Phil.Howerton [ I remember
an episode (no page & no precise information right now) VN
described to Edmund Wilson, related to the president of a
segregated college] The college. I believe, was Coker College
in Hartsville, South Carolina.
JM: Thank you! Following
your indication I searched BBoyd's AY ( Coker College,SC
and Spelman in Atlanta). The approximate dates led me to "Dear
Bunny-dear Volodya," page 97, when VN wrote to Wilson ( November 24,1942)
about a "Celebrated Negro scholar and organizer... told
me that when he went to England he was listed as a "Colonel" on the Channel
boat, because his name bore the addition "Col." on his passport."
Miscellany: While perusing AY, I came across an information which
interested me because of my recent vacations - when I was
chairlifted and heart-lifted towards a wondrous wild
waterfall over a field strewn with blue hydrangeas. In AY(467) Brian Boyd describes* how Nabokov, in high
summer "would often start off on a cable car or his favorite, a chairlift,
precursor of Ada's jikkers (magic carpets)".
I hadn't realized
that I'd been jikkering!
Also in B.Boyd's AY (464), I learned that there
had been moves "to have Roger Vadim direct 'Laughter in the Dark', in the
hope that Brigitte Bardot would star." Might the choice
for the name Vadim, in LATH, carry an added association to
this Roger V.? VN's relationship to BB (Brigitte, I mean) and Vadim
didn't develop further.
..........................................................................................................
*BB quotes
VN: "I find enchanting and dreamy in the best sense of
the word to glide in the morning sun from valley to timberline in that magic
seat, and watch from above myh own shadow - with the ghost of a butterfly net in
the ghost of a fist - as it keeps gently ascending in sitting profile along the
flowery slope below, among dancing Ringlets and skimming
Fritillaries."
From ADA I (ch.6 and 13): "Rolled up in its case was an old ‘jikker’ or skimmer, a blue magic
rug with Arabian designs...Because of the many collisions, collapses and other
accidents, especially numerous in sunset skies over idyllic fields, jikkers were
banned by the air patrol; but four years later Van ...bribed a local
mechanic to clean the thing...and many a summer day would they spend, his Ada
and he, hanging over grove and river or gliding at a safe ten-foot altitude
above surfaces of roads or roofs[...] The pleasure of suddenly discovering the
right knack of topsy turvy locomotion was rather like learning to man... those
delightful gliders called Magicarpets (or ‘jikkers’) that were given a boy on
his twelfth birthday...what a breathtaking long neural caress when one became
airborne..."
btw: is
it my impression or there is a mnemonic slip in the
lines above when 18 year-old Van glides with Ada in the
summer? (I've been equally skimming over the texts, so I'm not sure about
the chronologies).