Letters to Véra

by Vladimir Nabokov

  ‘Coridon’: Local varieties of the butterfly Lysandra (now Polyommatus) coridon. Although VN published a new species name, Lysandra cormion, for the butterflies he had caught, he was aware they could prove to be hybrids between Lysandra coridon and Meleageria (now Polyommatus) daphnis, as was shown conclusively to be the case in 1989, by Klaus G. Schurian, in Nachrichten des Entomologischen Vereins Apollo, N.F. 10:2 (1989), pp. 183–92 and 12:3 (1991), pp. 193–5.

  Mrs Marshall: Unidentified.

  curriculum: Curriculum vitae.

  Letter of 7 April 1939

  belle-sœur: Fr. ‘sister-in-law’.

  Major Crawford: Unidentified.

  Guitry: Sacha Guitry (1885–1957), French actor, playwright, film director and scriptwriter.

  as near me as Ilyusha is to us: As Fondaminsky’s apartment is to that of the Nabokovs in Paris.

  our former street: In 1919–20, VDN, EN and their children lived in London, at 6 Elm Park Gardens in Chelsea.

  to look Priel through to the end: Priel’s translation into French of Invitation to a Beheading.

  Osya: Iosif (Osya) Bromberg.

  Lourie: Unidentified.

  Mme Tyrkov: Ariadna Tyrkov-Williams.

  Postcard of 8 April 1939

  Lee: Asher Lee.

  on Priel: I.e. on Priel’s translation into French of Invitation to a Beheading.

  J’essaye de faire mon petit Kardakoff: Fr. ‘I’m trying to do my little Kardakoff’. Nikolay Kardakov, entomologist.

  Denis Roche is right: VN’s confirmation of the spelling of the name of another of his translators into French. Written vertically, along the card’s right margin.

  Postcard of 9 April 1939

  the holiday: Easter.

  Flora: Solomon.

  father has just died: Businessman Grigory Iosifovich Benenson (1860–1939), on the board of the former Russo-English Commerce Bank.

  Vera Markovna: Haskell.

  her husband: Arnold Haskell.

  Letter of 10 April 1939

  M. Sumarokov: Count Mikhail Nikolaevich Sumarokov-Elston (1893–1970), in the 1910s Russia’s most famous tennis champion.

  Wilding, McLaughlin, Gobert: Anthony Frederick Wilding (1883–1915), Maurice Evans McLoughlin (1890–1957), André Gobert (1890–1951), tennis champions.

  his little boy: Aleksandr Pavlovich Shuvalov (b. 4 May 1934, six days before DN) would become director of the London Theatre Museum.

  Lady McDougall: Unidentified.

  Nad. Iv.: Nadezhda Ivanovna Sablin.

  like the Cap d’Antibes cook: The Nabokovs had lived in Cap d’Antibes from late August to mid-October 1938.

  Nef.: Unidentified.

  N.I.: Nadezhda Ivanovna Sablin.

  Regina: Unidentified.

  Letter of 11 April 1939

  S. F. Protection: Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, founded in 1933 in Britain to assist refugee scholars.

  botanist-explorer: Vasily Vasilievich Sapozhnikov (1861–1924), Russian botanist and geographer.

  like mine: Konstantin Godunov-Cherdyntsev, the father of Fyodor, the protagonist of The Gift, is a lepidopterist who explores in the Altai and other parts of Central Asia; Fyodor imagines accompanying him on his last voyage, from which Count Godunov-Cherdyntsev never returns.

  Her husband: Vladimir Vyacheslavovich Chernavin (1887–1949), professor of ichthyology; escaped the Gulag in 1932 with his wife Tatyana Vasilievna and son Andrey.

  Three of the children … the fourth: Gleb Struve’s four children: Marina, Andrey, Nina and Danila.

  Yulen’ka: Yulia Struve, Gleb Struve’s wife.

  Mme Shklovsky: Zinaida Davydovna Shklovsky (?–1945), editor and political columnist, widow of Isaak Vladimirovich Shklovsky, pen-name Dioneo (1864–1935), journalist, ethnographer, writer.

  Rami: Unidentified.

  Wells: H. G. Wells.

  Evans (a specialist on Hesperidae): Brigadier William Harry Evans (1876–1956), lepidopterist, British army officer, served in India; Hesperidae, the family of typical Skipper butterflies.

  Uncle Kostya: Konstantin Nabokov.

  Bubka: DN.

  Letter of 12 April 1939

  Sebastian: VN’s novel The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, for which he was trying to find a publisher in London.

  the play: The Event or The Waltz Invention.

  Morrison: Unidentified.

  Birket: George Arthur Birkett (1890–1954), professor at the University of Sheffield, and author, with Raymond Beazley and Nevill Forbes, of Russia from the Varangians to the Bolsheviks (1918).

  Hicks: Possibly John Richard Hicks (1904–89), economist, then professor at the University of Manchester (1938–46), where, from 1933, Evgeny Vinaver taught French language and literature.

  Vinaver’s contact with him: VN drew an arrow connecting ‘him’ to ‘Hicks’.

  Eva: Lutyens.

  Sergey: Sergey Rodzyanko.

  the play: An English translation of The Event or The Waltz Invention.

  Leslie Banks: Leslie Banks (1890–1951), actor; in the 1930s starred in several films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

  Walpole: Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole (1884–1941), prolific British novelist.

  Osya: Iosif Bromberg.

  Tyrants: ‘Istreblenie Tiranov’ (‘Tyrants Destroyed’), Russkie zapiski, 8–9, August–September 1938, pp. 3–29; reprinted in VF; translated by DN with VN in TD.

  Priel: Who was translating Invitation to a Beheading into French.

  Letter of 13 April 1939

  14 years!: 15 April was the anniversary of their wedding.

  his father’s: Aleksandr Ivanovich Konovalov (1875–1949), politician and statesman, businessman, pianist.

  sicher ist sicher: Ger. ‘sure is sure’ (‘better safe than sorry’).

  the Saigon address: Previously, the Nabokovs lived at 8 rue de Saigon, in Paris; they moved to the Hotel Royal Versailles in February 1939.

  Le Marois: Hotel Royal Versailles, 31 rue Le Marois.

  Glebushka’s: Gleb Struve.

  Achilles K.: Unidentified. ‘Akhill K.’ in Russian.

  Ariadna: Tyrkov-Williams.

  Elisabeth Hill: Dame Elizabeth Mary Hill (1900–1996), Russian literature and Slavonic studies scholar, from 1936 at Cambridge.

  au net: Fr. ‘into fair-copy form’.

  Charova: Vera Sergeevna Charova (?–1971), actress, theatre director, founder of the London Russian Theatre Group of Drama Actors.

  Klamm’s messenger: In Das Schloß (The Castle, 1926), by Franz Kafka (1883–1924).

  Yellow-blue bus: Plays on the sound of the Russian ya lyublyu vas (‘I love you’), which follows.

  Letter of 14 April 1939

  Jules Romain[s]: Jules Romains (1885–1972), French novelist, playwright, poet and essayist.

  Shpunt: Unidentified.

  Mme Vorontsov-Dashkov: Countess Lyudmila Nikolaevna Vorontsov-Dashkov (née Zeidler, 1885–1943), second wife of Count Illarion Illarionovich Vorontsov-Dashkov (1877–1932).

  British Museum: On Great Russell Street.

  Miss McDuggals: VN spelled the name ‘McDougall’ in previous letters (10 and 11 April 1939). Unidentified.

  N. I.: Nadezhda Ivanovna Sablin.

  ‘avenir’: Fr. ‘future’.

  Letter of 15 April 1939

  Mrs Curran: Minnie Beryl Curran, secretary of the Royal Historical Society.

  Goudy: Alexander Porter Goudy, former lecturer in Russian at the University of Cambridge. When Goudy retired in 1936, Elizabeth Hill took over his position.

  tsar Vlad. Kir.: Grand Prince Vladimir Kirillovich Romanov (1917–92), from 1938 head of the Romanov House in exile.

  Letter of 16 April 1939

  from the Vysotsky family: Unidentified.

  a very talentless and corny play: The Corn is Green (1938) by George Emlyn Williams (1905–87), premiered at the Duchess Theatre, London.

  Sybil Thorndike: Agnes Sybil Thorndike (1882–1976; Dame Sybil from 1970), Brit
ish actress.

  Hellers: Vera Heller (née Lubrzynska), Eva’s sister and business partner, was a clothing designer at their fashion house in London.

  Lutyens: Robert Lutyens (1901–72), architect with his father, the famous architect Sir Edward Lutyens (1869–1944).

  we will end up with a fatal set of nannies: Following the Russian proverb, ‘A child with seven nannies has only one eye’.

  ‘rodnenkiy’ and ‘smeshno!’: Rus. ‘My very own’; ‘funny’.

  Letter postmarked 17 April 1939

  Date: 16–IV–39 was a mistake on VN’s part. He had written and posted a letter on 16 April from the Sablins’ in Brechin Place; this letter is postmarked and was written on 17 April, the day he moved to the Tsetlin apartment.

  Mai(divale): Maida Vale, a residential district in West London.

  the Romanian: Rostislav Donici, translating Kamera obskura for the Romanian publishing firm Vremea. The outbreak of war appears to have prevented publication.

  Flora: Solomon.

  Evg. Vasil.’s: Evgeny Vasilievich Sablin.

  baroness’s: Budberg.

  Postcard of 18 April 1939

  baroness’s: Budberg.

  they are reading: Presumably this means the publishers’ readers are still reading The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.

  Misha Lubrz.: Mikhail Efimovich Lubrzynsky, brother of Eva Lutyens, and VN’s Cambridge classmate.

  What a pen: The postcard is written thickly, with a blunt post-office pen.

  Serg. Rodz.: Sergey Rodzyanko.

  Osya: Iosif Bromberg.

  Spurrier: Unidentified.

  Letter of 19 April 1939

  Hotel Royal Versailles … : The address is crossed out.

  Zetlin: VN’s spelling here; an alternative transliteration for ‘Tsetlin’.

  Dennison Ross: Sir Edward Denison Ross, linguist, with whom VN had dined in February 1937.

  Sir Bernard: Pares.

  Samuel N. Harper: Samuel Northrup Harper (1882–1943), professor of Russian (1906–43) at the University of Chicago.

  Beausobre: Julia de Beausobre (née Yulia Mikhaylovna Kazarin, 1893–1979), later Lady Namier, first married to the Russian diplomat Nikolay de Beausobre. After his death in 1932, she was interned in a Soviet concentration camp; on her release in 1935 she came to England, where she married Lewis (later Sir Lewis) Namier, the historian, in 1947. Her memoir, The Woman Who Could Not Die, was published in 1938.

  Sir Alfred Mond: Sir Alfred Moritz Mond (1868–1930), from 1928 Baron Melchett, British industrialist, financier and politician.

  the Romanian: Donici.

  the old man: Iosif Hessen.

  Postcard postmarked 20 April 1939

  his cousin: Alan Strode Campbell Ross (1907–80), linguist, lecturer in English language at the University of Leeds (1929–40).

  Gams: Unidentified.

  Halpern’s: Aleksandr Yakovlevich Halpern (1879–1956), lawyer, former chargé d’affaires of the Russian provisional government in 1917.

  SPELLTACALL: This word (sel’takat’) presumably echoes some word which DN has invented and VéN has reported to VN.

  Letter of 21 April 1939

  terrible: EN died at the hospital on 2 May 1939.

  Parry: Albert Parry (1901–92), Russian-born scholar of Russian history, who had discussed ‘Sirin’ in an early overview of Russian émigré literature (see letter postmarked 23 April 1937). After earning a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1938, he founded the Department of Russian Studies at Colgate University, New York.

  Trofimov: Mikhail Vasilievich Trofimov (?–1948), lecturer in, then professor of, Russian (1919–45) at Manchester University.

  Silvikrin: Medicinal shampoo.

  Valya Tsetlin: Valentin Mikhaylovich Tsetlin (Valentine Wolf Zetlin, 1912–2007), future psychoanalyst.

  Letter of 1 June 1939

  Politzer: Ronald Politzer, publicity director at Collins, British publisher founded in 1819.

  Lubrzynsky: Mikhail Lubrzynsky.

  Colonel Clive Garsia: Lieutenant-Colonel Willoughby Clive Garsia (1881–1961), lecturer at the Staff College, Camberley, Surrey, near London.

  Otto Thien: Otto Theis (1881–1966), American-born, London-based editor and literary agent. VN spells his name variously as Thien, Theis, Theiss.

  Pneumothorax: VN was hoping to spend part of the summer in the Savoy Alps. Apparently, he and VéN had discussed renting in the village of Seythenex, which he transforms into ‘Pneumothorax’.

  se pique de zoologie: Fr. ‘prides himself on his zoology’.

  Col. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom: Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, whose autobiographical classic Seven Pillars of Wisdom (1922) recounts his experiences during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks in 1916–18.

  Letter of 2 June 1939

  Whites: More generally, butterflies of the Pieridae family; more specifically, the white butterflies in the sub-family Pierinae, like the familiar Large (Cabbage) White, Pieris brassicae, and the Small (Cabbage) White, Pieris rapae.

  ‘My double and I’: Nikolay Gubsky, My Double and I: Sentimental Adventures (London: William Heinemann, 1939).

  Thien: Theis.

  looks like Silberman: Silbermann, a quirky character in The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, Chs. 13–14, ‘a little man with bushy eyebrows … big shiny nose … shiny smile … bald brow … bright brown eyes’.

  Moura: Baroness Maria (Moura) Budberg.

  Theis’s wife: Louise Morgan (1883–1964), American-born journalist.

  N. Chronicle: News Chronicle, British daily formed by the merger of the Daily Chronicle and the Daily News in 1930, and absorbed into the Daily Mail in 1960.

  Vera Markovna: Vera Haskell.

  Pio: Korvin-Piotrovsky.

  Adamovich … reciprocal shamelessness: Georgy Adamovich, ‘Literatura v “Russkikh zapiskakh” [No. 17]’, Poslednie novosti, 1 June 1939, p. 3: Piotrovsky is ‘a poet, rarely appearing in our local press, very skilful and demanding of himself … His mode is something like [Aleksandr] Blok, dried off and cleaned up a little, as if checked by Pushkin.’ VN was a long-time opponent of what he saw as Adamovich’s favourable reviews for sale, for the price, say, of a restaurant dinner (see Pnin, p. 54: ‘selected among the Parisian Russians an influential literary critic, Zhorzhik Uranski, and for a champagne dinner at the Ougolok had the old boy devote his next feuilleton in one of the Russian-language newspapers to an appreciation of Liza’s muse on whose chestnut curls Zhorzhik calmly placed Anna Akhmatova’s coronet’).

  Arn. Bennett: Arnold Bennett (1867–1931), prolific British novelist and journalist. His diaries have not been published in full; VN may refer to Bennett’s bestseller, How to Live on 24 Hours a Day (1910), or his Self and Self-Management: Essays about Existing (1918).

  gr. pr.: Grand Prince Vsevolod Ioannovich (1914–73), next in line to the Russian throne after Grand Prince Vladimir Kirillovich. On 31 May 1939 he married morganatically Lady Mary Lygon (1910–82), thereby invalidating his claim to the throne.

  Aunt Bebesha: Nadezhda Wonlyar-Lyarsky, known as ‘Aunt Baby’.

  Misha L.: Lubrzynsky.

  dans le courant: Fr. ‘in the course of’.

  lie down to write: Exactly what is not clear. After The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, finished in January 1939, VN did not begin any new fiction in English until Bend Sinister, started perhaps in October 1941. Since this novel seems to have been sparked by Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 (prompting VN, for all his hope that the Soviets would defeat the Nazis, to conflate and critique German and Russian totalitarianisms) and reflected the strain of trying to extricate VéN and DN from Europe after the war had broken out, it seems unlikely to have been the work he anticipates writing here. His next major fictions in Russian would be the novella ‘Volshebnik’ (‘The Enchanter’), a prototype of Lolita, written in October and November 1939, and the abandoned novel Solus Rex, a forerunner in some ways of Pale Fire, begun some tim
e late in 1939, but there is too little information to know which, if either, of these fictions VN thinks here of treating in English.

  ONE-TWO, ONE-TWO … BANG!: Possibly a reference to DN’s learning to roller-skate.

  Letter of 3 June 1939

  Vera H.: Vera Heller.

  Capt. Riley: Norman Denbigh Riley (1890–1979), British entomologist, Keeper of Entomology at the British Museum (Natural History). Much later VN would review L. G. Higgins and N. D. Riley’s Collins guide, A Field Guide to the Butterflies of Britain and Europe: ‘Rebel’s Blue, Bryony White’, Times Educational Supplement, 23 October 1970, p. 19; reprinted in SO, pp. 331–5.

  meladon: His 1938 Moulinet catch, Lysandra cormion, now known to be a cross between Polyommatus (Lysandra) coridon and Polyommatus (Meleageria) daphnis: see note to letter of 6 April 1939.

  Stempfer: Henri Stempffer (1894–1978), French lepidopterist.

  a famous run-in over carswelli-arcilani: In 1926 the amateur lepidopterist Morris Carswell (1862–1942), after catching a butterfly in Murcia new to him, passed it on to Stempffer, who identified it as a new sub-species, which he named in Carswell’s honour, ‘Cupido minimus carswelli TTTS’, Soc Boll. FRCS. Ent. (1927), p. 247. The same year, Riley named it as a new species, Cupido arcilasis Riley, from specimens in the same locality collected by Carswell’s friend Cooke: ‘A New European Lycaenid: Cupido arcilacis’, Entomologist, 60 (1927), pp. 269–76. The next year, Stempffer, after a detailed morphological examination of the butterfly and its congeners, concluded it was a new species, in ‘Contribution à l’etude de Cupido carswelli Stempffer’, Encycl. Ent. Ser. B. III Lep., 3 (1928), pp. 105–15. Riley responded in ‘Cupido carswelli Stempffer = Cupido arcilacis Riley’, Entomologist, 61, pp. 38, 91, but his species name was ultimately invalidated. The specific status of Cupido carswelli, often in dispute, was eventually resolved in Felipe Gil-T., ‘Cupido carswelli (STEMPFFER, 1927): morphology of its chrysalis and genitalia compared with those of Cupido minimus (FUESSLY, 1775) and Cupido lorquinii (HERRICH-SCHÄFFER, 1847) (Lepidoptera, Lycaenidae)’, Atalanta, 37 (1/2) (September 2006), pp. 150–60.