More - Chernovik

-- Diverse elements (many are very likely among the references (some are among them for sure), some are less certain) --


Vanessa ("Vanessa Van Ness", p. TAL) : Vanessa is a genus of brush-footed butterflies in the tribe Nymphalini (among the group, besides the Vanessa, are the Araschnia (1819), Mynes (1832), Polygonia (1819), Symbrenthia (1819). ) from the Nymphalidae family (Many species are brightly coloured and include popular species such as the emperors, monarch butterfly, admirals, tortoiseshells, and fritillaries; The Nymphalidae are the largest family of butterflies with more than 6,000 species distributed throughout most of the world - among the Nymphalidae family are found the subspecies the danaine clade, the satyrine clade (among them the Morphinae (Lewis Carroll used opium/laudanum (a close reflexion of morphine) to soothe a medical condition) and Satyrinae (satyrs and browns, earlier treated as distinct family Satyridae)) and The nymphaline clade (Nymphalinae)).

Among the species:
The Vanessa cardui (also Belle-dame in French ("une belle dame toute en bleu" p. TAL)) also known as the painted lady, the Vanessa atalanta also known as the red admiral, the Vanessa abyssinica (1867), the Vanessa kershawi (1868) a.k.a. the Australian painted lady, Vanessa myrinna (Doubleday, 1849) a.k.a. the vivid banded lady or banded lady, the Vanessa buana (1898) a.k.a. the Lompobatang lady, the Vanessa vulcania (1819) a.k.a. the Canary red admiral, the Vanessa tameamea a.k.a. the Kamehameha butterfly, the Vanessa terpsichore (a muse) a.k.a. the Chilean lady, the Vanessa virginiensis a.k.a the American lady or American painted lady, the Vanessa hippomene a.k.a. the southern short-tailed admiral and the Vanessa altissima (Rosenberg & Talbot, 1914) – Andean painted lady.

"Vanessa" (1868) is also a painting by John Everett Millais (a promoinent member of the Pre-raphaelite Brotherhood and friend of Lewis Carroll). It is a fancy portrait depicting Jonathan Swift's close friend and correspondent Esther Vanhomrigh (1688-1723), who was known by that nickname, which Swift himself invented for her (note that J. Swift was considered by John Ruskin as one of the three most influential authors for him. Among Swift's work: "Cadenus and Vanessa" or "Bon Mots de Stella"). Esther Vanhomrigh is known as "Swift's Vanessa" because of the fictional name he gave her when he published their correspondence ("vanessa" was coined with "van" from vanhomrigh and "essa" a pet form of esther). The portrait is wholly imaginary. No actual image of Esther Vanhomrigh exists, and we know very little about her actual appearance, although she was said "not to be a beauty". She is holding a letter, presumably written to or from Swift. Her sad expression is related to the fraught nature of the relationship, which was broken up by Swift's relationship to another woman, Esther Johnson whom he called "Stella", whom he may have married secretly. Vanessa died soon afterwards. Millais also painted a companion piece depicting Stella.

--

The date 1842 (also found in the references) might possibly be added to the references to a Carrollian context. This might be a reference to an event of its childhood that Lewis Carroll considered as the probable source of his leanings about little girls (-> reference necessary; and add the quotes from the letters that betrays the importance of the event (like the one he urges a mother to ask her little girls to stop going around almost naked for the sake of the "poor" little brother, with a very alarmed tone)).

--

Fairy chess piece (or unorthodox chess piece) is a chess piece not used in conventional chess but incorporated into certain chess variants and some chess problems. These pieces include: Alibaba, boyscout, scorpion, crowned knight (more often named "centaur"), princess (bishop+knight compound), empress (rook+knight compound), flamingo, gryphon (Grande Acedrex (Alfonso X, 1283) also known as elephant bird), running rabbit (Taikyoku shogi, Wa shogi), ferz (note that in Russian, ferz' (ферзь) is simply the name of the Queen), lion, orphan, aanca (Spanish Gryphon or Elephant Bird), unicorn (Raumschach (1907)) and elephant (in Asian variants).
Many are found in "Alice in Wonderland" or in "Through the Looking-glass". The presence of some of these pieces in "Lolita" might also hint that it's not a conventional chessgame played in the background of the novel.

--

Léon Frapié (1863-1949; born and dead in Paris) was a French novelist who wrote about children and childhood. His most well-known book is "La Maternelle" (1904; i.e. "The Kindergarten") who was awarded Prix Goncourt that year.
"La Maternelle" is a kind of autobiographical novel by proxy since its author used not his own memories, but those of his wife, Leonie Mouillefert, whom he married in 1888. The story is about Rose, an educated girl from a well off family who faces a series of tragic events that leaves her penniless and without a home. She is forced to find work as an attendant at a day-care center in Paris with 150 children of the working class. Despite working below her station she finds herself tenderly caring for them and soon they become very fond of her. A movie was made of this novel in 1933.

Among his works: "Les Contes de la maternelle" (1910; "fairy tale of the kindergarten", "Nouveaux Contes de la maternelle" (1919; "The new fairy tale of the kindergarten")) or "L’Écolière" (1905, i.e. "The Schoolgirl").

--

André Mary (1879-1962) is a French poet author of  "Le Cantique de la Seine" (1911), "Le Doctrinal des Preux" (1919), "La Pucelle à la Rose" (1921; French for "The maid with a rose"; "la pucelle d'Orléans" (The maid of Orleans), or more generally "La Pucelle" is also a nickname of Joan of Arc), "Le livre des idylles et passe-temps" and "Paroles authentiques de Jeanne d'Arc, tirées du Procès de 1431 et des chroniques contemporaines" (about Joan of Arc), "Yvain ou le chevalier au lion" and "Tristan et Iseut" (1941). He was the founder of the Gallicanic School and tried to give a second life to medieval poetic forms.

-- 

Hippolyte Pixii (1808-1835) invented an early form of alternating current electrical generator, based on the principle of magnetic induction in 1832. Pixii's device was a spinning magnet, operated by a hand crank, where the North pole and South pole passed over a coil with an iron core.

-- 

Among the chain of references about socialism a central one is of course Karl Marx (May 1818 - March 14 1883; mother: Henrietta Pressburg (1788-1863). Her sister Sophie Pressburg (Marx's aunt) was married to Lion Philips; K. Marx was a man with a famous big beard), a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. The 3rd of nine children, he became the oldest son when his brother Moritz died in 1819. Young Karl was baptised into the Lutheran Church in August 1824 along with his surviving siblings, Sophie, Hermann, Henriette, Louise, Emilie and Caroline  (etymologically, Louise=Lewis / Caroline=Carroll) as was their mother the following year.

Among his works: "The Philosophical Manifesto of the Historical School of Law" (1842), "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" (1852), "Writings on the U.S. Civil War" (1861), "Theories of Surplus Value" (1862; three volumes), "Value, Price and Profit" (1865) and "The Civil War in France" (1871).

--

Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin (1889-1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame during the era of silent film. Chaplin became a worldwide icon through his screen persona "the Tramp" and is considered one of the most important figures in the history of the film industry. Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. As his father was absent and his mother struggled financially, he was sent to a workhouse twice before the age of 9 in 1898. When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. In 1919, Chaplin co-founded the distribution company United Artists, which gave him complete control over his films. His first feature-length was "The Kid" (1921), followed by A "Woman of Paris" (1923), "The Gold Rush" (1925), and "The Circus" (1928). He refused to move to sound films in the 1930s, instead producing "City Lights" (1931) and "Modern Times" (1936) without dialogue. Chaplin became increasingly political, and his next film, "The Great Dictator" (1940), satirised Adolf Hitler. The 1940s were a decade marked with controversy for Chaplin, and his popularity declined rapidly. He was accused of communist sympathies, while his involvement in a paternity suit and marriages to much younger women caused scandal. An FBI investigation was opened, and Chaplin was forced to leave the United States and settle in Switzerland. He abandoned the Tramp in his later films, which include "Monsieur Verdoux" (1947), "Limelight" (1952; reference in p. TAL), "A King in New York" (1957), and "A Countess from Hong Kong" (1967). The first film in which he conceived the Tramp look was "Mabel's Strange Predicament", but "the Tramp" character, as it became known, debuted to audiences in "Kid Auto Races at Venice".


Lita Grey (born Lillita Louise MacMurray, April 15, 1908 - December 29, 1995), who was known for most of her life as Lita Grey Chaplin, was an American actress and the second wife of Charlie Chaplin. Grey married four times. By her own account, she first met Charlie Chaplin at the age of eight at a Hollywood café and first worked with him at the age of twelve in the part of the “flirting angel” in "The Kid". She appeared briefly as a maid in "The Idle Class". Her one-year contract was not renewed. At the age of fifteen she met Chaplin again when she heard he was testing brunettes for his "The Gold Rush". They had an affair and she suspected she had become pregnant by the then-thirty-five-year-old Chaplin. As he could have been imprisoned for having sexual relations with a minor, they married that November in secret in Empalme, Sonora, Mexico to avoid a scandal. They had two sons, Charles Chaplin, Jr. (1925-1968) and Sydney Earl Chaplin (1926-2009).

--

Judy Garland (1922-1969; there are several references to "Judy" and "Garland" (see the main page); born Frances Ethel Gumm), famous for her role of Dorothy Gale in the movie "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) was married to David Rose (1910-1990; born in London, England), who notably composed the music of TV's  "Little House on the Prairie" (reference in the little isolated house where Lolita had spent a summer of boredom and that Humbert threatens to settle in), from 1941 to 1944. He composed the music of the movie "The Princess and the Pirate" (1944).

--

Angela Isadora Duncan ("Huncan Dines" (spoonerism pointing to Duncan Hines; p.148 TAL), dance, scarf, car accident, Riviera, school for girls, etc...; May 26, 1877 or May 27, 1878 - September 14, 1927 (september 14 is 9/14) in Nice, France, on the Riviera) was an American dancer who performed to acclaim throughout Europe. Born in California, she lived in Western Europe and the Soviet Union from the age of 22 until her death at age 49 or 50, when her scarf became entangled in the wheels and axle of the car in which she was riding. Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819-1898; the birthdate of John Ruskin and death date of Lewis Carroll), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849-1922).
Feeling unhappy and unappreciated in America, Duncan moved to London in 1898. She performed in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, taking inspiration from the Greek vases and bas-reliefs in the British Museum. The earnings from these engagements enabled her to rent a studio, allowing her to develop her work and create larger performances for the stage. From London, she traveled to Paris, where she was inspired by the Louvre and the Exposition Universelle of 1900.

She opened schools to teach young women her philosophy of dance. The first was established in 1904 in Berlin-Grunewald, Germany. This institution was the birthplace of the "Isadorables" (Anna, Maria-Theresa, Irma, Liesel, Gretel, and Erika), Duncan's protégées who would continue her legacy. Duncan legally adopted all six girls in 1919, and they took her last name. Later, Duncan established a school in Paris that was shortly closed due to the outbreak of World War I.

In 1910, Duncan met the occultist Aleister Crowley at a party (he is part of occultism references mentionned on the main page) - an episode recounted by Crowley in his Confessions. He refers to Duncan as 'Lavinia King', and would use the same invented name for her in his novel "Moonchild".

In 1911, the French fashion designer Paul Poiret rented a mansion—Pavillon du Butard in La Celle-Saint-Cloud - and threw lavish parties, including one of the more famous grandes fêtes, La fête de Bacchus on June 20, 1912, re-creating the Bacchanalia hosted by Louis XIV at Versailles. Isadora Duncan, wearing a Greek evening gown designed by Poiret, danced on tables among 300 guests; 900 bottles of champagne were consumed until the first light of day.

Otto Kahn, the head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., gave Duncan use of the very modern Century Theatre at West 60th Street and Central Park West for her performances and productions, which included a staging of Oedipus Rex that involved almost all of Duncan's extended entourage and friends. During her time in New York, Duncan posed for a number of studies by the photographer Arnold Genthe.

Breaking with convention, Duncan imagined she had traced dance to its roots as a sacred art. She developed from this notion a style of free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature and natural forces as well as an approach to the new American athleticism which included skipping, running, jumping, leaping and tossing.

Duncan's philosophy of dance moved away from rigid ballet technique and towards what she perceived as natural movement. To restore dance to a high art form instead of merely entertainment, she strove to connect emotions and movement: "I spent long days and nights in the studio seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movement." She believed dance was meant to encircle all that life had to offer - joy and sadness. Duncan took inspiration from ancient Greece and combined it with an American love of freedom. Her movement was feminine and arose from the deepest feelings in her body. This is exemplified in her revolutionary costume of a white Greek tunic and bare feet. Inspired by Greek forms, her tunics also allowed a freedom of movement that corseted ballet costumes and pointe shoes did not. Costumes were not the only inspiration Duncan took from Greece: she was also inspired by ancient Greek art, and utilized some of its forms in her movement.

Duncan bore two children, both out of wedlock. The first, Deirdre Beatrice (born September 24 (september is the 9th month), 1906), by theatre designer Gordon Craig, and the second, Patrick Augustus (born May 1, 1910), by Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. Both children drowned in the care of their nanny in 1913 when their runaway car went into the Seine.

In 1921, after the end of the Russian Revolution, Duncan moved to Moscow where she met the acclaimed poet Sergei Yesenin, who was 18 years her junior. On May 2, 1922, they married, and Yesenin accompanied her on a tour of Europe and the United States. However, the marriage was brief, and in May 1923 he left Duncan and returned to Moscow. Two years later, on December 28, 1925, Yesenin was found dead in his room in the Hotel Angleterre in St Petersburg in an apparent suicide.

-- 

Emilie Louise Flöge (August 1874-May 1952; born in Vienna), muse and lover of Austrian painter Gustave Klimt (1862-1918), part of the references of this riddle.

--
About Pavel Trtyakov and the Peredvizhniki (the wanderers): 

"The Mermaids" (1871; "mermaid" is a recurrent keyword in "Lolita" (e.g. among several instances, "mediocre mermaid" (p.86 TAL))) by Ivan Kramskoi, a Russian painter whose patron, Pavel Tretyakov (1832-1898; also Trety (третий) in Russian is "3rd"), was born and died the same years than Lewis Carroll.

Tretyakov was also the patron of Ilya Repin (who painted Kramskoi in 1882), the most famous Russian painter of the 19th century (a well-known self-portrait is dated 1878. In 1898, he purchased an estate, in Kuokkala, Finland (now Repino, Saint Petersburg). He welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1917) and of Viktor Vasnetsov, also a friend of the two previously mentionned painters, who had travelled in Italy in 1885 (among his most well-knwon works are "The Knight at the Crossroads" (1878), "Prince Igor's Battlefield" (1878), "Three princesses of the Underground Kingdom", "The Flying Carpet", "Bogatyrs" (1898) and a self-portrait of 1868. At the turn of the century, Vasnetsov elaborated his hallmark "fairy-tale" style of Russian Revivalist architecture. His first acclaimed design was a church in Abramtsevo in 1882, executed jointly with Vasily Polenov. The Russian pavilion of the World Fair in Paris followed in 1898. Between 1906 and 1911, Vasnetsov worked on the design of the mosaics for Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Warsaw; he was also involved in the design of Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Moscow. In 1918 Vasnetsov participated in the designing of a military uniform for the newly founded Red Army. Vasnetsov is credited with the creation of budenovka (initially named bogatyrka), a military hat reproducing the style of ancient Rus' cone-shaped helmets). Another Russian painter should be added among Tretyakov's protégés, Valentin Serov (1865-1911) a well-known Russian painter, especiallly known for his portraits. He is known for such paintings as "The Girl with Peaches" (1887), and "The Girl Covered by the Sun" (1888), both in the Tretyakov Gallery, "Snow Maiden" (based on a well-known Russian fairy-tale, "Sneguroshka") and "Peter II departure and Empress Elizabeth Petrovna on hunting" (1900). He also made a portrait of  Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (*) in 1898 (Ilya Repin also made a portrait of him), who is also in the Tretyakov gallery.
All these painters were part of the Peredvizhniki (i.e. wanderers ((melmoth the) wanderer, p. TAL)), in which we can add for instance Ivan Shishkin (1832-1898; same dates of birth and death than Lewis Carroll; he started to attend the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts in 1856; he took part of All Russian Exhibition in Moscow in 1882 and was present at the World Fair of 1878; among his notable works are "The Rocky Landscape", "A Rye Field" (1878), "Morning in a Pine Forest" (1878), and his last completed work was "The Pine Grove" in 1898; his patron was Pavel Tretyakov), Vasily Perov (1834-1882; In 1856 he was awarded with a minor silver medal for his sketch of a boy's head, presented to the Imperial Academy of Arts. After receiving the right to a state-paid trip abroad together with a golden medal, in 1862 Perov went to Western Europe, visiting several German cities, and then Paris, doing paintings depicting scenes from European street life. Returning to Moscow early, from 1865 to 1871 Perov created his masterpieces; among his major works we find "Old Man" (1868), "Alexander Ostrovsky" (1871) and "The Hunters at Rest" (1871). In 1871 the position of a Professor at Moscow School of Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. It was around this period that he joined the Peredvizhniki.), Arkhip Kuindzhi (1842-1910; During the five years from 1860 to 1865, he worked as a retoucher in the photography studio of Simeon Isakovich in Taganrog. Then, from 1868, he studied painting mainly independently and at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. Among his most notable works are "Evening in the Ukraine" (1878-1901), "Night on the Dnepr" (1882), "Surf and Clouds" (1882) and "Moonspots in the Forest, Winter" (1898-1908). His patron was Pavel Tretyakov.), Alexei Savrasov (1830-1897; Pavel Trtyakov was his patron. "The Rooks Have Come Back" (1871) is considered by many critics to be the high point in Savrasov’s artistic career. In 1871, after the death of his daughter, there was a crisis in his art. There exists a "Portrait of Alexei Savrasov" made by Vasily Perov dated 1878. He was the teacher of Isaac Levitan (1860-1900 (aged 39)), a Jewish painter (a member of the Peredvizhniki) known for paintings such as "Water Lilies", "Spring in Italy", "Silence" (1898) and "Dawn" (1900)) or Konstantin Makovsky (born in 1839 and was killed in 1915 when his horse-drawn carriage was hit by an electric tram in Saint Petersburg. In 1863, he and thirteen other students held a protest against the Academy's setting of topics from Scandinavian mythology in the competition for the Large Gold Medal of Academia; all left the academy without a formal diploma. A significant change in his style occurred after traveling to Egypt and Serbia in the mid-1870s. His patron was Tsar Alexander II. Among his notable paintings are "Children of the Artist" (1882), "Agents of the False Dmitry kill the son of Boris Godunov" (1862), "Widow" (1865), "Ophelia"). Their history started as such: In 1863 a group of fourteen students decided to leave The Imperial Academy of Arts. The students found the rules of the Academy constraining; the teachers were conservative and there was a strict separation between high and low art. In an effort to bring art to the people, the students formed an independent artistic society; The Petersburg Cooperative of Artists (Artel). In 1870, this organization was largely succeeded by the Association of Travelling Art Exhibits (Peredvizhniki) to give people from the provinces a chance to follow the achievements of Russian Art, and to teach people to appreciate art. Starting in 1871, the group started mobile exhibition throughout the European part of the russian Empire. There exists a group photograph of the Perezhniki (1863-64, "Artel of Artists"). Since 1898 the landscapes of the society have been used in the postcard industry.

(*) He also composed an opera named "The Snow Maiden" (The first performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's opera took place at the Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg on 29 January 1882. By 1898 it was revised in the edition known today and it remained the composer's own favorite work. A sovietic movie was also made out of it in 1952), based on a Russian fairy-tale (the main character being Snegurochka (diminutive) or Snegurka, or The Snow Maiden). A version of a folk tale about a girl made of snow and named Snegurka was published in 1869 by Alexander Afanasyev (1826-1871 - He was the equivalent of the Brothers Grimm in Russia. He was appointed librarian in the Archives of Moscow in 1849 until 1862. His "The Poetic Outlook of Slavs about Nature", which came out between 1865 and 1869) who was the inspiration for the play "The Snow Maiden" by Aleksandr Ostrovsky, with incidental music by Tchaikovsky in 1873 and Rimsky-Korsakov's "Snow Maiden" (whose libretto is based on the former play). This version of the fairy-tale was also included by louis Léger in his "Contes Populaires Slaves" (1882). In 1878, the composer Ludwig Minkus and the Balletmaster Marius Petipa staged a ballet adaptation of "Snegurochka" titled "The Daughter of the Snows" for the Tsar's Imperial Ballet.
Rimsky-Korsakov also composed a comic opera named "May Night" (reference in p.202 TAL, "one friday night toward the end of May"; based on Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852; the famous author of "Dead Souls" (1842; The novel shows the life of serfs (then still considered property of the landowner) before the 1861 emancipation. The first part of the book is conceived as mirroring Dante's Inferno of the Divine Comedy. Ilya Repin made a painting "Gogol burning the manuscript of the second part of Dead Souls" (an even that occured in 1852)). Let's also mention that is short story "Christmas Eve" was adapted as an opera by Tchaikovsky) 's story "May Night, or the Drowned Maiden", from his collection "Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka" published in 1832) between 1878 and 1879. The opera was shown in a Russian Private Opera production in 1898 that was conducted by the famous Sergei Rachmaninoff. The story implicates Rusalkas (Russian Water Nymphs of the Slavic mythology).

--

I consider that also indirect allusions to Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) are likely to be found via several keywords and names (for instance, the weird mention of a fictive "Bagration Island" p.302 TAL is likely a hint to "War and Peace" (Pyotr Bagration was a prominent Russian General during the Napoleonic Wars (himself mentionned in "Rue Bonaparte" p.26 TAL and "The Emperor" p. 201 TAL) that is mentionned in "War and Peace" (Bagration was married to Catherine who died and is buried in Venice and is thought to have been the lover of Catherine Pavlovna of Russia (1788-1819 ; Tsar Alexander I's sister)), which, in literature, particularly evokes Tolstoy's masterpiece "War and Peace"), just like the mention of the "Kreutzer Sonata" p.38 TAL is a reference to Leo Tolstoy's novel (the painting was inspired by the novel)). Among Tolstoy's major works are "The Cossacks" (1863; translated in English by Eugene Schuyler in 1878), "War and Peace" (Portions of an earlier version of the novel, then known as "The Year 1805", were serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867. It should be noticed that in Volume Three, a major turning point in the Life of the protagonist Pierre Bezukhov (reference-keyword also in "Pierre Point" p.33 TAL), is marked by the appearance of the Comet of 1811), "Anna Karenina" (the novel's first complete appearance was in book form in 1878; The first movie made from the novel was a Russian adaptation directed by Maurice André Maître in 1911) or "The Kreutzer Sonata" (a Russian movie was made from the novel in 1911, directed by Pyotr Chardynin). Tolstoy's earliest works were the autobiographical novels "Childhood", "Boyhood", and "Youth" (written from 1852 to 1856). Among his short stories we find for instances "The Raid" (1852), "The Snowstorm" (1856; same title than a poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson), "Kholstomer" (started in 1863), "A confession" (publication in 1882; the original title of Humbert Humbert's "Lolita" was "Lolita, or the Confession of  a White Widowed Male"), "Father Sergius" (1898; which, like _several of his works_ was published posthumously in 1911) or "Esarhaddon, King of Assyria". Tolstoy also wrote some plays, like "The Living Corpse" (written around 1900 and that premiered in 1911) or "The Cause of it All" (1910). Among the movies made bout Tolstoy there is a "How Fine, How Fresh the Roses Were" made in 1913. His "A Calendar of Wisdom" is a collection of insights and wisdom compiled by Tolstoy between 1903 and 1910 that was published in three different editions. An English translation by Archibald J. Wolfe of the first Russian edition, which was organized by subject, was published in 1919. An English translation of the second Russian edition, which was organized by calendar date, was begun in 1911 as a monthly serial but abandoned after the first volume. Among the inspiring men quoted in this work we find John Ruskin (1819-1900), a man of major importance in the riddle, but also Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) or Henry David Thoreau (1817-1865). His conversion from a dissolute and privileged society author to the non-violent and spiritual anarchist of his latter days was brought about by his experience in the army as well as two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860–61. This European trip in 1860–61 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugo's newly finished "Les Misérables". Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865; author of  "Solution of the Social Problem" (1849), "La Guerre et la Paix" (War and Peace, 1861) or "Of the Political Capacity of the Working Class" (1865)) to which he borrowed Proudhon's forthcoming publication's title, "La Guerre et la Paix" ("War and Peace", in French). Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks: "If I recount this conversation with Proudhon, it is to show that, in my personal experience, he was the only man who understood the significance of education and of the printing press in our time.". Enthusiasmed, Tolstoy returned to his Yasnaya Polyana and founded 13 schools for children of Russia's peasants, who had just been emancipated from serfdom in 1861. Tolstoy described the school's principles in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana". Tolstoy was painted by Ilya Repin. Leo Tolstoy had met his wife Sophia Tolstoy (the daughter of the physician Andrey Evstafievich Behrs (1808-1868)) in 1862. She died in 1919. Leo Tolstoy wrote from 1852 to 1910.

--

Charles Williams (9/20/1886 - May 15 1945. He married Florence Conway in 1917). He was a British poet, novelist, playwright, theologian, literary critic, and member of the Inklings (associated with the Oxford University. Among the members: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien). He was the author, among other works, of "The Place of the Lion" (1931), "The Chapel of the Thorn" (c.1912), "A Myth of Shakespeare", "A Myth of Francis Bacon", "Three Plays" (1929-31), "The Three Temptations" (1942), "Heroes and Kings", "The Figure of Beatrice" (1943; it was very highly regarded at its time of publication and continues to be consulted by Dante scholars today), "The Figure of Arthur" (1948; unfinished), "Witchcraft" (1941) and in "The Masques of Amen House" (2000; edited by David Bratman. Mythopoeic Press) are published "The Masque of the Manuscript" (1927), "The Masque of Perusal" (1929), "The Masque of the Termination of Copyright" (1930). "Religion and Love in Dante: The Theology of Romantic Love" was also published in 1974. He also wrote biographies: "Bacon" (1933), "A Short Life of Shakespeare" (1933; Oxford: Clarendon Press), "Queen Elizabeth" (1936), "Stories of Great Names" (London: Oxford University Press: Alexander, Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, Shakespeare, Voltaire, John Wesley) - among others. He was admired by T. S. Eliot and C. S. Lewis. He was also , for a period, a member of the Salvator Mundi Temple of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. 

--

Alice Pike Barney (1857-1931; she was born a January 14, the day Lewis Carroll died (not the same year) - notice that "pike" also mean "girl" in Norwegian) was an American Painter (her most known painting is probably "Waterlily" (1900)) that studied under Carolus-Duran and later she was one of the first student of James Abbott McNeill Whistler when he opened an academie. In 1882, she had spent a summer with her family at new York Long Beach hotel where Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was speaking about his American Lecture Tour. Wilde spent the day with Alice and her daughter Natalie on the beach. This conversation changed Alice's life, convincing her to pursue art seriously despite her husband's disapproval. At 17 she had become engaged to 33 years old famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley (he named a bota he used on Lake Victoria "The Lady Alice" because of her) but she instead married Albert Clifford Barney. She travelled to Paris and in 1899 she began a salon at her rented home on the Avenue Victor Hugo. While in Paris his two daughters (Natalie Clifford Barney (*) and Laura Clifford Barney) attended boarding school Les Ruches ('The Beehives')  founded by feminist Marie Souvestre [ Dorothy Bussy (July 1865 - May 1960), the sister of writer Lytton Strachey (Writer and critic) and of James Strachey - the first English translator of Freud, with his wife Alix -, anonymously published a novel, "Olivia" (1949), about her experience as a pupil at Les Ruches, describing the protagonist's crush on the headmistress Mlle. Julie (i.e., Souvestre). Eleanor Roosevelt (p. 78 TAL) - who was her pupil - was so greatly influenced by Souvestre and her feminist beliefs, that she went on to forge a political career. ]. She later remarried in 1911 a 23 years old man named Christian Hemmick when she was 53 years old. Barney had solo shows at major galleries including the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Corcoran is like a distortred image, an faint echo of Cormorant (p.177 TAL)). She converted to the Bahá'í Faith around 1900.

(*) She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" (meaning heterosexual attention from young males). In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien (In Paris, Renée Vivien's dress and lifestyle were as notorious among the bohemian set as was her verse. She lived lavishly, as an open lesbian, and carried on a well-known affair with American heiress and writer Natalie Clifford Barney. She also harboured a lifelong obsession with her closest childhood friend and neighbour, Violet Shillito – a relationship that remained unconsummated. In 1900, Vivien abandoned this chaste love, when the great romance with Natalie Barney ensued. The following year Shillito died of typhoid fever, a tragedy from which Vivien, guilt-ridden, never fully recovered). Natalie Clifford Barney's life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the French bestseller "Sapphic Idyll" to "The Well of Loneliness" (by Radclyffe Hall (born Marguerite Radclyffe Hall). In 1915, Hall fell in love with Mabel Batten's (There exists a painting of her by John Singer Sargent) cousin Una Troubridge [ She was a British lesbian sculptor. Her talent as a sculptor prompted Nijinsky to sit for her several times. she was nicknamed Una by her family as a child and chose the middle name Vincenzo herself, after her Florentine relatives. She was married to Ernest Troubridge who rose to the rank of admiral during and immediately after the First World War, and Una gained her title when Admiral Troubridge was knighted in June 1919, although they were already legally separated at the time ]), the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century. 

--

Auguste Feyen-Perrin (1826-1888), was a French painter, engraver and illustrator. He exhibited to the Salon for most of his life, winning medals in 1865, 1867 and 1874. He was a close friend of Gustave Courbet (1819-1877) and worked with him at two organizations Courbet presided over during the Franco-Prussian War: the Museum Commission and the Federation of Artists, created in 1871 during the Paris Commune. Despite this potentially compromising activity, he maintained his respectability with the Republican establishment and was decorated with the Légion d'Honneur in 1878.

Among his most known paintings are "Charles the Bold Found After the Battle of Nancy" (1865) and  "Nymphe" (1880). He painted many nudes of young women.

--

Gustave Courbet (1819-1877; (mother, Sylvie Oudot)) was a French painter who led the Realist movement in 19th-century French painting. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work. He was imprisoned for six months in 1871 for his involvement with the Paris Commune, and lived in exile in Switzerland from 1873 until his death.
His first works were an Odalisque inspired by the writing of Victor Hugo and a Lélia illustrating George Sand (mentionned on the main page of this blog), but he soon abandoned literary influences, choosing instead to base his paintings on observed reality. Courbet achieved his first Salon success in 1849 with his painting "After Dinner at Ornans". In 1849-50, Courbet painted "Stone-Breakers", which Proudhon (1809-1865) admired as an icon of peasant life; it has been called "the first of his great works".

Among his works: "Self-portrait with Black Dog" and "self-portait" in 1842, "Portrait of Baudelaire" (1848), "Les Demoiselles du bord de la Seine" (1856), "Femme nue couchée" (1862; nude), "The Trellis" (1862), "Portrait of Jo (La belle Irlandaise)" (1865–66; the painting kind of resemble Rossetti’s "Lady Lilith"; the model, Joanna ‘Jo’ Hifferman, was romantically involved with the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler referenced in "Lolita" in p.184 TAL), "Proudhon and his children" (1865), "Girl with Seagulls" (1865), "The Bather" (1868; nude), "The Source" (1868; nude), "The Trout" (1871) and "Portrait of Countess Karoly" (1865) and the famous "L'origine du monde" (1866) showing a woman's sex. He painted many nudes of women. 

--

Stéphane Mallarmé (18 March 1842 - 9 September (9th month) 1898) was a French poet and critic born in Paris. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of the early 20th century, such as Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism. He worked as an English teacher (just like Humbert Humbert was an English teacher in the outskirts of Paris) and spent much of his life in relative poverty but was famed for his salons, occasional gatherings of intellectuals at his house on the rue de Rome for discussions of poetry, art and philosophy. W.B. Yeats was a regular visitor.
He married Maria Christina Gerhard in 1863.
In 1875 he translated Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" (e.g. "raven-black bob" p.169 TAL) into French, while proto-Impressionist painter Édouard Manet illustrated it. among his other works:
"L'après-midi d'un faune" ('The afternoon of a Faun' (multiple references to fauns in "Lolita" (e.g. "faunlet", "satyr", "priap", "Pan", "faunish face" (p.108 TAL)))) (1876), "Les Mots anglais" (1878; 'the English words') and "Les Dieux antiques" (1879; 'The Antique Gods').

--

Edgar Degas (1834-1917; his mother was from New Orleans, Louisiana) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. He is regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism, although he rejected the term, preferring to be called a realist. Degas began to paint early in life. By the time he graduated from the Lycée with a baccalauréat in literature in 1853, at age 18, he had turned a room in his home into an artist's studio. he reevered  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres. In 1856, Degas traveled to Italy. The change in his art was influenced primarily by the example of Édouard Manet. Although Degas painted a number of Jewish subjects from 1865 to 1870, his anti-Semitism became apparent by the mid-1870s. His 1879 painting "Portraits at the Stock Exchange" is widely regarded as anti-Semitic, with the facial features of the banker taken directly from the anti-Semitic cartoons rampant in Paris at the time.
The Dreyfus Affair, which divided Paris from the 1890s to the early 1900s, further intensified his anti-Semitism. By the mid-1890s, he had broken off relations with all of his Jewish friends,  publicly disavowed his previous friendships with Jewish artists, and refused to use models who he believed might be Jewish. He remained an outspoken anti-Semite and member of the anti-Semitic "Anti-Dreyfusards" until his death.
Among his works: "Little Dancer of Fourteen Years" ("petit rat" p.230 TAL (French, litterally "little rat" (a very young ballet student at the Paris opera)), "Young Spartans Exercising" (1860-1862), "Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers" (1865), "Danse Class" (1871), "Rehearsal on Stage", "The Singer with the Glove" (1878), "Dancers at the bar" (1888), "Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers (Star of the Ballet)" (1878; with Rosita Mauri), "Danseuse sur la scène" (1878; with Rosita Mauri), , "Prima ballerina" (1878; with Rosita Mauri), "Fin d'arabesque" (1877; with Rosita Mauri), "Stage Rehearsal" (1878), "After the Bath, Woman Drying her Nape" (1898) and "Dancers" (1900).

--

Rosita Mauri was a famous dancer (who died in Paris in December 3, 1923). Edouard Manet painted her in "Jeune femme en rose" (1880). She was also painted by Edgar Degas in "Fin d'arabesque" (1877), "Dancer with a Bouquet of Flowers (Star of the Ballet)" (1878), "Prima ballerina" (1878) and "Danseuse sur la scène" (1878). The Swedish painter Anders Zorn painted her as well in 1888. She was also the subject of "A head" by Denys Puech in 1900. The famous French photographer Nadar (who died in March 1910) made portraits of her throughout her career. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote how impressed he was by her ritualistic animality (sa divination mêlée d’animalité). After she retired from full-time dancing, she taught future generations of dancers at the Ballet d’Opera's ‘Class of perfection’ between 1898-1920.

--

Eugène Delacroix (1798 - 1863) was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school.
As a painter and muralist, Delacroix's use of expressive brushstrokes and his study of the optical effects of colour profoundly shaped the work of the Impressionists, while his passion for the exotic inspired the artists of the Symbolist movement. A fine lithographer, Delacroix illustrated various works of William Shakespeare, the Scottish author Walter Scott and the German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Delacroix was also inspired by Lord Byron, with whom he shared a strong identification with the "forces of the sublime", of nature in often violent action. In the words of Baudelaire, "Delacroix was passionately in love with passion, but coldly determined to express passion as clearly as possible". Among his notable paintings: "Mademoiselle Rose", "Liberty Leading the People" (1830), "Fantasia Arabe" (1833), "The Natchez" (1835), "Jewish Wedding in Morocco", "The Barque of Dante" (1822), "Ovid among the Scythians" (1862) and "Shipwreck on the Coast" (1862; "A Shipwreck" (p.20 TAL)).

--

Rosa Bonheur, born Marie-Rosalie Bonheur, (16 March 1822 - 25 May 1899) was a French artist, an animalière (painter of animals) and sculptor, known for her artistic realism. Bonheur is widely considered to be the most famous female painter of the nineteenth century.
Francis Galton (who died 1911) used the Bonheurs as an example of "Hereditary Genius" in his 1869 essay of the same title. A French government commission led to Bonheur's first great success, "Ploughing in the Nivernais", exhibited in 1849. Though she was more popular in England than in her native France, she was decorated with the French Legion of Honour by the Empress Eugénie (wife of Louis-napoléon Bonaparte (a.k.a Napoléon III), French Emperor between 1852 and 1870) in 1865, and was promoted to Officer of the order in 1894. "Portrait of Rosa Bonheur" (1898), by Anna Klumpke (1856-1942). The first biography of Rosa Bonheur was published in her lifetime: a pamphlet written by Eugène de Mirecourt, "Les Contemporains: Rosa Bonheur", which appeared just after her Salon success with "The Horse Fair" in 1856. The second account was written by Anna Klumpke, an American painter from Boston who met Bonheur in 1887. The most authoritative work is Reminiscences of Rosa Bonheur, edited by Theodore Stanton (the son of Elizabeth Cady Stanton), and published simultaneously in London and New York in 1910. 
There is a well-known photograph of Rosa Bonheur by André Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri (born in March 1819) circa 1863 and there is another well-known picture of Rosa Bonheur and Natalie Micas in Nice in 1882.
Among her works: "The Horse Fair" (1852-55; Metropolitan Museum of Art), "A Family of Deer" (1865), "Changing of meadow" (1868), "The Monarch of the herd" (1868), "Portrait de Col. William F. Cody" (1889).

--

Robert Desnos (1900-1945 in a concentration camp; "1945" p. 30 TAL and "tragic old ladies that have been gassed" (p.254 TAL) in reference to the Nazi concentration/death camp) was a French surrealist poet who played a key role in the Surrealist movement of his day. The first poems by Desnos to appear in print were published in 1917 in La Tribune des Jeunes (Platform for Youth) and in 1919 in the avant-garde review, Le Trait d’union (Hyphen), and also the same year in the Dadaist magazine Littérature. In 1922, he published his first book, a collection of surrealistic aphorisms, with the title "Rrose Sélavy" (based upon the name (pseudonym) of the popular French artist Marcel Duchamp). In 1919, he met the poet Benjamin Péret who introduced him to the Paris Dada group and André Breton, with whom he soon became friends. In Georges Bataille's Documents, he wrote articles on "Modern Imagery", "Avant-garde Cinema" (1929, issue 7), "Pygmalion and the Sphinx" (1930, issue 1). Among his works are "La ménagerie de Tristan", "Rrose Sélavy " (1923/1930; pun on Eros C'est la vie - i.e. Eros is life) and "La géométrie de Daniel" (1939). He also made a play "La Place De L'Etoile", (1928; revised 1944) and a film script, L'Etoile de mer (1928) (French étoile means star (in latin Stella and Aster)).

-- 

"Cantrip College" (p.260 TAL): Cantrip is a word of Scots origin to mean a magical spell of any kind, or one which reads the same forwards and backwards. It can also be a witch's trick, or a sham. It is possibly derived from the Gaelic canntaireachd, a piper's mnemonic chant. Note that "cantrip" can be rearranged as pan tric, a barely distorted Pan trick.

--

The church of La Madeleine (p. TAL):  The settlement around the site had belonged to the Bishop of Paris since the time of Philip II of France, when Bishop Maurice de Sully seized the synagogue that stood on the site from the Jews of Paris in 1182, and consecrated it a church dedicated to Mary Magdalene. The Madeleine Church was designed in its present form as a temple to the glory of Napoleon's army. the building was finally consecrated as a church in 1842.
The funeral of the Pole Frédéric Chopin took place at the Church of the Madeleine in October 30, 1849.
During the Paris Commune of 1871, the curé of the church, Abbé Deguerry was one of those arrested and held hostage by the Commune. He was executed alongside Georges Darboy, the Archbishop of Paris and four other hostages on 24 May 1871, as French government troops were retaking the city.
The first organist of the church (1842-1846) was Charles-Alexandre Fessy (1804-1856).

--

References to the Renaissance French author Pierre de Ronsard and thus to his most famous poem "Mignonne, allons voir si la rose" (1545).

"Le roman de la Rose" is a French medieval poetical text supposedly written near the end of the reign of Louis IX (i.e. 9). 

--

"laodicean" (p.146 TAL) is to be counted among the references to Turkey, Greece, Persia and the Islamic civilization and especially  the antique anatolia/orient/middle-east civilization.

• Laodicea on the Lycus, in Phrygia (Turkey).
• Laodicea ad Libanum, near Homs (Syria).
• Laodicea (Arcadia), in Greece.
• Laodicea (Mesopotamia), in Iraq.
• Laodicea in Media, former name of Nahavand, Iran. 
• Laodicea in Phoenicia, former name of Beirut, Lebanon

--

Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie (3 June 1853 - 28 July 1942 in Jerusalem; Flinders is pretty close to Dutch Vlinders meaning Butterflies, especially since the Dutch V sound is between V and F), commonly known as Flinders Petrie, was an English Egyptologist and a pioneer of systematic methodology in archaeology and preservation of artefacts. He held the first chair of Egyptology in the United Kingdom, and excavated many of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt in conjunction with his wife, Hilda Petrie (1871-1957) i. He was Knighted in 1923. He wrote the articles about "Abydos, Egypt", “Egypt”, “Pyramid” and “Weights and Measures” in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. There is a photograph of him at age 12 in 1865. Sir Flinders Petrie was also painted by George Frederic Watts (see the main page; among other things, a husband of Ellen Alice Terry).

--

William Loftus (1820-1858), was a British geologist, naturalist, explorer and archaeological excavator, discovered the famous Sumerian/Babylonian Uruk in 1849. From 1849 he served as geologist and naturalist with the British government's Turco-Persian Boundary Commission, under Col. W.F. Williams (Royal Artillery). In September 1856 Loftus was engaged as assistant geologist to the Geological Survey of India, but in India he suffered declining health and died at sea on the voyage back to Britain, aged 38.
He wrote "Travels and Researches in Chaldaea and Susiana in 1849-52".

--

Alice Pleasance Liddell by Lewis Carroll (cropped)

--

Jean-François Champollion (Born in 1790. He died in Paris in March 1832) was a French scholar, philologist and orientalist, known primarily as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs (with the famous Rosetta Stone) and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. A child prodigy in philology, he gave his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in 1806, and already as a young man held many posts of honor in scientific circles, and spoke Coptic and Arabic fluently. In 1820, Champollion embarked in earnest on the project of decipherment of hieroglyphic script, soon overshadowing the achievements of British polymath Thomas Young who had made the first advances in decipherment before 1819. Champollion married Rosine Blanc (1794-1871) in 1818. Rosine was the daughter of a well-to-do family of Grenoblean glovemakers. In 1811, Champollion was embroiled in controversy, as Étienne Marc Quatremère, like Champollion a student of Silvestre de Sacy, published his Mémoires géographiques et historiques sur l'Égypte ... sur quelques contrées voisines. Champollion saw himself forced to publish as a stand-alone paper the "Introduction" to his work in progress "L'Egypte sous les pharaons ou recherches sur la géographie, la langue, les écritures et l'histoire de l'Egypte avant l'invasion de Cambyse" (1814). Because of the similarities in the topic matter, and the fact that Champollion's work was published after Quatremère's, allegations arose that Champollion had plagiarized the work of Quatremère. Even Silvestre de Sacy, the mentor of both authors, considered the possibility, to Champollion's great chagrin.

--

Auguste Mariette (1821-1881; Born at Boulogne-sur-Mer, a town which is a location in Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables") was a French scholar, archaeologist and Egyptologist, and founder of the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. His 1847 analytic catalogue of the Egyptian Gallery of the Boulogne Museum got him a minor appointment at the Louvre Museum in 1849, in Paris. 
He gained government funds open the museum in Cairo at Bulaq in 1863 in order to take the pressure off the sites and stop the trade in illicit antiquities. Among many things, he also cleared the sands around the Sphinx down to the bare rock, and in the process discovered the famous granite and alabaster monument, the "Temple of the Sphinx" and discovered the famous statue of the noble couple of the Pharaoh of the IVth dynasty, Rahotep and Nophret, in 1871. In 1860 alone, Mariette had set up 35 new dig sites, whilst attempting to conserve already-dug sites. His success was aided by the fact that no rivals were permitted to dig in Egypt, a fact that the British (who had previously had the majority of Egyptologists active in the country) and Germans (who were politically allied with the country's Ottoman rulers) protested at as a 'sweetheart deal' between Egypt and France. He also found the virtually intact tomb of Prince Khaemweset, Ramesses II's son. In 1878, his museum was ravaged by floods, which destroyed most of his notes and drawings.

In 1867, he had returned to oversee the ancient Egyptian stand at the Exposition Universelle, to a hero's welcome for keeping France pre-eminent in Egyptology. In 1869, at the request of the Khedive, he wrote a brief plot for an opera. The following year this concept, worked into a scenario by Camille du Locle, was proposed to Giuseppe Verdi, who accepted it as a subject for Aida (*). For Aida, Mariette and Du Locle oversaw the scenery and costumes, which were inspired by the art of Ancient Egypt. The premiere of Aida was originally scheduled for February 1871, but was delayed until 24 December 1871, due to the siege of Paris at the height of the Franco-Prussian War (which trapped Mariette with the costumes and scenery in Paris). The opera met with great acclaim.
In 1867, Mariette met with Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (of Jewish parents of an Italian family) who also became a famous egyptologist.
He died in Cairo and was interred in a sarcophagus which is on display in the Garden of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. The bust of other famous Egyptologists, including Charles Wycliffe Goodwin, have been placed on a semi-circular memorial around the sarcophagus.

(*) "Aida" is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in Egypt, it was commissioned by and first performed at Cairo's Khedivial Opera House on 24 December 1871. Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera for performance to celebrate the opening of the Khedivial Opera House, paying him 150,000 francs, but the premiere was delayed because of the Siege of Paris (1870-1871), during the Franco-Prussian War, when the scenery and costumes were stuck in the French capital, and Verdi's Rigoletto was performed instead. Aida eventually premiered in Cairo in late 1871.

--

Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (1817-1878) was an English Egyptologist, bible scholar, lawyer and judge. The first papyrus publication has been credited to Goodwin, who published for the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, one of the Papyri Graecae Magicae V, translated into English with commentary in 1853. Goodwin was appointed Assistant Judge of the British Supreme Court for China and Japan in 1865 on the founding of the court. Goodwin died in Shanghai in 1878.

--

In 1862 during the American Civil War, the Union General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.

--

p.211 TAL "I once read a French detective tale where the clues were actually in italics". Maurice Leblanc (1864-1941), the author of the Arsène Lupin books, was considered like a French Arthur Conan Doyle. Among his major works "Voici des ailes" (1898), "813" (1910), "La Frontière" ("The Frontier") (1911), "Les Trois Yeux" ("The Three Eyes") (1919), "La Robe d’écaille rose" (1920), "Dorothée, danseuse de corde" (US: "The Secret Tomb", UK: "Dorothy the Rope Dancer") (1923).

Yves Mirande (May 1876 - March 1957) also wrote a play titled "Arsène Lupin banquier" (and also "Paris-New York" (1940), "Charlemagne", "Tu seras Duchesse", "Princesse Tam Tam", "Le Roi des Champs-élysée" (Roi = King in French), "Train de Plaisir").

--

Sir Henry Irving (1838 - 1905), born John Henry Brodribb, sometimes known as J. H. Irving, was an English stage actor in the Victorian era, known as an actor-manager because he took complete responsibility (supervision of sets, lighting, direction, casting, as well as playing the leading roles) for season after season at the Lyceum Theatre, establishing himself and his company as representative of English classical theatre. In 1895 he became the first actor to be awarded a knighthood, indicating full acceptance into the higher circles of British society.
Irving was one of the inspirations for Count Dracula, the title character of the 1897 novel "Dracula" whose author Bram Stoker was business manager of the theatre.

After a few years' schooling while living at Halsetown, near St Ives, Cornwall, Irving became a clerk to a firm of East India merchants in London, but he soon gave up a commercial career for acting. On 29 September 1856 he made his first appearance at Sunderland as Gaston, Duke of Orleans, in Bulwer Lytton's play, "Richelieu", billed as Henry Irving., laboring against great odds until his 1871 success in The Bells in London set him apart from all the rest.
He married Florence O'Callaghan on 15 July 1869 at St. Marylebone, London, but his personal life took second place to his professional life. On opening night of The Bells, 25 November 1871, Florence, who was pregnant with their second child, criticised his profession: "Are you going on making a fool of yourself like this all your life?" Irving exited their carriage at Hyde Park Corner, walked off into the night, and chose never to see her again. He maintained a discreet distance from his children as well, but became closer to them as they grew older. Florence Irving never divorced Irving, and once he had been knighted she styled herself "Lady Irving"; Irving never remarried.

His elder son, Harry Brodribb Irving (1870–1919), usually known as "H B Irving", became a famous actor and later a theatre manager. His younger son, Laurence Irving (1871–1914), became a dramatist and later drowned, with his wife, in the sinking of the Empress of Ireland. H B married Dorothea Baird and they had a son, Laurence Irving (1897–1988), who became a well-known Hollywood art director and his grandfather's biographer.

In November 1882 Irving became a Freemason, being initiated into the prestigious Jerusalem Lodge No 197 in London. In 1887 he became a founder member and first Treasurer of the Savage Club Lodge No 2190, a Lodge associated with London's Savage Club.

He eventually took over the management of the Lyceum Theatre and brought actress Ellen Terry into partnership with him as Ophelia to his Hamlet, Lady Macbeth to his Macbeth, Portia to his Shylock, Beatrice to his Benedick, etc. Before joining the Lyceum, Terry had fled her first marriage and conceived two out-of-wedlock children with bohemian artist Godwin, but regardless of how much and how often her behavior defied the strict morality expected by her Victorian audiences, she somehow remained popular. It could be said that Irving found his family in his professional company, which included his ardent supporter and manager Bram Stoker and Terry's two illegitimate children, Teddy and Edy.

Whether Irving's long, spectacularly successful relationship with leading lady Ellen Terry was romantic as well as professional has been the subject of much historical speculation. Most of their correspondence was lost or burned by her descendants. According to Michael Holroyd's book about Irving and Terry, A Strange Eventful History: "Years later, when Irving was dead, Marguerite Steen asked Ellen whether she really had been Irving's lover, and she promptly answered: 'Of course I was. We were terribly in love for a while.' But at earlier periods in her life, when there were more people around to be offended, she said contradictory things."

Terry's son Teddy, later known as Edward Gordon Craig, spent much of his childhood (from 1879, when he was 8, until 1897) indulged by Irving backstage at the Lyceum. Craig, who came to be regarded as something of a visionary for the theatre of the future, wrote an especially vivid, book-length tribute to Irving. ("Let me state at once, in clearest unmistakable terms, that I have never known of, or seen, or heard, a greater actor than was Irving.") 

George Bernard Shaw, at the time a theatre critic who was jealous of Irving's connection to Ellen Terry (whom Shaw himself wanted in his own plays), conceded Irving's genius after Irving died.

--

After the Greek War of Independence (against the Ottoman Empire (~Turkey)), Greece was finally recognized as an independent nation in the Treaty of Constantinople (a.k.a. Istanbul, probably the most famous Turkish city) of May 1832. The first King was Otto of Greece (May 1832 - 1862), followed by George I of Greece (a Danish prince who reigned from March 1863 to March 1913).

-- 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton (Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton; 1803-1873; On 20 February 1844, in accordance with his mother's will, he changed his surname from 'Bulwer' to 'Bulwer-Lytton' and assumed the arms of Lytton by royal licence (like his widowed mother had done in 1811, but, his brothers remained plain 'Bulwer') was an English novelist, poet, playwright, and politician. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling novels which earned him a considerable fortune. He coined the phrases "the great unwashed", "pursuit of the almighty dollar", "the pen is mightier than the sword" (1), "dweller on the threshold", as well as the well-known opening line "It was a dark and stormy night". In 1822 he entered Trinity College, Cambridge. Bulwer-Lytton began his career as a follower of Jeremy Bentham. In 1831 he was elected member for St Ives in Cornwall, after which he was returned for Lincoln in 1832, and sat in Parliament for that city for nine years. In 1841, he left Parliament and did not return to politics until 1852. He married Rosina Doyle Wheeler (1802-1882 (2)), a famous Irish beauty who was also an author (e.g. "The Peer's Daughters: A Novel" (1849), "The School for Husbands: or Moliére's Life and Times" (1852), "Where there's a Will there's a Way"  (1871), "Chumber Chase" (1871), "Mauleverer's Divorce" (1871)). When King Otto of Greece abdicated in 1862, he was offered the crown of Greece, which he declined. He's the author of, among others, "Pelham: or The Adventures of a Gentleman" (1828; Pelham resembled Benjamin Disraeli's recent first novel "Vivian Grey" (1827)), "Eugene Aram" (1832 (3)), "Alice, or The Mysteries" (1838), "The Last Days of Pompeii" (1834), "Rienzi, the last of the Roman tribunes" (1835; It inpired the famous  Wagner's opera "Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen" (1842)), "Zanoni" (1842; (4)), "The Caxtons: A Family Picture" (1849), "The New Timon" (1846; an attack on Tennyson published anonymously), "King Arthur" (1848-1849), "A Strange Story" (1862), "The Rightful Heir" (1868), "The Coming Race" (1871) and "The Lady of Lyons" (1838; (5)).

(1) A thing to note: The phrase appeared as the motto of gold pen manufacturer Levi Willcutt during a Railroad Jubilee in Boston, Massachusetts which ran during the week beginning 17 September 1852.

(2) Rosina Doyle Wheeler's mother was the advocate of women's rights Anna Wheeler. One of Wheeler's great-granddaughters was the sister-in-law of the Prime Minister Gerald Balfour, while another, Lady Constance Lytton, followed Anna's role model and became a leading suffragette protester, hunger striker and writer, and a third, Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton, dismayed her parents by successfully proposing to the architect Edwin Landseer Lutyens and later became a Theosophist. One of her brothers, Sir John Milley Doyle (1781-1856) was a commander of British and Portuguese forces in the Peninsular War and the War of the Two Brothers (The Battle of Ponte Ferreira, fought on 22-23 July 1832, was the first major battle of the war; "in Portugal" p.32 TAL).

(3) there is a "Eugene Aram", a 1924 British film directed by Arthur Rooke starring a Walter Tennyson who played in "The Virgin Queen" (1923) and directed "King of Hearts" (1936).

(4) Zanoni is the story (which lies in the occult) of an immortal (at the time of Babylon he abandoned all human passions to become so) Rosicrucian brother in love with Viola Pisani who eventually dies during the French Revolution. The English Rosicrucian society, founded in 1867 by Robert Wentworth Little, claimed Bulwer-Lytton as their 'Grand Patron', but he wrote to the society complaining that he was 'extremely surprised' by their use of the title, as he had 'never sanctioned such' (many esoteric societies inspired by the Rosicrucians were formed in that time (Rosicrucians, having a rose in their name and having famous members in groups that claimed a relation with them (Conan Doyle, Yeats, etc...), are among the background references in "Lolita"), e.g. Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia (SRIA) ca. 1860-1865, Societas Rosicruciana in America (SRIA) in 1878, Cabalistic Order of the Rosicrucian (French: Kabbalistique de la Rose Croix) in 1888 and the already mentionned Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1888). Nevertheless, a number of esoteric groups have continued to claim Bulwer-Lytton as their own, chiefly because some of his writings - particularly "Zanoni" - have included Rosicrucian and other esoteric notions.

(5) It formed the basis for the operas "Leonora" (1845; based on the 1838 play "The Lady of Lyons", and "Notre-Dame of Paris", the 1831 novel by Victor Hugo) with music by William Henry Fry (he was the first person born in the United States to write for a large symphony orchestra, and the first to compose a publicly performed opera. From 1852 until his death in 1864, Fry served as music critic and political editor for the New York Tribune, the well-known Horace Greeley (1811-1872) 's newspaper); "Pauline" (1876, at the Lyceum Theatre) with music by Frederic Hymen Cowen (1852-1935; (6)); and for part of the plot of the operetta "Der Bettelstudent" (1882; It was revived in New York at least three times, the first time in 1898 at the American Theatre) with music by Carl Millöcker (1842-1899). The latter operetta was a success and allowed Millöcker to retire from conducting. Johann Strauss II rejected the libretto in favor of "A Night in Venice", but Millöcker's work turned out to be an enduringly popular operetta, with over 5,000 productions. Millöcker's first operetta was "Der tote Gast", an operetta in one act, premiered in 1865. A silent movie "Beggar Student" was made from "Der Bettelstudent" starring Viola Gilette (1871-1956), born Viola Pratt (she was an American contralto from Salt Lake City that made her stage debut in Washington, D.C. in 1898. She subsequently moved to New York City, where she sang with the Castle Square Opera Company). An article in 1899 in Hawaiian Star commented: "The play is Bulwer Lytton's masterpiece for the stage, and has held its place as a standard drama for near on to half a century, being as popular now as when it was first produced."
In the premiere of "The Lady of Lyons" in New York in 1838, the widow Melnotte was played by Charlotte Cushman (1816-1876; She was a descendant in the eighth generation from Pilgrim Robert Cushman, who helped organize the Mayflower voyage) was an American stage actress with a voice noted for its full contralto register making her able to play both male and female parts. By 1839, her younger sister Susan Webb Cushman became an actress, and at the age of 14 had married Nelson Merriman. Her husband abandoned her when she was pregnant and Charlotte cared for her sister. The two sisters became famous for playing "Romeo and Juliet" together, with Charlotte playing Romeo and Susan playing Juliet. In 1848, Cushman met journalist, writer and part-time actress Matilda Hays (Hays (there is a widow Hays in "Lolita"), influenced by George Sand (a French lady writer with a male pen name ("lady writer" p.44 TAL); Hays also translated som of her works), was a journalist and novelist who was "determined to use her writing to improve the condition of women."). The two women became close friends, and after a short amount of time they became involved in a lesbian affair. In 1849, Cushman returned to the United States and by 1852 had decided to retire from the stage. She took up residence with Hays in Rome, Italy. They began living in an American expatriate community there, made up mostly of the many lesbian artists and sculptors of the time. Cushman used her notoriety to promote the works of African American/Native American sculptor Edmonia Lewis, who had become a close friend and whom Cushman greatly admired. In 1854, Hays left Cushman for lesbian sculptor Harriet Hosmer (8), which launched a series of jealous interactions among the three women. Hays eventually returned to live with Cushman, but the tensions between her and Cushman would never be repaired. By late 1857, Cushman was secretly involved with lesbian sculptor Emma Stebbins (7). Although Cushman maintained that she was devoted to Stebbins, she became involved with another woman not long after her relationship with Stebbins began. Cushman met an 18-year-old actress, Emma Crow, the daughter of Wayman Crow, and fell for her. The two women began an affair, and Cushman often called her "my little lover".

(7) Emma Stebbins (1815-1882) was among the first notable American woman sculptors. She moved to Rome where she moved in with sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who had established herself there in 1852. She released the correspondence, "Charlotte Cushman: Her Letters and Memories of Her Life" in 1878. Her bronze statue of educator Horace Mann was installed outside the State House in Boston in 1865.

(8) Among the works of Harriet Hosmer we find "Hesper, The Evening Star" (1852; her first original sculpture), "Thomas Hart Benton" (1862; the first public monument in the state of Missouri), "A Waking Faun" (1866-1867; for Lafayette Park, St. Louis. It was created as a companion to "The Sleeping Faun"), the Lincoln Memorial, sometimes known as "Freedmen's Monument" (1867-1868), "Queen of Naples" (1868), "Sentinel of Pompeii" (1878), "Crerar Lincoln Memorial - The African Sibyl" (1888-1896; made in attempt to win a Lincoln Memorial competition), "Beatrice Cenci" (1857), "A Sleeping Faun" (1865; now being displayed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), "The Fountain of the Siren", "The Fountain of the Hylas and the Water Nymphs", "Queen Isabella of Castile", "The Clasped Hands of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning" (1853), "Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra" (1857) and an alternate Emancipation Memorial - designed but not constructed.
While living in Rome, she associated with a colony of artists and writers that included Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bertel Thorvaldsen, William Makepeace Thackeray, and the two female Georges, Eliot and Sand. When in Florence, she was frequently the guest of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning at Casa Guidi. The artists included Anne Whitney, Emma Stebbins, Edmonia Lewis, Louisa Lander, Margaret Foley, Florence Freeman, and Vinnie Ream. Hawthorne was clearly describing these in his novel "The Marble Faun", causing Henry James to dismiss them as "The White Marmorean Flock".

(6) Frederic Hymen Cowen (1852-1935) was a British pianist, conductor and composer. He was born Hymen Frederick Cohen and his siblings were Elizabeth Rose Cohen (b. 1843); actress, Henrietta Sophia Cohen (b. 1845); painter, Lionel Jonas Cohen (b. 1847) and Emma Magnay Cohen (b. 1849). In 1865 he was sent to Germany to further his musical education. In 1884 he conducted five concerts of the Philharmonic Society of London, and in 1888, on the resignation of Arthur Sullivan, became the regular conductor of that society. Cowen received honorary doctorates from Cambridge and Edinburgh in 1900 and 1910 respectively, and was knighted at St. James's Palace on 6 July 1911. He married a woman who was 30 years his junior. Among his works are "Pauline" (Lyceum Theatre, London in 1876; first given by the Carl Rosa Opera Company; the opera is inspired by Bulwer-Lytton's "Lady of Lyons"), "The Maid of Orleans" (about Joan of Arc; incidental music, 1871), "The Enchanted Cottage" (incidental music, 1922 - from a work by Arthur Wing Pinero), "The Deluge" (1878), "The Rose Maiden" (1870), "The Corsair" (1876), "The Sleeping Beauty" (1885), "The Fairies' Spring" (female voices, 1891), "The Water Lily" (1893), "The Rose of Life" (female voices, 1895), "A Daughter of the Sea" (female voices, 1896), "A Song of Thanksgiving" (1888), "In Memoriam: Ode to Carl Rosa" (1890), or the song "It was a Dream".

--

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900 in Paris) was an Irish playwright, novelist, essayist, and poet. He attended university in Dublin (Trinity College, from 1871 to 1874; The University Philosophical Society also provided an education, discussing intellectual and artistic subjects such as Rossetti and Swinburne weekly) then Oxford (At Magdalen, he read Greats from 1874 to 1878. Attracted by its dress, secrecy, and ritual, he petitioned the Apollo Masonic Lodge at Oxford, and was soon raised to the "Sublime Degree of Master Mason". While at Magdalen College, Wilde became particularly well known for his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements. Wilde won the 1878 Newdigate Prize for his poem "Ravenna", which reflected on his visit there the year before, and he duly read it at Encaenia. In November 1878, he graduated with a double first in his B.A. of Classical Moderations and Literae Humaniores (Greats).). He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After graduation from Oxford, Wilde returned to Dublin, where he met again Florence Balcombe, a childhood sweetheart. She became engaged to Bram Stoker and they married in 1878. In mid-1881, at 27 years old, "Poems" collected, revised and expanded his poetic efforts. The book was generally well received, and sold out its first print run of 750 copies, prompting further printings in 1882. Punch was less enthusiastic, "The poet is Wilde, but his poetry's tame" was their verdict. Aestheticism was sufficiently in vogue to be caricatured by Gilbert and Sullivan in "Patience" (1881). Richard D'Oyly Carte, an English impresario, invited Wilde to make a lecture tour of North America. He arrived in America on 2 January 1882.
Among his works are "The Picture of Dorian Gray", "Ravenna" (1878), "The Happy Prince and Other Stories" (1888, fairy stories - among them "The Nightingale and the Rose"), "The Sphinx", "The Duchess of Padua", "A Florentine Tragedy ", "The Canterville Ghost" (*), "The Soul of Man under Socialism", "The Truth of Masks", "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" (1898). Let's note that Aubrey Beardsley made illustrations for "Salomé".

(*) "The Canterville Ghost" is hinted in "Lolita" a book in which find we find mentions of Virginia, (lady) Clem (reminiscent of Poe's Virginia Clemm), Venice, Sybil (Merton; there is an aunt Sybil in "Lolita"), the Duchess of Cheshire (reminiscent of "Alice in Wonderland"), lord Rugby (Lewis Carroll's school) (and maybe Lord Arthur Savile, Jane Percy, Humbey, Uncle Cecil (an English male name that sounds like the French female name Cécile - in the perpective of the male/female pairings and swappings in the riddle)), etc...

--

Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (30 September 1852 (september is the 9th month) - 29 March 1924) was an Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor. While still an undergraduate, Stanford was appointed organist of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 1882, aged 29, he was one of the founding professors of the Royal College of Music, where he taught composition for the rest of his life.
His last symphony was composed in 1911.
He received honorary doctorates from Oxford (1883) and Cambridge (1888) and he was knighted in 1902. There exists a caricature of Stanford by Spy in Vanity Fair in 1905.
"His music is in the best sense of the word Victorian, that is to say it is the musical counterpart of the art of Tennyson, Watts and Matthew Arnold." - Ralph Vaughan Williams 

--

"Madame Butterfly" was published in 1898. It was written by John Luther Long who was mainly influenced by Pierre Loti's (*) 1887 novel "Madame Chrysanthème". The three acts opera "Madama Butterfly" by Giacomo Puccini, based on John Luther Long's short story, premiered in New York in 1900.

(*) Pierre Loti (14 January 1850 (14 January is the day of death of Lewis Carroll) - 10 June 1923) was French naval officer and novelist (that had been admired by Marcel Proust, Le Roman d'un enfant (The Story of a Child), a somewhat fictionalized recollection of Loti's childhood, would greatly influence Marcel Proust), known for his exotic novels. Loti proceeded to the South Seas as part of his naval training, living in Papeete, Tahiti for two months in 1872, where he "went native". Several years later he published the Polynesian idyll originally titled "Rarahu" (1880), which was reprinted as Le Mariage de Loti, the first book to introduce him to the wider public. His narrator explains that the name Loti was bestowed on him by the natives, after his mispronunciation of "roti" (a red flower) - the book inspired the well_known 1883 opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes. In 1882, Loti issued a collection of four shorter pieces, three stories and a travel piece, under the general title of "Fleurs d'ennui" (Flowers of Boredom). Loti served  as a naval officer aboard the ironclad Atalante. During the autumn of 1900 he went to China as part of the international expedition sent to combat the Boxer Rebellion. He described what he saw there after the siege of Beijing in "Les Derniers Jours de Pékin" ("The Last Days of Peking", 1902). Later, " Les Désenchantées", which concerned women of the Turkish harem, was based like many of Loti's books, on fact - it has, however, become clear that Loti was in fact the victim of a cruel hoax by three prosperous Turkish women. Among his works: "Figures et Choses qui passaient" (1898), "Judith Renaudin" (1898), "Le Château de la Belle au Bois dormant" (1910; 'The Castle of the Sleeping Beauty'), "Prime Jeunesse" (1919), "Journal Intime" (1878–1885, 2 vol ("Private Diary", 1925–1929)), "Correspondence Inédite" (1865–1904, unpublished correspondence, 1929)

--

Lorina Charlotte Liddell by Lewis Carroll

--

Amy Judith Levy (10 November 1861 - 10 September 1889; her firstname Amy is the anagram of may) was a British lesbian feminist essayist, poet, and novelist. She was the first Jewish woman at Cambridge University. Levy showed interest in literature from an early age. At 13, she wrote a criticism of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's feminist work "Aurora Leigh"; at 14, Levy's first poem, "Ida Grey: A Story of Woman's Sacrifice", was published in the journal "Pelican". While travelling in Florence in 1886, Levy met Vernon Lee (*), a fiction writer and literary theorist six years her senior, and fell in love with her. Both women would go on to write works with themes of sapphic love.

(*) Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the British writer Violet Paget (1856-1935; 1935 is also the year of birth of Lolita). Among her works: "Ottilie: An Eighteenth Century Idyl", A Phantom Lover: A Fantastic Story (1886; a novella also "Oke of Okehurst", "Alice Oke"), "The Child In The Vatican" (1900), "The Enchanted Woods" (1905; essays) or "Proteus or The Future Of Intelligence" (1925).

--

Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was a Czech Art Nouveau (*) painter and decorative artist. In 1871, Mucha became a chorister at the Saint-Peter’s Cathedral in Brno, where he received his secondary school education. It is there that he had his first revelation, in front of the richness of Baroque art. Mucha moved to Paris in 1887. Mucha's style was given international exposure by the 1900 Universal Exhibition in Paris.
Much and his wife visited the U.S. from 1906 to 1910, during which time their daughter, Jaroslava, was born in New York City.

(*) Art Nouveau has affinities with the Pre-Raphaelites and the Symbolist styles, and artists like Aubrey Beardsley, Alphonse Mucha, Edward Burne-Jones, Gustav Klimt and Jan Toorop can be associated with the style. The origins of Art Nouveau are found in the resistance of the artist William Morris to the cluttered compositions and the revival tendencies of the 19th century and his theories that helped initiate the Arts and crafts movement.

--

There are also references to the Burlesque (*).

Examples:

"Robert the Devil, or The Nun, the Dun, and the Son of a Gun" is an operatic parody by W. S. Gilbert in which there is a King, a Queen, a Princess, an Alice and a character named Raimbault (sounds like Rimbaud in French ; a troubadour betrothed to Alice). The piece premiered at the opening of the newly rebuilt Gaiety Theatre in London on 21 December 1868. Robert the Devil was part of a series of five operatic burlesques written early in Gilbert's career. Among them was "The Merry Zingara; or, the Tipsy Gipsy and the Pipsy Wipsy" (Royalty Theatre, 1868; (in which the Gipsy Queen was played by Charlotte Saunders)), a burlesque of Balfe's "The Bohemian Girl" (To note: a four-act French version of Balfe's ballad opera, "La Bohemienne", was mounted in Rouen in 1862). 
A silent movie version was made in Britain in 1922 in which Ellen Terry, much better known as a stage actress, made her last screen appearance as Buda the nursemaid. C. Aubrey Smith plays Devilshoof.
"The Bohemian Girl" is mentioned in the short stories "Clay" and "Eveline" by James Joyce which are both parts of "Dubliners". In "Clay", the character Maria sings some lines from "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls". The aria is quoted again in Joyce's novel "Finnegans Wake".
Booth Tarkington mentions the opera, though not by name, in "The Two Vanrevels", and quotes a line of the aria "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls".

"Carmen up to Data" is a musical burlesque also premiered at the Gaiety Theatre in London in 1890 (with Florence St. John in the title role and Arthur Williams as Captain Zuniga). Other examples at the Gaiety include "The Bohemian G-yurl "(1877), "Blue Beard" (1882), "Miss Esmeralda" (1887; Esmeralda was the name of the bohemian girl in Victor Hugo's "Notre-Dame de Paris"), "Faust up to Date" (1888), "Ruy Blas and the Blasé Roué" (1888; "Ruy Blas" was a tragic drama by Victor Hugo in which an indentured commoner (and a poet), dares to love the Queen), "Cinder Ellen up too Late" (1891; Cinder Ellen/Cinderella), etc...
John Hollingswhead (Hollingshead was born in Hoxton, London), the first manager of the Gaiety Theatre, was an innovative producer that brought Gilbert and Sullivan together in 1871 to produce their first joint work.

(*) The word first appears in a title in Francesco Berni's Opere burlesche of the early 16th century, works that had circulated widely in manuscript before they were printed. For a time, burlesque verses were known as poesie bernesca in his honour. 'Burlesque' as a literary term became widespread in 17th century Italy and France, and subsequently England, where it referred to a grotesque imitation of the dignified or pathetic. Shakespeare's Pyramus and Thisbe scene in Midsummer Night's Dream and the general mocking of romance in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle were early examples of such imitation.
In 17th century Spain, playwright and poet Miguel de Cervantes ridiculed medieval romance in his many satirical works. Among Cervantes' works are Exemplary Novels and the Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes published in 1615. The term burlesque has been applied retrospectively to works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and to the Graeco-Roman classics.

"Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old" (named after the legendary Greek father of the drama), is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. premièred in London at the Gaiety Theatre on 26 December 1871. Like many productions at that theatre, it was written in a broad, burlesque style, considerably different from Gilbert and Sullivan's later works. It was a success, for a Christmas entertainment of the time, and closed on 8 March 1872, after a run of 63 performances. It was an advance on the types of burlesques to which Gaiety audiences were accustomed. The plot of Thespis, with its elderly gods tired of their life in Olympus, is similar to some of Offenbach's operas, notably "Orphée aux Enfers" ('Orpheus in the Underworld'; libretto by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy (Already mentionned in the main page (and Ludovic is etymologically related to Louis/Lewis))).

--

Camille Flammarion (1842-1925), was a French astronomer and author, and he also published the magazine "L'Astronomie", starting in 1882. The "Flammarion engraving" first appeared in Flammarion’s 1888 edition of "L’Atmosphère". Among his works are "La pluralité des mondes habités" (The Plurality of Inhabited Worlds) (1862), "Real and Imaginary Worlds" (1865), "Les Étoiles et les Curiosités du Ciel" (1882), "L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire" (1888), "Stella" (1897), "L’inconnu et les problèmes psychiques" (published in English as: L’inconnu: The Unknown) (1900). In 1910, for the appearance of Halley's Comet, he believed the gas from the comet’s tail "would impregnate [the Earth’s] atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet.". He was influenced by Jean Reynaud (1806–1863; he was a French socialist philosopher) and his "Terre et ciel" (1854), which described a religious system based on the transmigration of souls believed to be reconcilable with both Christianity and pluralism. He was convinced that souls after the physical death pass from planet to planet, progressively improving at each new incarnation (C. Flammarion is part of the background references about esoterism in "Lolita" (generally poiting to Rosicrucians and later movement especially the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn - Arthur Conan Doyle's (who is also part of the esoteric references as he was an adept of spiritism and an alledged member of the the Golden Dawn) (*) "The Poison Belt", published 1913, also have a lot in common with Flammarion's worries that the tail of Halley's Comet would be poisonous for earth life.)). He is also hinted in "merman" (p.86 TAL) and "conche" (p.212 TAL) that points to the Greek god Triton (who has the body of a merman and holds a conch), which Flammarion was the first to propose as a name for the satellite of Neptune now wearing this name)

(*) Doyle had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects. In 1887 he joined the Society for Psychical Research and was also initiated as a Freemason (26 January 1887) at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. He resigned from the Lodge in 1889, but returned to it in 1902, only to resign again in 1911. On 28 October 1918, Kingsley Doyle died from pneumonia, which he contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded during the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Brigadier-General Innes Doyle died, also from pneumonia, in February 1919. Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a novella on the subject, The Land of Mist, featuring the character Professor Challenger. "The Coming of the Fairies" (1922) appears to show that Conan Doyle was convinced of the veracity of the five Cottingley Fairies (**) photographs (which decades later were exposed as a hoax). He reproduced them in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits. In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his own flat in Bloomsbury. Doyle attended the séance and declared the clairvoyance manifestations to be genuine.
(**) a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1900–88) and Frances Griffiths (1907–86), two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle KStJ, DL (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician, most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. Among his numerous works are "Through the Magic Door", "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Groom's Story" (1898), "Life After Death" (1919), "The Silver Mirror", "Evidence for Fairies", "Fairies Photographed", "The Cottingley Fairies", "Three of Them", "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", "The Adventure of the Three Students", "The Adventure of the Three Gables", "Haunting Dreams", etc... .

In 1900 he also wrote a book, The Great Boer War (**). One of Doyle's first novels, "The Mystery of Cloomber", was not published until 1888. "A Study in Scarlet" (1887. The novel was first published as a book in July 1888), was the first Sherlock Holmes book. He also played for the amateur cricket (like a distorted image of "croquet") team the Allahakbarries alongside authors J. M. Barrie and A. A. Milne. 


There is a famous photograph of Doyle taken by Herbert Rose Barraud (*), author of "Men and Women of the Day, 1888-89".

(*) Herbert's brother was Francis James Barraud (1856-1924), an artist celebrated for having created "His Master's Voice", a painting used in advertising by the early HMV gramophone records.

(**) (The (Second) Boer War (1899-1902) was the annexation by the United Kingdom army of the two south African Republics (South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State; respectively founded in 1852 and 1854; The British had annexed Basutoland in 1868). Both would eventually be incorporated into the Union of South Africa in 1910. Several key British colonial leaders favoured annexation of the independent Boer republics. These figures included Cape Colony Governor Sir Alfred Milner ("Milner Pass" (p. TAL))) - Note that in 1882, Boer mercenaries declared their independence from the Transvaal Republic (south Africa; founded in 1852) and established the Republic of Stellaland.

--

François-René, Vicomte de Chateaubriand (1768 - 4th of July 1848) was a French writer, politician, diplomat, and historian, who is considered the founder of Romanticism in French literature. Among other works he wrote "Essai sur les révolutions", "Atala, ou Les Amours de Deux Sauvages dans le Desert", "Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem" (1811; English translation by Frederic Shoberl, 1814. Travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, during the years 1806 and 1807), "On Buonaparte and the Bourbons" (in Blum, Christopher Olaf, editor and translator, 2004. Critics of the Enlightenment. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books. 3–42; "Rue Bonaparte" p.26 TAL"), "Les Natchez", "Voyage en Amérique" (i.e. Journey in America), and his famous "Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe" around 1849.

--

Honoré de Balzac, born Honoré Balzac (May 1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright. Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Jack Kerouac, Akira Kurosawa and Henry James, as well as important philosophers such as Friedrich Engels. He had a near-fatal accident in 1832 (he slipped and cracked his head on the street).
In February 1832 Balzac received an intriguing letter from Odessa—with no return address and signed simply "L'Étrangère" ("The Foreigner")—expressing sadness at the cynicism and atheism in "La Peau de Chagrin" and its negative portrayal of women. His response was to place a classified advertisement in the Gazette de France, hoping that his anonymous critic would see it. Thus began a fifteen-year correspondence between Balzac and "the object of [his] sweetest dreams": Ewelina Hańska.

Among his works: "Cromwell" (1819), "Béatrix", "Le Colonel Chabert" (1832), "Le Curé de Tours" (1832), "Louis Lambert" (1832), "Contes drolatiques" (1832–37; conte is french for fairy tale), "Les Ressources de Quinola" (1842), "Paméla Giraud" (1842), "La Rabouilleuse" (1842), "Ursule Mirouët" (1842), "La Dernière Fée" (1823; French for The Last Fairy), "Clotilde de Lusignan" (1822), "Le Corsaire" (opera; a Corsaire is a privateer, i.e. a kind of pirate), "Les Chouans" (1829; about the French Revolution), "Sarrasine" (1830), "La Fille aux yeux d'or" (1833), "La Peau de chagrin" (1831), "Le Lys dans la vallée" (1835).
After writing several novels, in 1832 Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of "all aspects of society". The moment the idea came to him, Balzac raced to his sister's apartment and proclaimed: "I am about to become a genius"! Although he originally called it Etudes des Mœurs ( literally 'Studies of manners', or 'The Ways of the World ' ) it eventually became known as La Comédie Humaine, and he included in it all the fiction that he had published in his lifetime under his own name. This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement.

--

Gustave Flaubert (1821–May 1880; "Flaubertian" p.145 TAL) was an influential French novelist who was perhaps the leading exponent of literary realism in his country. He is known especially for his first published novel, "Madame Bovary" (1857; The novel (referenced in "Lolita"), which took five years to write, was serialized in the Revue de Paris in 1856). In 1849–50 he went on a long journey to the Middle East, visiting Greece and Egypt. In 1858, Flaubert traveled to Carthage to gather material for his next novel, "Salammbô". The novel was completed in 1862 after four years of work. At the time of his death, he may have been working on a further historical novel, based on the Battle of Thermopylae (one of the most famous battle in ancient Greece against the Persian empire). "Dictionary of Received Ideas" was pubished posthumously in 1911. "La légende de Saint-Julien l'Hospitalier" (1888), an opera by Camille Erlanger [ May 1863 - March 1919; He was a Parisian-born French opera composer particularly known for "Velléda" (1888) and "Le Juif polonais" (1900; i.e. 'the Polish Jew') - he also composed "Aube Rouge" (1911; i.e. Red Dawn) and "Hannele Mattern", rêve lyrique (lyrical dream) in five acts (1911) ], was an adaptation from Flaubert.

--

(Pierre Jules) Théophile Gautier (1811-1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While Gautier was an ardent defender of Romanticism, his work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassianism, Symbolism, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as diverse as Balzac, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, Henry James, Marcel Proust and Oscar Wilde. Among his works : "Albertus" (1832), "Pâquerette" (1851; i.e. "Daysies"), "Le Roman de la Momie" (Marius Petipa's "Pharaoh's Daughter" (1862; revival in 1898 - see the main page) was based on it and there was also a movie based on the book in 1911),  "Caprices et Zigzag" (1852), "Emaux et Camées" (1852),"Italia" (1852), "L’Art Moderne" (1856), "Le Captaine Fracasse" (1863), "Romans et Contes" (1863; conte means fairy tale in French), "De Profundis Morpionibus" (1863; Gautier preferred to keep that satirical work anonymous), "Loin de Paris" (1865), "Voyage en Russie" (1867; i.e. 'Journey to Russia' which is the year Lewis Carrol travelled to Russia), "Tableaux de Siège: Paris 1870-1871" (1871). Gautier also wrote a verse named "Le Spectre de la rose" .

-- 

Gaston Paris (1839 - died in march 1903) was a French writer and scholar that was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901, 1902 and 1903. Paris was the son of Paulin Paris, an important scholar of medieval French literature. In his childhood, Gaston learned to appreciate Old French romances as poems and stories, and this early impulse for the study of Romance literature was placed on a solid basis by courses of study at Bonn (1856) and at the École des chartes.
Paris taught French grammar in a private school, later succeeding his father as professor of medieval French literature at the Collège de France in 1872; in 1876 he was admitted to the Academy of Inscriptions and in 1896 to the Académie française; in 1895 he was appointed director of the Collège de France. He won a European reputation as a Romance scholar.

In 1877 Gaston Paris was invited to Sweden for the 400th anniversary of the Uppsala University, where he was made an honorary doctor. Before returning home he also visited Kristiania (Oslo) to take part in a celebration of the Norwegian philosopher Marcus Jacob Monrad. At the University of Kristiania, Gaston Paris also held a lecture about the two folktale collectors, Asbjørnsen (who had begun to collect and write down fairy tales and legends in 1832) and Moe (22 April 1813 - 27 March 1882), which he believed to be, besides the Grimm Brothers, the best re-tellers of the genre.
Among his works: "Histoire poétique de Charlemagne" (1865), "Manuel d'ancien Français" (1888), "Mystère de la passion by Arnoul Gréban" (1878, in collaboration with Gaston Raynaud), "Poèmes et légendes du moyen âge" (1900).

--

The keyword "jew" (and associated words and names) (*) is pointing to diverse references but we can also observe that Humbert Humbert is particularly associated with it. In fact, it's hinted several times in the novel that Humbert could be Jewish or at least could pass for it. Humbert is wandering throughout the story and of course especially in the U.S.A. where he is a freshly arrived immigrant. He wanders the land. I think "The Wandering Jew" is hinted (it's definitely part of the references) and he is associated with him. The reason is probably that Humberg... I meant Humbert (a "mask" for Lewis Carroll) can be associated with the verb wander and the word land (thus are associated the words  Carroll-wander-land, wander-land being a reflexion of wonderland (this phenomeon of reflexion is found extensively in the riddle (e.g. Hodgson/Dodgson, Parkington/Tarkington, Humberland/Cumberland, Keats/Yeats/Yates, etc... (even in sound: Charlotte/Shalott) - a mirror reflexion is not the exact image of reality (right and left inverted), and so the words and names are the same if it were not for a different letter, a missing letter or a letter more).

(*) examples: "tragic old ladies that have been gassed" (p.254 TAL), "babylonian blood" (p.258 TAL), p.79 TAL when John Farlow is interrupted by his wife Jean as he is about to make an anti-semitic comment (Jean thinks Humbert might be Jewish - think of Charlotte's words earlier (p. 74, 75 TAL): "Looking down at her fingernails, she also asked me had I not in my family a certain strange strain. I countered by inquiring wether she would still want to marry me if my father's maternal grandfather had been, say, a Turk. She said it did not matter a bit; but that, if she ever found out I did not believe in our _Christian_ God, she (...)"), Also remember Quilty associating Humbert to a possible "German refugee" while talking of his Gentile's house (p.297 TAL), obviously "Jewish" is hinted. It is also probably hinted in "Humberg" (p.118 TAL)).

--

Emma Goldman (1869-May 1940) Born in Kovno, Russian Empire (present-day Kaunas, Lithuania) to a Jewish family, Goldman emigrated to the United States in 1885.

When she read Chernyshevsky's novel, "What Is to Be Done?" (1863), she found a role model in the protagonist Vera, who adopts a Nihilist philosophy and escapes her repressive family to live freely and organize a sewing cooperative. The book enthralled Goldman and remained a source of inspiration throughout her life.

[From 1853 to 1862, he lived in Saint Petersburg, and became the chief editor of Sovremennik ("Contemporary"), in which he published his main literary reviews and his essays on philosophy. In 1862, he was arrested and confined in the Fortress of St. Peter and Paul, where he wrote his famous novel "What Is to Be Done?" in 1863. The novel was an inspiration to many later Russian revolutionaries]

Attracted to anarchism after the Haymarket affair (which occurred in Chicago on 4 May 1886, which is the event commemorated the May Day (Some argue that it was first proposed by Peter J. McGuire of the American Federation of Labor in May 1882, after witnessing the annual labour festival held in Toronto, Canada)), Goldman became a writer and a renowned lecturer on anarchist philosophy, women's rights, and social issues, attracting crowds of thousands. She and anarchist writer Alexander Berkman (*), her lover and lifelong friend, planned to assassinate industrialist and financier Henry Clay Frick as an act of propaganda of the deed. She divorced her husband Jacob A. Kersner in 1888. Her writing and lectures spanned a wide variety of issues, including prisons, atheism, freedom of speech, militarism, capitalism, marriage, free love, and homosexuality (When she was a young girl, she became friends with a servant named Petrushka, who excited her "first erotic sensations"). She wrote "Anarchism and Other Essays" in 1911. She was deported to Russia in 1919. In 1923, she published a book about her experiences, "My Disillusionment in Russia". While living in England, Canada, and France, she wrote an autobiography called "Living My Life".

There exists a photograph of Emma Goldman's family in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1882 with her half-sister Helena with Morris on her lap (Goldman's mother Taube Bienowitch had been married before, to a man with whom she had two daughters - Helena in 1860 and Lena in 1862. Goldman's relationships with her elder half-sisters, Helena and Lena, were a study in contrasts. Helena, the oldest, provided the comfort they lacked from their mother; she filled Goldman's childhood with "whatever joy it had". Lena, however, was distant and uncharitable. The three sisters were joined by brothers Louis (who died at the age of six), Herman (born in 1872), and Morris (born in 1879)). 

(*) Alexander Berkman was born Ovsei Osipovich Berkman in the Lithuanian city of Vilnius (then called Vilna, and part of the Vilna Governorate in the Russian Empire) and was the youngest of four children born into a well-off Jewish family. One of the books that interested him was Ivan Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" (1862), with its discussion of nihilist philosophy. But what truly moved him was Nikolay Chernyshevsky's 1863 novel, "What Is to Be Done?", and Berkman felt inspired by Rakhmetov, its puritanical protagonist who is willing to sacrifice personal pleasure and family ties in single-minded pursuit of his revolutionary aims.
Berkman decided to emigrate to the United States. When his brother left for Germany in early 1888 to study medicine, Berkman took the opportunity to accompany him and from there made his way to New York City. In 1889, Berkman met and began a romance with Emma Goldman, another Russian immigrant and soon Berkman and Goldman fell in love and became inseparable. Despite their disagreements and separations, Goldman and Berkman would share a mutual devotion for decades, united by their anarchist principles and love for one another. There exist also a photograph of Berkman addressing a May Day rally in New York's Union Square, 1914 and a photograph of Berkman in 1919, on the eve of his deportation (see below).
In 1917 the U.S. entered World War I and Congress enacted the Selective Service Act, which required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for military conscription. Berkman moved back to New York, where he and Goldman organized the No Conscription League of New York, which proclaimed: "We oppose conscription because we are internationalists, anti-militarists, and opposed to all wars waged by capitalistic governments". The organization was at the forefront of anti-draft activism, and chapters were established in other cities. The No Conscription League changed its focus from public meetings to disseminating pamphlets after police started disrupting the group's public events in search of young men who had not registered for the draft. Berkman and Goldman were arrested during a raid of their offices on June 15, 1917, during which police seized what The New York Times described as "a wagon load of anarchist records and propaganda material". The pair were charged under Espionage Act of 1917 with "conspiracy to induce persons not to register". Berkman served his sentence in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, seven months of which were in solitary confinement for protesting the beating of other inmates. When he was released on October 1, 1919. Berkman moved to Saint-Cloud, France, in 1925, a country where he still is buried.

--

Rosa Luxemburg (March 1871-1919; born in Poland, then in the Russian Empire and died in Berlin, Germany) was a German-Polish Marxist theorist, philosopher, economist, anti-war activist, and revolutionary socialist of Polish-Jewish descent who became a naturalized German citizen. She became part (among others) of the (First) Proletariat Party (1882-1886), Social Democratic Party of Germany (1898-1915) and the Communist Party of Germany (1919). She married Gustav Lübeck in 1898. She had studied in Zurich, Switzerland. She is known to have "attacked" Karl Kautsky, in 1910 (He was a Czech-Austrian (born in the Austrian Empire) philosopher, journalist, and Marxist theoretician (His position as a prominent Marxist theorist was assured in 1888)).
Among her writings: "The Industrial Development of Poland" (1898), "In Defense of Nationality" (1900), "Reform or Revolution" (1900), "Theory & Practice" (1910). Among her famous speeches: "Speeches to Stuttgart Congress" (1898).


--

Isabella Beeton (1836-1865; née Mayson) was an English journalist, editor and writer (particularly known for "Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management"). She married Samuel Orchart Beeton in 1856 (who  was the first British publisher of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in 1852, securing the rights from the then-unknown Harriet Beecher Stowe. He also launched The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, a pioneering serial for middle-class women, the same year. His Boy's Own Magazine, published in the UK from 1855 to 1890, was the first and most influential boys' magazine).

--

Marie Selika Williams (c. 1849 - 1937; selika is almost an angram of Alice: alise) was an American coloratura soprano born in Natchez, Mississppi. She was the first Black artist to perform in the White House in 1878.
On November 18 1878, she sang for President Rutherford B. Hayes and First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes in the Green Room and was introduced by Frederick Douglass. She performed at Philadelphia's Academy of Music in 1878 and at New York's Steinway Hall in 1879. From 1882 to 1885 she performed across Europe with her husband, giving a concert in St James's Hall for Queen Victoria in 1883. Due to her rendition of E. W. Mulder's "Polka Staccato", she was often called the "Queen of Staccato".
After her husband died in 1911, Williams gave private lessons and taught at the Martin-Smith Music School in New York City. She died on May 19, 1937. Her most well-known photograph was taken by Maud Cuney Hare (see below).

--

Maud Cuney Hare (1874-1936) was an American pianist, musicologist, writer, and African-American activist in Boston, Massachusetts.
She also studied at Harvard's Lowell Institute of Literature. When white students learned that Maud Cuney and another African American, Florida L. Des Verney, were living in a campus dormitory, some of them tried to have the young women excluded. A musicologist, she collected music from across the South and Caribbean in her study of folklore, and was the first to study Creole music. She is most remembered for her final work, Negro Musicians and Their Music (1936), which documents the development of African-American music. 
Her father died on March 3, 1898. Maud married J. Frank McKinley, a doctor 20 years her senior, who like Maud was of mixed race. Their daughter Vera was born in 1900. After their divorce, Maud returned to Boston where she married William P. Hare on August 10, 1904, and from then on used the joint last name "Cuney Hare" ("cuney" is kind of a distorted image of "coney" i.e. "rabbit"). The couple settled at 43 Sheridan Street. 

--

Mary Chase Walker Morse (1828 - May 17, 1899; French 'morse' means 'walrus') was an American schoolteacher, pioneer, and suffragette. In 1865 she became the first school teacher at Mason Street Schoolhouse, the first public school to be built in San Diego County, California. She recorded her "Recollections of Early Times in San Diego" in 1898.

--

 Mark Twain (1835-1910; there exists a well-known photo of him by the famous photographer Mathew Brady, dated 1871 (brady (born in may) is famous for his 1862 photographs of the battle of Antietam)), real name Samuel Langhorne Clemens, was an American author and humorist. Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri. Throughout 1868, Twain and Olivia Langdon corresponded. Though she rejected his first marriage proposal, two months later, they were engaged. In February 1870, Twain and Langdon were married in Elmira, New York, where he courted her and managed to overcome her father's initial reluctance. She came from a "wealthy but liberal family", and through her, he met abolitionists, "socialists, principled atheists and activists for women's rights and social equality", including Harriet Beecher Stowe (his next-door neighbor in Hartford, Connecticut). Until May 1895, the family stayed mainly in France, Germany, and Italy, with longer spells at Berlin, Florence and Paris. Later he sailed across the Pacific Ocean (and his scheduled lecture in Honolulu, Hawaii, had to be cancelled due to a cholera epidemic).

Twain formed a club in 1906 for girls he viewed as surrogate granddaughters, the Angel Fish and Aquarium Club. The dozen or so members ranged in age from 10 to 16. Twain exchanged letters with his "Angel Fish" girls and invited them to concerts and the theatre and to play games. Twain wrote in 1908 that the club was his "life's chief delight". In 1907, Twain met Dorothy Quick (then aged 11) on a transatlantic crossing, beginning "a friendship that was to last until the very day of his death".


Oxford University awarded Twain an honorary doctorate in letters (D.Litt.) in 1907.
In 1909, Twain is known to have said:

I came in with Halley's Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don't go out with Halley's Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together'.

Twain died of a heart attack on April 21, 1910, in Redding, Connecticut, one day after the comet's closest approach to Earth.

Twain is also known to have criticized Robert Louis Stevenson, among others. In 1882, he had sent a photograph of himself in a white suit to 18-year-old Edward W. Bok, later publisher of the Ladies Home Journal, with a handwritten dated note on verso, which eventually became his trademark.

Twain's views became more radical as he grew older. In a letter to friend and fellow writer William Dean Howells in 1887, he acknowledged that his views changed and developed over his life, referring to one of his favorite works:

"When I finished Carlyle's "French Revolution" in 1871, I was a Girondin; every time I have read it since, I have read it differently – being influenced and changed, little by little, by life and environment ... and now I lay the book down once more, and recognize that I am a Sansculotte! And not a pale, characterless Sansculotte, but a Marat."
Before 1899, Twain was an ardent imperialist. In the late 1860s and early 1870s, he spoke out strongly in favor of American interests in the Hawaiian Islands. He said the war with Spain in 1898 was "the worthiest" war ever fought. In 1899, however, he reversed course. In the New York Herald, October 16, 1900, Twain described his transformation and political awakening, in the context of the Philippine–American War in 1898 (ended by the Treaty of Paris), to anti-imperialism.

Among his works: "Advice to Little Girls" (1865), "General Washington's Negro Body-Servant" (1868), "Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance" (1871; short story collection), "Punch, Brothers, Punch! and Other Sketches" (1878; short story collection), "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" (1889), "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" (1896).

--

Charles Kingsley (1819-1875; Caricatured in Vanity Fair in 1875) was an English broad church priest of the Church of England, a university professor, social reformer, historian and novelist. He is particularly associated with Christian socialism. He was a friend and correspondent with Charles Darwin and He was also the uncle of female explorer Mary Kingsley (1862-1900; She was an ethnographer (p.302 TAL, "(...) by the explorer (...) a remarkable lady"), scientific writer, and explorer whose travels throughout West Africa and resulting work helped shape European perceptions of African cultures and British imperialism. Note that her first tarvel was in the Canary islands. She had a brother named Charles). his sister was Charlotte Kingsley Chanter (1828-1882 - note the 28/82 (same dates than Dante Gabriel Rosetti); She wrote "Ferny Combes: A Ramble After Ferns in the Glens and Valleys of Devonshire" (1856)). He spent his childhood in Clovelly, Devon, where his father was Curate 1826-1832 and Rector 1832-1836, and at Barnack, Northamptonshire and was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Helston Grammar School before studying at King's College London, and the University of Cambridge. Charles entered Magdalene College ("La madeleine" (p. TAL; French Madeleine = Magdalene)), Cambridge, in 1838, and graduated in 1842. In 1861 he became a private tutor to the Prince of Wales (Edward VII - 9 November 1841 - 6 May 1910).
Kingsley's interest in history is shown in several of his writings, including "The Heroes" (1856), a children's book about Greek mythology (a Greek faity tale), and several historical novels, of which the best known are "Hypatia" (1853; Hypatia was a prominent thinker of the Neoplatonic school in Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy. She is the first female mathematician whose life is reasonably well recorded; The book was said to have been Queen Victoria's favourite novel by Kingsley. A notable adaptation of the novel to the stage was G. Stuart Ogilvie's Hypatia, which opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1893. Julia Neilson played the character of Hypatia, and her husband Fred Terry played Philammon. (*)), "Hereward the Wake" (1865) and "Westward Ho!" (1855). Among his other works: "Alton Locke" (1849), "The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby" (1863), "The Ancient Régime" (Lectures at the Royal Institution, 1867 (the ancient régime is the French Royal regime before the French revolution)), "Water of Life and other Sermons" (1867) and "At Last: a Christmas in the West Indies" (1871).

Note: He was sympathetic to the idea of evolution and was one of the first to welcome Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species. When a heated dispute lasting three years developed over human evolution, Kingsley gently satirised the debate, known as the Great Hippocampus Question, as the "Great Hippopotamus Question" (remember the Lewis Carroll pastiche of "Age of Innocence"  with a hippopotamus?).

(*) Ogilvie's play introduced a scheming Jewish character called Issachar (played by Tree) in place of Kingsley's Miriam. The portrayal of Issachar was relatively sympathetic, as Tree had great respect for the Jewish contribution to contemporary theatre. Even The Jewish Chronicle noted that Issachar is "ambitious and able, he plots and counterplots but there is no suspicion or meanness in his nature" and concluded that he was the "least conventional and least offensive of recent stage Jews".
In the modern era criticism of the novel has focused on its anti-Semitism as well as its racial prejudice. The book has been described as "ferociously racist". One review describes it as "Christian apologia, [with] religious and ethnic bigotry in the form of anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism". 

--

Walt Whitman (May 1819 - March 1892) is also part of the stream of American artists in the references. He anonymously published some of his earliest poetry in the New York Mirror.
In February 1868, Poems of Walt Whitman was published in England thanks to the influence of William Michael Rossetti, with minor changes that Whitman reluctantly approved. Among his works are "Franklin Evans" (1842), "Leaves of Grass" (1855, the first of seven editions through 1891 (Though the second edition was already printed and bound, the publisher almost did not release it. In the end, the edition went to retail, with 20 additional poems in August 1856);  The book received its strongest praise from Ralph Waldo Emerson ((May 1803 - April 1882). Several well-known writers admired the work enough to visit Whitman, including Bronson Alcott (1799 - March 1888, father of Louisa May Alcott) and Henry David Thoreau (July 1817 - May 1862)), "Drum-Taps" (1865), "Democratic Vistas" (1871) and "Specimen Days" (1882).
Walt Whitman was photographed by the famous photographer Mathew Brady. Painter Thomas Eakins's portrait of Walt Whitman (1887-1888) was the poet's favorite.
One happy moment that he later recalled was when he was lifted in the air and kissed on the cheek by the French Marquis de Lafayette during a celebration in Brooklyn on July 4, 1825.

--

Arthur (Llewellyn) Machen (3 March 1863 – 15 December 1947) author of "The Great God Pan" ("Pan" p. TAL),  was a Welsh author and mystic of the 1890s and early 20th century. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His novella "The Great God Pan" (1890 - 1894 - which influenced Bram Stoker) has garnered a reputation as a classic of horror. He is also well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons. He also authored among many others: "The Chronicle of Clemendy" (1888), "Hieroglyphics: A Note upon Ecstasy in Literature", "The hill of Dreams", "Out of the Earth" (1923; A short horror story regarding the malefic brutality of the mythical 'Little People'), "The House of the Hidden Light" (Written in 1904 with Arthur Edward Waite (A book of coded and mystical correspondence) and "The Three Impostors".

--

George Eliott (Mary Ann Evans (alternatively "Mary Anne" or "Marian"; Let's mention that in "Alice in Wonderland", Alice in called Mary Ann by the white rabbit); 1819-1880) was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She was the second child of Robert Evans (1773-1849).
In 1850, she moved to London with the intent of becoming a writer, and she began referring to herself as Marian Evans. She stayed at the house of John Chapman, the radical publisher whom she had met earlier at Rosehill and who had published her Strauss translation. Chapman had recently purchased the campaigning, left-wing journal The Westminster Review, and Evans became its assistant editor in 1851. Although Chapman was officially the editor, it was Evans who did most of the work of producing the journal, contributing many essays and reviews beginning with the January 1852 issue and continuing until the end of her employment at the Review in the first half of 1854.

The philosopher and critic George Henry Lewes (1817-1878) met Evans in 1851, and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes was already married to Agnes Jervis. They had an open marriage, and in addition to the three children they had together, Agnes also had four children by Thornton Leigh Hunt.
While continuing to contribute pieces to the Westminster Review, Evans resolved to become a novelist, and she set out a manifesto for herself in one of her last essays for the Review, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" (1856). The essay criticised the trivial and ridiculous plots of contemporary fiction by women. In other essays, she praised the realism of novels that were being written in Europe at the time.
Acceptance was finally confirmed in 1877 when they were introduced to Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. The queen herself was an avid reader of all of George Eliot's novel.
In "Middlemarch" (1871-1872), she presents the stories of a number of denizens of a small English town on the eve of the Reform Bill of 1832; the novel is notable for its deep psychological insight and sophisticated character portraits. The roots of her realist philosophy can be found in her review of John Ruskin's Modern Painters in Westminster Review, in 1856.
She was also the author of, among other works, "Armgart" (1871), "Romola" (1863), "The influence of Rationalism" (1865), etc...

--

Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919) was an Italian opera composer and librettist that is mainly known for "Pagliacci" (May 1892), the story of a murder occuring in 1865 (Upon learning of the plot of Leoncavallo's libretto in an 1894 French translation, the French author Catulle Mendès thought it resembled his 1887 play La Femme de Tabarin, such as the play-within-the-play and the clown murdering his wife. Mendès sued Leoncavallo for plagiarism. The composer pleaded ignorance of Mendès' play. Later there were counter-accusations that Mendès' play resembled that of Don Manuel Tamayo y Baus' "Un Drama Nuevo" (1867). Mendès dropped his lawsuit. However, the scholar Matteo Sansone has suggested that, as Leoncavallo was a notable student of French culture, and lived in Paris from 1882 to 1888, he had ample opportunity to be exposed to new French art and musical works).

In 1879 Leoncavallo's uncle Giuseppe, director of the press department at the Foreign Ministry in Egypt, suggested that his young nephew come to Cairo to showcase his pianistic abilities. Arriving shortly after the deposition of Khedive Ismail, Leoncavallo eventually secured work as a piano teacher and pianist to the brother of the new Khedive Tewfik Pasha. His time in Egypt concluded abruptly in 1882 after revolts in Alexandria and Cairo led by ‘Urabi in which the composer quickly departed for France. In Paris, Leoncavallo found lodging in Montmartre.

An agent located in the Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis secured Leoncavallo employment as an accompanist and instructor for artists who performed in Sunday concerts mostly at cafés. It was during this time that he met Berthe Rambaud (1863-1926; Rambaud is almost a distorsion of the several times mentionned Rimbaud in "Lolita") a "preferred student", who would become his wife in 1895. Increasingly inspired by the French romantics, particularly Alfred de Musset, Leoncavallo began work on a symphonic poem based on Musset's poetry entitled "La Nuit De Mai" (The May Night). The work was completed in Paris in 1886 and premiered in April 1887 to critical acclaim. With this success and now with enough accumulated money Leoncavallo and Berthe would return to Milan to begin his career as a composer of opera.

Almong his works we find "La bohème"  (6 May 1897, Teatro La Fenice, Venice), "Maïa" (1910), "Zazà" (1900), "La reginetta delle rose", "A chi la giarrettiera?" (1919), "Malbrouck" (1910), "Séraphitus Séraphita - Poema Sinfonico" after Honoré de Balzac) and "La nuit de mai – poème symphonique" ("Mai" means "May" in French). 

--

Sybil Grey (c. 1850s–1930s) was a British singer and actress during the Victorian era best known for creating a series of minor roles in productions by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, including roles in several of the famous Gilbert and Sullivan operas, from 1880 to 1888. She began her career as a member of the chorus and understudy during the first London production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance". Among other things she played the non-singing role of Jane in the curtain raiser "Mock Turtles". In November 1882, she played in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe" (an operas with fairies (and the Queen of the Fairies - played by Alice Barnett (born in May 1846)) in which she plays Leila, a fairy) while still playing in "Mock Turtles", then she was in Gilbert and Sullivan's "Princess Ida" and then "The Sorcerer".  She was later one of the three Little Maids, in the original production of "The Mikado" (with Jessie Bond And Leonora Braham (*)). From December 1887, she had roles in two musical burlesques by composer Meyer Lutz at the Gaiety Theatre in London. The first was as Zillah in "Miss Esmeralda (emerald in Spanish), or The Maid and the Monkey," and the second was as Vanilla in Frankenstein, or The Vampire's Victim, with a libretto by Richard Henry. In April 1888, she played Polly in the farce "Lot 49" at a benefit for Nellie Farren. In June 1888, she returned to the Savoy for the first revival of "The Mikado", playing her old role of Peep-Bo. During this run, she took roles in two benefit performances of Gilbert's blank verse "fairy plays". The first was Lady Amanthis in "Broken Hearts" at a charity matinée at the Savoy, in a cast that included Julia Neilson, Richard Temple and Lewis Waller. After leaving D'Oyly Carte, Grey enjoyed a long West End theatre career. She began with Drury Lane pantomimes, including "Babes in the Wood", in 1888, and "Beauty and the Beas"t, as the King of Diamonds, in 1890. In 1891, she played Lucy Morley in a farce called "Our Doctors" at Terry's Theatre; Alice Ormerod in "A Lancashire Sailor" by Brandon Thomas, among other things. In 1898, she appeared in "The Dove-Cot" at the Duke of York's Theatre, together with Leonora Braham and starring Seymour Hicks. She was Miss Deare in another musical comedy, "Three Little Maids", in 1902.

(*) Leonora Braham (3 February 1853 – 23 November 1931), born Leonora Lucy Abraham, was an English opera singer and actress primarily known as the creator of principal soprano roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic operas.  In 1878, she moved to North America, where she continued to perform in comic opera. After returning to England, she was engaged by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, creating five of the principal soprano roles in the hit series of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, including the title role in "Patience" (1881), "Phyllis" in "Iolanthe" (1882), the title role in "Princess Ida" (1884), Yum-Yum (one of the three little maids) in "The Mikado" (1885), and Rose Maybud in "Ruddigore" (1887). She also played Aline in the first revival of "The Sorcerer" (1884–85). She also Played in Alfred Cellier's "Dorothy" in the title role.

--

Richard Wagner (May 1813 - 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is primarily known for his operas. His "Tristan und Isolde" (1865) is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music. Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama, and which was announced in a series of essays between 1849 and 1852. At the age of 20, Wagner had composed his first complete opera, "Die Feen" (The Fairies). Wagner's involvement in left-wing politics abruptly ended his welcome in Dresden. Wagner was active among socialist German nationalists there, regularly receiving such guest as the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. He was also influenced by the ideas of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Ludwig Feuerbach. Widespread discontent came to a head in 1849, when the unsuccessful May Uprising in Dresden broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role. Warrants were issued for the revolutionaries' arrest. Wagner had to flee, first visiting Paris and then settling in Zürich where he at first took refuge. The political ban that had been placed on Wagner in Germany was fully lifted in 1862. In 1871, Wagner decided to move to Bayreuth, which was to be the location of his new opera house. Wagner also resided in Venice for a while in 1858. The most famous photograph of Wagner is probably the one from 1871.

--

William Sterndale Bennett (1816-1875; His father died in 1819) as an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. At the age of ten Bennett was admitted to the London Royal Academy of Music (RAM), where he remained for ten years. In 1837, Bennett began to teach at the RAM, with which he was associated for most of the rest of his life. For twenty years he taught there, later also teaching at Queen's College, London. Amongst his pupils during this period were Arthur Sullivan. He was Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge from 1856 to 1866. He was knighted in 1871 by Queen Victoria.
Among Bennett's student compositions were a piano concerto (No. 1 in D minor, Op. 1), a symphony and an overture to "The Tempest". The concerto received its public premiere at an orchestral concert in Cambridge on 28 November 1832, with Bennett as soloist. Performances soon followed in London and, by royal command, at Windsor Castle, where Bennett played in April 1833 for King William IV and Queen Adelaide. In 1844 Bennett married Mary Anne Wood (1824-1862). After the controversial 1855 season of the Philharmonic Society at which Richard Wagner conducted, Bennett was elected to take over the conductorship in 1856, a post which he held for ten years. At his first concert, on 14 April 1856, the piano soloist in Beethoven's "Emperor" Concerto. Among his works were also a pastoral cantata, "The May Queen", Op. 39, for the opening of the Leeds Town Hall in 1858 and an Ode (Op. 40) with words by Alfred, Lord Tennyson for the opening of the 1862 International Exhibition in London. In March 1856 Bennett, while still teaching at the RAM and Queen's College, was elected Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. The RAM had been temporarily saved from bankruptcy by grants from the government, authorised by Gladstone as Chancellor of the Exchequer ("chessboard" from Old French eschequier), in 1864 and 1865. 
He is also the author of "Wood Nymphs" overture.
The Pre-raphaelite painter John Everett Millais made a portrait of him.

--

Henry Payne (1868-1940) was an English stained glass artist, watercolourist and painter of frescoes. He was involved in several of the group's collective projects, most notably the decoration of the chapel at Madresfield Court, which numbers among the seminal achievements of the Arts and Crafts movement. 
In 1908 he was commissioned to produce a wall painting for the later stages of the decoration of the Palace of Westminster. His work "The Plucking of the Red and White Roses in the Temple Garden" - an allegory on the Wars of the Roses - now hangs in the Palace's East Corridor (see also on the theme his "Choosing the Red and White Roses" (c. 1908)). In 1936, he designed the window depicting the Nativity in the chapel’s sanctuary area (Little Chapel, Rodborough, Gloucestershire) and his son Edward added "The Light of the World" in 1947 based on William Holman Hunt’s painting.


--

Johannes Valentinus Andreae was a German theologian, who claimed to be the author of an ancient text known as the "Chymische Hochzeit Christiani Rosencreutz anno 1459" (published in 1616, Strasbourg, as the "Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz"). This became one of the three founding works of Rosicrucianism, which was both a legend and a fashionable semi-cult across Europe in this period. He died in 1654 - which is kind of like a distorted 1564 (1564 and 1616 are dates directly alluded in "Lolita", obviously in refernce to Shakespeare, also to Cervantes (who died in 1616 too) but also in allusion to Johann Valentin Andreae as part of many cryptic references to ROSIcruscianism and esoterism, allowing indirect refrences pointing to Roses and Carroll Lewis - in the latter case, notably through Harvey Spencer Lewis (1883-1939) who was a noted Rosicrucian author, occultist, and mystic who was the founder in the USA and the first Imperator of the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis (AMORC), from 1915 until 1939. His son, Ralph Maxwell Lewis (1904-1987), an accomplished philosopher and author, succeeded him in 1939 as the second Imperator of AMORC).

--

Phryne also indirectly alluded, inspired Baudelaire's "Lesbos" and "La beauté" (also in "Phryne before the Areopagus" by Jean-Léon Gérôme, c. 1861) and Rainer Maria Rilke's "Die Flamingos".

Jean-Léon Gérôme (a well-known French painter who was elected, a member of the Institut de France in 1865) and his paintings are also part of the tacit references in "Lolita" (among his most famous works: "Young Greeks at the Mosque" (1865), "Arnaut Smoking" (1865; a muslim man with a nargile),  "Phryne before the Areopagus" (c. 1861), "Napoleon in Egypt" (1863), "Turkish Prisoner" (1861), "Turkish Butcher Boy in Jerusalem" (1862), "Harem baths", "The Slave Market" (1866), "Reception of Le Grand Condé at Versailles" (1878), "The Tulip Folly" (1882), "Summer Afternoon on a Lake" (1895) or "Tamerlane" (1898)).
In 1856, he visited Egypt for the first time. 

--

Paintings, movies and litterature are not the only art to be referenced in "Lolita" by Nabokov, photography (particularly pointing to Lewis Carroll) is also quite important.

It is also linked to John Ruskin and the Pre-raphaelites:

A few years after the discovery of photography was announced in 1839, the British art critic John Ruskin named it "the most marvelous invention of the century." Making permanent what the eye saw fleetingly, the new technology seemed an almost magical revelation.

As photography gained a foothold in the 1840s, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti formed the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. These young painters and their followers wished to return to the purity, sincerity, and clarity of detail found in medieval and early Renaissance art that preceded Raphael (1483–1520). But they were also spurred on by the possibilities of the new medium, which could capture every nuance of nature. Indeed, Pre-Raphaelite artists painted with such precision that some critics accused them of copying photographs.

Many photographers in turn looked to the language of Pre-Raphaelite painting in an effort to establish their nascent medium as a fine art. Both photographers and painters—many of whom knew one another—drew inspiration directly from nature. In choosing subjects, they also mined literature, history, and religion, as well as modern life. Together they developed a shared vocabulary that is explored in this exhibition through the genres of landscape, narrative subjects, and portraiture.

source: http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2010/preraphaelite/slideshow/index.htm

--

Bela Lyon Pratt (1867 - May 1917) was an American sculptor. He is known among other things foer his statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, massachusetts. After graduating from Yale, he enrolled at the Art Students League of New York where he took classes from William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), Kenyon Cox (1859-1919), Francis Edwin Elwell (1858–1922), and most important, Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848-1907), who became his mentor. After a short stint in Saint-Gaudens' private studio, Pratt traveled to Paris, where he trained with sculptors Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu (1833-1891) and Alexandre Falguière (1831–1900) at the École des Beaux-Arts. He became an associate of the National Academy in 1900.

Salem, Massachusetts is a coastal city of New England located at 42°31′10″N. The name Salem is a hellenized form of the word for "peace" in Hebrew (shalom), and the name mentioned several times in the Bible and traditionally associated with Jerusalem. One of the most widely known aspects of Salem is its history of witchcraft allegations, which in many popular accounts started with Abigail Williams, Betty Parris (daughter of Samuel Parris), and their friends playing with a Venus glass (mirror) and egg. The Salem witchcraft trial of 1878, also known as the Ipswich witchcraft trial and the second Salem witch trial, was an American civil case held in May 1878 in Salem, Massachusetts, in which Lucretia L. S. Brown, an adherent of the Christian Science religion, accused fellow Christian Scientist Daniel H. Spofford of attempting to harm her through his "mesmeric" mental powers ("Mesmer Mesmer" p.308 TAL, "Phineas Quimby" p. 248 TAL). On the subject of the witches trial of Salem, note "Ye lyttle Salem maide, a story of witchcraft" (1898; a novel by Pauline Bradford Mackie (1873–?), Lamson, Wolffe and Co., Boston, 1898). "peine forte et dure" (p. TAL) is also reference to the Salem witches trials (Giles Corey – pressed to death (September 19, 1692) through the use of peine forte et dure). Among the individuals implcated in these events we can also find a Mercy Lewis, an Alice Parker and a Dorothy Good.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - May 1864; one of his ancestor was the only judge of the Salem witches trial ("witch" p.200 TAL) who never repented) was overseer of the port of Salem from 1846 until 1849. He worked in the Customs House near Pickering Wharf, his setting for the beginning of "The Scarlet Letter". He was an American novelist, Dark Romantic, and short story writer born in that city. The Family moved in Maine and in 1819, he was sent back to Salem for school and soon complained of homesickness and being too far from his mother and sisters. Hawthorne married Sophia Peabody on July 9, 1842, at a ceremony in the Peabody parlor on West Street in Boston. They had three children: Una (March 3, 1844; the name Una is a reference to "The Faerie Queene" by Edmund Spenser), a son Julian (1846) and Rose in May 1851. There is a well-known photograph of Una, Julian, and Rose in 1862. His wife Sophia Peabody died in 1871.

Sophia had first met Nathaniel Hawthorne through her sister, Elizabeth. When the author came to visit once, Elizabeth is said to have reported, "He is handsomer than Lord Byron!" When she urged Sophia to come downstairs to meet him, she laughed and said, "If he has come once he will come again". After meeting her, Nathaniel wrote the tale "Edward Randolph’s Portrait", which included an artist character inspired by Sophia Peabody named Alice Vane.

Among his works: "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), "The Blithedale Romance" (1852), "The Marble Faun: Or, The Romance of Monte Beni" (1860), "The Dolliver Romance" (1863) (unfinished), "Doctor Grimshawe's Secret: A Romance" (1882; unfinished, with preface and notes by Julian Hawthorne), "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832), "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "Feathertop" (1852) and "A Virtuoso's Collection" (May 1842; first published in Boston Miscellany; The story references a number of historical and mythical figures, items, beasts, books, etc. as part of a museum collection. The narrator is led through the collection by the virtuoso himself who turns out to be the Wandering Jew; among the beasts: Edmund Spenser's 'milk-white lamb' which Una led in "The Faerie Queene", The wolf that devoured Little Red Riding Hood, A griffin (or Gryphon), Don Quixotte's rossinante, The raven in which the soul of King George I of Great Britain revisited his love Melusine von der Schulenburg (Duchess of Kendal) after his death, Grip, the raven that belonged to Barnaby Rudge and later inspired Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven", Don Quixote's horse Rosinante, The albatross from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", etc...). At the outset of the American Civil War, Hawthorne traveled with William D. Ticknor to Washington, D.C.. There, he met Abraham Lincoln and other notable figures. He wrote about his experiences in the essay "Chiefly About War Matters" in 1862.

--

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 – March 1882 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American poet and educator. Among his siblings he had a brother Samuel born in 1819. Among his children: Charles Appleton Longfellow, Alice Mary Longfellow and Edith Longfellow. He was a lifelong friend of Nathaniel Hawthorne. A small collection, "Poems on Slavery", was published in 1842 as Longfellow's first public support of abolitionism. Longfellow also published a play in 1842, "The Spanish Student". Among his other works: "Kavanagh" (1849), "Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie" (1847; there are references to Quebec in "Lolita"), "The New England Tragedies" (1868), "The Divine Tragedy" (1871), "Tales of a Wayside Inn" (1863; Also included "Birds of Passage"), "Household Poems" (1865), "Flower-de-Luce" (1867), "Kéramos and Other Poems" (1878), "Ultima Thule" (1880; the name is synonymous of Great Northern), "In the Harbor" (1882). Notice that the myth surrounding Endymion (a ancient Greek myth with similarity withe the "Sleeping Beauty" tale; a Naiad Nymph is also associated to the story; In the Renaissance, the revived moon goddess Diana had the Endymion myth attached to her) has been expanded and reworked during the modern period by figures like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Keats (in his 1818 narrative poem "Endymion"). Longfellow's "Giles Corey of the Salem Farms" (1868) is a play inspired by the Salem Witches' trial.

There is a photograph of his wife Fanny Appleton and sons Ernest and Charles dated 1849 and a well-known photograph of him from 1868 by the famous Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

--

George Catlin (1796-1872), an American painter, author, and traveler who specialized in portraits of Native Americans ("indians") in the Old West. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County (*), Pennsylvania.
Many of his most famous portraits are from 1832 (e.g. the Painting of Sha-có-pay, a Plains Ojibwe chief, "Little Bear, Hunkpapa Brave", "The Cutting Scene Mandan O-kee-pa Ceremony" or Painting of Wah-ro-née-sah (The Surrounder), a chief of the Otoe tribe).  The French critic Charles Baudelaire remarked on Catlin’s paintings, "He has brought back alive the proud and free characters of these chiefs, both their nobility and manliness". In 1852 he was forced to sell the original Indian Gallery, now 607 paintings, due to personal debts. From 1852 to 1857 he traveled through South and Central America and later returned for further exploration in the Far West. The record of these later years is contained in "Last Rambles amongst the Indians of the Rocky Mountains and the Andes" (1868) and "My Life among the Indians" (ed. by N. G. Humphreys, 1909).
Catlin have also written an eccentric book, which reached its eighth edition by 1882, entitled "Shut Your Mouth".

There exists a well-known 1849 painting of him by William Fisk ( (1796–1872 !), an English portrait and history painter (among his other works he painted a "Child and Favourite Dog" (1819) that he sent to the Royal Academy).

(*) September 25, 1786: Luzerne County was formed from part of Northumberland County. It was named after Chevalier ("knight" in French)) de la Luzerne, French ambassador to the United States.
Luzerne is to be associated with Luzern (German spelling) / Lucerne (French spelling) in Switzerland.

--

Charles Christian Nahl (October 18, 1818 - March 1, 1878; Some times called Karl Nahl) was a German-born painter who is called California's first significant artist. He was the son of Georg Valentin Friedrich Nahl (1791-1857) and Henriette (Weickh) Nahl (1796-1863). Unease over the political state of Hesse led him and his friend Frederick August Wenderoth ((*) 1819-1884; Wenderoth is kind of a portmateau of Melmoth the Wanderer, I guess...) to Paris in 1846, where he enjoyed some success at the salon and changed his name to "Charles". The February Revolution prompted another move with his mother and siblings, including half-brother Hugo Wilhelm Arthur Nahl (1833-1889) to Brooklyn, New York, where they heard of the gold strike. He arrived in Nevada City, California the next year. He moved to San Francisco after the 1852 Sacramento fire (There is an illustration of the fire by Arthur). He painted the "The Rape Of The Sabines - The Invasion" (1871).

(*) Wenderoth painted "Little Terrier" or "Rider on white horse" (1849); Between 1852 and 1853, Wenderoth traveled to the South Seas and on to Australia. On his return, in 1856 he married Nahl's half-sister, Laura. In 1857 Wenderoth was living in Charleston, South Carolina and in 1858 he returned to Philadelphia. There Wenderoth worked for Harper's Weekly, producing illustrations and photographs, and established a business on Chestnut Street, with partner William Curtis Taylor.

--

Andrew Warren Sledd (1870 - March 1939; born in Virginia) was an American theologian, university professor and university president. In 1888, Sledd entered Methodist-affiliated Randolph–Macon College in Ashland, Virginia.He was ordained as a Methodist minister and licensed to preach in 1898. He earned a second master of arts degree in Greek from Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1896, and completed one year's additional graduate work toward a doctoral degree. While he was at Harvard, he played for the Harvard Crimson baseball team. After teaching for several years, Sledd was chosen to be the last president of the University of Florida at Lake City, from 1904 to 1905, and the first president of the modern University of Florida (first known as the "University of the State of Florida"), from 1905 to 1909. Sledd first gained national recognition after he wrote a 1902 magazine article advocating better legal and social treatment of African-Americans. He is also prominently remembered for his role in founding the modern University of Florida, his scholarly analysis of biblical texts as literature, his call for an end to racial violence, and his influence on a generation of Methodist seminary students, scholars and ministers. His wife was Annie Florence Candle.

--

Louis Le Prince (1841-1890) was a French inventor who shot the first moving pictures on paper film using a single lens camera, and was heralded as the father of cinematography. He filmed moving picture sequences Roundhay Garden Scene in october 1888, the first movie.

--

The ancestor of modern photography was the Daguerreotype invented by Frenchman Louis Daguerre.

--

Margaret (from Marguerite) Bernadine Hall (10 March 1863 – 2 January 1910) was an English painter who spent most of her career in Paris. Few of her works have survived, but she is notable for her painting Fantine (a character in Victor Hugo's novel "Les Misérables"). One known extant paintings by Hall is in Trinity College, Cambridge; It is a portrait entitled "Sedley Taylor (1834–1920), Music Scholar and Benefactor", which was painted in 1898.  In 1882 the family moved to London, and later that year, at the age of 19, Margaret moved to Paris to study for five years at the academy run by Auguste Feyen-Perrin (1826-1888) and Eduard Krug. This was at a time when there were few female artists in the city, and when the Impressionists were active. Between 1888 and 1894 Hall travelled extensively to countries including Japan, China, Australia, North America, and North Africa, returning to Paris in 1894. She moved back to England in 1907, where she died three years later at the home of the playwright George Calderon in Hampstead Heath, London.

--

"Les Misérables" by Victor Hugo (there are references to Hugo in "Lolita") published in 1862 is a novel whose most of the story occurs during 1823 and 1832 (notice the 23/32 - an interval of 9 years who lasts during the reign of three French kings: Louis XVIII, Charles X and Louis-philippe I) in which an older man (Jean Valjean, prisoner 24601; In the popular imagination, the character of Jean Valjean came to represent both Hugo himself and leftist sentiment. In 1871, when Hugo was living in Brussels during the radical revolt known as the Paris Commune, anti-revolutionary mobs attacked his house and broke windows shouting "Down with Jean Valjean!") lives with a little girl.

--

Samuel Morse (Samuel F. B. Morse was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, USA) was an American painter and inventor. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs. He was a co-developer of the Morse code and helped to develop the commercial use of telegraphy.
In England, Morse perfected his painting techniques and by the end of 1811, he gained admittance to the Royal Academy. He left England on August 21, 1815, to return to the United States and begin his full-time career as a painter. Morse also sought commissions among the elite of Charleston, South Carolina. Between 1819 and 1821, Morse went through great changes in his life, including a decline in commissions due to the Panic of 1819. In 1819 he painted a portrait of James Monroe, 5th President of the United States. From 1830 to 1832, Morse traveled and studied in Europe to improve his painting skills, visiting Italy, France and Switzerland. During his time in Paris, he developed a friendship with the writer James Fennimore Cooper. As a project, he painted miniature copies of 38 of the Louvre's famous paintings on a single canvas, which he entitled "The Gallery of the Louvre". He completed the work upon his return to the United States. On a subsequent visit to Paris in 1839, Morse met Louis Daguerre. He became interested in the latter's daguerreotype, the first practical means of photography. While returning by ship from Europe in 1832, Morse encountered Charles Thomas Jackson of Boston, a man who was well schooled in electromagnetism. Witnessing various experiments with Jackson's electromagnet, Morse developed the concept of a single-wire telegraph. At the Speedwell Ironworks in Morristown, New Jersey on January 11, 1838, Morse and Vail made the first public demonstration of the electric telegraph. Morse received a patent for the telegraph in 1847, at the old Beylerbeyi Palace (the present Beylerbeyi Palace was built in 1861-1865 on the same location) in Istanbul (Turkey), which was issued by Sultan Abdülmecid, who personally tested the new invention. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1849. The original patent went to the Breese side of the family after the death of Samuel Morse. In the 1850s, Morse went to Copenhagen and visited the Thorvaldsens Museum, where the sculptor's grave is in the inner courtyard. He was received by King Frederick VII of Denmark, who decorated him with the Order of the Dannebrog in 1856 (He had also received the Great Gold Medal of Arts and Sciences from the King of Württemberg in 1852). Morse expressed his wish to donate his portrait from 1830 to the king. In 1856, Morse traveled to London to help Charles Tilston Bright ((8 June 1832 - 3 May 1888, appointed engineer to the Magnetic Telegraph Company in 1852, father of Charles Bright (1863-1937) knighted in 1919)) and Edward Whitehouse test a 2,000-mile-length of spooled cable. In 1858, he was also elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. In 1858, Morse introduced wired communication to Latin America when he established a telegraph system in Puerto Rico, then a Spanish Colony. Morse's oldest daughter, Susan Walker Morse (1819-1885), would often visit her uncle Charles Pickering Walker, who owned the Hacienda Concordia in the town of Guayama. During one of her visits, she met Edward Lind, a Danish merchant who worked in his brother-in-law's Hacienda La Henriqueta in the town of Arroyo. They later married. Lind purchased the Hacienda from his sister when she became a widow. Morse, who often spent his winters at the Hacienda with his daughter and son-in-law, set a two-mile telegraph line connecting his son-in-law's Hacienda to their house in Arroyo. The line was inaugurated on March 1, 1859, in a ceremony flanked by the Spanish and American flags. The first words transmitted by Samuel Morse that day in Puerto Rico were:
"Puerto Rico, beautiful jewel! When you are linked with the other jewels of the Antilles in the necklace of the world's telegraph, yours will not shine less brilliantly in the crown of your Queen!".
In 1858 Morse was awarded the sum of 400,000 French francs (equivalent to about $80,000 at the time) by the governments of France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Piedmont, Russia, Sweden, Tuscany (in Italy), and Turkey, each of which contributed a share according to the number of Morse instruments in use in each country.

Morse married Lucretia Pickering Walker on September 29, 1818, in Concord, New Hampshire. She died on February 7, 1825, shortly after the birth of their third child (Susan b. 1819, Charles b. 1823, James b. 1825). He married his second wife, Sarah Elizabeth Griswold on August 10, 1848, in Utica, New York and had four children (Samuel b. 1849, Cornelia b. 1851, William b. 1853, Edward b. 1857). In 1871, a bronze statue of Samuel Morse was unveiled in Central Park, New York City.

--

George Caleb Bingham (March 1811 - 1879) was an american artist born in Augusta County, Virginia. He is probably particularly known for "Washington Crossing the Delaware" (1856-1871). He also painted "Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap" (1851-1852). 

In 1856, Bingham moved to Europe with his second wife Eliza (almost an angram of Alice, alize) and youngest daughter. First they stayed in Paris for several months, where Bingham fulfilled a long-cherished desire and studied the Old Masters at the Louvre Museum, likely his chief reason for going abroad.

--

Vanessa Bell (30 may 1879 - 7 April 1961), sister of Virginia Woolf (25 January 1882 - 28 March 1941; an English writer and one of the foremost modernists of the twentieth century (their parents were Leslie Stephen (1832-1904) and Julia Prinsep Stephen (1846-1895 ; she was an English philanthropist and a Pre-Raphaelite model. They married in March 1878. In 1867 she had married Herbert Duckworth. She was photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron)), she also had two brothers and two half-brothers, George (1868-1934; knighted in 1927) and Gerald Duckworth (the lastname of her mother was Duckworth). In later life she alleged that during her childhood she had been sexually molested by her half-brothers, George and Gerald Duckworth (his full name Gerald de l'Etang Duckworth (*). Here we have to notice that étang in French, means "pond", "pool" and that Duckworth was the name of the clergyman accompanying Lewis Carroll and the three little Liddel girls during the boat trip along the river, the 4th of July 1862 when Carroll first told the story of "Alice in Wonderland" (Duckworth was the duck in the pool of tears in Alice in Wonderland, in which several real persons were discreetly included - Lewis Carroll himself and the other Liddell sisters - a literary device also used in "Lolita", as I tried to demonstrate). De l'Etang, was the surname of one of his mother's ancestors, Antoine de l'Etang, a page to French Queen Marie Antoinette. His mother was a niece of Julia Margaret Cameron, the photographer, after whom she was named).

Vanessa Bell had attended Sir Arthur Cope's art school in 1896, and then studied painting at the Royal Academy in 1901. Her illustration for "To the Lighthouse", the book by her sister Virginia Woolf, is about a beach with lighthouse that was a part of Bell’s and Woolf's childhood in St Ives, Cornwall.

(*) In 1898, Gerald Duckworth founded the publishing company which bears his name, Gerald Duckworth and Company Ltd, in Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. In his first year, 1898-99, he published Henry James's In the Cage; Leslie Stephen's English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century; Jocelyn by John Sinjohn, a nom-de-plume of John Galsworthy; a translation of August Strindberg's Der Vater; and Mother Goose in Prose, the first children's book by L. Frank Baum, and the first book illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. (Baum's most famous work, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", was published in Chicago just a year later)

--

The Rhine Maidens of Wagner's Tetralogy by Arthur Rackham

--

Eiríkr or Eiríkur Magnússon (1833-1913) was an Icelandic scholar who was Librarian at the University of Cambridge and played an important role in the movement to study the history and literature of the Norsemen in Victorian England.
Born in Berufjörður in the east of Iceland, Eiríkr was sent to England in 1862 by the Icelandic Bible Society. In 1871, he became a librarian at the University of Cambridge, where he worked until the end of 1909. In 1893 he also became lecturer in Icelandic.
Eiríkr lectured and organised famine relief for Iceland in 1875 and 1882 and fell out with Guðbrandur Vigfússon, a fellow Icelandic scholar who was at Oxford and had been his friend, over that and his preference for modernised Icelandic in translating the Bible (Guðbrandur was a purist). Like many Icelandic scholars in Britain at the time, Eiríkr gave Icelandic lessons as a source of income, first in 1863. Most famously, he taught William Morris and collaborated with him on translating a number of sagas. Within a year of Morris beginning his studies with Eiríkr, their Story of Grettir the Strong was published (1869). In 1870 they published the first English translation of Völsungasaga. In 1871 Eiríkr and his wife accompanied Morris to Iceland, where Eiríkr went with Morris on a tour of "saga steads" and other places of interest. Between 1891 and 1905 they published a six-volume Saga Library, which included Heimskringla and the first English translations of Hávarðar saga Ísfirðings, Hænsa-Þóris saga and Eyrbyggja Saga. Eiríkr defended Morris against York Powell's criticism of his archaic style. Eiríkr was married to Sigríður Sæmundsen, a descendant of Egill Skallagrímsson. She campaigned to improve education for girls in Iceland. He is buried in the Mill Road cemetery, Cambridge.

There is a chain of references about the Scandinavian countries (at least Iceland, Norway (see below), Sweden and Denmark) in relation with their medieval literature (saga) and supernatural creatures and their impact in Victorian British literature and the Pre-raphaelites (references in "elf" (p. TAL), "elves" (p. TAL), "Mimir and memory" (p.260 TAL; Mímir (Old Norse "The rememberer, the wise one") is a figure in Norse mythology renowned for his knowledge and wisdom who is beheaded during the Æsir-Vanir War. Afterward, the god Odin carries around Mímir's head and it recites secret knowledge and counsel to him) and "Dunkerque was fortified in the tenth century" (p.262 TAL; Dunkerque is the French name of Dunkirk, a city on the French northern seabord which was walled in 960 AD to protect against the Vikings (famous Scandinavian sailors and warriors)). Notice that - besides William Morris learning Icelandic going in Iceland, translating Icelandic Sagas and writing stories influenced by the antique Germanic world - John Ruskin lived in Denmark Hill in London, starting in the year 1842).

References concerning Denmark:

Alexandra of Denmark (Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia (or Alix as her family knew her), Queen of the United Kingdom.

King Otto of Greece (reign: May 1832 - 1862) is followed by George I of Greece, a Danish prince. King of Greece from March 1863 until his assassination in March 1913. During his reign Thessaly was annexed from the Ottoman Empire after the Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878).

Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875 ; alluded several times in "Lolita", particularly by the mention of "The Little Mermaid" and "The Emperor's New Clothes" (though attributed to a different author)), was a Danish author. Although a prolific writer of plays, travelogues, novels, and poems, Andersen is best remembered for his fairy tales. Some of his most famous fairy tales include "The Emperor's New Clothes" (p.201 TAL), "The Little Mermaid" (p. TAL), "The Nightingale", "The Snow Queen", "The Princess and the Pea" and "The Ugly Duckling". Andersen's father, introduced Andersen to literature, reading to him "Arabian Nights". He once said that is favorite English author was Charles Dickens. There exists a photograph of Andersen in 1867. 

Carl August Nielsen (9 June 1865 - 3 October 1931) was a Danish musician, conductor and violinist, widely recognized as his country's most prominent composer. Though not an outstanding student and composing little, Nielsen progressed well in violin under Valdemar Tofte (1832-1907), and received a solid grounding in music theory from Orla Rosenhoff. In 1886 (he was then around 20 years old) he went to stay with the retired Odense merchant Jens Georg Nielsen and his wife at their apartment on Slagelsegade and then he fell in love with their 14-year-old daughter Emilie Demant. The affair was to last for the next three years. Nielsen had five children, two of them illegitimate. He had already fathered a son, Carl August Nielsen, in January 1888, before he met sculptor Anne Marie Brodersen (1863-1945). He premiered his Op. 1, Suite for Strings, in 1888, at the age of 23. The following year, Nielsen began a 16-year stint as a second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra under the conductor Johan Svendsen (1840 - 14 June 1911), during which he played in Giuseppe Verdi's Falstaff and Otello at their Danish premieres.
Among his works: "Saga-Drøm" (Saga Dream), Op. 39 is a tone poem for orchestra based on the Icelandic Njal's Saga.  "Pan and Syrinx" (Pan og Syrinx), a vigorous nine-minute symphonic poem inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses, was premiered in 1911. Among Nielsen's orchestral works for the stage is "Aladdin" (1919).

References concerning Sweden (so far):

Carl Larsson (May 1853 - January 1919; initials C.L., the reflexion of L.C. (Lewis Carroll) - Carl is etymologically related to Carroll/Charles) was a Swedish painter representative of the Arts and Crafts Movement. After several years working as an illustrator of books, magazines, and newspapers, Larsson moved to Paris in 1877, where he spent several frustrating years as a hardworking artist without any success. After spending two summers in Barbizon, the refuge of the plein-air painters, he settled down with his Swedish painter colleagues in 1882 in Grez-sur-Loing, at a Scandinavian artists' colony outside Paris. It was there that he met the artist Karin Bergöö, who soon became his wife. This was to be a turning point in Larsson's life. Among his children, Brita, Pontus (1888) and Esbjörn (1900).
Among his works there are for instance "Atelje idyll Konstnärens hustru med dottern Suzanne" (1885),  "Mammas och småflickornas rum" (1897; showing a naked little girl on the foreground) and "Brita And I" (1895; a selfportrait with his little daughter, on which we can see C. L. and 42). He is the author of "At Solsidan" (1910).

Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982; "montagnard émigré" p.210 TAL (Beside being a reference to a text by Chateaubriand (alluded several times in the novel), 'montagnard' is French for Mountain man i.e. Berg man in German and Swedish)). Her swedish father was Justus Bergman (May 1871 - July 1929) and her German mother was Frieda Adler. After her father's death, she was sent to live with an aunt, who died of heart disease only six months later. She then moved in with her Aunt Hulda and Uncle Otto, who had five children. Another aunt she visited, Elsa Adler, first told Ingrid, when she was 11, that her mother may have had "some Jewish blood" (Biographer Aleksandra Ziolkowska-Boehm, however, notes that the claim of Jewish blood was likely an embellishment. After being forced to do an in-depth genealogical investigation, Bergman's maternal cousin found there to be no Jewish ancestry on Bergman's mother's side). Her career started in "Landskamp" (1932) and she played in such movies as "Casablanca" (1942; most characters are mainly French and Americans), "På solsidan" (reminescent of Carlsso'sn "At Solsidan"), "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (based on the novel by R. Louis Stevenson and directed by Victor Fleming (who started his career in 1910) who also directed "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" in 1939), "Arch of Triumph" (The Arc de triomphe in Paris is linked to Napoleon Bonaparte), "Joan of Arc" (1949), "Under Capricorn" (her character is Lady Henrietta Flusky), "Rage in Heaven" (her character is Stella Bergen Monrell) and "Notorious" (her character is Alicia Huberman). She arrived in Los Angeles on May 6 1939 and her first US film was also in 1939. 

Georg von Rosen (13 February 1843, Paris - 3 March 1923, Stockholm ;"Eva Rosen" p. TAL) was a Swedish painter, known for his treatment of subjects from Swedish history and Norse mythology. He taught at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts between 1880 and 1908. In his 1871 picture of Karin Månsdotter – a 16th Century Swedish queen who was the only commoner to hold that position until modern times and who is considered a romantic figure – she is depicted as "an innocent angel", holding the hand of her mentally deranged husband, King Eric XIV (i.e. 14), who is lying on the floor, confused by his inner demons. She is thus giving the King strength to resist the demands of his adviser Jöran Persson, standing on the other side of him and trying to get him to sign a document.

Anders Zorn (1860-1920; married to Emma Lamm) was a Swedish painter who painted among other subjects King Oscar II of Sweden (1898), 3 American Presidents (Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft (1911) and Theodore Roosevelt) and "The Queen consort of Sweden and Norway, Queen Sophia". He also made a self-portrait in 1882, painted "Self Portrait with Faun and Nymph", painted Rosita Mauri in 1888 and many nudes of women.

Jean-Baptiste Jules Bernadotte (1763 – 8 March 1844), French Marshall of emperor Napoleon Bonaparte since May 18, 1804. He became King of Sweden in May 11, 1818 (as Charles XIV (ie. 14) John; Karl Johan) and King of Norway in September (9th month) 7, 1818 (as Charles III (i.e. 3) John).
His candidacy was advocated by Baron Carl Otto Mörner. The main street of Oslo (capital of Norway), Karl Johans gate, was named after him in 1852. 

References to the famous Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (born in May. Among many other things he named and described birds and butterflies), known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné (Linné is a Frenchified version of Linn, which meant linden tree in his Swedish dialect ("under the lindens" p. TAL)) - note that in many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus.

The Nobel Prize, an invention of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, was imagined when, in 1888, Nobel was astonished to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper. As it was Alfred's brother Ludvig (Ludvig is etymologically equivallent to Louis/Lewis) who had died, the obituary was eight years premature. The article disconcerted Nobel and made him apprehensive about how he would be remembered. This inspired him to change his will. On 10 December 1896, Alfred Nobel died in his villa in San Remo, Italy, from a cerebral haemorrhage. The Swedish Academy chose the poet Sully Prudhomme for the first Nobel Prize in Literature. A group including 42 Swedish writers, artists, and literary critics protested against this decision, having expected Leo Tolstoy to be awarded. Some, including Burton Feldman, have criticised this prize because they consider Prudhomme a mediocre poet. Feldman's explanation is that most of the Academy members preferred Victorian literature and thus selected a Victorian poet. Among the winners: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Rudyard Kipling (youngest receiver at 42 years old), Maurice Maeterlinck (1911), Romain Rolland, Knut Hamsun, Anatole France, W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Henri Bergson, Sinclair Lewis, John Galsworthy, Eugene O'Neill, André Gide, T. S. Eliot, Carl Spitteler (Nobel Prize in 1919; author of "Schmetterlinge" ("Butterflies"). He died at Lucerne), Selma Lagerlöf (a Swedish author who was the first female writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature; among her works: "The Wonderful Adventures of Nils" (story followed by "Further Adventures of Nils" (1911)), "The Emperor of Portugallia" and "Jerusalem" ) and Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (a Danish author (His career began with the publication of "Himmerland Stories" (1898-1910)) whose sister was an early feminist).

Let's mention that the Nine Herbs Charm is an Old English charm (or spell) recorded in the 10th-century. The numbers nine and three, significant in Germanic paganism and later Germanic folklore, are mentioned frequently within the charm. The major Germanic god Woden (a.k.a. Odinn) is mentionned as well.

Possible references to Norway (there might be much more concerning the other Scandinavian countries, but I don't have more right now): 

Fridtjof Nansen: see the main page.

Roald Amundsen: see the main page.

Rosemåling : the name of a traditional form of decorative folk art that originated in the rural valleys of Norway which uses stylized flower forms ( "Rose" can be interpreted as a reference to the rose flower, but the floral elements are often so stylized that no specific flower is identifiable, and are absent in some designs).

Ålesund is a Norwegian city known for its Art Nouveau architecture.

The Oslo Olympic Games of 1952.

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson (1832 - 1910) was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature who one of The Four Greats (De Fire Store) among Norwegian writers, the others being Henrik Ibsen (author of "Hedda Gabbler"), Jonas Lie, and Alexander Kielland (1849-1906). Bjørnson is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian National Anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet" (written between 1859 and 1868). Bjørnson's political opinions had brought upon him a charge of high treason, and he took refuge for a time in Germany, returning to Norway in 1882 (a photograph of of him and his family taken this year exists). One of his child was born in 1868 and another one in 1871 and two of his child died in 1942. He died in Paris in 1910. Among his works are "Sigurd Slembe" (1862), "Maria Stuart i Skotland" (1863), "De Nygifte", ("The Newly Married"; 1865), "Fiskerjenten" (1868), "Støv" (1882) and "Paul Lange og Tora Parsberg" (1898).
Universal (male) suffrage exists in Norway since 1898. 1898 is also the date the Norwegian flag was fully allowed (by Sweden - Norway was still not an independent nation) to be used. 

The National Day of Norway is on May 17.

Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is a famous Norwegian painter. He studied painting in Paris. His most famous painting is the "The Scream" (there are two versions: 1893 and 1910). Among his notable works: "The lady from the Sea", "Train Smoke" (1900), "Death of Marat", "Self-Portrait" (1882), "Vampire", "The Kiss", "Four Girls in Åsgårdstrand", "Metabolism" (1898; initially called "Adam and Eve"), "Henrik Ibsen at the Grand Café" (1898), "The Rainbow" (1898), "Sitting Nude by the Beach" (1898), "The Fairytale Forest", "Two Children on their way to the Fairytale Forest", "Nude in Front of the Mirror", "In the Garden", "Venus", "Chestnut Trees", "Rosa Meissner", " Children in the Street" (1910-15), "The Murderer" (1910),  "Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Speaking to the People" and "Galloping Horse" (1910; Cavall means horse in Celtic). Munch was enthralled by the vast display of modern European art, including the works of three artists who would prove influential: Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec - all notable for how they used color to convey emotion. Munch was particularly inspired by Gauguin's "reaction against realism" and his credo that "art was human work and not an imitation of Nature", a belief earlier stated by Whistler. As one of his Berlin friends said later of Munch, "he need not make his way to Tahiti to see and experience the primitive in human nature. He carries his own Tahiti within him." (Tahiti is a polynesian Island). He also made some photographs (among them the photograph of a naked woman titled "Rosa Meissner at the Hotel Rohn in Warnemünde"). Edvard's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868.

Henrik Ibsen (was born in march and died in may) was the Norwegian author of "Hedda Gabler",  "A Doll's House", "Peer Gynt" (Translation By William Archer in 1911; note that there exists an hybrid tea rose named "Peer Gynt"), "The Lady from the Sea", "Digte" (1871 - only released collection of poetry, included "Terje Vigen", (written in 1862 but published in "Digte" from 1871), "Olaf Liljekrans" (1856; krans with the recurring mirror trick gives snark which points to a famous work of Lewis Carroll), "Love's Comedy" (1862), "The Pretenders" (1863), "Brand" (1865), "Rosmersholm", "The Wild Duck" and "An Enemy of the People" (1882). He is widely regarded as the most important playwright since Shakespeare. He influenced other playwrights and novelists such as George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Miller, James Joyce, Eugene O'Neill and Miroslav Krleža. Ibsen was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1902, 1903 and 1904. 

Knut Hamsun (1859-1952) was a major Norwegian writer, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1920. Among his notable works: "Et Gjensyn" (1878), "Bjørger" (1878), "Pan" (1894; partly written in Paris), "Victoria" (1898), "In Wonderland" (1903; Impressions of about Hamsun's travels in Russian Caucasus, Turkey and Persia), "Dronning Tamara" (1903; "Queen Tamara"), "Sværmere" (1904; "Mothwise" (1921), "Dreamers"), "Rosa" (1908), "Children of the Age" (1913) and "Wanderers" (1909). 

"Norwegian Folktales" (Norwegian: Norske Folkeeventyr) is a collection of Norwegian folktales and legends by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. It is also known as Asbjørnsen and Moe, after the collectors. It first appeared a slim pamphlet (in 1841, but post-dated as 1842) offering a selection of a few tales, without a title page, the editor's names or table of contents. This was sufficiently well-received, and championed by P. A. Munch in a German newspaper. The second edition appeared in 1852. Another series dubbed the "New Collection" appeared later (Norske Folke-Eventyr. Ny Samling 1871). Asbjørnsen and Moe were inspired by the German folktale collectors, the Brothers Grimm, not merely to emulate their methodology, but drawing encouragement by it, their endeavor was a work of national importance, especially as the Grimms openly gave high praise for the Norske folkeeventyr. Among the illustrators: Eilif Peterssen (1852-1928), August Schneider (1842-1873), Otto Sinding (1842-1909).

Peter Christen Asbjørsen was a Norwegian writer and scholar. He and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe were collectors of Norwegian folklore.  He became a student at the University of Oslo in 1833, but as early as 1832, in his twentieth year, he had begun to collect and write down fairy tales and legends. He later walked on foot the length and breadth of Norway, adding to his stories.

Jørgen Moe (pretty close to Poe) was a Norwegian folklorist, bishop, poet and author. He is best known for the "Norske Folkeeventyr", a collection of Norwegian folk tales which he edited in collaboration with Peter Christen Asbjørnsen. Moe was appointed Knight of the Order of St. Olav in 1873 and was made commander of the 1st cross class in 1881. During January 1882, he resigned his diocese due to failing health, and he died the following March.

Peter Andreas Munch (1810-May 1863), usually known as P. A. Munch, was a Norwegian historian, known for his work on the medieval history of Norway. Munch’s scholarship included Norwegian archaeology, geography, ethnography, linguistics, and jurisprudence. He was also noted for his Norse Legendary saga translations. Among his works: "De nyeste Tiders Historie" (1842), "Om Skandinavismen" (1849) and "Det norske Folks Historie" (1852-1863). 

Sigrid Undset (May 1882 - 1949; her mother was Charlotte Undset (1855-1939)) was a Norwegian novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928. Among her works "Jenny" (1919), "Madame Dorthea" (1939; also the year "Men, Women and Places" was published in London). She translated Icelandic sagas into modern Norwegian. 

Hans Kinck (1865-1926) who was a Norwegian author who wrote "The Last Guest" based on the life of Pietro Artino (1492-1556; he was an Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist and blackmailer who wielded immense influence on contemporary art and politics and invented modern literate pornography. He became known via a pamphlet titled "The Last Will and Testament of the Elephant Hanno" against Many members of the elite of the time including Pope Leo X (Leo is Latin for Lion; The second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, ruler of the Florentine Republic. He became elected Pope a March 9. Raphael painted a portrait of him and decorated Vatican rooms). Agostino Chigi, the rich banker and patron of Raphael, took him under his wing. He settled permanently in 1527, in Venice, the anti-Papal city of Italy, "seat of all vices" Aretino noted with gusto. Francis I of France and Charles V pensioned him at the same time, each hoping for some damage to the reputation of the other. Clement VII made Aretino a Knight of Rhodes, and Julius III named him a Knight of St. Peter). Some of his stories are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe in style. 

--

"Vanessa" (1952) by Hugo Winterhalter (an American easy listening arranger and composer) to lead us to: 

 Albert Gustav Winterhalter (1856-1920), was an admiral in the United States Navy. He was commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet from 1915 to 1917. In 1898, as flag lieutenant to Rear Admiral J.M. Miller, Commander in Chief Pacific Station, Winterhalter personally arranged the hoisting of the American flag at the ceremonies attending the transfer of sovereignty of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States. He was Hydrographer of the Navy from May 1908 to January 1910. While stationed in San Francisco in 1896, he married Broadway actress Helen Dauvray.

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873) was a German painter and lithographer, known for his portraits of royalty in the mid-nineteenth century. He trained as a draughtsman and lithographer in the workshop of Karl Ludwig Schüler (1785-1852). He left Baden to move to France where his Italian genre scene "Il dolce Farniente" attracted notice at the Salon of 1836. "Il Decameron" a year later was also praised; both paintings are academic compositions in the style of Raphael. Among his most famous work: "Florinda" (1852), "A Young Girl called Princess Charlotte" (1864), "Princess Charlotte of Belgium" (1842), "Portrait of Eugénie, Empress of the French" (1862), "Rosa Potocka" (1856), "Painting of baby Princess Alice of the United Kingdom", "Queen Victoria" (1842), "Emperor Frederick III of Germany, King of Prussia with his wife, Empress Victoria, and their children, Prince William and Princess Charlotte" (1862), "The Cousins: Queen Victoria and Victoire, Duchesse de Nemours" (1852), "Portrait of a lady with roses in her hair, (Countess Pushkina)", "Princess Alice of England" (1861), "Charlotte Stuart, Viscountess Canning" (1849), "Study of a Girl in Profile" (1862), "Barbara Dmitrievna Mergassov-Rimsky-Korsakova" (1864), etc...

--

LEWIS and CLARk expedition, after the Louisiana purchase (from May 1804 to September 1806 (9/1806); another member of the expedition was Charles Floyd (p.51 TAL), the only one to have died during the expedition). The starting point was Camp Dubois (it was located on the east side of the Mississippi River so that it was still in United States territory. This was important because the transfer of the Louisiana Purchase to France from Spain did not occur until March 9, 1804, and then from France to the United States on March 10, 1804). On May 16 they reached St Charles, in Missouri (it served as the first state capital, while the modern State Capital St Louis), which was considered the last civilised place.

Rose Philippine Duchesne (1769 - 18/11/1852 (1811 and 1852; and DUCHESnE is a like a slightly distorted reflexion of DUCHESSE (French for duchess)); beatified in May 1940 (1940 is a date mentionned in "Lolita") ("beatified" comes from the same latin root than Beatrix/Beatrice)) was a French Religious Sister and educator. She spent the last half of her life teaching and serving the people of the Midwestern United States, then the western frontier of the nation. There is a shrine in her honor in St Charles, Missouri, the place she lived and died.

--

Dred Scott v. Sandford (argued twice in 1856 and decide in March 1857), also known simply as the Dred Scott case, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. It held that "a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves", whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States.

About Dred Scott's situation : Charlotte Taylor Blow Charless (1810–1905): born in Southampton, Virginia, Mrs. Charless traveled with her family first to northern Alabama and then, in 1830, to St. Louis where her father, Peter Blow (1777 - 1832), briefly operated a hotel. At the time of his death, he or his family sold their slaveDred Scott (ca.1799-1858) to Colonel John Emerson, who took Scott to the “free” state of Illinois (*) and territory of Wisconsin. When Dred Scott returned to St. Louis in 1842, he sued for his freedom. Scott found moral and monetary support from Charlotte Charless, her husband and her brothers Henry and Taylor Blow. In November 1852, the Missouri Supreme Court reversed the trial court's decision, holding that the Scotts were still legally slaves and that they should have sued for freedom while living in a free state (decision by Chief Justice William Scott). After Scott's final appeal to the United States Supreme Court failed in 1857, Colonel Emerson's widow, by then married to a leading abolitionist, transferred ownership of Scott to Taylor Blow. Mr. Blow gave Mr. Scott his freedom in 1857. 
(*) A free state, Illinois had been free as a territory under the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, and had prohibited slavery in its constitution in 1819 when it was admitted as a state.

In a memo to Justice Robert H. Jackson in 1952 (for whom he was clerking at the time) on the subject of Brown v. Board of Education, future Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist wrote that "Scott v. Sandford was the result of Taney's effort to protect slaveholders from legislative interference."
Another famous case concerning the black individuals fighting for their rights and freedom in the USA concerns Charlotte Dupuy, also called Lottie (ca. 1787-1790 – after 1866), who was an enslaved African-American woman who filed a freedom suit in 1829 against her master, Henry Clay (1777-1852) (**), then Secretary of State. This case went to court seventeen years before Dred Scott filed his more famous legal challenge to slavery. Then living in Washington, DC, Dupuy sued for her freedom and that of her two children, based on a promise by her previous owner.


(**)  Henry Clay, Sr. (April 12, 1777 – June 29, 1852; His spouse was Lucretia Hart (m. 1799–1852) was an American lawyer, planter and statesman. He was elected Speaker of the House in 1811. He briefly retired to rebuild his family's fortune in the aftermath of the Panic of 1819 (Panic of 1819). In 1832, Clay ran for president as a candidate of the National Republican Party, losing to Andrew Jackson. He was Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Kentucky's 5th district (Kentucky's state capital: Louisville) from march 1811 to 1813. He was in office as senator of Kentucky from 1810 to march 1811, from 1831 to march 1842, and from march 1849 to 1852.

In 1819, a dispute had erupted over the admission of Missouri as a slave state. New York Congressman James Talmadge introduced an amendment that would provide for the gradual emancipation of Missouri's slaves, sparking the ire of southerners. Though Clay had previously called for gradual emancipation in Kentucky, he sided with the southerners in voting down Talmadge's amendment.

--

Laurence Oliphant (1829-1888 ; Oliphant means elephant in old French and in Dutch, and it is also a keyword (e.g. "took her to a dude-ranch about a day's drive from Elephant (Elphinstone)" (p.276 TAL)); the Scottish clan Oliphant as an Unicorn as symbol ; Notice that in French, Laurence is a female name (male/female swapping instance?)) was a South African-born British author, traveller, diplomat and Christian mystic. He is best known for his satirical novel Piccadilly (1870). Oliphant was elected Member of Parliament for Stirling Burghs in 1865. In 1848 and 1849, he and his parents toured Europe. In 1851, he accompanied Jung Bahadur from Colombo to Nepal, which provided the material for his first book, "A Journey to Katmandu" (1852). Oliphant returned to Ceylon and from there went to England to study law. Oliphant left his legal studies to travel in Russia. The outcome of that tour was his book "The Russian Shores of the Black Sea" (1853). Oliphant left Parliament in 1868. While he did not show any conspicuous parliamentary ability, he was made a great success by his novel Piccadilly (1870). He then fell under the influence of the spiritualist prophet Thomas Lake Harris, who in about 1861 had organised a small community, the Brotherhood of the New Life, which was settled in Brocton on Lake Erie, and subsequently moved to Santa Rosa, California. After three, years Oliphant worked as correspondent for The Times during the Franco-German War, and afterwards spent several years in Paris in the service of the paper. There he met, through his mother, his future wife, Alice le Strange. In 1879, Oliphant left for Palestine, where he hoped to promote Jewish agricultural settlement. Later, he saw these settlements as a means of alleviating Jewish suffering in Eastern Europe. He visited Constantinople (in what is now Turkey) in the hopes of obtaining a lease on the northern half of the Holy Land and settling large numbers of Jews there (this was prior to the first wave of Jewish settlement by Zionists in 1882). In 1888, he traveled to the United States and married his second wife, Rosamond, a granddaughter of Robert Owen (who was a Welsh social reformer born in May and one of the founders of utopian socialism and the cooperative movement).

--

Margaret Oliphant (1828-1897) was a Scottish novelist and historical writer, who usually wrote as Mrs. Oliphant. Her fictional works encompass "domestic realism, the historical novel and tales of the supernatural". In 1849 she had her first novel published: "Passages in the Life of Mrs. Margaret Maitland". In May 1852, she married her cousin. For the sake of his health they moved in January 1859 to Florence. Among her works: "Margaret Maitland" (1849), "John Drayton" (1851), "The Melvilles" (1852), "The Last of the Mortimers" (1862), "Heart and Cross" (1863), "The Chronicles of Carlingford" in Blackwood's Magazine (1862–1865; republished as: Salem Chapel (1863), The Rector (1863), Doctor's Family (1863), The Perpetual Curate (1864), Miss Marjoribanks (1866), Phoebe Junior (1876)), "A Son of the Soil" (1865), "Brownlows" (1868; close to Brown Lo which is equivalent to Brown Dolores (p.245 TAL)), "Squire Arden" (1871; The plot follows the story of Squire Edgar Arden of Arden, his sister Clare, and their poor cousin Arthur Arden), "May" (1873), "Mrs. Arthur" (1877), "The Primrose Path" (1878), "Lady Jane" (1882), "A Little Pilgrim in the Unseen" (1882), "The Wizard's Son" (1884) and "Joyce" (1888).

--

Washington Irving (April 3, 1783, in New York - November 28, 1859, in Tarrytown in New York State) was an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle" (1819) and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820), both of which appear in his collection, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of Oliver Goldsmith, Muhammad, and George Washington, as well as several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Alhambra, Christopher Columbus, and the Moors. Irving served as the U.S. ambassador to Spain from 1842 to 1846.

In August 1824, Irving published the collection of essays Tales of a Traveller—including the short story "The Devil and Tom Walker"—under his Geoffrey Crayon persona. "I think there are in it some of the best things I have ever written", Irving told his sister. But while the book sold respectably, Traveller was dismissed by critics, who panned both Traveller and its author. "The public have been led to expect better things", wrote the United States Literary Gazette, while the New-York Mirror pronounced Irving "overrated". Hurt and depressed by the book's reception, Irving retreated to Paris where he spent the next year worrying about finances and scribbling down ideas for projects that never materialized.
Irving wento to Spain ("A History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus", was published during his time in Spain, in January 1828) and London in the next years.
Washington Irving arrived in New York, after seventeen years abroad, on May 21, 1832.
Irving at this time also began a friendly correspondence with the English writer Charles Dickens and hosted the author and his wife at Sunnyside during Dickens's American tour in 1842.
In 1842, after an endorsement from Secretary of State Daniel Webster, President John Tyler appointed Irving as Minister to Spain.
Irving, along with James Fenimore Cooper, was among the first American writers to earn acclaim in Europe, and Irving encouraged American authors such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Herman Melville, and Edgar Allan Poe. Irving was also admired by some European writers, including Lord Byron, Thomas Campbell, Charles Dickens, Francis Jeffrey, and Walter Scott.

--

The Gadsden Purchase in 1853 sold a bit of territory from Mexico to the USA, added to the states of Arizona and New Mexico.

--

Ferdinand Maximilian Joseph of Habsburg-Lorraine ("Lorrain" p. TAL), Archduke of Austria, Royal Prince of Hungary, born in Vienna, Austria, in 1832 and died in 1867 in Mexico. His father was Archduke Franz Karl (The second surviving son of Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor) and his mother was Princess Sophie of Bavaria but until his sixth birthday, he was cared for by Baroness Louise von Sturmfeder. Rumors at the court stated that Maximilian was, in fact, the product of an extramarital affair between his mother and his first cousin Napoleon II (nicknamed the Eaglet), Duke of Reichstadt, the only legitimate son of Napoleon; the duke's mother was Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, former Empress of the French, Maximilian's aunt. He married princess Charlotte of Belgium. He accepted an offer by Napoleon III of France (Charles-Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) to rule Mexico and after an invasion of Mexico by France became thus emperor under the name Maximilian I.

--

William Archer (1856-1924) was a Scottish critic and writer. He was also a lover of Elizabeth Robins (1865 - May 1952; see the main page). He took up residence in London (p.15 TAL) in 1878.Archer had much to do with introducing Henrik Ibsen to the English public with his translation of "The Pillars of Society", produced at the Gaiety Theatre, London, 1880. It was the first Ibsen play to be produced in London but made little impression. He also translated, alone or in collaboration, other productions of the Scandinavian stage: Ibsen's "A Doll's House" (1889), "The Master Builder" (1893, with Edmund Gosse); Edvard Brandes's "A Visit" (1892); Ibsen's "Peer Gynt" (1892, with his brother ("bruder" p. TAL) Charles Archer); "Little Eyolf" (1895); and John Gabriel Borkman (1897); and he edited Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas vols., 1890–1891). In 1897 Archer, along with Elizabeth Robins, Henry William Massingham, and Alfred Sutro, formed the Provisional Committee to organize an association to produce plays of high literary intrinsic merit, such as Ibsen's. The association was called the "New Century Theatre" but was a disappointment by 1899, although it continued until at least 1904. In 1899, a more successful association, called the Stage Society, was formed to replace it.
Max Beerbohm's caricature of Archer paying a humble visit to Henrik Ibsen was published in The Poets’ Corner, London 1904. 
Among his works: "Masks or Faces? A Study in the Psychology of Acting" (1888), "English Dramatists of To-day" (1882), "Henry Irving, a study" (1883), "America To-day, Observations and Reflections" (1900), "The Old Drama and the New" (1923), "War is War" (1919) and "The Green Goddess" (1921).

Charles Archer collaborated with his brother William in translating 3 of Ibsen's plays: "Rosmersholm", "Lady Inger of Ostrat", and "Peer Gynt".

--

In indirect Astrology references (diverses (e.g. all the solar system planets are referenced in "Lolita" (Jupiter (p.280 TAL), Venus (p. TAL, p. TAL), Uranus ("uranists" p.16 TAL; notice that Urania is the muse of astronomy and originally of astrology), Saturn ("saturnalia" p.138 TAL, p. TAL), Neptune (p. TAL; sometimes indirectly e.g. via the mention of Triton), Pluto (p. TAL; e.g. indirectly, by references to the Styx (p.250 TAL) and Charon (associated to Hades whose Latin name is Pluto) that are also moons of Pluto; it was still considered a planet when the book was written), etc...)) ; part of the "esoterism" references): Pico della Mirandola, Pierre le Lorrain (1472), Michael Scot (represented the head backwards in Dante's "Inferno"), John Dee (maybe in "vee" p. TAL; we know that words/name with one letter difference are used t opint to references (e.g. Parkington/Tarkington)).

The Astrological signs ("aster", "stella", "star", "starlet" and all the references to the planets) are probably hinted in the novel:
Aries-Ram ("Ramsdale"; the March month (which is among the references) is said Mars in French, like the planet ruling the Aries), Taurus-Bull (references to "May", "Venus" and Nabokov (Vivian Darkbloom, 1919, 1923), a Taurus himself), Gemini-Twins (several mentions of twins in the novel), Leo-Lion (maybe "Lyons", "Dandelion", "sun", "august"? from Latin AVGVST- (latin V and U are the same), whose Gustav is basically an anagram of), Virgo-the maiden (the several references to Joan of Arc, known as the Maid of Orleans - a maiden?), Sagittarius-the archer (refernces to William archer (1856 - 1924), lover of Elizabeth Robins (1865 - May 1952), maybe? and "Jupiter" (p.280 TAL)), Aquarius-The Water-bearer ("aquarium" (p.108 TAL), "uranists" (p.16 TAL), "saturnalia" (p.138 TAL); Both Lewis Carroll and John Ruskin were Aquarius), Pisces-the Fish ("fish" p.158 TAL and references to Neptune and Jupiter (p.280 TAL for the latter)).

William Lilly (May 1602 - 1681), English astrologer, whose mother was named Alice, who is known for the historical portrayal it leaves of diverse men (among them John Dee).

In indirect esoteric references there are also Edgar A. Poe's "Metzengerstein" (1832) and "The Oval Portrait" (1842) in which metempsychosis (the word also plays a prominent role in James Joyce's "Ulysses") is a prominent theme.

--

"a veritable Proteus of the highway" (p.227  TAL). Proteus is another reference to Poseidon, or as he was known to the Romans, Neptune (also a planet of the solar system...).
Although very far from certain, it might also be an obscure reference to Auguste Léopold Protet (Protet does sound quite close to Protée, French for Proteus) who was a French Navy Admiral, who officially founded Dakar (now, capital of Senegal) in 1857 and was killed near Shanghai in May 1862, during the Taiping rebellion.

--

"Mesmer Mesmer" (p.308 TAL), a reference to Franz Mesmer (born in MAY 1734 and dead in MARCH 1815; notice the may/march) was a German physician with an interest in astronomy, who theorised that there was a natural energetic transference that occurred between all animated and inanimate objects that he called animal magnetism, sometimes later referred to as mesmerism. The theory attracted a wide following between about 1780 and 1850, and continued to have some influence until the end of the century. In 1843 the Scottish physician James Braid proposed the term hypnosis for a technique derived from animal magnetism; today this is the usual meaning of mesmerism.

--

Diverse things linked with Portugal ("in Portugal" p.32 TAL):  the proclamation of the First Portuguese Republic in 1910.

During the Invasion of Portugal by France (1810-1811) in the Peninsula War, The French were victorious at the battle of Redhina (March 1811) against a much larger Anglo-portuguese army.

In the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro (3,4,5 May 1811), the British-Portuguese Army under Lord Wellington checked an attempt by the Napoleonic French Army of Portugal (of 42,000 soldiers) under Marshal André Masséna to relieve the besieged city of Almeida, that the French troops of the city managed to escape on May 10 1811.

The Mirandese language (autonym: mirandés or lhéngua mirandesa; Portuguese: mirandês or língua mirandesa) is sparsely spoken in a small area of northeastern Portugal, in the municipalities of Miranda do Douro, Mogadouro and Vimioso.

--

War is part of the references ("the gloom of yet another world war had setteled upon the globe" (p. 32 TAL), "the poor boy has just been killed in Korea" (p. 290 TAL; Korean war (1950-1953), about Charlie Holmes), Colonel Maximovich (p. TAL), "Bagration" (p. 302 TAL; a Russian general during the Napoleonic wars), "Barda" (p. TAL; a French military slang word), etc...):

Battle of Konya (in Turkey) in 1832, Egypt defeating the Ottoman Empire (i.e. ~Turkey).

Anglo-persian war starting in 1856 (ending in 1857).

Crimean war (1853 - March 1856; Crimea was in the Russian Empire): The Russian Empire (with the Kingdom of Greece) opposed mainly to The United Kingdom, French Empire (under Napoleon III (Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte)) and the Ottoman Empire (~Turkey). Austria remained neutral but was implicated (and hostile to the Russian Empire, even if the help Russia gave to Austria to suppress the Hungarian Revolution, in 1849, gave hope that Austria would have sided with it). The famous Florence Nightingale (born in Florence, Tuscany, in May 1820 - died in August 1910 in Mayfair, London, England) participated and became known in this war.

Egypt fell under British control in 1882 following the Anglo-egyptian war.

Treaty of Lausanne (a major city of Switzerland) in 1923. Among the signatories Turkey, France, Greek Kingdom and the Brittish Empire (First Treaty of Lausanne after the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912). 

Battle of Roosebeke (roosebeke means « the brooklet of the rose » (/the rose creek)), in 1382 (anagram of 1832; both, when adding up the figures of these dates, giving 14), in which the French army (of 10 to 16,000 men) of Charles VI defeated a Flemish (~south Dutchmen) army (of 26 to 40,000 men).

--

Egyptian revolution of 1919 (leading to Britain's recognition of Egyptian independence in 1922) with implementation of a new constitution in 1923.

Egyptian revolution of 1952.

--

Two of the most salliant, famous (and powerful) French kings are Louis IX (i.e. 9; a.k.a Saint Louis) and Louis XIV (i.e. 14).

--

Alice of Athens (capital of Greece), was the wife of John II of Ibelin, Lord of Beirut, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. She was a daughter of Guy I, Lord of Athens. Her paternal grandfather was Otho I de la Roche-sur-l'Ongon, Lord of Athens. Her father Guy was created Duke of Athens in 1260 by King Louis IX ( i.e. 9 ) of France (a.k.a. Saint Louis after who is named the city of Saint Louis in Missouri ("missouri" p.156 TAL)).

-- 

"The School of Athens" is one of the most famous paintings of Raphael. 

--

The firstname Louis (of which Lewis and Lutwidge are cognates) is derived from Clovis (a.k.a. Hloddovic (-us)), the First French king, also the first catholic (Germanic barbarian) king post-Western Roman Empire fall and the firstname Charles (a.k.a. Karl; of which Carroll is a cognate) is the name of the first French emperor, Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, a.k.a. Charles I of France; made emperor by Leo III) - before Napoleon Bonaparte. Louis I of France was the son of Charlemagne, Louis le Pieux (or Louis le Débonnaire).

-- 

Along with elements pointing to women artists and activists within the riddle, there are also hints to women who were scientists and often suffered of what was later named the Matilda Effect (i.e. a common bias against acknowledging the contribution of woman scientists in research) in 1993, after Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) - part of the references in the riddle (see the main page), since she was the first woman to describe this tendency in her essay "Woman as Inventor".

Among the famous woman victim of this phenomenon likely hinted in references:

Rosalind Elsie Franklin (1920-1958). The double-helix model of DNA structure was first published in the journal Nature by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953, (X,Y,Z coordinates in 1954) based upon the crucial X-ray diffraction image of DNA labeled as "Photo 51", from Rosalind Franklin in 1952.

CAROLine (born in march) Herschel was a German astronomer, whose most significant contributions to astronomy were the discoveries of several comets. She added her final entry to her observing book on 31 January 1824 about the Great Comet of 1832, which had already been discovered on 29 December 1823 (notice the 32/23 already present elsewhere in references).

Maria Sibylla Merian (Mary Ann, Marianne (also the name of a symbol the French Revolution), etc... are likely part of the refrences too. There is one in Alice in Wonderland) was a pioneering entomologist. Because of her careful observations and documentation of the metamorphosis of the butterfly, she is considered by David Attenborough to be among the most significant contributors to the field of entomology. She was a leading entomologist of her time and she discovered many new facts about insect life through her studies.

Beatrix Potter was an English writer, illustrator, natural scientist (mycologist), and conservationist best known for her children's books featuring animals, such as those in "The Tale of Peter Rabbit".

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868-1921) changed the theory of modern astronomy. She was  the daughter of Congregational church minister George Roswell Leavitt and his wife Henrietta Swan (Kendrick). She was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts.

Alicia Boole discovered 4-D polytopes. She's the daughter of the famous George Boole (Boole's status as mathematician was first recognised by his appointment in 1849 as the first professor of mathematics at Queen's College, Cork ) to whom we owe the Boolean Algebra ("st Algebra", p.96 TAL). Despite never holding an academic position, she made a number of valuable contributions to the field, receiving an honorary doctorate from University of Groningen. She was first exposed to geometric models by her brother-in-law Charles Howard Hinton (notably author of "A New Era of Thought" (1888)) when she was just 18.

Dorothy Maud Winch was a theoretical biochemist born in Rosario, Argentina. She wrote among other things: "On Some Aspects of the Theory of Probability," Philosophical Magazine, 38, (1919).

Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron; 1815-1852. The only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and his wife Lady Byron (nicknamed Annabella; She was born and died in May. Her most famous portrait must be the one made by Charles Hayter)). In 1842, Ada translated an article by Italian military engineer Luigi Menabrea on the engine, which she supplemented with an elaborate set of notes, simply called Notes. These notes contain what many consider to be the first computer program - that is, an algorithm designed to be carried out by a machine. Lovelace's notes are important in the early history of computers.  Her educational and social exploits brought her into contact with some famous scientists such as Andrew Crosse, Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), Charles Wheatstone, Michael Faraday and the author Charles Dickens, which she used to further her education. Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)". She worked as a mathematician with Charles Babbage (1791- died in 1871 in Marylebone, London, England) considered by some as the father of the computer.

Marie Curie (born Maria Salomea Skłodowska; she died a 4th of July; Her mother died of tuberculosis in May 1878) was a Polish (Poland was then part of the Russian empire; it's a country whose colors are white and red) and naturalized-French (like Valeria-Valechka, p. TAL) physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences (She won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). She also received the Albert Medal in 1910. She named the first chemical element that she discovered‍ - polonium ("by Polonius!" p. 150 TAL), which she isolated in 1898‍ - after her native country. The elder siblings of Maria (nickname: Mania) were: Zofia (born 1862), Józef (born 1863), Bronisława (born 1865, nickname: Bronia) and Helena. On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had lost their property and fortunes through patriotic involvements in Polish national uprisings aimed at restoring Poland's independence (the most recent had been the January Uprising of 1863-1865; Poland is among the keywords in "Lolita" even by indirect ways (e.g. "Polonius" p.150 TAL)). This condemned the subsequent generation, including Maria, her elder sisters and her brother, to a difficult struggle to get ahead in life.

Amalie Emmy Noether (March 1882 - 1935) was a German mathematician known for her landmark contributions to abstract algebra ("st Algebra" p.96 TAL) and theoretical physics.
She was described by Pavel Alexandrov, Albert Einstein, Jean Dieudonné, Hermann Weyl, and Norbert Wiener as the most important woman in the history of mathematics.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (May 1900-1979) was a British–American astronomer and astrophysicist who, in 1925, proposed in her Ph.D. thesis an explanation for the composition of stars in terms of the relative abundances of hydrogen and helium. In 1919, she won a scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge University, where she read botany, physics, and chemistry. Here, she attended a lecture by Arthur Eddington (1882-1944) on his 1919 expedition to the island of Principe in the Gulf of Guinea off the west coast of Africa to observe and photograph the stars near a solar eclipse as a test of Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Margaret Fountaine (May 1865-1940) was a Victorian lepidopterist (a person who specialises in the study of Lepidoptera, members of an order encompassing moths and butterflies) and diarist. The arrival of the modern bicycle gave her a newfound freedom, and saw her cycling in France in 1897, and in 1898 accompanied by her sister Rachel on a cycling holiday through Italy. 

Hedy Lamarr (lamarr sounds like 'la mare' in French which means 'the pond'/'the pool') was a Hollywood actress co-invented spread spectrum communications with George Antheil (their invention was granted a patent on 11 August 1942). She was born in Vienna, Austria.

Named like a woman executed as result of the Salem Witch trial who was executed on 9/22/1692, Alice Parker:

Alice H. Parker (1865-?; She was born and lived in Morristown, New Jersey). It was highly unusual for an African-American woman to attend college in her era, but she did, and took classes Howard University with honors. She designed a natural gas-fueled “new and improved heating furnace.” It was the first time anyone had thought of using natural gas for home heating. Her design won her a patent in 1919, and from her design was born the thermostat and the more familiar forced air furnace in most homes today.

Alice Parker Lesser (1863 - 1939) was an American lawyer, suffragist, and clubwoman based in Boston, Massachusetts. She passed the bar examination in San Francisco in 1888, after studying independently and with the lawyer who would become her husband. Alice Parker Lesser was part of the American delegation to the International Woman Suffrage Alliance congress in 1911, at Stockholm, representing Massachusetts. Later in life, as Alice Parker Hutchins, she was editor of the Women Lawyers' Journal and was based in New York City. After suffrage was achieved, she was active with the League of Women Voters.

--

International Women's Day (March (3rd month) 8): 
In August 1910, an International Women's Conference was organized to precede the general meeting of the Socialist Second International in Copenhagen, Denmark. Inspired in part by the American socialists, German Socialist Luise Zietz (1865-1922; She was one of the first female members of the new Reichstag in 1919) proposed the establishment of an annual International Woman's Day and was seconded by fellow socialist and later communist leader Clara Zetkin, although no date was specified at that conference. Delegates agreed with the idea as a strategy to promote equal rights including suffrage for women. The following year on March 19, 1911 International Women's Day was marked for the first time, by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland.

--

Madeleine Pelletier (May 1874 - December 1939; "Madeleine" p. TAL) was the first French woman in France to be a doctor having a diploma in psychatry and was of the most militant French feminist of her time. In 1904, she entered the Free-masonry in la loge no 3 Philosophie sociale. In 1905, she was affiliated at la loge La nouvelle Jérusalem. In 1906, she became médecin des Postes in 14th arrondissement de Paris.
Among her works: "Une seule morale pour les deux sexes, La suffragiste" (1910), "Avortement et dépopulation, La suffragiste" (mai 1911), "Le célibat, État supérieur", "De la prostitution", "Le Féminisme et ses militantes", "L'Émancipation sexuelle de la femme" (1911) and "Mon voyage aventureux en Russie communiste" ('My adventurous journey in communist Russia').

--

The second Vanity Fair was a British weekly magazine published from 1868 to 1914. Lewis Carroll was one of its famous contributors. Thomas Allinson bought the magazine in 1911 from Frank Harris, by which time it was failing financially. A full-page, colour lithograph of a contemporary celebrity or dignitary appeared in most issues, and it is for these caricatures that Vanity Fair is best known then and today. Among the major caricatures we can find: Henry Liddell (father of Alice P. Liddell), Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, Charles Darwin (featured in 1871), Queen Alexandra (featured in 1911), Paul Kruger (nicknamed Uncle Paul), president of the South African Republic (featured in march 1900), Ivor Bertie Guest (1882), Arthur Guest, Georges Du Maurier and Henry Irving and his son Laurence Sydney Brodribb Irving (married to Mabel Lucy Hackney; He was educated at Marlborough College and the College Rollin in Paris, following which he was in Russia for three years studying for the Foreign Office). Many carricatures were drawn by Leslie Ward up to 1911.

Hubert von Herkomer (May 1849-March 1914) was a German born British painter, and also a pioneering film-director and composer who painted a portrait of Henry Liddell (father of Alice Liddell) who was also carricatured by Vanity Fair. In 1885, he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, a position he held until 1894.

--

Prince Christopher of Greece and Denmark (10 August 1888 – 21 January 1940) was the youngest child of King George I of Greece, belonging to a dynasty which mounted and lost the throne of Greece several times during his lifetime (first time in 1863). Much of his life was spent living abroad.

He was born in Imperial Russia, son of George I of Greece and his queen, Olga, a Russian grand duchess by birth. Christopher, like his siblings, was a polyglot, speaking Greek, English, Danish, Russian, French and Italian. He was briefly engaged to Princess Alexandra, Duchess of Fife in about 1910 (Alexandra's mother, Princess Louise, Duchess of Fife, was a daughter of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra of the United Kingdom, herself an older sister of George I of Greece, Christopher's father). The engagement was terminated when disapproving parents learned of the liaison. In 1912, Princess Alice of Bettenberg thinks of marry him to her sister Louise, later Queen of Sweden, but this project won't realize.
On 1 January 1920, Christopher married a very wealthy American widow, Nonnie May "Nancy" Stewart Worthington Leeds, at Vevey, Switzerland. Shortly after their marriage, Princess Anastasia developed cancer, and died in London on 29 August 1923, leaving no children from this marriage. Prince Christopher later remarried; his second wife was Princess Françoise of Orléans (25 December 1902 – 25 February 1953). one child was born to Françoise: Prince Michael of Greece and Denmark was born in Rome in 1939, shortly before Prince Christopher's death. In 1935 monarchy is restored in Greece but he chooses to remain in Italy.

In 1910 he meets, in London, Journalist W. T. Stead (1849-1912), who makes him discover spiritism. A few years later, he reads "Les grand initiés" d'Edouard schuré and advise his step-sister Princess Alice of Battenberg to read it. Not long later she goes through a mystic crisis. In his mémoires, Prince Christopher tells of his many encounters with ghosts, among them Dorothy Walpole in Sandringham.

--

Archibald Primrose,  5th Earl of Rosebery (May 1847 - May 1929; Archibald Philip Primrose was born on 7 May 1847 in his parents' house in Charles Street, Mayfair, London) was a British Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 5 March 1894 to 22 June 1895. He had went to Brighton College between 1863 and 1865. Dalmeny proceeded then to Christ Church, Oxford, through the years 1865 until 1869. He became the 5th earl of Rosebery at the death of his grandfather, the 4th Earl, in 1868. In 1878, he married his wife, Hannah de Rothschild (painted by Frederic Leighton), whith whom he had two sons in 1882 and two daughters, one being named Sybil Myra Caroline Primrose. It was also speculated that Rosebery was bisexual: like Oscar Wilde, he was hounded by John Douglas, 9th Marquess of Queensberry, for his association with Francis Douglas, Viscount Drumlanrig, one of Queensberry's sons. Rosebery's mother was Lady (Catherine Lucy) Wilhelmina Stanhope (1819–1901), a historian who later wrote under her second married name "the Duchess of Cleveland". His father, Lord Dalmeny, was MP for Stirling from 1832 to 1847 and served as First Lord of the Admiralty under Lord Melbourne. Archibald Primrose earl of Rosebery was carricatured in Vanity Fair by Leslie Ward.

--

Lady Charlotte Elizabeth Guest (née Bertie ("Berthe" p.66 TAL); 19 May 1812 – 15 January 1895), later Lady Charlotte Schreiber, was an English aristocrat who is best known as the first publisher in modern print format of "The Mabinogion" (an antique Celtic text) which is the earliest prose literature of Britain. Guest established "The Mabinogion" as a source literature of Europe ("The Mabinogion" was preserved in the "Red Book of Hengest", a manuscript written shortly after 1382 (an anagram of 1832), which ranks as one of the most important medieval manuscripts written in the Welsh language), claiming this recognition among literati in the context of contemporary passions for the Chivalric romance of King Arthur and the Gothic movement. Her first husband, John Josiah Guest, 1st Baronet, died in 1852.

Arthur Guest (1841-1898) was the fifth son of Sir Josiah Guest, 1st Baronet, and Lady Charlotte Elizabeth, daughter of Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey. Ivor Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne, and Montague Guest were his elder brothers. Guest entered Parliament for Poole in 1868, a seat he held until 1874. He unsuccessfully contested Cardiff in 1880 and Southampton on 23 May 1888. Guest married Adeline Mary, daughter of David Barclay Chapman, in 1867.

Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne, 2nd Baronet Dowlais (1835-1914) was a Welsh industrialist. Hewent on to gain a Master of Arts degree from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1856. He succeeded his father to his baronetcy following his death in 1852. He held the office of High Sheriff of Glamorgan in 1862 and was the mayor of Poole from 1896–1897. He was elevated to the peerage in 1880 as Baron Wimborne, of Canford Magna in the County of Dorset, on Disraeli's initiative. He owned the Dowlais Iron Company (Though the Bessemer process was licensed in 1856, nine years of detailed planning and project management were needed before the first steel was produced.). On 9 July 1900, the Dowlais Iron Company and Arthur Keen's Patent Nut and Bolt Company merged to form Guest, Keen & Co. Ltd (GKN plc). He was lampooned in Vanity Fair as "the paying Guest".

Arhtur Keen was Vice-president Institution of Mechanical Engineers, from 1897 to 1911. he was married to the daughter of Thomas Astbury (1810-1862).

--

Myrddin Wyllt, the Welsh foreruner of the Arthurian Merlin, is associated with the battle of Arfderydd that took place in Cumberland.

--

In the indirect cryptic references, we might possibly count the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-1878, ending with the independance of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 and the British taking over Cyprus (among the related keywords in "Lolita": "Turk" (p.60 and 75 TAL), "Russian", "sultan" (p.134 TAL; it is the ruler of the Ottoman Empire), "Tchaikovsky", "Eiffel"). After an uprising in the Balkans, the atrocities committed by the Ottoman Bashi-bazuks spurred a wave of indignation in the west (prominent individuals such as Charles Darwin (1809-1882), Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) or Victor Hugo famously condemned the Ottoman abuses in Bulgaria). Article 9 of the 1856 Paris Peace Treaty, concluded at the end of the Crimean War, had obliged the Ottoman Empire to grant Christians equal rights with Muslims but the Ottoman behavior on the question remained source of frictions for the Western Powers. In 1876, the Serbs and the Ottoman were at war (an event that prompted Tchaikovsky to compose the famous "Marche Slave"). A pamphlet that W. E. Gladstone published in September 1876, "Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East", attacked the Disraeli (there is a famous photograph of him from 1878, by Cornelius Jabez Hughess; Disraeli was Chancelllor of the Exchequer ('Exchequer' means chessboard) in 1852 and from 1866 to 1868; he was Prime Minister in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880) government for its indifference to the Ottoman Empire's violent repression of the Bulgarian April uprising. Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire in April 1877 and its troops entered Romania via the new Eiffel Bridge (Gustave Eiffel (1832-1923), famous for his Parisian metal tower). War was won by Russia and Ottoman had to gave up territories it possessed in Europe for centuries. Konstantin Makovsky produced his painting "The Bulgarian Martyresses" in 1877 about these events. In literature we can mention that at the close of Tolstoy's 1877 novel "Anna Karenina", the character of Count Aleksey Vronsky enlists in a Russian volunteer regiment traveling to the aid of the Serbians, and in 1882, Laza K. Lazarevic (1851-91; an author that has been often refered as the Serbian Turgeniev), wrote the short story "The People Will Reward All of This". The author describes the tragic fate of the war veterans after returning from this war.

--

Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst ("by psychoanalyzing" p.257 TAL) who founded analytical psychology and wrote among other things about Archetypal images (supposedly universal symbols that can mediate opposites in the psyche, often found in religious art, mythology and fairy tales across cultures), reincarnation, synchronicity, cryptomnesia and Synesthesia.

--

Otto Rank (1884-1939) was an Austrian psychoanalyst ("by psychoanalyzing" p.257 TAL), writer, and teacher. Born in Vienna, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, an editor of the two most important analytic journals, managing director of Freud's publishing house and a creative theorist and therapist. In 1926, Otto Rank left Vienna for Paris. For the remaining 14 years of his life, Rank had a successful career as a lecturer, writer and therapist in France and the United States. He died in New York City in 1939. He published "The Lohengrin Saga" in 1911.
He also wrote the "The Double" (Der Doppelgänger), "The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend", "Modern Education", "Truth and Reality" and "Dreams and Poetry" and "Dreams and Myth" in Sigmund Freud's "Die Traumdeutung". 

--

Rollo May (1909-1994; born in Ada, Ohio ; Rollo is the Italian and English version of Hrolf (Rollon in French), the name of a Viking leader that got the Dukedom of Normandy (in France) first in 911) was an American existential psychologist whose first book "The Art of Counselling" was published in 1939.

--

(Charles-Marie) Gustave Le Bon (nobel backwards?; "Miss Fenton Lebone" (p.206 TAL); also Le Bon is pretty close to Le Bel (p.41 TAL); Born in May 1841; he was a descendant of Louis Le Bon) was a French polymath whose areas of interest included anthropology, psychology, sociology, medicine, invention, and physics. among his many influences we can notice Charles Darwin. He is best known for his 1895 work "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind", which is considered one of the seminal works of crowd psychology. Defeat in the war coupled with being a first-hand witness to the Paris Commune of 1871 strongly shaped Le Bon's worldview. Le Bon's works were influential to such disparate figures as Theodore Roosevelt and Benito Mussolini, Sigmund Freud, and Vladimir Lenin. As for him, he was inspired by Charles Darwin (1809-1882) among other figures.

He wrote: "Les Lois Psychologiques de l'Évolution des Peuples" (1894; published as "The Psychology of Peoples" in 1898), "Voyage au Népal" (1886); ("Travel to Nepal"; Nepal is among the references ("Lepchas old men of eighty" (p.19 TAL); The Lepchas are a people from Eastern Nepal. Nepal is a reference mainly to point to 1923 in my opinion via the Nepal-Britain Treaty of 1923)), "La Psychologie politique et la défense sociale" (1910), "Les Premières Civilisations de l'Orient" (1889; "The First Civilisations of the Orient"), "La Civilisation des Arabes" (1884; "The World of Islamic Civilization"), "The Psychology of Politics and Social Defense") and "Les Opinions et les croyances" (1911; "Opinions and Beliefs").
He also authored "Les Levers photographiques" (1888; "Photographic surveying"). The most well-known photograph of him is from 1888.

--

Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)

-- 

Simon Hatley (27 March 1685 (an angram of 1865) - after 1723) was an English sailor involved in two hazardous privateering voyages to the South Pacific Ocean. On the second voyage, with his ship beset by storms south of Cape Horn, Hatley shot an albatross, an incident immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". Born in 1685 in Woodstock, Oxfordshire, Hatley went to sea in 1708 as part of Woodes Rogers's expedition against the Spanish. Hatley's second voyage, under George Shelvocke (there'sa similraity with Sherlock (Holmes)), was the source of the albatross incident, and also ended with his capture by the Spanish. In 1797, William Wordsworth, having read Shelvocke's account of that voyage, suggested Hatley's shooting of an albatross as the basis of a contemplated joint work with Coleridge. Wordsworth dropped out of the project soon after, but Coleridge continued, and the poem was published in "Lyrical Ballads" (1798), containing poems by both men, and assuring Hatley a place in literary history. Gustave Doré (1832-1883) made illustrations for his "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" in 1876 (the year of Carroll's "The Hunting of the Snark"). 

-- 

Blanche Lazell (1878-1956; she was born on a farm near Maidsville, West Virginia) was an American painter, printmaker and designer. Known especially for her white-line woodcuts, she was an early modernist American artist, bringing elements of Cubism and abstraction into her art. In 1899, Lazzell enrolled in the South Carolina Co-educational Institute. Upon graduation later that year, she became a teacher at the Red Oaks School in Ramsey, South Carolina. In spring of 1900, she returned to Maidsville. In 1912, she toured Europe, settled in Paris, France where she attended lectures by Florence Heywood and Rossiter Howard, avoided the café life, and joined the Students Hostel on Boulevard Saint-Michel. While in Paris, Lazzell took classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, Académie Julian, and Académie Delécluse, eventually settling in at the Académie Moderne where she studied with post-impressionist painter Charles Guérin (1875-1939) and David Rosen. She returned to the United States at the end of September (9th month), sailing from London on the SS Arabic of the White Star Line. In 1919, she was featured in an exhibition in Manhattan, New York, at the Touchstone Gallery alongside Flora Schoenfeld. Lazzell returned to Europe in 1923 with Tannahill and Kaesche, touring Italy and spending two months in Cassis (on la côte d'azur) before settling in Paris late that summer. Her friend Flora Schoenfeld convinced her to dye her hair red in the fashion of many women in their circle. While in Paris Lazzell studied Cubism and geometric abstraction alongside Fernand Léger, André Lhote, and Albert Gleizes. Lazzell's work was exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and the American Women's Club in 1923.

--

Peter Rosegger was an Austrian writer and poet from the province of Styria in the Alps. His first book "Tales from Styria" was released in 1871. He also wrote "Jakob the Last One" (1888) and "Earth's Blessing" (1900).

--

Mexican revolution of 1910  (several mentions of Mexico, Mexicans and Aztecs in the novel (e.g. "optimistic Mexicans" (p.159 TAL), "Mexican border" (p.157 TAL), "Aztec Red" (p. TAL, etc...)).

The National Day in Mexico is the 5th of May (El Cinco de Mayo) is celebrating the Mexican victory the Battle of Puebla against France in May 1862 (Emperor Napoléon III (i.e. 3), Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte waged war against Mexico between 1861 and 1867).

--

The Maitland Plan ("snows of Chile" p.266 TAL, and subjacent references implying the Maitland name) refers to a plan created by Scottish Major General Thomas Maitland (that was 2nd Governor of British Ceylon up to March 1811) in 1800. The plan was titled Plan to capture Buenos Aires and Chile, and then emancipate Peru and Quito. The Kingdom of Great Britain was by then at war with Spain and France in the Napoleonic Wars, and was seeking to expand its influence in South America. According to Argentine historians like Felipe Pigna and Rodolfo Terragno, José de San Martín, the Argentine general and prime leader of the southern part of South America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire, was introduced to the plan (during his stay in London in 1811) by members of the Logia Lautaro: a Freemasonic Lodge founded by Francisco de Miranda and Scottish Lord MacDuff.

The last loyalists in south America, the Pincheira brothers, moved to Patagonia and remained there as royalist outlaws until defeated in 1832.

--

Byron Quinby Jones (Quin sounds like "queen", and Quinby sounds like Queen Bee; nickname B.Q.) was a pioneer aviator and an officer in the United States Army. Jones began and ended his career as a cavalry officer, but for a quarter century between 1914 and 1939 was an aviator in the various organizations that were the Army's air arm. Jones was born on April 9, 1888 near Henrietta, New York. His family moved to Rochester, where he graduated from Public School 24 and East High School. After a year of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Jones was appointed to the United States Military Academy by Representative James Breck Perkins of New York, and entered the Class of 1911 on June 15, 1907.

Following an unremarkable fourth class (plebe) year, Jones performed summer training duties in 1908 between June 16 and July 11 for the incoming Class of 1912, out of which eight upperclassmen, including Jones and five other third class cadets, were accused of hazing violations, some of which involved the beating of the new plebes, prohibited by law since March 1901. As a result of three days of disciplinary hearings convened July 17, 1908, the eight cadets were recommended for dismissal from the academy. The specification against Jones, that he "inaugurated" a new form of punishment for plebes in which they were required to double time, was found to be "conclusive" by the testimony of all cadets called before the board. Jones affirmed that he had double-timed every plebe in his company, but denied that any serious violations of hazing had occurred.
Despite the scandalous notoriety of the incident, supporters of the cadets mounted a campaign directly to President Theodore Roosevelt, who had signed the no-hazing law that had resulted in their dismissal. On August 20, Roosevelt ordered the third class cadets reinstated but suspended with loss of all pay and allowances until June 15, 1909. After Roosevelt approved the December 1908 recommendation of the superintendent of West Point, Colonel Hugh L. Scott, that they be permitted to return to the academy, Jones and the other third class cadets joined the same class that they had hazed on February 1, 1909. Jones graduated on June 12, 1912, 27th in a class of 95.

Jones entered active duty and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 14th Cavalry. He performed troop duty at Fort Clark and Marfa, Texas from September (9 th month) 14, 1912, to December 2, 1913. In March 1938, the War Department offered Jones command of the 18th Wing in Hawaii, which also included temporary promotion to brigadier general, however Jones declined the position, stating in his submission to Cullum's Biographical Register in 1940.

--

"Oregon" (p.158 TAL) and "Old Oregon Trail" (p.156 TAL) might be indirect references to the name Salem as it is also a major city of Oregon.

--

Zachary Taylor (1784-1850 ; born in new hampshire ; "Ball Zack" (p.192 TAL), "taylor" (p.274 TAL)) was the president of the USA (the only one caoming from Louisiana so far) from March 1849 until his death on July 9 1850. Taylor's status as a national hero as a result of his victories in the Mexican-American War won him election to the White House despite his vague political beliefs. His top priority as president was preserving the Union, but he died sixteen months into his term, before making any progress on the status of slavery, which had been inflaming tensions in Congress. He climbed the ranks establishing military forts along the Mississippi River and entered the Black Hawk War (*) as a colonel in 1832. His success in the Second Seminole War attracted national attention and earned him the nickname "Old Rough and Ready".
For the election, the Whig Party convinced the reluctant Taylor to lead their ticket, despite his unclear platform and lack of interest in politics. He won the election alongside New York politician Millard Fillmore, defeating Democratic candidates Lewis Cass (**) and William Orlando Butler, as well as a third party effort led by former President Martin Van Buren and Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (***) of the Free Soil Party.

(*) Black Hawk War of 1832: US officials, convinced that the British Band was hostile, mobilized a frontier militia and opened fire on a delegation from the Native Americans on May 14, 1832. Black Hawk responded by successfully attacking the militia at the Battle of Stillman's Run. This is how started the war.

(**) Lewis Cass (October 9, 1782 – June 17, 1866) was an American military officer, politician, and statesman: he was longtime governor of the Michigan Territory (1813–1831 ( 13/31 )), Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson, and Secretary of State under President James Buchanan. During his long political career, Cass served as an American ambassador to France (1836-1842), and as a U.S. Senator representing Michigan (March 4, 1849 – March 4, 1857).

(***) Charles Francis Adams Sr. (August 18, 1807 – November 21, 1886; he was born and died in Boston, Massachusetts) was an American historical editor, politician and diplomat. He was a son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams, of whom he wrote a major biography. During the Civil War Adams served as the United States Minister to the United Kingdom (May 16, 1861 – May 13, 1868) under Abraham Lincoln, where he played a key role in keeping Britain neutral while southern agents were trying to achieve official recognition of the Confederacy. Part of his duties included correspondence with British civilians including Karl Marx. Adams served as U.S. arbiter on the 1871-72 international commission to settle the "Alabama" claims that met in Geneva (Switzerland). Among his children: Louisa Catherine Adams (1831–1870) married Charles Kuhn, Charles Francis Adams Jr. (May 1835 – May 1915), Henry Brooks Adams (February 1838 – March 1918), Arthur Adams (1841–1846). There exists a portrait of Adams by William Morris Hunt in 1867 (he was the leading painter of mid-19th-century Boston, Massachusetts; on of his most famous painting is "Niagara Falls" (1878)).


References to the Indians and Florida (see the main page) possibly also pointing to The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between various groups of Native Americans collectively known as Seminoles and the United States, part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States".

Events in relation: The United States acquired Florida from Spain through the Adams-Onís Treaty in 1819 (The 42 nd parallel became agreed upon as the northward limit of the Spanish Empire by the Adams-Onís Treaty; There are latitudes references reminescent of Alice: "I wonder what Latitude or Longitude I've got to?" when falling in the hole). 

Treaty of Payne's Landing: In the spring of 1832 the Seminoles on the reservation were called to a meeting at Payne's Landing on the Oklawaha River. The treaty negotiated there called for the Seminoles to move west, if the land was found to be suitable. They were to be settled on the Creek reservation and become part of the Creek tribe. The delegation of seven chiefs who were to inspect the new reservation did not leave Florida until October 1832. After touring the area for several months and conferring with the Creeks who had already been settled there, on March 28, 1833 the seven chiefs signed a statement that the new land was acceptable.  The United States Senate finally ratified the Treaty of Payne's Landing in April 1834. The treaty had given the Seminoles three years to move west of the Mississippi. The government interpreted the three years as starting 1832, and expected the Seminoles to move in 1835.

--

Daisy Earles (1907 - 1980; born Hilda Emma Schneider; her father and mother were Emma and Gustav Schneider; "kiddoid gnomide" p.254 TAL, "dwarf (conductors)" p. TAL, "freak" p. TAL (reference to the famous movie - see below), "Bearded Woman" p.158 TAL) was a German dwarf who migrated to the United States in the early 1920s. She worked in Hollywood movies in California and later toured with circus companies. Her three dwarf siblings worked with her and were known as The Doll Family as they looked like dolls. Daisy Earles was blonde, pretty, and tall compared to her other dwarf sisters, and had a very well proportioned figure for which she earned the epithet of a "miniature Mae West".  Daisy Earles acted with her brother in Tod Browning's film "The Unholy Three" (1925; Browning also filmed with Karl freund the famous "Dracula" with B. Lugosi), which was filmed in both silent and sound movie formats. Daisy Earles's early acting assignment was in 1932 in "Freaks" (among the characters: Cleopatra (name of a famous ruler from Egypt), Venus, Bearded Lady (p.158 TAL), Bird girl, Siamese twins (played by Daisy and Violet Hilton), Madame Tetrallini (played by Rose Dione) and Roscoe), with her brother Harry which brought her acclaim; the film was based on the story "Spurs" by Tod Robbins. Earles, along with her "diminutive" sisters, Tiny and Grace, and brother Harry, had acted in a dance and song sequence along the Yellow Brick Road, named as "Munchkins" in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939). However, they were not given credits in this film individually but only named as "The Singer Midgets as The Munchkins" as if they were a unique "novelty species or fantasy race" both in real and reel life, in spite of their considerable acclaim in theatrical genre of circus, as "The Doll Family". After Oz, film work dried up, so the family headed to Florida and back to the circus. Another film in which she acted in 1952 was "The Greatest Show on Earth" (featuring Charlton Heston and Dorothy Lamour (also known for "Road to Bali" (1952), for instance)) for which she was again not given the credit by name. However, for her role in this film she won an award for her the "blink-and-you-miss-it" photo shot. In 1928, she acted in the film Three-Ring Marriage. Following retirement, Earles lived in Sarasota, Florida with her three siblings.

--

Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838 - 1883 (notice the 38/83); "kiddoid gnomide" p.254 TAL, "dwarf (conductors)" p. TAL, "freak" p. TAL, "Bearded Woman" p.158 TAL), better known by his stage name "General Tom Thumb" (reference to a famous character from a fairy tale; a Queen of the Fairies, a butterfly and King Arthur are implicated in the story; there is a 1856 version by Charlotte Mary Yonge; there was a Children's edition of the story in 1888), was a midget ("dwarf" p. TAL) who achieved great fame as a performer under circus pioneer P.T. Barnum.
By late 1842 (4 years old), Stratton had not grown an inch in height or put on a pound in weight from when he was six months old. Apart from this, he was a totally normal, healthy child, with several siblings who were of average size. Stratton made his first tour of America at the age of five, with routines that included impersonating characters such as Cupid and Napoleon Bonaparte as well as singing, dancing and comical banter with another performer who acted as a straight man. It was a huge success and the tour expanded.
Stratton appeared twice before Queen Victoria. He also met the three-year-old Prince of Wales, who would become King Edward VII. Stratton became a Freemason on October 3, 1862. His Spouse was Lavinia Warren (1863-1919).

-- 

George gershwin (1898-1937) was an American composer and pianist of Ukrainian and Russian Jewish background born in New York City. His mother Roza Bruskina moved with her family to New York due to fears of an increasing anti-Jewish sentiment in Russia. Once re-settled, she Americanized her first name to Rose. The first child to the new couple was Ira (given the name 'Israel'), on December 6, 1896. It was about that time that Morris moved the family to Brooklyn, to a second-floor dwelling at 242 Snediker Avenue. George Gershwin was born at the new residence on September 26, 1898. After Ira and George, two more children were born to the family: Arthur (1900-1981), and Frances (1906-1999).
Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924) and "An American in Paris" (1928) as well as the opera "Porgy and Bess" (1935). He moved to Paris intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, who refused him, where he began to compose "An American in Paris". After returning to New York City, he wrote "Porgy and Bess" with Ira and the author DuBose Heyward (Based on the novel Porgy by DuBose Heyward, the action takes place in the fictional, colored neighborhood of Catfish Row, Charleston, South Carolina. With the exception of several minor speaking roles, all of the characters are African-American). Initially a commercial failure, "Porgy and Bess" is now considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century. Gershwin and Buddy DeSylva created the experimental one-act jazz opera "Blue Monday". Among his other works: "Three Preludes", "Dream Sequence / The Melting Pot", "Primrose", "Rosalie", "Treasure Girl", "A Damsel in Distress " and "The Shocking Miss Pilgrim".

--

Madame de la FAYette (March 1634 - May 1693) was a French writer, the author of "La Princesse de Clèves", France's first historical novel and one of the earliest novels in literature. Some of her acquaintances included Henrietta of England, future Duchess of Orleans. Among her other works "Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre" and "La Princesse de Montpensier".

--

In March 1811, Marie Louise, duchess of Parma (second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, born in Austria - she was an Austrian archduchess. She was the eldest child of the Habsburg Emperor Francis II of Austria) delivered a long-awaited heir, to whom Napoleon gave the title "King of Rome". Two years later Napoleon arranged for Joséphine to meet the young prince "who had cost her so many tears".

Napoléon Louis Charles Bonaparte (1802 - 5 May 1807) was the eldest son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais. His father was Emperor Napoleon I's younger brother; his mother was the daughter of Napoleon's first wife, Josephine de Beauharnais. Napoleon Charles had two brothers: the youngest, Louis Napoleon, eventually became Emperor as Napoleon III in 1852.

--

Princess Eugénie of Greece and Denmark (born in February 10, 1910 in Paris) was the youngest child and only daughter of Prince George of Greece and Denmark and his wife, Princess Marie Bonaparte, daughter of Prince Roland Bonaparte, a great-nephew of Napoleon I. She married Polish Prince Dominik Rainer Radziwiłł on 30 May 1938 in Paris (they spent their honeymoon in the USA ; they had 2 children: Princess Tatiana Radziwiłł born 28 August 1939 and Prince Jerzy (George) Andrzej Dominik Hieronim Piotr Leon Radziwiłł (4 November 1942)). She was married a second time to Prince Raymond de Tour et Taxis, second duke of Castel Duino (she has a 3rd child with him: Prince Charles-Alexandre in 1952).
At 2 years old, she meets Rudyard Kipling. She spent most of her young years in France. Stricken by pleurisy at age 16 (diagnosed by Charles Talamon), she endures difficult years and is cured by a long treatment in Leysin in Switzerland. Fully cured in 1933, she travels a lot in Europe and the USA with her mother. During that time, she goes through a psychanalisis with Sigmund Freud and becomes a close friend of him.
In 1935, King George II of Greece (her cousin) is called back on the throne of Greece after 12 years of exil (he was king from 1922 to 1924 and from 1935 to 1947).
Among the countries she traveled in: the UK, the USA, Denmark, Portugal, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Turkey south Africa.
She published a book written by her mother about their chowchow Topsy in 1940 ( "Topsy : The Story of a Golden-Haired Chow", London, Pushkin press, 1940).

--

Robert E. Lee (January 19, 1807 – October 12, 1870 (notice the 07/70)) was an American general known for commanding the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in the American Civil War from 1862 until his surrender in 1865. He distinguished himself during the Mexican-American War.

Philip Sheridan (March 6, 1831 (New York) - 1888 (Massachusets))  was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career (in service from 1853 to 1888) was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with General-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant, who transferred Sheridan from command of an infantry division in the Western Theater to lead the Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the East. In 1864, he defeated Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley and his destruction of the economic infrastructure of the Valley, called "The Burning" by residents, was one of the first uses of scorched earth tactics in the war. In 1865, his cavalry pursued Gen. Robert E. Lee and was instrumental in forcing his surrender at Appomattox.

The capital of Wyoming (Sheridan) is named after him. Sheridan, Wyoming is on US Route 14, a road on which we can find for instance Pierre (capital of South Dakota), Chicago or the Yellowstone National Park.

On US Route 9 (going through Delaware, New Jersey and New York) you can find Fort Lee or Pleasantville, both in New Jersey.

There are likely much more references to US Route numbers among the references.

--

Gastonia is is the largest city and county seat of Gaston County, North CAROLina, USA -  It is part of the Charlotte metropolitan area.
Named after William J. Gaston who was member of the State senate for the last time in 1819.
In 1832, Gaston delivered a graduation address at the University of North Carolina, which emphasized the duties of the graduates to themselves and their communities and urged them to take action against slavery.

--

21th US president Chester Alan Arthur (1829 (in Fairfield, Vermont; their family remained in Fairfield until 1832) - November 18 (18/11 in European dates) 1886 in New York. He was president of the USA untill March 4, 1885) was Quartermaster General of the New York Militia from July 27, 1862 to January 1, 1863, Inspector General of the New York Militia from April 14, 1862 to July 12, 1862, Engineer-in-Chief of the New York Militia from January 1, 1861 to January 1, 1863 (Preceded by George F. Nesbitt and Succeeded by Isaac Vanderpoel (van der poel in Dutch means "from the pond(/pool)" (in Dutch, "poel" is prononced like "pool" in English))), 21st Collector of the Port of New York in office from December 1, 1871 to July 11, 1878 (Appointed by   Ulysses S. Grant) and was 20th Vice President of the United Stateis n office from March 4, 1881 to  September 19 (september is the 9th month), 1881. His father had emigrated to Canada in 1819 (or 1820). On April 5, 1882, Arthur was elected to the District of Columbia Commandery of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States (MOLLUS) as a Third Class Companion, the honorary membership category for militia officers and civilians who made significant contributions to the war effort. He had married Ellen Lewis "Nell" Herndon Arthur that was introduced to him in 1856.
The Arthurs had two sons, one of whom died young, and a daughter: William Lewis Herndon Arthur (1860-1863), Chester Alan Arthur II (1864-1937) and Ellen Hansbrough Herndon Arthur (1871-1915) who married Charles Pinkerton ("pink" is said "rose" in French) and lived in New York City.

Among his siblings: Regina (meaning Queen in Latin; 1822-1910) and Jane (1824-1842; notice the mirror effect 24/42).
Mark Twain wrote of him, "[I]t would be hard indeed to better President Arthur's administration".
There is a Chester A. Arthur statue at Madison Square in New York City from 1898.

Reference to him might be because of his initials: C. A. A. a clue about the Catagela/Eaglet riddle (see the main page).

--

Regarding Lincoln (p. TAL), there is also an anecdote of a 11 years old little girl (Grace Bedell) who encouraged Abraham Lincoln to grow his iconic beard. Lincoln later met with Bedell. In a 1878 interview in her local newspaper of Westfield (New York state), she recollected what prompted her to write the letter.

-- 

Harriet Tubman (1822 - March 1913; her mother was Harriet "rit" Green) was an American abolitionist, humanitarian, and an armed scout and spy for the United States Army during the American Civil War. Born into slavery, Tubman escaped in 1849 and subsequently made some thirteen missions to rescue approximately seventy enslaved families and friends, using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad. She later helped abolitionist John Brown recruit men for his raid on Harpers Ferry, and in the post-war era was an active participant in the struggle for women's suffrage.

--

Alexander von Humboldt (September (9 th month) 14 (i.e. 9/14), 1769 - May 1859; "humbertoldi" (p. TAL), Humb(-ert-)oldi - humboldi is a close reflexion of Humboldt) was a Prussian geographer, naturalist, explorer, and influential proponent of Romantic philosophy and science that travelled extensively in Latin America (after receiving persmission by King Charles IV of Spain (who died in 1819) to do so), exploring and describing it for the first time from a modern scientific point of view. Notable for " Kosmos" (1845–1862). He received the Copley Medal in 1852.

--

Among Lewis Carroll's photographs, a particularly high number had little girls as subject

--

William Pūnohu White (1851-1925) was a Hawaiian lawyer, politician, and newspaper editor.  He became a political statesman and orator during the final years of the Kingdom of Hawaii and the beginnings of the Territory of Hawaii. Alongside Joseph Nāwahī, he was a principal author of the proposed 1893 Constitution with Queen Liliʻuokalani. They were decorated Knight Commanders of the Royal Order of Kalākaua (Emperor of Austria-Hungary, Franz Joseph I was awarded the Knights Grand Cross in 1878) for their service and contribution to the monarchy on January 14, 1893 (January 14 is the day and month of death of Lewis Carroll, his name is white and he was Knighted - we thus sort of have a "white knight" linked to Lewis Carroll, who is supposed to be the white knight in "Through The Looking-Glass", a role that Humbert Humbert is taking in the riddle). When an attempt by the queen to promulgate this constitution failed on January 14, 1893, White's opponents tried to slander him in the English-language press and to diminish his support among Native Hawaiians by claiming he had tried to incite the people to storm the palace and harm the queen and her ministers. White denied these charges and threatened to sue the newspapers. Three days after the attempted promulgation, the queen was deposed in a coup during the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893. During the Provisional Government of Hawaii and the Republic of Hawaii that followed it, he remained loyal to the monarchy. After the annexation of Hawaii to the United States, he was elected as a senator of the first Hawaiian Territorial legislature of 1901 for the Home Rule Party.

Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole (March 1871-1922) representing the Kingdom of Hawaii at the Congress of the USA was also a prince. His nickname was "Prince Cupid". His father (father of three royal princes of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi) had died in 1878 and his mother, a princess of the Kingdom of Hawaii was born in may.
In 1898, the United States annexed Hawaii and the Territory of Hawaii was formed. Kūhiō and his wife left Hawaiʻi upon his release and traveled widely in Europe, where they were treated as visiting royalty. He traveled to Africa from 1899 to 1902 where he joined the British Army to fight in the Second Boer War.

The last king of Hawaii was Kalākaua, born in November 16, 1836. 

The Constitution of 1852 served as the Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from 1852 through 1864. 

Hawaii joined the USA as the Territory of Hawaii in 1898. 

King Kamehameha IV (February 9, 1834; born Alexander ʻIolani Liholiho (died in 1863)). When he was 14 he left the Royal School and went to law school. When he was 15, he went on a government trip to England, the United States. A diplomatic mission was planned following French Admiral de Tromelin's 1849 attack on the fort of Honolulu. With the supervision of their guardian Dr. Judd, Alexander and his brother sailed to San Francisco in 9/1849. After their tour of California, they continued on to Panama, Jamaica, New York City and Washington, D.C. They toured Europe and met with various heads of state. Speaking both French and English, Alexander was well received in European society. He met president of France Louis Napoleon Bonaparte ("Rue Bonaparte" (p. TAL)). In May 1850, the royal brothers, boarded a ship in England and sailed to the United States for a more extensive stay before returning. At Washington D.C., they met with President Zachary Taylor ("Zack", "taylor").
Upon his return Alexander was appointed to the Privy Council and House of Nobles of Kamehameha III in 1852.  On January 11, 1855 Alexander took the oath as King Kamehameha IV, succeeding his uncle when he was only 20 years old. Elisha (can be rearranged as Alishe, a close reflexion of Alice) Hunt Allen as minister of finance and William Little Lee served as chief justice, until he was sent on a diplomatic mission and then died in May 1857 (On March 11, 1849 he had married Catherine Newton (c. 1819-1894)). Only a year after assuming the throne, Alexander took the hand of Emma Rooke as his queen. After marrying in 1856, the royal couple had their only child in May 1858.
In 1862 he translated the Book of Common Prayer into the Hawaiian language. Under his eight-year reign the Kingdom saw the many territory additions. Laysan Island was annexed in May 1, 1857, Lisianski Island was annexed in May 10, 1857, and Palmyra Atoll was annexed in April 15, 1862.

Queen Emma of Hawaii (Emma Kalanikaumakaʻamano Kaleleonālani Naʻea Rooke of Hawaiʻi) was the Queen consort of King Kamehameha IV from 1856 to his death in 1863. Two years later on May 20, 1858 Emma gave birth to a son, Prince Albert Edward Kamehameha. Prince Albert, who was always called "Baby" by Emma, had been celebrated for days at his birth and every public appearance. Mary Allen, wife of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Elisha (can be rearranged as Alishe, a close reflexion of Alice) Hunt Allen, had a son Frederick about the same age, and they became playmates. In 1862, Queen Victoria agreed to become godmother by proxy, and sent an elaborate silver christening cup. Before the cup could arrive, the prince fell ill in August and condition worsened. The Prince died on August 27, 1862 and Emma would not have any more children.


William Phileppus Ragsdale (c. 1837 - November 24, 1877) was a lawyer, newspaper editor, and translator of the Kingdom of Hawaii and popular figure known famously for being luna or superintendent of the leper colony of Kalaupapa. Elements of his life story influenced Mark Twain's 1889 novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court".
 His siblings were Edward Alexander Ragsdale (1839 - 1863) and Annie Green Ragsdale Dowsett (1842 - 1891), who married James Isaac Dowsett. He was considered a distant relative or cousin of Queen Emma. In 1865, Ragsdale was replaced of his work as the first editor of Ka Nupepa Kūʻokoʻa ("The Independent Newspaper").

--

Maurice Chevalier (born in september (9th month) 1888; Maurice sounds like Morris and Chevalier means Knight in French) was a French actor, cabaret singer and entertainer born in Paris. He is perhaps best known for his signature songs, including "Louise", "Mimi" (close reflexion to "mimir" (p.260 TAL)), "Valentine" and for his films, including "The Love Parade" and "The Big Pond". He made his name as a star of musical comedy. He went to Hollywood in 1928, where he played his first American role in "Innocents of Paris". He played in a few pictures, including Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris" (a rare drama for Chaplin, in which his character of The Tramp does not appear) and made a huge impression in the operetta "Dédé". He met the American composers George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. The "Big Pond" gave Chevalier his first big American hit songs: "Livin' in the Sunlight, Lovin' in the Moonlight" with words and music by Al Lewis and Al Sherman. Among his other movies: "Paris sera toujours Paris", "Playboy of Paris", "The Merry Widow", "The Beloved Vagabond" and "A Royal Affair".

--

Fred Astaire (kind of sounds like aster, especially in French; born in May 1899; Frederick Austerlitz (the name of the most famous victory of Napoleon Bonaparte); His father (born September (9th month) 8, 1868) (references to musical comedies, p. TAL) was born in Austria from Jewish parents converted to Roman Catholicism and his mother was Johanna "Ann" (née Geilus) (Joan of Arc's name was Jehanne d'Arc)) was an American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter. He starred in "Blue Skies" (Astaire ("aster-like" p.289 TAL) playing in Blue Skies - that's a hint to the Blue Sky Aster a.k.a. the Riddell Aster, a salliant element of the riddle conceived by Nabokov), "The Bunch and Judy", "Royal Wedding", "A Damsel in Distress", "Three Little Words" (with Vera-Ellen and Red Skelton) and "The Gay Divorcee".

--

There is a certain mirror effect in important dates as well, in the riddle: 1811/1911, 1819/1919, 1832/1932, 1842/1942, 1852/1952, etc... 

There is also likely a chain of references important for the riddle that is characterized by dates with double numbers ((1010, 1111, 1212, 1313?), 1414, 1515, 1616, (1717?), 1818, 1919) 

Belle Dame (Vanessa Cardui)

Is it also quite possible that page numbers of the manuscript/novel might be themselves hinting in the riddle (p.14, p.52, p.242, etc...) to important elements?

--

Odo (Eudes in French; "Otto" (p.308 TAL), a distorted image of Odo; also the references to Vikings ("Mimir", the fortification of Dunkirk, etc...), Paris, France and kings) was king of France from 888 to 898 and was elected to this function after his victorious defense of Paris as duke of Paris against the Vikings. The viking leader Hrolf (Rollo (Rollon, in French)) - who was part of the attack on Paris in 885, in Which Odo had repelled the Vikings off Paris - became the first duke of Normandy (a land granted by Charles III) in 911.

--

Saint Rose (of Lima). She was the first saint of the American continent. She was born in 1586 (an anagram of 1856 and of 1865 (56 / 65)), died in 1617 and became a saint in 1671 (17 / 71). Her feast is on 23 august and one of her attribute is the rose. As a saint, Rose of Lima has been designated as a co-patroness of the Philippines along with Saint Pudentiana; both saints were both moved to second-class patronage in September 1942, by Pope Pius XII, but Rose remains the primary patroness of Peru and the Indians of Latin America. 

--

Andrew Lang (1844–1912; he was a Scots poet, novelist, and literary critic) and his Fairy Tales collections named after a color (The Blue Fairy Book, The Red Fairy Book (all the fairy tales alluded in "Lolita", including from the "Arabian Nights" seem to be found in the BLUE (with such stories as the "Forty Thieves", "Snow-White and Rose-Red", "The Sleeping Beauty", "Blue Beard", "The History of Jack the Giant-killer" (containing a Giant named Cormoran) and "Rumpelstiltskin") and RED (with such stories as "Princess Rosette", "Princess Mayblossom" and "The Enchanted Canary" (p.14 TAL)) books), The Blue Poetry Book, The Green Fairy Book, The True Story Book, The Yellow Fairy Book, The Red True Story Book, The Pink Fairy Book, The Arabian Nights'  Entertainments, The Red Book of Animal Stories, The Grey Fairy Book, The Violet Fairy Book, The Crimson Fairy Book, The Brown Fairy Book, The Red Romance Book, The Orange Fairy Book, The Olive Fairy Book, The Red Book of Heroes, The Lilac Fairy Book) are likely also hinted in the constant references to colors (especially red). His "The Blue Poetry Book" (1891) contains "A Red, Red Rose", Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Mercy", Sir Walter Scott's "Alice Brand" and "Rosabelle", William Blake's "Night", Thomas Gray's "The bard", John Milton's "Il Penseroso" (like a reflexion of Ponderosa), Lord Byron's "Stanzas written on the Road between Florence and Pisa", William Shakespeare's "Where the Bee Sucks, there Suck I", Charles Savage Landor's "Rose Aylmer" and many others.

------------

The most dubious putative elements:



Elisha Otis (1811-1861; reference in the "elevator" moment p.119 TAL; elisha rearranged can gice alishe, which is pretty close to alice) was a well-known American industrialist, inventor of a safety device that prevents elevators from falling if the hoisting cable fails. He worked on this device while living in Yonkers, New York in 1852. He demonstrated his safety system in Crystal Palace in 1853. The design of the Otis safety elevator is somewhat similar to one type still used today.

--

"rosebud degenerated mouth" (p. TAL), a rosebud mouth: rosebud is a rose (a stage of the flower) - a word that comes (via French) from Latin Rosa - and mouth is said "mund" in German - is Nabokov discreetly pointing here to (Queen) Rosamund (see the main page)

--

James J. "Jimmy" Corcoran (c. 1819 – 1900 (the same date of birth and death than John Ruskin); corcoran is a close to cormoran; barely a distorted reflection of it) was an Irish-born American laborer and well-known personality among the Irish-American community of the historic "Corcoran's Roost" and the Kip's Bay districts, roughly the area near 40th Street and First Avenue in Manhattan, New York, and was widely regarded as the champion of working class Irish immigrants between 1850 and 1880.

--

The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C. Prior to its closing, it was one of the oldest privately supported cultural institutions in the United States capital. Starting in 1890, a museum school, later known as the Corcoran College of Art + Design, co-existed with the gallery. The museum's main focus was American art.

William Wilson Corcoran (1798 - 1888;  corcoran is a close to cormoran; barely a distorted reflection of it) was an American banker, philanthropist, and art collector. He started the Corcoran Gallery of Art. He was the co-founder of Riggs Bank.

William Corcoran Eustis was born in 1862 in Paris to George Eustis, Jr. (1828-1872) and Louise Morris Corcoran. He was the grandson of banker and philanthropist William Wilson Corcoran. He laid the cornerstone for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in May 1894, which his grandfather funded. William was a personal secretary to General John J. Pershing during the First World War. In 1900 he married Edith Livingston Morton (1874-1964), a daughter of Levi P. Morton, vice president under Benjamin Harrison.

--

"Treasures of the Snow" (1950; published in 1952 in France) by Patricia St. John (born in England in 1919-1993; third of five children) is a 222 pages children novel centered on a little girl named Annette living in a Swiss vilage of the Alps named Rossinière in the early 1900s. The English author (also author of "The Tanglewood's Secret" and "Star and light") lived in a Swiss village from 1926 to 1939 (she then is in London as a nurse), which seved as an inspiration for the book.

--

Rosalie (Sounds like Rosa Lee. Ros alie is almost Rose Alice) Slaughter Morton (1876-1968; born Blanche Rosalie Slaughter) was an American physician and surgeon. In addition to running her own medical practices, she co-founded the American Women's Hospitals Service, worked as a medic during the First World War, and was the first chairperson of the Public Health Education Committee. Morton was one of the first female members of faculty at the Polyclinic Hospital of New York, and the first at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.
Born in Virginia, she studied at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania despite her family's expectation that she would only aim to find a husband who could provide for her. In the early 1930s Morton suffered a bout of pneumonia, prompting her to move to Winter Park, Florida, where she died in 1968. She began further studies in Europe, travelling to Berlin, Vienna, Paris, and London. During this time Morton took courses, observed surgeries, and wrote a number of scientific papers including several comparing the health of women and men. 
By 1937 Morton had been awarded 9 decorations by home and foreign Governments. During her career Morton's awards included the Cross of Czar Nicholas II, the Joan of Arc medal, and the Conspicuous Service Cross.
She published in 1940 a second book titled "A Doctor's Holiday in Iran" (Iran is Persia).

--

Maurice Herzog (January 15, 1919-2012; "the alpinist" (p.10 TAL); Maurice sounds close to Morris and German "Herzog" means "Duke") was a French mountaineer and administrator who was born in Lyon, France. He led the expedition that first climbed a peak over 8000m, Annapurna, on 3 June 1950, and reached the summit with Louis Lachenal (in this expedition there was also Gaston Rébuffat (a well-known French alpinist and mountain guide born in May 1921) and Lionel Terray). Upon his return, he wrote a best-selling book about the expedition, "Annapurna, First Conquest of an 8000-meter Peak" (1952).

--

Charles Hudson (4 October 1828 – 14 July 1865 ; among the keywords "alpinist" (p.10 TAL), "swiss",  "Alps", "mountain", etc...) was an Anglican chaplain and mountain climber from Skillington, Lincolnshire, England.

During the first ascent of the Matterhorn (located in Switzerland; a.k.a. Mont Cervin, in French), on 14 July 1865, Hudson was killed in a notorious accident during the descent. Amongst his guided climbs were the first ascent of Monte Rosa in 1855 (in French massif du Mont Rose) located between Switzerland and Italy. Hudson was one of the most important climbers of the golden age of alpinism. An immensely strong walker, he is considered a pioneer of guideless and winter climbing in the western Alps.
Edward Whymper (The first ascent of the Matterhorn was made by Edward Whymper and a few others, among them, Charles Hudson) ultimately succeeded in making the mountain's first ascent in July 1865 while his rival Jean-Antoine Carrel led the party that achieved the second ascent three days later.

--

Piz Roseg, a mountain in the Swiss Alps was first climbed to the top by Horace Walker (1838-1908) in 1865 (he was also the first to climb and to reach the top of diverse peaks in the Alps in France and Switzerland during 1865 and 1868).

--

The expedition team of the Belgian Antarctic Expedition that crossed the Antartic Circle in 1898 included some notable individuals:

Roald Amundsen (1872-1928), Frederick Cook (1865-1940; American – Surgeon, anthropologist and photographer), Henryk Arctowski (1871–1958; Pole – geologist, oceanographer and meteorologist), Emile Danco (1869–1898; Belgian – geophysical observations. He had entered the Royal Military Academy in 1888. During the expedition he performed regular magnetic observations and assisted Arctowski, until May 1898, when he felll ill), Henri Somers (1863–?), Max Van Rysselberghe (1878–?), Louis Michotte (1868–1926), Carl August Wiencke (1877–1898; Norwegian sailor), Engelbret Knudsen (1876-March 1900; Norwegian sailor) and Johan Koren (1877-3 March 1919; Norwegian. He brought on board Nansen, the ship's cat on the Expedition named after Fridtjof Nansen, who died on 22 June 1898, and was buried in the Antarctic (the opposite of the North Pole (kind of its mirror image))).

--

Lewis Chessmen  named after the bay where they were found, are a group of distinctive 12th-century chess pieces, along with other gaming pieces, most of which are carved from walrus ivory. Discovered in 1831 (I guesss we can say that 1831 is a close reflexion of 1832...if we follow the rules of the mirror trick in the riddle, allowing for instance a character difference (e.g. Parkington/Tarkington)) on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland, they may constitute some of the few complete, surviving medieval chess sets, although it is not clear if a set as originally made can be assembled from the pieces. When found, the hoard contained 93 artifacts (93 is like a reflexion of 39 ): 78 chess pieces, 14 tablemen and one belt buckle. The British Museum claims the chessmen were probably made in Trondheim, Norway, in the 12th century.

--

1642: King Charles I of England sent soldiers to arrest members of Parliament, beginning England's slide into civil war. 

War of the Roses (1455-1485; war between the York and Lancaster, two branches of the Plantagenet dynasty (a French dynasty ruling England), each side represented by a rose, one white, one red), a salliant event in English history.

--

Karl Ludwig Schulmeister (1770-1853; "schulmeister" means "school teacher") (also known as Carl Schulmeister or Charles Louis Schulmeister) was an Austrian double agent for France during the reign of Napoleon I. He was a spy for the Austrian Empire and the Holy Alliance, but was recruited by General Savary to spy for France. His information led to the French capture of Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon and also contributed to the victory at Austerlitz. Schulmeister also acted as a General in Napoleon's army, undertook espionage missions that took him into England and Ireland, and was appointed commissioner of police for Vienna during Napoleon's second occupation in 1809.

--

(The venerable) Pierre Toussaint (1766-1853) was a former slave from the French colony of Saint-Domingue who was brought to New York City by his owners in 1787. There he eventually gained his freedom and became a noted philanthropist to the poor of the city. Freed in 1807 after the death of his mistress, Pierre took the surname of "Toussaint" in honor of the hero of the Haitian Revolution which established that nation. Toussaint spoke both French and English. In 1811, Toussaint married Juliette Noel, a slave 20 years younger than he, after purchasing her freedom (she was held by a French family). As a very popular hairdresser among the upper echelon of New York society, Toussaint earned a good living. They adopted Euphemia, the daughter of his late sister Rosalie (He had saved his money and paid for her freedom), who had died of tuberculosis, raising the girl as their own.

--

Baron Timme Rosenkrantz (1911-1969) was a Danish aristocrat, author and jazz enthusiast. Rosenkrantz was an early supporter of African American jazz musicians and promoted many concerts and recordings. Rosenkrantz organized the 1946 European tour of an all-star band led by Don Redman (1900-1964; born in West Virginia), the first American jazz group to visit Copenhagen and Stockholm after World War II. In 1923, Redman joined the Fletcher Henderson orchestra, mostly playing clarinet and saxophones.

--

The SS Savannah was the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean, from 24 May to 30 June 1819 (mention of a transatlantic cruise p. TAL). 

--

Dorset Ooser (Link): a wooden head that featured in the nineteenth-century folk culture of Melbury Osmond, a village in the southwestern English county of Dorset ("Dorset" p.10 TAL). The head was hollow, thus perhaps serving as a mask (p.3, p.53 TAL), and included a humanoid face with horns, a beard (not unlike Pan, a Faun), and a hinged jaw which allowed the mouth to open and close. Although sometimes used to scare people during practical jokes, its main recorded purpose was as part of a local variant of the charivari custom known as "skimity riding" or "rough music", in which it was used to humiliate those who were deemed to have behaved in an immoral manner.

--

"Santa Fe" (p. TAL): Fe sounds like French Fée which means fairy.

--

In 1811, The first two in a series of four severe earthquakes struck the Midwestern United States and made the Mississippi River appear to run backward.

--

The 1865 Memphis (Memphis is originally a major city in ancient Egypt) earthquake.

--

The 1911 Kebin (maybe "cabin" p. TAL?) earthquake in the Russsian empire (now Kazakhstan).
There were also earthquakes in Russia off the east coast of Kamchatka on May 4 1911 and in Guerrero and Michoacan, Mexico and in the Kerman province, Iran (Persia), also in 1911.

--

Abolition of slavery in Portuguese-speaking Brazil in 1888.

--

The official boundary of Texas was set at the Sabine River (the current boundary between Texas and Louisiana) and following the Red and Arkansas rivers to the 42nd parallel (California's current northern border) 


----- Even less Sure -----


"Carl and Al" (p.150 TAL) is possibly meant to suggest to replaces Charles Le Bel by Alfred (Al can be short for Alfred) Le Bel: Alfred Le bel is kind of close to Alfred Nobel.

--

The Kensington runestone (*) found in the USA in 1898 by Swedish (Scandinavian) immigrant Olof Ohman (1854-1935; 1854 is the birthdate of Edith Liddell, the 3rd Liddell girl; 1935 is the birtdate of Dolores Haze) ...  
Elements: Temple Knights (Templars)... Philippe Le Bel, French King ... Temple of Salomon (Jewish King) ... New Jerusalem .... Rosicrusians - Free Masons ... Rosslyn / Melrose (both mentionned in Ruskin autobiography "Praeterita") / Sinclair ... Westford knight / Newport tower ... Amerindians / micmac legends ... Saint Graal - Arthurian legend ... Christopher Columbus (signature with a X with a hook) ... USA France Scotland Portugal Scandinavia .

(*) A copy of the inscription made its way to the University of Minnesota. Olaus J. Breda (1853-1916), professor of Scandinavian Languages and Literature in the Scandinavian Department, declared the stone to be a forgery and published a discrediting article which appeared in Symra during 1910. The Minnesota Historical Society has a bill of sale showing Ohman sold him the stone for $10 in 1911.


--

"A zoo in Indiana where a large troop of monkeys lived in a concrete replica of Christopher Columbus' flagship" p.158 TAL (reference to MESkER (close to Mesmer) Park Zoo in Evansville, Indiana): Christopher Columbus' flagship during his first journey to the American continent was the Santa Maria, one of 3 ships, whose two others had for names La Niña (Spanish for "the girl") and La Pinta (that one theory says is an alteration of La pintada (the painted one (a woman wearing make-up - references of that kind can be found elsewhere, like Beatrice being "painted and lovely"))), both supposedly references to prostitutes.
By the by, let's remind that Lolita is derived from a Spanish girl (there is mention of a Spanish girl in "Lolita", daughter of a Spanish nobleman) name, Dolores (Literally "pains").

There are also several US cities named Columbus, including in North Carolina, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico and Kentucky.

--

Arthur Hunter Palmer (1819 - March 1898; Birthdate of John Ruskin and year of death of Lewis Carroll), was an Irish-Australian ("irish" p. TAL) politician and a Premier of Queensland. Born in Ireland, Palmer went to Queensland and took up land, acting as a magistrate in 1865. In 1865, Palmer married Miss Cecilia Jessie Mosman (Harriette Mosman, the second wife of Queensland Premier Thomas McIlwraith). From 1872 to 1877, the Palmer family leased the house Fernberg in Paddington, which became Queensland's Government House in 1910. Later, the family home was Easton Gray.
On 2 August 1867 he became Colonial Secretary and Secretary for Public Works in the R. R. Mackenzie ministry, and in September (9th month) 1868 Secretary for Public Lands. Mackenzie resigned on 25 November 1868 and Palmer went into opposition. On 3 May 1870 Palmer became Premier (preceded by Charles lilley (appointed in 1868)) and Colonial Secretary, and in July 1873 Secretary for Public Works. Hunter served as Administrator (deputy to the Governor) from 2 May 1883 to 6 November 1883, from 20 April 1886 to 12 December 1886, from 9 October 1888 to 1 May 1889, from 16 November 1890 to 6 May 1891.
He was Member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for Port Curtis from 19 March 1866 – 14 November 1878., member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly for North Brisbane from 15 November 1878 - 24 December 1881.
He was Member of the Queensland Legislative Council from 24 December 1881 – 20 March 1898.

--

Gertrude Stein was a Jewish American novelist, poet, playwright known among other things for the sentence "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose". Her lover was Alice B. Toklas. Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She knew Sinclair Lewis (who had became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature) author of "The Enchanted Hour" (1919), "The Cat of the Stars" (1919) and "Moths in the Arc Light" (1919) among other works. Among her works "Three Lives" (1905-06), and "The Making of Americans" (1902-1911).

--

Eileen Gray (born Kathleen Eileen Moray Smith; 9 August 1878 – 31 October 1976 in Paris, France) was an Irish-born French-based architect and furniture designer and a pioneer of the Modern Movement in architecture. She became the 19th Baroness Gray in 1895 after the death of her uncle. Gray's serious art education began in 1900 at the Slade School of Fine Arts (founded in 1871, with rrots in 1868) in London. Gray was a registered fine arts student at Slade from 1900 to 1902. Although fine arts education was typical for a young woman of Gray's class, Slade was an unusual choice. Known as a bohemian school, the classes at Slade were generally co-educational which was usual for the time. Gray was one of 168 female students in a class of 228. In 1905, Gray returned to London to be with her ill mother. For the next two years, she studied lacquering with Dean Charles before returning to Paris. In 1910, Gray opened a lacquer workshop with Seizo Sugawara.

In 1922, Gray to opened a shop named "Jean Désert" that was located on the fashionable Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris. The shop was named after an imaginary male owner “Jean” and Gray's love of the North African desert. Grey designed the facade of the shop herself. Jean Désert sold the abstract geometric rugs designed by Gray and woven in Evelyn Wyld's workshops. Clients included James Joyce.

n 1926, she started work on a new holiday home near Monaco (a Princedom by the sea ...) to share with Badovici. Because a foreigner in France couldn’t wholly own property, Gray bought the land and put it in Badovici’s name, making him her client on paper. Construction of the house took three years and Gray remained on site while Badovici visited occasionally.
The house was given the enigmatic name of E-1027. It was code for the lovers' names; the E standing for Eileen, the 10 for J, meaning Jean, the 2 for B standing for Badovici and the 7 for G standing for Gray. E-1027 is routinely described as a masterpiece. E-1027 is a white cuboid built on rocky land on raised on pillars.
The famous French architect Le Corbusier often stayed at E-1027 and although he admired it, in 1938/1939 he vandalized its walls with Cubist murals of naked women. This violated Gray’s express wish that E-1027 be free of any decoration.

Gray was bisexual. She mixed in the lesbian circles of the time, being associated with Romaine Brooks, Loie Fuller, Marie-Louise Damien, and Natalie Barney.

--

Is "Woolly-woo-boo-are?" (p.296 TAL; butchered French sentence: "Voulez-vous boire ?" meaning "Do you want a drink?") [ beside being likely a reference to sir Leonard Woolley, as seen earlier ] a sneaky reference to Chapter V of "Through the Looking-glass" titled "Wool and Water" (woolly, adjective of Wool and Water the (original, universal drink by excellence))?

-- 

The Versailles rail accident occurred on 8 May 1842 in the cutting between Meudon and Bellevue stations on the railway between Versailles and Paris following celebrations at the Palace of Versailles (associated with Louis XIV (i.e. 14)) marking King Louis Philippe's saint's day. A train returning to Paris derailed at Meudon after the leading locomotive broke an axle, and the carriages behind piled into it and caught fire. It was the first French railway accident and the deadliest in the world at the time, causing between 52 and 200 deaths, including that of explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville (born a 23 May and died a 8 May; rear admiral; French explorer who explored diverse places among them, the western pacific and the south pole) and his wife Adèle Dumont D'Urville (née Adèle Dorothée Pépin, also spelled Adélie (after whom Adélie Land (the french territory in the south pole) is named)).

-- 

In the references pointing to elements of "The Wizard of Oz" maybe we can add Munchkins: (Edvard) Munch (Lolli-)Kins, connected somehow.

--

"marmot" p.168 TAL which is the name of an animal in English means "kid" in familiar language in French. 

--

Let's mention, just in case, that Lolita's lastname, Haze, sound like French "hase" which is a word meaning "female of the hare" (also S is roughly like a mirror reflexion of Z) and that Dutch HAZEn mens HAREs. Haze and Hare are quite similar anyway, only one letter being different - almost like a slightly distorted reflexion.

--

"The Squirl and his Squirrel, the Rabs and their Rabbits / Have certain obscure and peculiar habits" (p.255 TAL) is possibly a hidden reference to A. A. Milne's "The Wind in the Willows" (-> reference necessary).

--

(Rose La) Touche and "Laqueue" (p.290 TAL; both names in the riddle and novel with the same (French) name structure) can form a saucy French phrase, something Nabokov was not above ("By now Nabokov, who called himself a poet in prose—not just for his style but also for his way of looking at the world—was writing plays as well, and publishing both stories and verbal riddles; in private, he was not above reciting “unprintably licentious poems." (article The condescending smile of the supreme enchanter by John Simon; http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-condescending-smile-of-the-supreme-enchanter-5414)).

--

*-The elements in that last part are of course highly conjectural and even sometimes far-fetched.-*

========= === ==== == ==============

« I don’t think that an artist should bother about his audience. His best audience is the person he sees in his shaving mirror every morning. I think that the audience an artist imagines, when he imagines that kind of a thing, is a room filled with people wearing his own mask. »  – Vladimir Nabokov

In an interview in 1962 for the BBC when asked on why he wrote “Lolita”: « I’ve no general ideas to exploit, I just like composing riddles with elegant solutions.” – Vladimir Nabokov

In a 1964 interview with Playboy: « She was like the composition of a beautiful puzzle — its composition and its solution at the same time, since one is is a mirror view of the other, depending on the way you look.«- Vladimir Nabokov

===========
You might want to have a look at my PALE FIRE page
=========== 

Back to the main page