Vera

by Stacy Schiff

102 knew she had been ridiculed: Boyd interview with VéN, January 9, 1985, Boyd archive.

  103 “This is a very private” to “from VN”: VéN to Iseman, September 14, 1967, PW.

  104 “VN was practically”: VéN to Canfield, December 2, 1967.

  105 the Pierre meeting: Interview with Iseman, May 19, 1995. Boyd interview with VéN, January 9, 1985, Boyd archive. Interview with Dan Lacy, April 27, 1998.

  106 “In the dimly-lit”: Iseman to Alan Cohen, December 4, 1967, PW.

  107 “choral and sculptured”: PF, 136.

  108 “in a rage”: VéN to Iseman, December 21, 1967.

  109 Minton was none: Interview with Minton, June 5, 1995.

  110 “Badminton”: VéN to Louba Schirman, May 22, 1968, VNA.

  111 The Rowohlt sessions: Interview with Helmut Frielinghaus, May 28, 1996.

  112 the marathons session were: VN to Rowohlt, April 17, 1974, VNA.

  113 “Everything,” reported Vera: VéN to DN, November 10, 1969, VNA.

  114 “Literature must be taken”: LRL, 105.

  115 “not only Veen’s muse:” Appel, The New York Times Book Review, May 14, 1969.

  116 “sun-and-shade games”: ADA, 579.

  117 One reviewer read: Matthew Hodgart, The New York Review of Books, May 22, 1969, 3–4.

  118 could not live: ADA, 575.

  119 “What the hell, Sir”: VN to Hodgart, May 12, 1969, SL, 450–51. Hodgart’s elegant apology, The New York Review of Books, July 10, 1969.

  120 “She is also, in a dimension”: Updike, The New Yorker, August 2, 1969, 67–73. Alfred Kazin arrived at the same conclusion, expressing great enthusiasm for VN but mustering only partial admiration for ADA. “It is too much about himself, his wife, his Russia-America, rather than an extension of the art that bears his name,” he declared. VN howled; an enterprising editor had the good sense to change—with Kazin’s permission—the “w” to an “l” in the eighth word. See Kazin, Bright Book of Life (Boston: Little Brown, 1971), 317. Interview with Alfred Kazin, November 10, 1996.

  121 Updike’s wrist: James Mossman, The Listener, October 23, 1969, 560, repr. in SO, 146. Boyd circumvented the problem by concluding that VN’s “married love for Véra Nabokov inspired” a number of works, Ada among them. In Alexandrov, ed., Garland Companion to Vladimir Nabokov, 6. Karlinsky explains the matter differently in “Nabokov’s Russian Games,” The New York Times Book Review, April 18, 1971.

  122 “But there are many”: Boyd interview with VéN, December 8, 1984, Boyd archive.

  123 Zina was only half-Jewish: VéN to Simon Karlinsky, December 10, 1986, VNA.

  124 Appel’s reaction: Interview with Appel, April 24, 1995.

  125 “petrified superpun”: LL, 122.

  126 Nabokov’s Waterloo: Martin Seymour-Smith, The Times Literary Supplement, October 2, 1969.

  127 “the greatest living”: Ron Sheppard, Time, May 23, 1969, 49.

  128 “like six-packs”: Taylor, McGraw-Hill to VN, June 6, 1969, VNA.

  129 “I don’t remember that”: Gilliatt, Vogue, March 1967.

  130 the same synthetic nostalgia: L’Espresso, November 1, 1959, 1.

  131 a half-bemused smile: Boyd interview with Appel, May 1, 1983, Boyd archive.

  132 knew nothing about Mozart: Interview with Fred Hills, April 7, 1995. Nor did she herself pad ignorance with eloquence. William Buckley once began a conversation about the New Testament; VéN bowed out with “I am not informed on that subject.” Interview with Buckley, December 12, 1996.

  133 spinning a yarn: Boyd interview with Berkman, Boyd archive. The Negresco opened for business in 1913.

  134 the story of the future Appels, and “Well, it’s a beautiful”: Interview with Appel, May 8, 1998.

  135 “Véra has a much better”: Interview with Appel, April 24, 1995.

  136 conversation was studded: William F. Buckley Jr., Buckley: The Right Word (New York: Random House, 1996), 380.

  137 “Defeat” to “she’s wrong”: Interview with Appel, April 19, 1995. ADA, 557.

  138 “under their new loads”: Updike, Life, January 13, 1967.

  139 deep affection for Nixon: Interview with Jason Epstein, May 11, 1998.

  140 wife did not flinch: Field, 1977, 24.

  141 like to choke her husband: Duffy notes, Time, PC.

  142 “imprudent and unwise”: VéN to Rolf, April 20, 1962.

  143 “Do you always”: Rolf to VéN, April 26, 1962.

  144 “we trust completely”: VéN to Rolf, February 1, 1963.

  145 “Goodbye. You are the only”: Rolf to VéN, Easter Sunday, 1963.

  146 banished her to an inhospitable: Interviews with Lillian Habinowski, March 25, 1998, E. Levin, September 1997.

  147 “an act of vandalism”: Rolf to the Nabokovs, September 1965, PC.

  148 “She is one of the most”: VéN to L. Massalsky, October 1, 1965.

  149 “My husband has been terribly”: VéN to Rolf, March 21, 1967.

  150 “I would rather keep”: VéN to Field, regarding his ms. this page, 1973.

  151 “In the middle 60s”: VéN to Joan Daly, June 7, 1969, PW.

  152 perfectly truthful, highly inaccurate: VéN to Rolf, July 29, 1969.

  153 much-needed month: Interview with L. Habinowski. Rolf’s “As It Is Written” appeared in The Partisan Review 37, no. 2, 1970.

  154 “the weather has finally”: VéN to Topazia Markevitch, June 19, 1965, VNA.

  155 Don’t be angry: VN to VéN, June 15, 1926, VNA.

  156 over Sunday lunch, and “Darling, you have”: Interview with Phyllis Christiansen, August 10, 1996.

  157 nothing remotely casual: Ellendea Proffer to author, May 9, 1997.

  158 constantly on the brink: Interview with Martha Duffy, November 14, 1995.

  159 loneliness seeping out: Interview with Nina Appel, August 7, 1996.

  160 “No, we do not feel”: VéN to Philippe Halsmann, February 9, 1969, VNA. Dieter Zimmer saw the situation differently. “My impression was that the problem was not loneliness but rather the necessity to fend off intruders.” To author, March 12, 1996.

  161 entirely happy on a desert: Interview with HS, July 11, 1995.

  162 provided a short list: Esslin, The New York Times Book Review, May 12, 1968, 4. To an Italian journalist, VN quipped: “When I really need people, I paint them on the walls of my cave,” Gaetano Tumiati, La Stampa, October 30, 1969.

  163 “We tell that story”: Interview with Dick Wimmer, December 1, 1997.

  164 many saw the public game: Interview with Christopher F. Givan, February 7, 1997. Two of VN’s American tennis opponents testified that he could not be lured from the baseline. Sports Illustrated’s Robert H. Boyle resorted to the same metaphor in recalling the couple’s relationship. “It was almost as if they played verbal tennis with each other—he hit the ball, and back it flew.” Interview with Boyle, October 7, 1998.

  165 “every major studio”: Lyons, The New York Post, September 27, 1968, 51.

  166 “You’re a child” to “head of Paramount”: Robert Evans, The Kid Stays in the Picture (New York: Hyperion, 1994), 128.

  167 all of January 1971: “He walks about the acropolises of my past with a tape recorder. It is sometimes difficult for the tourist; much is closed,” VN sighed, January 4, 1971, VN to Hessen.

  168 On the Proffer visit: Interview with Ellendea Proffer, May 31, 1995; E. Proffer to author, May 9, 1997.

  169 She could be warm: Interviews with Marie-Luce Parker, April 17, 1997; Nina Appel, August 7, 1996; Gennady and Alla Barabtarlo, May 26, 1996.

  170 believed her the most interesting, and It hardly mattered: Interview with Nikki Smith, April 9, 1997. See also Alison Bishop in Gibian and Parker, eds., Achievements, 216–17.

  171 VN for the Nobel: McGraw-Hill correspondence, January 6, 1969, Lilly; Karlinsky to VéN, October 16, 1980, VNA.

  172 in a gray suit: Interview with Michael Bergman, May 17, 1996.

  173 “It is no use raking up”: VéN
to Lena Massalsky, May 19, 1966.

  174 “And thank God that”: VéN to L. Massalsky, February 22, 1967.

  175 “ ‘Avorton’ is a French” and “You don’t”: L. Massalsky to VéN, June 22, 1967.

  176 “Of course, I did not understand”: VéN to L. Massalsky, June 27, 1967.

  177 managed to insult: VéN to Goldenweiser, June 15, 1968. She apologized for the behavior of her sister, whom she called a sick individual. Lena had mixed feelings about the reparations payments and may have said as much, Interview with Michaël Massalsky, September 12, 1996; also L. Massalsky to VéN, March 14, 1968.

  178 source of continual: Interview with V. Crespi, January 25, 1995.

  179 “What would you” and “What did you say”: Interview with V. Crespi, July 4, 1998.

  180 examined Crespi’s teenaged: Interview with Marcantonio Crespi, May 5, 1998.

  181 painfully, cripplingly shy: Interview with V. Crespi, April 16, 1998. Rolf had noted the same.

  182 “I trust it isn’t the second” and “It looks like”: Interview with V. Crespi, October 24, 1996.

  183 “I could always” and “No thank you”: Interview with V. Crespi, January 25, 1995.

  184 “A man of Chaplin’s”: Interview with V. Crespi, July 4, 1998.

  185 The de Rougemont dinner: Interviews with Allegra Markevitch Chapuis, Natalie Markevitch Frieden. Topazia Markevitch, Le Matin des Livres, May 15, 1981.

  186 “You’ve been a bad influence”: Interview with V. Crespi, October 21, 1996.

  187 alcohol destroys: Robert Ruebman to author, April 22, 1996. McCarthy made the prohibitionist remark to Boyd, Boyd interview of January 12, 1983, Boyd archive. This was something VéN shared with Sibyl Shade.

  188 “The wine is gone” to “off the balcony”: Interview with Horst Tappé, February 10, 1997.

  189 “We simply could not”: VéN to Mr. Westbrook, December 13, 1967.

  190 “We are not with you”: VéN to Alison Bishop, March 13, 1968.

  191 “dumb intellectuals”: Levy, The New York Times Magazine, 36.

  192 Russian-Chinese border skirmish: Duffy notes, Time.

  193 “an irresponsible demagogue”: VéN to E. Levin, July 27, 1972, PC.

  194 “Oh, dear Lena, if only”: VéN to E. Levin, August 19, 1969, PC.

  195 “Richard the Lion” and “I thus achieved”: Alison Jolly to author, June 21, 1998.

  196 “We didn’t regret”: VéN to E. Levin, June 3, 1969, PC.

  197 “We are the senior authorities”: VéN to E. Levin, March 12, 1971, PC.

  198 “that Mr. Watergate fellow”: George Feifer, “Vladimir Nabokov,” Saturday Review, November 27, 1976, 21.

  199 did not have a political mind: Interview with Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., October 9, 1996. In VéN’s analysis, her husband’s world was built entirely on daydreaming, art, and scientific schemas. “These components simply left no room for political and economic notions.” VéN to Karlinsky, November 20, 1978, VNA. See also Gold, in Gibian and Parker, Achievements, 53–54.

  200 “When I see a cute young woman”: VéN to Elena Levin, June 3, 1969.

  201 “In her letters there is”: VéN to Karlinsky, February 28, 1968, VNA.

  202 “Some day, I hope”: VéN to Karlinsky, September 21, 1987, VNA.

  203 “The Germans” and “The Americans”: Clarke, Esquire, July 1975, 132–33.

  204 “Without being enthusiastic”: VéN to Schebeko, March 16, 1973.

  205 center of the world: Interview with Evan Harrar, August 26, 1996.

  206 They were afraid: Boyd interview with Appel, April 30, 1983, Boyd archive; interview with Ellendea Proffer.

  207 “I keep receiving warnings”: VéN to V. Crespi, November 15, 1967.

  208 the latest scuttlebutt: Interviews with Crespi; Loo; Anne Dyer Murphy, June 2, 1995 (for Mr. Pynchon); Jill Krementz (Joyce Maynard); George Weidenfeld, April 21, 1997 (for Jason Epstein); Mati Laanso, March 26, 1997.

  209 “Fuck Communism”: Duffy notes, Time.

  210 separate bedrooms: Interview with Minton, June 5, 1995.

  211 “I don’t like your shirts”: Interview with Boyd, November 21, 1996.

  212 “The more you leave me out” and “I am always”: Boyd interview with VéN, January 14, 1980, Boyd archive.

  10 THE LAND BEYOND THE VEIL

  1 had the distinct sense: VéN to Berkman, March 19, 1965.

  2 could not answer: VéN to Lazar, September 9, 1968, VNA.

  3 “I apologize for this”: VéN to Field, December 27, 1971.

  4 “her attention span”: Interview with DN, November 1, 1996.

  5 “phenomonal capacity”: Goldenweiser to VéN, December 13, 1969, Bakhm.

  6 sun, and salvation: VéN to Goldenweiser, April 12, 1970, Bakhm.

  7 “8 rooms, 3 baths” and “golden-voiced”: VN to VéN, April 8, 1970, VNA.

  8 “some kind of lexicomaniac”: Publishers Weekly, September 25, 1972.

  9 “it did not matter”: VéN to Mondadori, March 26, 1970, VNA.

  10 threw up his arms: VéN to Mondadori, August 28, 1970, VNA.

  11 “The rest heroically”: VN diary, December 3, 1970, VNA.

  12 “All writers should”: Duffy notes for Time, PC.

  13 “Lack of imagination”: VéN to Daly, November 1, 1971, PW.

  14 “I wonder what other writers”: VéN to Joan Daly, June 29, 1970, PW.

  15 folders and files: As early as 1963, VéN felt the Montreux apartment too small. VéN to Anna Feigin, May 16, 1963.

  16 “Oh Miss Loo” to “just trying to scare you”: Interviews with Beverly Jane Loo, June 2, 1995, November 1995, May 9, 1998. The other New York publisher to whom she sent love was Epstein.

  17 “I don’t know”: VéN to the Levins, Christmas 1970, PC.

  18 “How sadly:”: VéN to E. Levin, Christmas, c. 1972, PC. As for Solzhenitsyn, he wrote like a shoemaker. Interview with E. Levin, June 6, 1995.

  19 “We still have not”: VéN to Barbara Epstein, February 26, 1975, VNA.

  20 “Le doux M. Nabokov”: VéN to Ergaz, February 3, 1959.

  21 “acting as plenipotentiary”: Field, 1977, 9.

  22 “I don’t think about my letters”: VéN to Boyd, May 2, 1986, VNA.

  23 denied every remark: VéN to Field, December 5, 1971. She chastised Boyd: “You see how unreliable [an] ‘interview’ can be? I can swear that I never said any of what is on this page.” VéN to Boyd, notes to his Chapter 9, VNA.

  24 “I am sorry”: VéN to Appel, November 8, 1974.

  25 “shopworn”: VéN to the Bishops, June 21, 1960.

  26 He felt she would have denied: Interview with Boyd, November 23, 1996.

  27 “was surprised by my reflection”: VéN to Boyd, March 19, 1989, VNA.

  28 her eyes never left: Interview with Sophie Lannes, Lannes in L’Express, June 30, 1975.

  29 “sharp-witted”: VéN to Sonia Slonim, January 20, 1967.

  30 “again impair our personal”: Wilson to VN, March 8, 1971, NWL, 333. VN’s animus toward Wilson was already quite clear to a 1969 visitor, Duffy interview. After the May 1957 visit VéN reported on the gout which had disabled Wilson, revealing no ill will. She had been surprised, however, that what Wilson felt he needed to recover was “a glass of whisky, undefiled by water” (VéN to Epstein, June 1, 1957). In his American Scholar piece, Meyers suggests that VéN had been offended by Wilson and had urged her husband to retaliate, a supposition for which there is no basis. See also Wilson, Upstate, 156–63.

  31 A faculty wife: Interview with Frances Lange, September 12, 1996.

  32 bellowed that: SO, 218–19.

  33 “For my part”: VéN to E. Levin, July 27, 1972, PC.

  34 better conveyed the torture: VéN to Goldenweiser, January 15, 1973, Bakhm., VéN to Schebeko, February 19, 1973, VéN to Elena Levin, May 9, 1973, PC.

  35 “second-rate books”: Philip Oakes, The Sunday Times (London), June 22, 1969.

  36 “the true reader’s main�
��: TT, 75.

  37 “angry panic” and “prepared”: VN diary, January 9 and 11, 1973, VNA.

  38 “cretinous”: VN to Samuel Rosoff, March 23, 1973, SL, 513.

  39 “You have written”: VéN to Field, March 10, 1973.

  40 “She so often put”: Interview with V. Crespi, May 3, 1998.

  41 “which teems with factual”: VéN to Parker, December 12, 1973. Field had his work cut out for him. For Paul, Weiss (May 25, 1973, PW) VN annotated the list of people to whom the biographer had spoken: “Dislikes me personally, I hardly know him, an enemy, knew him very little, unknown to me, knew him slightly, not sure ever met him, never met him, unknown to me, a cousin, a man of great imagination, saw me last in 1916, almost certainly a figment of AF’s imagination.”

  42 By page two: VéN copy of Field, 1977, VNA.

  43 “This still is not the long”: VéN to Joan Daly, August 29, 1973, PW.

  44 “I know that he doesn’t”: VéN to DN, January 14, 1974, VNA.

  45 “We can only plead”: VéN to Karlinsky, February 22, 1974, VNA.

  46 “It has not been” to “of the century”: Salter, People, March 17, 1975. The difficulty in accepting a happy marriage at face value is not new; VN could nearly have added it to his short list of taboo topics in the afterword to LO, 314. Writing of another hugely productive couple, Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Carolyn G. Heilbrun has observed: “The marriage of a woman and man of talent must constantly be reinvented; its failure has already been predicted by conventional society, and its success is usually … disbelieved or denied.” Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life (New York: Ballantine, 1988), 81.

  47 “High-born Russian ladies”: Rosalind Baker Wilson to author, September 28, 1994.

  48 parted with Russian: Nadezhda Mandelstam conveyed this very message to Montreux in 1975, via the Proffers (Carl Proffer to the Nabokovs, November 12, 1975, Michigan). Solzhenitsyn too lamented VN’s having abandoned Russia and her themes. E. Stein, “Reminiscences of Nabokov,” Russkaya Mysl, July 13, 1978, 11.

  49 “Jewified”: Krivoshein to Z. Shakhovskoy, Amherst.

  50 for commercial gain: Jeanne Vronskaya, The Independent, April 16, 1991. For a catalogue of VéN’s offenses, see Shakhovskoy’s addendum to “In Search of Nabokov,” Amherst.

  51 “One has to know how”: VN, “The Anniversary,” Rul, November 18, 1927.