'Run along now,' said Van. 'You've no right to excite
me like that. I'll hire Miss Condor to chaperone me if you do not behave
yourself. We dine at seven-fifteen.' (ibid.)
When Lucette rings Van up and he tells her that he is not
alone in his cabin, Lucette thinks that Van is with Miss Condor and
commits suicide jumping into the Atlantic.
One of the foot boys at Ardis admires the pictures of race
horses:
Slapping his thighs in dismay, the coachman [Trofim Fartukov] stood berating a tousled foot boy
who had appeared from under a bush. He had concealed himself there to enjoy in
peace a tattered copy of Tattersalia with pictures of tremendous, fabulously
elongated race horses, and had been left behind by the charabanc which had
carried away the dirty dishes and the drowsy servants. (1.39)
It is Trofim Fartukov who takes Van to Maidenhair when Van leaves
Ardis forever (1.41):
Maidenhair. Idiot! Percy boy might have been buried by
now! Maidenhair. Thus named because of the huge spreading Chinese tree at the
end of the platform. Once, vaguely, confused with the Venus'-hair fern. She
walked to the end of the platform in Tolstoy's novel. First exponent of the
inner monologue, later exploited by the French and the Irish. N'est vert,
n'est vert, n'est vert. L'arbre aux quarante écus d'or, at least in the
fall. Never, never shall I hear again her 'botanical' voice fall at
biloba, 'sorry, my Latin is showing.' Ginkgo, gingko, ink,
inkog. Known also as Salisbury's adiantofolia, Ada's infolio, poor
Salisburia: sunk; poor Stream of Consciousness, marée noire by
now. Who wants Ardis Hall! (1.41)
The maidenhair-tree (ginkgo) is also mentioned in
Pale Fire:
Many years ago Disa, our King's Queen, whose favorite
trees were the jacaranda and the maidenhair, copied out in her album a quatrain
from John Shade's collection of short poems Hebe's Cup, which I cannot
refrain from quoting here (from a letter I received on April 6, 1959, from
southern France):
THE SACRED TREE
The gingko leaf, in golden hue, when shed,
A muscat grape,
Is an old-fashioned
butterfly, ill-spread
In shape.
When the new Episcopal church in New Wye
(see note to line 549) was built, the
bulldozers spared an arc of those sacred trees planted by a landscaper of genius
(Repburg) at the end of the so-called Shakespeare Avenue, on the campus. I do
not know if it is relevant or not but there is a cat-and-mouse game in the
second line, and "tree" in Zemblan is grados. (Kinbote's note
to line 49)
In his stream of consciousness Van recalls Ada's revised monologue of
Shakespeare's mad king:
Ce beau jardin fleurit en mai,
Mais in hiver
Jamais, jamais, jamais, jamais,
jamais
N'est vert, n'est vert, n'est vert, n'est vert,
n'est vert. (1.14)
"Jamais" was the nickname of Chekhov's friend Lika Mizinov. In a
letter of June 12, 1891, to Lika Chekhov mentions lomovoy
izvozchik (a carter) Trophim, who would enlarge Lika's vocabulary
with foul words. Instead of signature, Chekhov drew a heart pierced with an
arrow.
In a letter of September 8, 1891, to Suvorin Chekhov mentions Tolstoy's
Holstomer ("Story of a Horse," 1886):
Итак, к чёрту философию великих мира сего! Она вся, со
всеми юродивыми послесловиями и письмами к губернаторше, не стоит одной кобылки
из «Холстомера».
And so to the devil with the philosophy of all the great ones of this
world! The whole of it with its fanatical "Afterwords" and "Letters to a
Governor's Wife" is not worth one little mare in his "Story of a Horse."
Alexey Sklyarenko