Mr. Swine

Mr. Swine is the pink, bald, porcine desk clerk at The Enchanted Hunters hotel who, along with his colleague Mr. Potts, mishandles Humbert Humbert's reservation on the night he arrives with Lolita, embodying the hotel's bumbling, indifferent bureaucracy and the farcical obstacles that delay Humbert's predatory plan.

Identity and Role

Mr. Swine is introduced as the initial old clown at the front desk of The Enchanted Hunters, a pale palace of a hotel in Briceland. He is described as "bald" and "porcine," and he examines Humbert's features with a polite smile before leisurely producing the garbled telegram. He then turns his head to look at the clock and finally announces that the room with twin beds, which Humbert had ordered, has been given away because it was held only until half past six. He explains that a religious convention has clashed with a flower show in Briceland, causing the shortage.

Interaction with Humbert

When Humbert coldly corrects his name—"The name is not Humberg and not Humbug, but Herbert, I mean Humbert"—and insists that any room will do, asking for a cot for his "little daughter" who is "ten and very tired," Mr. Swine peers good-naturedly at Lolita, who is still squatting, listening in profile, lips parted, caressing a cocker spaniel. Whatever doubts the obscene fellow had, they are dispelled by that blossom-like vision. He says he might still have a room—in fact, one with a double bed. When Humbert asks about a cot, Mr. Swine defers to his colleague, Mr. Potts, who also appears pink and bald, with white hairs growing out of his ears and other holes. Mr. Potts cozily says that their double beds are really triple, recalling one crowded night when they had three ladies and a child like Humbert's sleep together, adding that he believes one of the ladies was a disguised man. Mr. Swine then says, "I think it went to the Swoons," referring to the spare cot. Humbert, desperate, says they will manage somehow, adding that his wife may join them later. Mr. Swine and Mr. Potts become, in Humbert's sardonic view, his best friends. In the slow, clear hand of crime, Humbert writes "Dr. Edgar H. Humbert and daughter, 342 Lawn Street, Ramsdale." A key—numbered 342—is half-shown to him, like a magician showing an object he is about to palm, and then handed over to Uncle Tom, the bellboy.

Narrative Significance

Mr. Swine functions as a minor but memorable obstacle in the chain of farcical mishaps that Humbert must overcome to secure a room with Lolita. His casual incompetence and the hotel's chaotic management—exacerbated by the clash of a religious convention and a flower show—force Humbert into a double bed with his intended victim, a configuration that both heightens his anticipation and, ironically, complicates his initial plan for a separate cot. Mr. Swine's porcine appearance and his role as a gatekeeper who is easily swayed by the sight of Lolita underscore the theme of predatory desire that the hotel's very name, The Enchanted Hunters, evokes. He is a figure of low comedy in a narrative that constantly veers between the grotesque and the farcical.