JM: Ada's Charles Nicot and Nicholas Tobakoff( but I quote from memory).
AS: Ivan Tobak* (Cordula's first husband), Shura Tobak, a Jewish musician (3.3), and Jean Nicot (with whom Admiral Tobakoff, Ivan Tobak's ancestor, had an epee duel: 2.5) are mentioned in Ada. You must be thinking of Charles Chateaubriand, after whom a mosquito was named (1.17)...

JM: Indeed, there is a play with Chateaubriand [François René Auguste Chateaubriand, born in (cf.Lucette) Saint-Malo, who wrote incessantly his Mémoires d'Autre Tombe, is a frequently understimated reference in ADA*. Mentioned through "insect/incest" and a novel about incestuous siblings, he is mentioned as "Charles" Chateaubriand - and I wonder why].

"What about Cordula de Prey? ... Cordula is now Mrs Ivan G. Tobak... Here’s her last postcard. Portrait of Vladimir Christian of Denmark, who, she claims, is the dead spit of her Ivan Giovanovich...‘Who cares for Sustermans,’ observed Lucette, with something of her uterine sister’s knight move of specious response, or a Latin footballer’s rovesciata...‘His ancestor,’ Van pattered on, ‘was the famous or fameux Russian admiral who had an épée duel with Jean Nicot and after whom the Tobago Islands, or the Tobakoff Islands, are named, I forget which...Ada supposed, at first, that Tapper was an invented name...but that was before anybody heard of the other person’s death in Kalugano....‘the rat was rotting away in a hospital bed.’...‘I meant the real Tapper,’ cried Lucette ... I’ll borrow a book’ (scanning on the nearest bookshelf The Gitanilla, Clichy Clichés, Mertvago Forever, The Ugly New Englander) ..."

I have no idea if it was Nabokov, or some other equally playful writer, who once quipped that it was bad to have a couch named after one's name (Mme Récamier) but even worse to have a dish (the Chateaubriand steak). The strange pair met at Mme Récamier's famous salon gatherings.

There is a fascinating book "The love affair as a work of art" ( Dan Hofstadter) detailing their story, Proust, George Sand, Rousseau, etc. emplying love-letters, memoirs, biographies.

google: Chateaubriand is chiefly significant as marking the transition from the old classical to the modern romantic school. The fertility of ideas, vehemence of expression and luxury of natural description, which he shares with the romanticists, are controlled by a discipline learned in the school of their predecessors. His palette, always brilliant, is never gaudy; he is not merely a painter but an artist. He is also a master of epigrammatic and incisive sayings. Perhaps however, the most truly characteristic feature of his genius is the peculiar magical touch which Matthew Arnold indicated as a note of Celtic extraction, which reveals some occult quality in a familiar object, or tinges it, one knows not how, with "the light that never was on sea or land." He was a life-long friend of Juliette Récamier. Here is his account of their first encounter: "Suddenly Madame Récamier entered wearing a white dress; she sat down in the centre of a blue silk sofa; Madame de Staël remained standing and continued her conversation, in a very lively manner and speaking quite eloquently; I scarcely replied, my eyes fixed on Madame Récamier. I asked myself whether I was viewing a picture of ingenuousness or voluptuousness. I had never imagined anything to equal her and I was more discouraged than ever; my roused admiration turned to annoyance with myself. I think I begged Heaven to age this angel, to reduce her divinity a little, to set less distance between us. When I dreamed of my Sylph, I endowed myself with all the perfections to please her; when I thought of Madame Récamier I lessened her charms to bring her closer to me: it was clear I loved the reality more than the dream. Madame Récamier left and I did not see her again for twelve years. "

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