The Maar/Zimmer exchange is nothing short of a boxing match. Gloves off, gentlemen! Is there any reason Mr Zimmer did not comment on what (at least I thought) was the most intriguing part of Mr Maar’s letter in the TLS? Namely the (supposed) references to the ‘pale Spanish child’ made by VN himself in ‘Lolita’:

>In the second chapter, Humbert Humbert watches Lolita among other nymphets at the swimming-pool, and recalls that none ever surpassed her in desirability, with a few exceptions: "once in the hopeless case of a pale Spanish child, the daughter of a heavy-jawed nobleman, and another time 'mais je divague'". Why did Nabokov introduce this Spanish daughter of a nobleman as the only child capable of competing with Lolita? She lacks any obvious function in the text. On the following pages she appears inconspicuously once again as Lolita's little Spanish friend. She is "the lesser nymphet, a diaphanous darling", with whom Lolita jumps a rope. On leaving the scene with Lo, Humbert flashes a smile at this "shy, dark-haired page-girl of my princess", who thereupon disappears from the novel.
Who is smiling here to whom - the paedophile Humbert at a missed chance, or his creator at the lesser Spanish nymphet of the aristocrat Lichberg, who had supplied the services of a page to the true princess? Referential mania? If only one ever knew with this Rastelli.<

Could there be/is there any other explanation (come on, VN heavyweights!) for this Spanish child than the one put forward by Maar?

TA Colquhoun