NPPF - Pale Fire Chronology (Part 2)

Wed Aug 27 15:18:06 CDT 2003

> 1909 July
> Shade has his first fainting attack ("When I'd just turned eleven")
> (ll. 141-156).
>
> Winter
> Shade has fainting attacks every afternoon (possibly a later winter)
> (ll. 157-159) "for several weeks", according to Kinbote (n. 162).
>
> 1912
> King Alfin almost drowns while flying a hydroplane (n. 71).
>
> 1914 Aug. 20
> Pope Pius X dies (n. 85).
>
> Sometime
> Romulus Arnor and Oswin Bretwit are born (I.).
>
> 1915 Sometime
> Sylvia O'Connell marries and divorces Leopold O'Donnell (I.) and Odon
> is born to them (I.).
> Count Otar is born (I.).
>
> July 5, O. S.?
> Prince Charles Xavier is born (n. 1-4, n. 433-434, I.)  Note that
> the difference between his age and Shade's is seventeen years, not
> sixteen as Kinbote says to Sybil (n. 181), an apparent discrepancy.
> Jakob Gradus (henceforth "Gradus") is born, apparently in Riga
> (n. 17, 29, I.).  Both Zembla (n. 71) and Latvia used the Old Style
> calendar at the time; starting in 1900, July 5 O. S. was July 18 N. S.
>
> 1916
> Col. Peter Gusev builds a monoplane, Blenda IV, for King Alfin
> (n. 71).  His son Oleg, future (?) duke of Rahl, is born. (n. 130,
> I.).  Maybe around this time Col. Gusev marries Sylvia O'Donnell.
> Nodo is born to Leopold O'Donnell and a Zemblan boy impersonator (I.).
>
> 1917 Sometime
> Dr. Oskar Pfister publishes _The Psychoanalytical Method_, later to
> be quoted by Prof. C. (n. 929).
>
> April
> On a senior-class outing, Shade falls in love with Sybil Irondell
> (possibly the year before or after) (ll. 247-260).
>
> 1917 or 1918
> Fifalda de Fyler, later Countess Otar, is born (n. 71).
>
> 1918 or 1919
> Fleur de Fyler, later Countess de Fyler, is born. (n. 71).
>
> 1919 Jan. 7
> King Alfin and Charles Xavier are photographed together (Dec. 25,
> O. S.) (n. 71).
>
> Jan. 7-13
> Col Gusev is by now the First Duke of Rahl.  King Alfin dies in a
> plane crash (Dec. 25 to 31, O. S.) (n. 71, I.).
>
> Jan. 14?
> Maybe around Jan. 1 New Style, Zembla adopts the New Style or
> Gregorian calendar (n. 71).
>
> Early in the year
> King Alfin's widow, Queen Blenda, becomes the ruler of Zembla
> (n. 71, I.).
>
> Before July 7
> Shade and Sybil marry (l. 275, n. 275).
>
> 1920
> Martin Gradus, our man's father, dies.  His widow moves to
> Strasbourg.  "Soon thereafter", she dies too, and young Gradus
> is raised by a merchant coincidentally also named Gradus (n. 17,
> 29).
>
> 1921 May 17
> After a major operation and a few days before his death, Franklin
> Lane writes a remarkable passage about the afterlife (n. 810, I.).
>
> 1921 or 1922
> Young Prince Charles Xavier's nurse consoles him with a Zemblan
> proverb (n. 1000).  Possibly around this time ("my early boyhood")
> he sees a conjuror at his uncle's castle (FW).
>
> 1922
> Mr. Campbell arrives in Zembla to become Charles Xavier's tutor
> (n. 71).
>
> 1923 or 1924
> Eight-year-old Charles Xavier finds photographs of his father's
> plane crash (n. 71).
>
> 1925
> Baron Radomir Mandevil is born (I.).
> Sylvia O'Donnell leaves Zembla to marry an Oriental prince (I.).
>
> 1928 Sometime
> Julius Steinmann is born (I.).
>
> Before July 5
> Disa is born (n. 275, n. 433-434).  She spends this summer and the
> next fourteen at the Villa Paradisa (n. 433-434).
>
> 1929 Late April or early May
> Charles Xavier and Oleg, Duke of Rahl (though his father is still
> alive), share a bed for the first time (n. 130).
>
> May
> Mr. Campbell sprains his ankle in the Mandevil Forest. (n. 130,
> n. 149).  While he is still laid up, Charles Xavier and Oleg find
> Thurgus's secret passage and reach the theater, where they're
> frightened by a rehearsal, possibly of _The Merman_.  "Soon after",
> Charles almost dies of pneumonia and "[t]o recuperate he was sent
> for a couple of seasons to southern Europe." (n. 130).  I'm
> assuming that "three decades earlier" (than 1958) is an
> approximation.
>
> 1929? Summer?
> Charles sees a guilty-looking priest apparently receive divine grace.
> (n. 47-48)
>
> 1930
> Conmal finishes translating Shakespeare and starts on Milton and
> other poets (n. 962).
>
> 1930?
> In Gradus's "early youth", he joins an unsuccessful attempt to beat
> up a local lad who had won a motorbike at a fair (n. 171).
>
> 1931 Late in the year
> Oleg dies at fifteen in a toboggan accident (n. 130, I.).
>
> 1932
> Charles Xavier begins "dividing his time between the University and
> his regiment," "the nicest time of his life" (n. 71).
>
> After July 5
> Mr. Campbell leaves Zembla (n. 71), but 1931 according to I.
> s.v. Campbell, an apparent discrepancy.
>
> 1933 "The first part of the year"
> The Shades visit Nice, possibly glimpsing Disa and her English
> governess.  Hazel is conceived, presumably (ll. 433-435, n. 433-434,
> I. s.v. Shade).
>
> 1934 Early in the year
> Hazel Shade is born (l. 435, n. 86-90, n. 293, I.).  Her fellow
> college students (the nice frail roommate, the White twins, the
> Korean boy, maybe Pete Provost and his friend) would probably
> also have been born around this time.
>
> 1936 Sometime
> Charles finds a goose-boy named Garh in a lane north of Troth (I.
> s.v. Garh).  (But Troth seems to be a foreign country in n. 80.)
>
> April 30
> A. E. Housman dies (n. 920).
>
> July 20
> Queen Blenda's blood ailment is much better.  Charles Xavier goes to
> a ball. (n. 71).
>
> July 21
> Queen Blenda dies in the small hours.  Charles Xavier is told around
> 4 AM (n. 71, I.).
>
> July 22 to Aug. 30
> Fleur de Fyler's "courtship" of and three-day cohabitation with
> Charles (n. 71) occur during this period.
>
> Aug. 30
> Charles Xavier crowned king of Zembla. (n. 12, n. 71, n. 275, I.).
> Baron Radomir Mandevil serves as his throne page (I, n. 149,
> incorrectly given as 130 in the Index).
>
> 1936?
> The Shades spend a term at "Iph" while Hazel is "a mere tot"
> (ll. 502-509).
>
> 1936-1940
> The undergraduates Kinbote mentions were probably born around this
> time.
>
> 1937 May 10
> Maud Shade begins her scrapbook with an ad in _Life_ for the Talon
> Trouser Fastener (l. 91).
>
> "Sometime in the forties"
> Gradus goes to Zembla as a brandy salesman (n. 17, 29).  He has a
> variety of jobs in the glass business (n. 171).  He marries a beader,
> the daughter of a publican (n. 17, 29, n. 697) and after she leaves
> him, lives in sin with his mother-in-law till her death.  After that
> he tries to castrate himself and, with the help of an infection,
> becomes cured of lust (n. 697).
>
> Also probably sometime in the forties
> Hazel plays Mother Time in the school pantomime (ll. 309-314).
>
> 1942 Summer
> Disa spends her last consecutive summer at the villa at Cap Turc
> (despite the Nazi occupation--but Zembla is apparently neutral)
> (n. 433-434).
>
> 1944
> Gordon Krummholz is born (I.).
>
> 1944 or 1945
> Dee Goldsworth is born (between February 1944 and February 1945, if
> she is 14 when Kinbote moves in, or between the late summers or
> early autumns if she's 14 when Kinbote writes his note--unless I'm
> giving him too much credit for precision) (n. 47-48).
>
> 1946 or 1947
> Candida Goldsworth is born (n. 47-48).
>
> 1947 July 5
> Charles meets the nineteen-year-old Disa at a masked ball (n. 275).
>
> 1948 or 1949
> Betty Goldsworth is born (n. 47-48).
>
> 1949 March 28
> That issue of _Life_ has an ad for the Hanes Fig Leaf Brief, which
> becomes the last entry in Maud Shade's scrapbook (n. 91).
>
> Later that year
> Maud Shade, at eighty, becomes paralyzed and aphasic and is
> hospitalized (ll. 195-208).  Sybil has Maud's half-paralyzed Skye
> terrier destroyed, to Hazel's distress (n. 230).
>
> June?
> King Charles marries Disa "almost two years" after meeting her,
> having prayed alone in the Onhava cathedral most of the night before
> (n. 71, n. 275, I.).  During the next four years he tries and
> fails to have sex with her, she finds out he's gay, he promises
> several times to be faithful but never succeeds, and on a trip to an
> Italian lake he tells her he doesn't love her. (n. 433-434)
>
> 1949 or 1950
> Alphina Goldsworth is born (n. 47-48).
>
> 1950 January?
> Maud Shade dies at the beginning of the year (n. 86-90, n. 230).
> That day the Shades see a cicada's molted integument and a dead ant
> on a pine trunk (ll. 237-240).  Shortly thereafter, the Shades
> suffer poltergeist manifestations lasting nearly a month (n. 230).
>
> Sometime
> The elder Countess de Fyler dies in the fire at the Exposition of
> Glass Animals.  Gradus helps lynch the tourists mistaken for
> arsonists (n. 71).
>
> 1950?
> Around this year, Paul Hentzner's wife leaves him, taking their son,
> and Hentzner moves to town (n. 347).
>
> 1951
> Erich Fromm publishes _The Forgotten Language_, later to be quoted
> by Prof. C. (n. 929).
>
> 1952?
> Hazel Shade matriculates at Wordsmith.  Her trip to France may not be
> too far from this time.
> Perhaps sometime in the next few years, Kinbote's future gardener
> works as a nurse in a hospital for blacks in Maryland (l. 998).

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