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A Timeline of Ada

 

by Dieter E. Zimmer

August 18, 2009 - February 10, 2010

 

 

 

Though there are quite a few explicit dates in Ada, more than in any other of Nabokov's novels, some  of them ostentatiously superfluous, a detailed inner chronology is largely a matter of inference. To make my inferences verifyable, this timeline is referenced throughout. It is far from listing all the dates that could be culled from Ada. The page references are to the standard American edition by Vintage International, New York, 1990 et seq.

 

 

As earlier experimentators had conjectured, our annals lagged by about half a century behind Terra's along the bridges of time, but overtook some of its underwater currents.                                             Ada, p.340-341

 

 

1699

Prince Vseslav Zemski is born. He will be "Governor of Bras d'Or, an American province in the Northeast," and Van's, Ada's and Lucette's great-great-grandfather (p.x, p.3).

 

1755

Princess Sofia Temnosiniy is born, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's great-great-grandmother (p.xi).

 

1760

Erasmus Veen is born, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's great-grandfather (p.xi).

 

1770

Prince Vseslav Zemski, age 71, is married to Princess Sofia Temnosiniy, age 15 (p.x).

 

1772

Peter Zemski is born, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's maternal great-grandfather (p.x).

 

1773

Olga Zemski is born, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's paternal great-grandmother (p.xi).

 

1793

Erasmus Veen is married to Olga Zemski (p.xi).

 

1797

Death of Prince Vseslav Zemski, age 98.

 

1799

Dedalus Veen is born, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's paternal grandfather (p.xi).

 

1800

Ardelion Veen is born, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's maternal grandfather (p.xi).

 

1801

Ivan Durmanov is born, Aqua's and Marina's father, General and "Commander of the Yukon Fortress and peaceful country gentleman" (p.x, p.3).

 

1806

Peter Zemski's wife Mary O'Reilly is born, Aqua's and Marina's grandmother (p.x).

 

1809

Death of Princess Sofia Zemski née Temnosiniy, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's great-great-grandmother (p.xi).

 

1814

Death of Olga Veen née Zemski, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's paternal great-grandmother (p.xi).

 

1815

England annexes France (p.287).

 

1820

Countess Irina Garin is born, Van's and Ada's paternal grandmother (p.xi).

 

1824

Peter Zemski (age 52) is married to Mary O'Reilly (age 18), "an Irish woman of fashion" (p.x, p.3).

 

1825

Daria (Dolly) Zemski is born in Bras d'Or, Aqua's and Marina's mother (p.x).

 

1832

Death of Peter Zemski, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's great-grandfather (p.x).

 

1835

Albino uprisings (p.133).

 

1837

Dedalus Veen is married to Countess Irina Garin; they will be Van's and Ada's grandparents (p.xi).

 

1838

(January 1) Walter Dementiy (Demon) Dedalovich Veen ("Raven Veen" or "Dark Veen") and his cousin Walter Daniel (Dan) Veen ("Red Veen") are born (p.4)

Death of Countess Irina Veen née Garin, Van's and Ada's paternal grandmother (p.xi).

 

1840

Daria (Dolly) Zemski is married to Ivan Durmanov; the couple will be Van's, Ada's and Lucette's maternal grandparents (p.x).

 

1842

Ivan Durmanov is born, Aqua's and Marina's elder brother (p.x).

Ida Larivière is born (p.77).

 

1844

(January 5) The twin sisters Aqua and Marina Durmanov are born in Ladoga, Mayne (p.10).

 

1848

Ardelion Veen, Lucette's paternal grandfather, dies of a heart attack in the library of Ardis Hall (p.xi, p.41).

 

1849

Death of Mary Veen née Trumbell, age unknown, Lucette's paternal grandmother (p.xi).

 

1850

Death of Mary Zemski née O'Reilly, Van's and Ada's maternal great-grandmother (p.x).

 

1852

Death of Erasmus Veen, inventor of the clockwork luggage cart, Van's, Ada's and Lucette's paternal great-grandfather (p.xi, p.115).

 

1858

Year of birth of musician Philip Rack, later one of Ada's lovers (dies 1888).

 

1859 to c.1870

The "Great Revelation" on Antiterra (p.20). "Evil days", "torture and mesmerism" (p.329). Electricity is banned; even the word is taboo. In an obscure way the electricity crisis inspires the notion of a kin planet in the universe, Terra, to which the metaphysical yearnings of the Antiterrestrians become attached. This is the "Great Reaction" in the 1860s, the hopes for a blissful afterlife on Terra (p.20, p.83). [On p.83, there is a temporal inconsistency: the "banning of 'currents and circuits'" must have taken place when Daniel Veen's grandmother Olga Veen was still alive, that is before 1814.]

 

1862

Death of Aqua's and Marina's elder brother, the violinist Ivan Durmanov (age 20), of pulmonary cancer in a sanatorium in Ex-en-Valais (p.x, p.65).

 

1865

Birth of Andrey Vinelander whom Ada is to marry in 1892 (p.xi).

 

1866

Beginning of Marina Durmanov's theatrical career (p.427).

 

1867

(December 31) Marina Durmanov and Demon Veen dance at a New Year's ball, and she falls in love with him (p.11).

Birth year of Count Percy de Prey (p.275). The family owns an estate near Ardis. The father (possibly Count Peter de Prey who in 1875 belonged to the first board of the Villa Venus chain) is killed c.1882 in a duel in Boston Common, leaving an enterprising widow, Prascovie de Prey née Praskovia Lanskoy (p.284). Percy is the second cousin of Cordula de Prey at Malorukino near Malbrook, Mayne (p.321).

 

1868

(January 5) In the course of a play in a theater (probably in Ladore Town, p.15), the enormously wealthy banker, landowner, Don Juan and gambler Demon Veen, age 30, begins an affair with an actress on the stage, Marina Durmanov, age 24 (p.x, p.12).

 

1869

(mid March) Demon and Marina separate when he discovers her ongoing affair with Baron d'Onsky (p.12). In Nice, he fights a duel with d'Onsky, wounding him (p.14); afterwards there is a brief reconciliation with Marina who comes to his Villa Armina near Nice, and she becomes pregnant (p.15).

(from April 10) Demon is "nursed" by Aqua (p.15).

(mid April) Demon sends Marina a letter of farewell (p. 15).

(April 23) After yet another futile attempt at reconciliation with Marina, by "dorophone," Demon in Ex-en-Valais marries Marina's twin sister Aqua who also becomes pregnant (p.19, p.26, p.250).

(August) Aqua shows first signs of insanity and before December 14 returns to her "Home" (p.7, p.20).

Year of birth of Comtesse Cordula de Prey (p.163). Her father is a major, her mother a comedy actress (p.164). After the death of her father, she grows up with her mother at the estate of Malorukino near Malbrook, Mayne (p.318). The family is "obscurely related" to Dan's and Marina's neighbors in Ladore; Percy de Prey is her second cousin (p.321).

 

1870

(January 1) Marina's and Demon's son Ivan (Van) Demonovich Veen is born in Ex-en-Valais. With the father's and a doctor's assistance he is foisted on deranged Aqua who just had given birth to a stillborn child also engendered by Demon (p.xi, p.218, p.551).

(mid January) Two weeks after the delivery Marina hurries to Demon's bedside "in Dr. Stella Ospenko's ospedale"; he had been slightly wounded in a duel (p.252).

(before February 16) Aqua has left her "Home" (and probably returns to America).

(spring) Marina's and Demon's affair is interrupted for two months (p.250).

Death of Daria (Dolly) Durmanov née Zemski (age 45), Van's and Ada's maternal grandmother (p.x).

 

1871

(spring) In a Manhattan elevator, Daniel Veen asks Marina to marry him and is turned down (p.5).

(summer) Marina's and Demon's liaison is interrupted for four months (p.250).

(August 16) The date Marina pretends to have been her wedding day by scrawling it across her wedding photograph (p.6). Actually she marries Daniel four months later (p.6). The purpose of the "forged wedding date" (p.442) is to dispel any suspicion that Demon and not Daniel might be Ada's father.

(September) Aqua flees from a psychiatric ward to her husband Demon's country home (probably the estate of Raduga near Luga, Mayne); shortly before, Demon had thrown Marina out when she had suggested that he divorce Aqua and marry her (p.26).

(November) Marina informs Daniel Veen by Aerogram that she will marry him (p.5).

(December 15) Marina and Demon separate after a "quite final row" in Demon's villa in Ladore Town (p.252).

(December 16) Marina Durmanov, age 27, marries her cousin Daniel Veen, age 33, an art dealer in Manhattan (p.xi, p.252).

(late December) From his Villa Armina near Nice, Demon Veen sends Marina 99 orchids.

 

1872

(July 21) Marina's and Demon's daughter Adelaida (Ada) Danilovna Veen is born (p.xi, p.105, p.218); officially her father is Daniel Veen.

Demon and Marina definitely put an end to their on-and-off affair of three years (p.250).

Death of General Ivan Durmanov, Aqua's and Marina's father (p.x).

From 1872 to 1892 Demon is blackmailed by Baron Norbert von Miller who has come to know that he is Van's father (p.441).

 

1875

(September 20) Simultaneously one hundred "Floramors" (brothels) open in England and on the East Coast of North America (p.350); they had been thought up by late Eric van Veen (no relation).

 

1876

(January 3) Dan's and Marina's daughter Lucinda (Lucette) Veen is born (p.xi, p.6).

(January) Dan makes a half-hearted pass at Mlle Larivière (p.131).

 

1878

(January 1) Demon's former tutor gives Van for his eight birthday a copy of Alice in the Camera Obscura (p.547).

(summer) First meeting of Van (age 8) and Ada (age 6) on Dan's and Demon's estate Radugalet where Van this year spends summer and winter (p.149).

 

1880

Van travels to "gay resorts in Louisiana and Nevada" with his father and his tutor (p.149).

 

1882

(autumn) Van's "first prison term" at Riverlane, "the fashionable and brutal boarding school" in Luga, Mayne (p.81).

 

1883

(winter term) Van "madly" in love with a shopkeeper's (Mrs. Tapirov) daughter (p.32, p.545).

(late August) Aqua Veen née Durmanov commits suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills at the "sanastoria" of Centaur, Arizona (p.29, p.30–31).

Death of Anna Pimenovna Nepraslinov (born 1797), Marina's "dear housekeeper" (p.399).

(September?) Ada's first term at Brownhill (p.21, p.111, p.166, p.170, p.323, p.394).

Death of Dedalus Veen, Van's and Ada's paternal grandfather (p.xi).

 

1884

(April 23) During a visit to Ardis, Demon suggests to Marina that Van spend the coming summer there (p.237).

(May 1) The last catalogue of the Ardis Hall library is printed (p.130).

(from c. June 4 to September, "Ardis I"): Van, age 14, travels by train from his prep school in Luga, Mayne, to Ladore the spend the summer vacations on the estate of Ardis belonging to his uncle Daniel Veen and his "aunt" Marina. There he meets his "cousin" Ada, age 12. Very soon both discover that they are brother and sister. They violently fall in love in the parks, arbors and woods of Ardis. (p.113, p.156, p.160)

(July 21) Picnic on the occasion of Ada's twelfth birthday (I/13). Ada stops biting her fingernails.

(July 28 or August 4) "Night of the Burning Barn." Van and Ada make love for the first time (p.114).

(August 1) Ardis' librarian Philippe Verger quits his job (p.133).

(August) Baron Klim Avidov (anagram of Vladimir Nabokov) gives Van and Ada a fancy Scrabble board (p.223). Van notices similarities between Scrabble and the planchette (p.225).

(after the "Night of the Burning Barn") Van and Ada happen to find in the attic Marina's herbarium from 1869-70 and deduce from it that they are brother and sister (p.7-8, p.148).

(September) Van and Ada take leave of each other, returning to their respective schools (p.156–159). Before going back to Riverlane, Van spends two weeks with his father in Ladoga, N.A. (p. ). Demon takes him to a party where he meets Cordula de Prey again (p.163-165).

Gamaliel becomes President of the Western hemisphere (p.14, p.329). England is ruled by King Victor (p.329).

(December) Brief meeting with Ada in Brownhill, near her school, chaperoned by her classmate Cordula de Prey (I/27, p.167).

 

1885

(summer) Van is mountain climbing in the Western states, Ada and Lucette are in Europe, Demon visits Ardis twice (p.237).

(August) First "brief interlude of intolerable bliss" with Ada (p.160). As these two meetings (in 1885 and 1886) are mentioned nowhere else, they may never have taken place.

(September?) Having finished Riverlane School, Van begins his studies at Chose University in England (p.173).

 

1886

Physician and naturalist Dr. Krolik dies of a heart attack (p.219).

(June or July) Demon Veen comes to Ardis for a dinner (p.237).

(June) Yet another "brief interlude of intolerable bliss" with Ada (p.160). As Van is still in England at this time and as this meeting is not mentioned anywhere else, it may never have taken place.

(mid July) Van travels from Dover to Manhattan (p.178).

(July 21) Van receives a cryptic hydrogram from Ada (p.178).

(July 25) Van and sick Ada (pneumonia) briefly meet at Forest Fork near Ardis (I/29, p.160, p.162, p.179).

(July 28) Van takes a boat back from Man(hattan) to England (p.180).

 

1887

(winter 1886-87) In the course of a poker game at Chose, Van uncovers a card-sharper, Lord Dick C., a cousin of one his Riverlane schoolmates (p.176).

(February 5) The Chose Ranter prints a rave review of "Mascodagama's" (Van's) acrobatic act (p.181).

(spring) Ada's and Cordula de Prey's time at Brownhill School is over (p.323).

(May) Demon Veen spends a few days at Ardis while Ada is botanizing in Estotia or California and Van is "whoring in Chose" (p.237).

Mlle Larivière writes and publishes her novella Les enfants maudits that is going to be made into a movie (p.424).

In Chose, Van defeats chess champion Pat Rishin (p.224).

 

1888

(first week of January) Van's fame as "maniambulator" reaches America (p.183).

("early Thargelion" = late May) Ada begins her affair with music teacher Philip Rack (p.335).

("not long before" his second stay in Ardis) Van visits his first Villa Venus Club (p.353).

(early June, beginning of summer vacations in Chose) Van travels from England to America and straight on to Ardis, uninvited and unannounced: beginning of "Ardis II" (p.160, p.187). Van happens into a party (p.187) where he meets Cordula de Prey (slighter older than he, p.163) and her brother Percy who had been kicked out of Riverlane (p.164, p.188).

(mid July, c. 8th) Lucette spends five days at her father's town house (p.226, p.236).

(July 13 Friday, eight days before Ada's sixteenth birthday) Daniel intends to bring Lucette back to Ardis but something intervenes. Instead, Demon who wants to sell a piece of peat-bog announces his visit. So it happens that the "real" family for the first time unites for a dinner (everybody knowing the true relationship but not admitting it). Marina gives a cheerful but awkward dinner  (I/38). Van learns from his father that his former schoolmate Percy de Prey has enlisted in the army and is going to be sent to Crimea (p.245-245).

(July 21) At Ada's outdoor birthday party, Van meets his former schoolmate Percy de Prey (1867–1888) who is three years his senior, scuffles with him, wins due to his acrobatic training, but is exhausted (p.274–275). Return home with Ada next to the coachman and Van behind her with Lucette on his lap (p.278).

(summer) The Second Crimean War against Tartary begins, the Allies landing on the "rhomboid island" (p.231).

(August) Because of Blanche's denunciation, Van discovers Ada's infidelity, abruptly leaves Ada and Ardis to take revenge on his rivals Philip Rack and Percy de Prey. On his way to Kalugano, in his rage he insults an unknown officer, fights a duel with him, is wounded and taken to a hospital where he finds Philip Rack dying in one of the adjoining rooms and learns from Cordula de Prey that her brother Percy has been killed by a Tartar in the Crimean War. After leaving the hospital, Van spends a month in Cordula's Manhattan penthouse (I/42).

(early September) Van travels from Manhattan to Lute (Paris) to spend two weeks with his father before his return to Chose (p.325). Crimea capitulates (p.329).

(early September) Lucette goes with her mother to Hollywood where she will attend a Junior High School until 1890 (p.487). Barely arrived, she suffers from "a severe streptococcal ague" (p.223).

(September to 1890) Ada sends Van six letters; he does not accept the first three and answers none of them (p.331–336).

 

1889

In a film based on Chekhov's Four Sisters, Marina plays mute Varvara, living in a bungalow in Universal City, Los Angeles (p.333).

(end) Van wants to take his Master's degree at Chose University (p.218).

 

1890

Van deposits five of Ada's six letters in a Swiss bank safe (p.336).

Lucette finishes her school in Hollywood (p.487).

 

1891

(February) Van publishes his "philosophical novel" Letters from Terra, pseudonym Voltemand (p.338).

Ada's first appearance on stage, in Chekhov's Four Sisters, in a theater in Yakima, Wash. At about the same time Marina ends her career as an actress in a film version of the same play where she plays Varvara, the all but mute oldest of the four sisters (p.427).

(autumn) From California Lucette sends Van a love letter of ten pages (p.366). 

 

1892

(February) Van receives a statement of sales for his novel. In the course of a year, six copies had been sold in Manhattan and London (p.343).

(autumn) Van completes his medical studies at the university of Kingston, Mayne (p.345) but continues to work there on his project "Dimension & Dementia" (p.365) and buys Cordula de Prey's penthouse in Manhattan, Alexis Avenue (p.366).

(November) Lucette who has begun to study history of art at Queenston College close by comes to see Van in his quarters in Kingston, bringing from Ardis Ada's seventh letter that he does not leave unanswered: She wants to live with nobody but him, and if he refuses she will marry Andrey Vinelander, an Arizona rancher (p.337).

Kim Beauharnais, former kitchen boy at Ardis Hall, comes to blackmail Ada with compromising snapshots of Van and Ada he had taken in 1884 and 1888 (II/7).

(probably December) Ada moves into Van's Manhattan penthouse on Alexis Avenue, above the 'Monaco' restaurant (p.366, p.579).

Dinner with Ada and Lucette at the restaurant 'Ursus' where they listen to Russian songs (II/8).

 

1893

(February 3) Van "rebribes" the janitor not to tell anybody about Ada's presence in his penthouse (p.433).

(Febuary 4?) Demon's cousin Dan(iel) Veen, Lucette's real and Van's official father, dies a Boschian death at Ladore hospital (p.433).

(February 5) Demon returns early from Santiago de Chile to be at his cousin's deathbed, happens to pass by Alexis Avenue and surprises Van and Ada in their penthouse (p.439). For the first time he admits that he is Van's father and urges him to discontinue the affair with his sister (p.444).

Marina retires until her death in 1900 to "her still dazzling, still magically well-staffed Côte d'Azur villa" (Villa Armina, Demon's gift); from now on suffers from "obscure" diseases (p.450).

Ada marries rancher Andrey Vinelander in Arizona (p.xi).

 

1895

Van's book Illegible Signatures (p.450).

 

1896

Accompanied by her maid Brigitte, Lucette visits Ada and Andrey Vinelander at their Agavia Ranch in Arizona (p.461) but leaves very soon, put off by Andrey's stupidity and his sister Dorothy, a "prissy and pious monster" (p.462-463).

Lucette undergoes an appendectomy (p.478).

 

1899

One of Van's several visits with his mother Marina in her Villa Armina on the Côte d'Azur (p.450). Finds Lucette there on several occasions. The last time he sees her there is at the Nice railway station (p.461).

 

1900

(beginning of the year) Van sees his mother for the last time in her clinic at Nice (p.451)

(two weeks later) Marina Veen née Durmanov dies of (intestinal?) cancer (p.451).

Van begins writing his "second philosophic fable," a "denunciation of space" (p.502).

 

1901

(May 31) In Lute (Paris) happens to run into Gregoriy Arkadievich (Greg) Erminin (p.453); he had met him and his twin sister Grace in Ardis and now learns that Greg had been madly and hopelessly in love with Ada (p.454). Shortly after he meets Cordula de Prey (p.456), now married to she shipowner Tobak(off), and from her he learns that Lucette is staying at the hotel Alphonse IV, wants to see her there but meets her at Ovenman's bar across the street and tells her that he is going to sail to Manhattan on June 3 (p.461).

(June 1) Van travels from Lute (Paris) to London (p.458).

(June 2) Van at the psychiatric clinic at Chose where he wants to examine a case of chromesthesia (color feeling) (p.468).

(June 3) In the afternoon, Lucette in Le Havre-de-Grâce embarks to Manhattan on the 'Admiral Tobakoff' where through Cordula Tobakoff and without Van's knowing she has gotten herself a cabin. In the evening, Van in Old Hantsport, England, embarks on the same vessel in order to give a lecture on the "Psychology of Suicide." From the passenger list he learns that Lucette is aboard. (p.458, p.464).

(June 4) Van spends most of the day with Lucette who is determined to seduce him (p.476–491).

(June 5, shortly after midnight) When Van has rudely rejected all her attempts, she jumps into the Atlantic and drowns (p.494–495, p.497).

(July 10) Van has dinner at his father's (p.499).

Van buries a letter to Ada in the garden of Villa Armina where he unearthes it in 1928 (p.500).

 

1903

Van's book on Claivoyeurism (p.450).

 

1904

(January) The monthly The Artisan publishes an extract from Van's treatise on the "denunciation of space" titled Reflexions in Sidra (p.502).

(spring) At a dinner party in Demon's Manhattan house, Van sees his father for the last time (p.505).

(July 21) On her 32nd birthday, Ada quits smoking (p.105).

(July 21, 1904 or 1908 or later): Van visits a Villa Venus Club for the last time (p.358).

 

1905

(March) Demon Veen dies in an airplane accident above the Pacific (p.504).

Van is elected to the Rattner Chair of Philosophy at the University of Kingston (p.506).

(October 10, Saturday) At Hotel Manhattan Palace, Geneva, Van unexpectedly gets a cable from Ada who suggests they meet in Mont Roux. Immediately Van goes to Mont Roux where as usual he checks in at the Les Trois Cygnes (p.508).

(October 11, Sunday) Van sees Ada at the Hotel Bellevue, Mont Roux, in company of her husband, her sister-in-law and three film people but manages to make an appointment with her (p.520). In the following days, they secretly meet ten times in Van's suite in the Trois Cygnes and make love (p.521). Ada decides to get a divorce from Andrey Vinelander (p.526).

(October 17, Friday) As Andrey who is a heavy smoker has long »been coughing up blood, he decides to go to the American hospital in Valvay (Vevey) to get a medical examination and is diagnosed as having advanced tuberculosis (p.528).

(October 22, Wednesday) For himself "and his cousin," Van buys a villa in Sorcière (Sierre) in the Valais, later Villa Jolana (p.528).

(October 23, Thursday) Ada has decided not to leave her husband and returns with him and her sister-in-law to Phoenix, Arizona (p.529).

Van walks six miles from Mont Roux to the airport of Rennaz to travel all over the world (p.531).

During the next 17 years, Ada writes him around a hundred brief and rather meaningless letters (p.532).

 

1911

(June 4) Van incidentally seduces Lucy Manfristan, a "red-haired English virgin," and takes her to Fialta on the Adriatic (p.573).

 

1912

Van's book Suicide and Sanity ("extremely abstruse and specialized") (p.578).

 

1913

Van's book Furnished Space (p.450).

 

1919

The Manhattan palazzo Van inherited from his father burns down (p.336).

 

1921

Van's book Compitalia ("extremely abstruse and specialized") (p.578).

 

1922

(March/April?) Without regrets, Van retires from Kingston University to live in Europe from now on (p.507, p.548).

(April 23) After years of declining health, Andrey Vinelander dies in an Arizona hospital (p.532, p.551).

(May) Van is in Dalmatia (p.551).

(June) Van is in the Dolomites (p.551) where he begins to work on his essay novella The Texture of Time (p.552).

(summer) Van buys three more villas, two on the Adriatic and one at Ardez in the Northern Grisons (p.552).

(July 11, Friday) Ada sends Van a cable, suggesting they meet at the Trois Cygnes in Mont Roux coming Monday (p.552).

(July 13, Sunday) Ada flies to Switzerland for an "exploratory interview" with Van (p.532). In the evening, Ada's cable belatedly reaches Van in a hotel at Alvena (p.552). He immediately sets out to drive to Mont Roux, probably by way of his villa in Ardez, takes the wrong road twice, reaching his house at Sorcière via Sylvaplana, Chiavenna, Splügen and Brig in the evening and spending the night there (p.535, p.552). [The timetable here is onconsistent. Van should have received the telegram on Saturday, July 12, in order to have enough time to get to Sorcière by Sunday evening.]

(July 14, Monday) Van leaves Sorcière early in the morning (p.535), has breakfast on his way and between 4 and 5 p.m. reaches Mont Roux (p.551), to check in at the Trois Cygnes (p.553). Dinner with Ada. Afterwards, she pretends she has to return to Geneva (p.558).

(July 15, Tuesday) Van and Ada reunited (p.562).

 

1924

Van's book The Texture of Time is published and wins acclaim (p.579).

 

1928

In the garden of Villa Armina near Nice, Van unearthes a letter to Ada he had buried there in 1901 (p.500).

 

1930

"Lammer" (electricity) is once more prohibited (p.572).

 

1932

Van's book When an Alienist Cannot Sleep, "extremly abstruse and specialized" (p.578).

 

1940

Van retrieves Ada's five letters he had deposited in a Swiss bank safe in 1890 (p.336).

French film director Victor Vitry makes a movie based on young Van's Letters from Terra (p.579).

Van's later typist Violet Knox is born (p.576).

 

1957

Information and Form is published, a book written jointly by Van and Ada (p.578).

Secretary Violet Knox, now married to Van's publisher (and Ada's editor) Ronald Oranger, comes to live with Van and Ada and to type out the book he is to write during the next ten years (p.576).

Van, now age 85, starts to write his "memoir" Ada which Ronald Oranger is going to edit after Van's and Ada's death in 1968 (p.578).

 

1959

Publication of Van's anti-Freudian treatise The Farce of Group Therapy in Sexual Maladjustment (p.577).

 

1963

The first draft of Ada is finished (p.578).

 

1965

The final fair copy of Ada (i.e. Part I to IV) is finished (p.578).

 

1967

(January 1) On his 97th birthday, Van sets out to write Part V of Ada (p.567).

Violet Knox finishes typing out Ada (p.578).

 

1968

Van and Ada supposedly die (p.584). Ronald Oranger edits Van's manuscript of Ada.

 

1969 (on Antiterra and Terra)

Publication of Ada.

 

 

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