OBVIOUS BEDFELLOWS:

"Let me simplify matters by saying that in my parlor politics as well as in open-air statements . . . I content myself with remarking that what is bad for the Reds is good for me," Nabokov told the New York Times in 1968. Nabokov, of course, was not answering this question off-the-cuff over a telephone line, but in a carefully composed written response to queries sent in advance. Which is perhaps why the continuation of his answer went into more detail without giving too much away:

I do not have any neatly limited political views or rather that such views as I have shade off into a vague old-fashioned liberalism. Much less vaguely--quite adamantically, or even admantinely--I am aware of a central core of spirit in me that flashes and jeers at the brutal farce of totalitarian states, such as Russia, and her embarrassing tumors, such as China. A feature of my inner prospect is the absolute abyss yawning between the barbed-wire tangle of police states and the spacious freedom of thought we enjoy in America and Western Europe.

What Nabokov did not reveal to the paper was that, by this point, he had been such an avid reader of National Review that William F. Buckley had given him and his wife, Vera, a lifetime subscription. ("The National Review has always been a joy to read . . . and your articles in the Herald Tribune counteract wonderfully the evil and trash of its general politics," Nabokov wrote Buckley in 1973.) A couple of years later, in August 1970, Vera Nabokov sent a check for $49.95 (nearly $360 in today's dollars) to cover a two-year subscription to the magazine. "As long as I am alive, you will receive National Review with my compliments because you made the mistake of being so generous with me," Buckley replied a month later.

The Buckley-Nabokov friendship dated to the late 1950s, around the time of the American publication, and astounding success, of Lolita. The novel's triumph after several frustrating years of limbo, including its original, error-filled, argument-inciting 1955 publication by the Olympia Press, was the culmination of the Nabokovs' time in the United States, a far cry from their imperiled emigre status escaping the Nazis in 1940. Lolita meant freedom, not just from tyranny, but from having to earn a living in academia. The novel's success eventually afforded Vladimir and Vera the means to leave Ithaca, New York, where Nabokov taught literature at Cornell University, for Montreux, Switzerland, in 1961.

The Montreux Palace Hotel was about an hour's drive from Gstaad, where William F. and Patricia Buckley wintered in the early parts of the year. There was skiing, dedicated time to write--in later years Buckley would work on his Blackford Oakes spy thrillers exclusively during his time there--and choice friends across ideological spectra and the arts, most notably the actor David Niven and the economist John Kenneth Galbraith.

The Nabokovs were not part of this circle. But Bill and Pat made it a point to visit the other couple whenever they were in residence at Gstaad, and corresponded regularly when they were elsewhere. WFB wanted Nabokov to come on Firing Line as a guest, but Nabokov demurred, "because he would need to memorize everything he would then say," Buckley told his longtime editor at Doubleday, Sam Vaughan, in 1996. "I said, come on, your extemporaneous talk is absolutely lapidary. He said no, he had never spoken in public in his entire life, including lectures to students, without first memorizing what he was going to say."

The conversation between Buckley and Nabokov revolved around, as Buckley described it in his moving obituary of Nabokov, "the literary scene, the political scene, inflation, bad French, cupitidous publishers, the exciting breakthrough in his son's career, and what am I working on now?" Buckley thrilled to receive a copy of Transparent Things, Nabokov's last novel published during his lifetime. (There would be some discussion of the work-in-progress that eventually saw the light of day as The Original of Laura, too.)

At one meal, Buckley remarked that Nabokov seemed to be rather pleased with himself.

"I am," Nabokov said. "I finished my OSS."

"What's OSS?"

"Obligatory Sex Scene."

Buckley would send Nabokov copies of his own books; he even modeled a character--the father of a Soviet spy--featured in his second Blackford Oakes novel, Stained Glass, after Nabokov. "I told him I was going to do it," WFB told an interviewer in 1978. (Nabokov was, apparently, amused, but not that amused.)

He also brought or sent other people's works, including, oddly, two paperbacks by the historical fiction writer Mary Renault. After sending Nabokov an Ezra Pound anthology edited by Hugh Kenner, the author replied: "Though I detest Pound and the costume jewelry of his verse, I must say Kenner's approach is very interesting."

Buckley would later send the Nabokovs inscribed copies of two books, The Governor Listeth and American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century, for which the couple thanked him profusely--as well as for WFB's "rare understanding of the Soviet atmosphere" in his NR articles about Russia: "The more such observant travelers as you the better."

Tweet   @brothersjudd