In my Russian article on the Burning Barn scene in
Ada (http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/sklyarenko6.doc)
and elsewhere I argue that Ada, who wanted to spend the night with Van and
needed the house to be empty, bribed somebody in the Ardis household
(presumably, Kim Beauharnais, the kitchen boy and photographer) to set the barn
on fire. This is an old trick. Shkurin, the valet
of Ekaterina Alekseevna (the future Empress Catherine II), set his own
house on fire in the night when Ekaterina gave birth to Aleksey Bobrinsky, her
son by Grigoriy Orlov. Shkurin knew that the Emperor Peter III (Ekaterina's
husband who was murdered by Aleksey Orlov, Grigoriy's brother, a
couple of months later) greatly enjoyed fires and that to admire one
he would go to a distant part of the city. Ivanchuk, a character in Aldanov's
novel "Чёртов мост" (Le Pont du Diable, 1925), tells the whole story to
Shtaal, the novel's hero.
The name Shkurin comes from shkura,
"animal's skin" (see anagram with shkura in one of my previous
posts). As to the name Bobrinsky (that comes from Bobriki, the estate
Catherine gave her illegitimate son), it reminds one of Marina's and
Ada's bobry (the sea-otter fur coats). Catherine didn't love her
son who was brought up in Shkurin's family. In Ada, Marina abandons her
son Van to her twin sister Aqua.
Other famous arsonists include Herostratus, Nero
and Count Rostopchin.
Alexey Sklyarenko