylvia had vigorously and messily marked out in red pencil a communication from New Wye which told of the poet's hospitalization. I had been looking forward to meeting my favorite American poet who, as I felt sure at the moment, would die long before the Spring Term, but the disappointment was little more than a mental shrug of accepted regret, and discarding the newspaper, I looked around me with enchantment and physical wellbeing despite the congestion in my nose. Beyond the field the great green steps of turf ascended to the multicolored coppices; one could see above them the white brow of the manor; clouds melted into the blue. Suddenly I sneezed, and sneezed again. Kingsley offered me another drink but I declined it, and democratically joined him in the front seat. My hostess was in bed, suffering from the aftereffects of a special injection that she had been given in anticipation of a journey to a special place in Africa. In answer to my "Well, how are you?" she murmured that the Andes had been simply marvelous, and then in a slightly less indolent tone of voice inquired about a notorious actress with whom her son was said to be living in sin. Odon, I said, had promised me he would not marry her. She inquired if I had had a good hop and dingled a bronze bell. Good old Sylvia! She had in common with Fleur de Fyler a vagueness of manner, a languor of demeanor which was partly natural and partly cultivated as a convenient alibi for when she was drunk, and in some wonderful way she managed to combine that indolence with volubility reminding one of a slow-speaking ventriloquist who is interrupted by his garrulous doll. Changeless Sylvia! During three decades I had seen from time to time, from palace to palace, that same flat nut-colored bobbed hair, those childish pale-blue eyes, the vacant smile, the stylish long legs, the willowy hesitating movements. (note to Line 691)
O'Donnell, Sylvia, née O'Connell, born 1895? 1890?, the much-traveled, much-married mother of Odon (q. v.), 149, 691; after marrying and divorcing college president Leopold O'Donnell in 1915, father of Odon, she married Peter Gusev, first Duke of Rahl, and graced Zembla till about 1925 when she married an Oriental prince met in Chamonix; after a number of other more or less glamorous marriages, she was in the act of divorcing Lionel Lavender, cousin of Joseph, when last seen in this Index.
A French writer, politician, diplomat and historian, François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand (1868-1948) is the author of René (a short novel, 1802). Renée O'Connell-Mikhailovski (1891–1981) was a notable twentieth-century Russian porcelain artist, painter, and graphic artist of French-Irish descent. She studied under the famous illustrator Ivan Bilibin (1876-1942) at the drawing school of the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in Saint Petersburg. She later became Bilibin's romantic partner and artistic collaborator (they lived together in 1912-1917; after the 1917 Revolution, Bilibin emigrated to Egypt and then to Paris, but in 1935 he returned to Leingrad where he died of exhaustion during the siege of the city in World War Two). The Bilibin family was related to the Botkins, Dmitri Botkin (an art collector, 1829-1889) and his brother Sergey Botkin (a celebrated physician, 1832-1889). Renée O'Connell-Mikhailovski was closely aligned with the prominent Mir iskusstva (World of Art) movement, which prioritized aestheticism and traditional folklore over rigid realism. She lived and worked in St. Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad her entire life, gaining prominent recognition as a talented designer for porcelain and theater productions. Sylvia O'Donnel's son Odon (stage name of Donald O'Donnell) is a world-famous actor and Zemblan patriot who helps the king to escape from Zembla. Sylvia O'Donnell's first name brings to mind Silvia Hamilton (1910-1994), an intimate friend of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (a French writer and aviator, 1900-1944) in New York City. Just prior to returning to Algiers to resume his work as a Free French Air Force pilot, Saint-Exupéry gave her the working manuscript (with the author's illustrations) of his fairy tale Le Petit Prince ("The Little Prince," 1943). The parachute and aviation mosaics by Soviet artist Alexander Deyneka (1899-1969) are part of a famous series titled Sutki sovetskogo neba (Twenty-Four Hours in the Soviet Sky, 1938). It graces the ceiling of the Mayakovskaya Moscow Metro station:
