Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

In the dining room of The Enchanted Hunters (in VN's novel Lolita, 1955, a hotel in Briceland where Humbert Humbert and Lolita spend their first night together) Lolita draws Humbert's attention to a lone diner who resembles Clare Quilty, the writer fellow in the Dromes ad:

After his first night with Lolita in The Enchanted Hunters (a hotel in Briceland), Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) realizes that Lolita is a lone child, an absolute waif:

In VN's novel Ada (1969) Van and Ada find out that they are brother and sister thanks to Marina's old herbarium that they discovered in the attic of Ardis Hall:

The characters in VN's novel Lolita (1955) include Miss Pratt (headmistress of the Beardsley School for Girls) and Miss Cormorant (one of the teachers):

At my first interview with headmistress Pratt, she approved of my child’s “nice blue eyes” (blue! Lolita!) and of my own friendship with that “French genius” (a genius! Gaston!) - and then, having turned Dolly over to a Miss Cormorant, she wrinkled her brow in a kind of recueillement and said:

Describing his childhood, Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) compares elderly American ladies leaning on their canes to towers of Pisa:

When Humbert Humbert (the narrator and main character in VN's novel Lolita, 1955) visits Lolita (now married to Dick Schiller and big with child) in Coalmont, she tells him about her life after her escape from the Elphinstone hospital with Clare Quilty (the playwright) and calls Elphinstone "Elephant:"

“Sit down,” she said, audibly striking her flanks with her palms. I relapsed into the black rocker.

“So you betrayed me? Where did you go? Where is he now?”

Describing his rented house, Kinbote (in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962, Shade’s mad commentator who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions his landlord’s four daughters (Alphina, Betty, Candida and Dee) and calls Judge Goldsworth "the head of this alphabetic family:"

Lines 47-48: the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith 

The poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire (1962), John Shade lives in the frame house between Goldsworth and Wordsmith:

I cannot understand why from the lake

I could make out our front porch when I'd take

Lake Road to school, whilst now, although no tree

Has intervened, I look but fail to see

Even the roof. Maybe some quirk in space

Has caused a fold or furrow to displace

The fragile vista, the frame house between

Describing his journey with Lucette (in VN's novel Ada, 1969, Van's and Ada's half-sister) onboard Admiral Tobakoff, Van Veen mentions a steeplechase picture of ‘Pale Fire with Tom Cox Up’ that hangs in Lucette's suite:

Quite kindly he asked where she thought she was going.

At the end of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) says that his brain is drained and mentions a brown ament (a catkin) that dries on the cement:

Gently the day has passed in a sustained

Low hum of harmony. The brain is drained

And a brown ament, and the noun I meant

To use but did not, dry on the cement.