The Enchanted Hunters
The Enchanted Hunters is the hotel in Briceland, a town of "phony colonial architecture" and "imported shade trees," where Humbert Humbert brings Dolores Haze on the first night of their cross-country journey. It is the site of the novel's central, catastrophic turning point: the moment Humbert's long-nurtured fantasy of possessing Lolita collides with the reality of her drugged, resistant, and ultimately seductive presence, marking the irrevocable start of their abusive relationship. The hotel's name, which Humbert first hears from Charlotte Haze shortly before her death, becomes a haunting leitmotif that recurs throughout the narrative, eventually serving as the title of the play in which Lolita performs at Beardsley School and as the final, ironic destination of Humbert's murderous quest for Clare Quilty.
Discovery and Arrival
Charlotte Haze first mentions The Enchanted Hunters during a conversation with Humbert in late July 1947, shortly after their marriage. Pointing at an autumn view in a conservative Eastern state, she says, "There is a hotel I remember, Enchanted Hunters, quaint, isn't it? And the food is a dream. And nobody bothers anybody." Humbert, preoccupied with his own schemes, barely registers the name. Months later, after Charlotte's death and his liberation from her plans, he recalls the hotel with the "seductive name" while shopping for Lolita's clothes in Parkington. Using a guidebook, he locates it in the secluded town of Briceland, a four-hour drive from Camp Q, and sends a telegram ordering a room with twin beds for the next night. The telegram arrives garbled, the name transformed into "Humberg" or "Humbug," a telepathic echo of Humbert's own hesitations about how to register himself and his "daughter." When they finally reach Briceland after a frustrating search through the rain, the hotel appears "marvelously and inexorably, under spectral trees, at the top of a graveled drive—the pale palace of The Enchanted Hunters." A row of parked cars initially blocks access, but a "formidable convertible, resplendent, rubious in the lighted rain" is energetically backed out by a broad-shouldered driver, allowing Humbert to slip into the gap.
The Lobby and the Room
The lobby is "full of old ladies and clergymen." A hunchbacked and hoary Negro in a uniform takes their bags. Lolita sinks down on her haunches to caress a pale-faced, blue-freckled, black-eared cocker spaniel swooning on the floral carpet. At the desk, a bald porcine old man examines Humbert's features with a polite smile, then leisurely produces the garbled telegram, wrestles with some dark doubts, turns his head to look at the clock, and finally says he is sorry, the room with twin beds has been given away because of a religious convention clashing with a flower show. Humbert, coldly insisting his name is "not Humberg and not Humbug, but Herbert, I mean Humbert," demands any room, adding that his "little daughter" is ten and very tired. The pink old fellow peers good-naturedly at Lolita, still squatting, listening in profile, lips parted, to what the dog's mistress is telling her. His doubts dispelled by that "blossom-like vision," he offers a room with a double bed. Mr. Potts, also pink and bald, cozily says, "Our double beds are really triple," and mentions that one crowded night they had three ladies and a child like Humbert's sleep together. Humbert, writing in the "slow clear hand of crime," registers as "Dr. Edgar H. Humbert and daughter, 342 Lawn Street, Ramsdale." The key is 342—the same number as the Haze house. A handsome young Negress slips open the elevator door, and "the doomed child" goes in, followed by her throat-clearing father and crayfish Tom with the bags. The room is a "parody of a hotel corridor. Parody of silence and death." It contains a double bed, a mirror, a double bed in the mirror, a closet door with mirror, a bathroom door ditto, a blue-dark window, a reflected bed there, the same in the closet mirror, two chairs, a glass-topped table, two bedtables, and a big panel bed with a Tuscan rose chenille spread and two frilled, pink-shaded nightlamps.
The Dinner and the Drug
In the dining room, which smells of fried fat and features maudlin murals depicting enchanted hunters in various postures and states of enchantment amid a medley of pallid animals, dryads, and trees, Lolita points out a lone diner in loud checks, saying he looks "exactly, but exactly, like Quilty." Humbert mistakes this for a reference to the Ramsdale dentist, Dr. Ivor Quilty, but Lolita corrects him: "I meant the writer fellow in the Dromes ad." During dessert, Humbert produces a small vial containing "Papa's Purple Pills"—the sleeping capsules he obtained from Dr. Byron. He pretends to swallow one himself, and Lolita, intrigued by the "plump, beautifully colored capsules," asks to try one. He gives her a capsule, hoping it will work fast. It does: she becomes drowsy, yawning, and he has almost to carry her into the room. She sits on the edge of the bed, swaying, speaking in "dove-dull, long-drawn tones," and begins to confess something, but Humbert, pocketing the key, tells her to go to bed and leaves her.
The Night and the Aftermath
Humbert wanders through the public rooms, glory below, gloom above. He drifts to the Men's Room, where a person in clerical black inquires about Dr. Boyd's talk. He goes to the lobby, where a change has occurred: a number of people in floral dresses or black cloth have formed little groups. He sees a delightful child of Lolita's age, in a pure white frock with a white ribbon in her black hair, who notices his gaze and becomes self-conscious. He leaves the lobby and stands on the white steps, looking at the hundreds of powdered bugs wheeling around the lamps in the soggy black night. Suddenly, he becomes aware of someone sitting in a chair on the pillared porch. A voice addresses him: "Where the devil did you get her?" Humbert claims she is his daughter, but the voice insists, "You lie—she's not." The voice asks where her mother is; Humbert says dead. The voice, drunk, invites them to lunch tomorrow, but Humbert declines. The voice says, "That child of yours needs a lot of sleep. Sleep is a rose, as the Persians say." Humbert leaves the porch and, after at least half an hour, returns to the room. The drug has not worked as expected. Lolita is awake, staring at him, and eventually, she seduces him. The next morning, they leave the hotel, and Humbert reflects that he had thought months or years would elapse before he dared to reveal himself to Dolores Haze, but by six fifteen they were "technically lovers." The Enchanted Hunters, the site of this consummation, becomes a symbol of the ruined paradise Humbert has created.
Recurrence and Thematic Significance
The name "The Enchanted Hunters" recurs throughout the novel as a mocking echo. The playlet in which Lolita performs at Beardsley School is also titled The Enchanted Hunters, a coincidence that Humbert finds "pleasant in a sad little way" but which he fails to recognize as a clue to Clare Quilty's involvement. Years later, after Lolita has left him, Humbert returns to Briceland with Rita and attempts to revisit the hotel, but it is full. He sends a postcard requesting twin beds and receives a prompt refusal. The hotel's note paper is headed: "The Enchanted Hunters / Near Churches / No Dogs / All legal beverages." Humbert wonders if the last statement is true and whether a hunter, enchanted or otherwise, would need a pointer more than a pew. He does not enter. The hotel remains a place of unattainable, corrupted memory, a symbol of the paradise that was never truly his and that he has irrevocably defiled.
