"Still, her handwriting is there, and it is difficult not to see Véra as the fictional Clare, lifting the edge of a page in the typewriter and declaring, “ ‘No,

"Still, her handwriting is there, and it is difficult not to see Véra as the fictional Clare, lifting the edge of a page in the typewriter and declaring, “ ‘No, my dear. You can’t say it so in English. . . . And if for instance,’ she would say—and then an exact suggestion would follow.” Well perhaps. Yet the article describes her as having arrived in America with "uncertain English", and Nabokov had spoken English from his youth and attended an English college.