JК
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight :: Набоков Владимир Владимирович
Страница: 31 из 124And where is the third party?Rotting peacefully in the cemetery of St Damier. Laughingly alive in five volumes. Peering unseen over my shoulder as I write this (although I dare say he mistrusted too strongly the commonplace of eternity to believe even now in his own ghost).
Anyway, here was I with the booty that friendship could yield. To this I added a few casual facts occurring in Sebastian's very short letters belonging to that period and the chance references to University life found scattered amongst his books. I then returned to London where I had neatly planned my next move.
At our last meeting Sebastian had happened to mention a kind of secretary whom he had employed from time to time between 1930 and 1934. Like many authors in the past, and as very few in the present (or perhaps we are simply unaware of those who fail to manage their affairs in a sound pushing manner), Sebastian was ridiculously helpless in business matters and once having found an adviser (who incidentally might be a shark or a blockhead – or both) he gave himself up to him entirely with the greatest relief. Had I perchance inquired whether he was perfectly certain that So-and-So now handling his affairs was not a meddlesome old rogue, he would have hurriedly changed the subject, so in dread was he that the discovery of another's mischief might force his own laziness into action. In a word he preferred the worst assistant to no assistant at all, and would convince himself and others that he was perfectly content with his choice. Having said all this I should like to stress .the fact as definitely as possible that none of my words are – from a legal point of view – slanderous, and that the name I am about to mention has not appeared in this particular paragraph.
Now what I wanted from Mr Goodman was not so much an account of Sebastian's last years – that I did not yet need – (for I intended to follow his life stage by stage without overtaking him), but merely to obtain a few suggestions as to what people I ought to see who might know something of Sebastian's post-Cambridge period.
So on 1 March 1936, I called on Mr Goodman at his office in Fleet Street. But before describing our interview I must be allowed a short digression.
Amongst Sebastian's letters I found as already mentioned some correspondence between him and his publisher dealing with a certain novel. It appears that in Sebastian's first book (1925), The Prismatic Bezel, one of the minor characters is an extremely comic and cruel skit upon a certain living author whom Sebastian found necessary to chastise.
Anyway, here was I with the booty that friendship could yield. To this I added a few casual facts occurring in Sebastian's very short letters belonging to that period and the chance references to University life found scattered amongst his books. I then returned to London where I had neatly planned my next move.
At our last meeting Sebastian had happened to mention a kind of secretary whom he had employed from time to time between 1930 and 1934. Like many authors in the past, and as very few in the present (or perhaps we are simply unaware of those who fail to manage their affairs in a sound pushing manner), Sebastian was ridiculously helpless in business matters and once having found an adviser (who incidentally might be a shark or a blockhead – or both) he gave himself up to him entirely with the greatest relief. Had I perchance inquired whether he was perfectly certain that So-and-So now handling his affairs was not a meddlesome old rogue, he would have hurriedly changed the subject, so in dread was he that the discovery of another's mischief might force his own laziness into action. In a word he preferred the worst assistant to no assistant at all, and would convince himself and others that he was perfectly content with his choice. Having said all this I should like to stress .the fact as definitely as possible that none of my words are – from a legal point of view – slanderous, and that the name I am about to mention has not appeared in this particular paragraph.
Now what I wanted from Mr Goodman was not so much an account of Sebastian's last years – that I did not yet need – (for I intended to follow his life stage by stage without overtaking him), but merely to obtain a few suggestions as to what people I ought to see who might know something of Sebastian's post-Cambridge period.
So on 1 March 1936, I called on Mr Goodman at his office in Fleet Street. But before describing our interview I must be allowed a short digression.
Amongst Sebastian's letters I found as already mentioned some correspondence between him and his publisher dealing with a certain novel. It appears that in Sebastian's first book (1925), The Prismatic Bezel, one of the minor characters is an extremely comic and cruel skit upon a certain living author whom Sebastian found necessary to chastise.