Humbert Humbert

Curious to know the exact definition of the brown color that Nabokov assigns to Humbert's name, I looked up umber in the dictionary. The first entry reads, "a natural pigment resembling but darker than ocher, normally dark yellowish-brown in color (raw umber) or dark brown when roasted (burnt umber). The second entry reads, "a brownish-gray moth with coloring that resembles tree bark." Lepidoptera. I only should have expected this.

H=drab shoelace brown.
UMBER=moth.
T=pistachio green.
Umber sandwiched by the colors of birth and death.

So here is the Umber Moth (a drab shoelace brown).


And here is the Umber Moth caterpillar (arching it's back in search of prey on a pistachio green leaf).