The aristocratic Nabokov house is stocked with English and French amenities, English black soap, toothpaste, and breakfast syrup imported from London. Nabokov's memories are of a quite English childhood in a Russian setting. He learned to read and write English before Russian or French.
His mother would read bedtime stories to him in English. He is particularly fond of the American character Golliwogg and his wooden doll friends, whose adventures include being captured by cannibals and riding through the sky in an airship constructed of yellow silk.
His mother would then lead him up the stairs to the third floor to the children's sleeping rooms. They would play a game. Little Vladimir would close his eyes at the bottom of each stairway, and his mother would call out "step, step, step," guiding him up the.....
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