By Brian Taves
[Editor’s note: Brian Taves is a film historian with the Library of Congress and a Jules Verne scholar, senior author of The Jules Verne Encyclopedia (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996).]
Over the recent decades, Verne’s literary portrait of the United States has been gradually filled in, first with Walter James Miller’s The Annotated Jules Verne: From the Earth the Moon (1978), then with the first publication of “The Humbug” as part of The Jules Verne Encyclopedia (1996), and in 2006 with the publication of the original text of The Meteor Hunt. Yet one more book, however, while known to Verne aficionados since it was published in England, has never appeared in the United States -- The Will of an Eccentric.
The Will of an Eccentric was serialized in Boys’ Own Paper, then published by Sampson Low -- and forgotten. Yet it is not only one of Verne’s relatively few novels set entirely in the United States, it is also a reworking of his most famous book, Around the World in Eighty Days.
Verne's talent for comedy has been unjustly overlooked, and was first evidenced in his early theatrical background and continued in his short story, "The Marriage of M. Anselme de Tilleuls" (shortly to have its first English-language appearance), through such plays as Around the World and Keraban the Inflexible. The humor often has its basis in bizarre characters, many of them placed in unusual locales, such as Kin-Fo’s Tribulations of a Chinese in China, Keraban in Turkey, Phileas Fogg in virtually any corner of the world, or the American eccentric who formulates a truly living last will and testament (The Will of an Eccentric). The School for Robinsons satirizes the Robinsonade narrative of survival on a desert island, while "The Humbug" and Adventures of the Rat Family are parodies of evolution. In A Fancy of Doctor Ox, Verne cleverly mocks his own literary formula with the mad escapade of a scientist who fills a small town's atmosphere with pure oxygen, speeding up the pace of living to a frenzy. Verne subjects Ox and many of the heroes of his more serious novels to a similar farcical humiliation in the science fiction play, Journey Through the Impossible (1882), one of several theatrical projects he co-authored with Adolphe d'Ennery (and published by Prometheus in conjunction with the North American Jules Verne Society in 2003).
The Will of an Eccentric is the capstone of a series of stories using an American setting or with American characters, offering Verne’s commentary on our culture and national character. More than a third of Verne's novels featured the United States, her citizens, or the American continent. The United States was the land of Yankee ingenuity, inventiveness, and industrialization, part of the technological wave that formed the undercurrent for his series of "Extraordinary Journeys." The lack of tradition, as compared to the tradition-bound European perceptions, and belief in individual initiative appealed to the young Verne.
The United States was the home of the wild west, and the country's wide-open spaces allow utopian settlements in The 500 Millions of the Begum. For Verne, as for his contemporaries, the American Civil War was a pivotal event in the century, and Verne produced an antislavery, pro-Union historical novel of the conflict, North Against South, together with a novelette, The Blockade Runners. The opening and the characterizations of The Mysterious Island and From the Earth to the Moon are also indebted to his pro-Northern sentiments.
Verne's vision of the United States was cautionary; he saw the country as a center of mechanical engineering that could be used for both good and evil, whether the hot air balloons of the Weldon Society in Robur the Conqueror, or astronomical exploits of the Baltimore Gun Club in From the Earth to the Moon, Around the Moon, and Topsy-turvy. An even more dangerous engineer, Robur, centers his exploits in North America, revealing a strange affinity for it that obliges him to exhibit his final vehicle, the Terror, nowhere else, although he proclaims himself "master of the world." In Facing the Flag, the weapons inventor Thomas Roch has been imprisoned by the government in a North Carolina asylum. From San Diego, Mistress Branican sets out in search of her husband, lost at sea.
The sincerity of Verne's interest in the United States is demonstrated by the fact that he had already used this country as a setting for From the Earth to the Moon and The Blockade Runners before his books had been largely discovered through English-language translation. Indeed, before he was age 20, he had planned a novel entitled Jedediah Jamet (begun but never completed) that would take place partly during the American Revolution. Verne made his only journey to the United States in the spring of 1867, when he was all but unknown here, although his books were already best-sellers in France.
The highlight of his trip was a visit to Niagara Falls, the memory of which proved so durable that over two decades later when he laid pivotal episodes of subsequent novels there: the heroic Quebec separatist couple in Family Without a Name go over the cataract in a fiery ship, while Robur flies out of the Niagara into the air by transforming the Terror from a ship into an airplane. Verne recounted his journey to America in A Floating City, concentrating on the two-week voyage with only minor fictionalization. The last five chapters of the book are a largely factual account of his travels, with only incidental narrative added. Verne hoped to return someday, until finally advancing age and ill-health made such a trip impossible, and he never journeyed again to the new world.
Verne explained to a reporter, "Traveling was the pleasure of my life, and it was with great regret that, in 1886, I was forced to give it up.... The great regret that this causes me is chiefly that I shall never be able to see America again. I should so have liked to have gone to Chicago this year, but in the state of my health and with this ever-open wound it was quite impossible. I do so love America and the Americans. As you are writing for America be sure to tell them that if they love me -- as I know they do, for I receive thousands of letters every year from the States -- I return their affection with all my heart. Oh, if I could only go and see them all, it would be the great joy of my life!"
The Will of an Eccentric becomes, in a sense, Verne’s own wished-for trip around America. This novel of peregrinations around the country which epitomized the New World’s variety, wealth, and indeed, eccentricity, could not have been more appropriate in the wake of another Columbian centennial and the dawning of a new century as it would appear in print.
Verne is struck by American materialism, and it underlies The Will of an Eccentric. His mind was probably already acutely sensitive to this element through his own experience at the Paris bourse, and Verne demonstrates his insight into the stock trade in his portrayal of how Meade Augustus Hopkins manipulates speculative fever and mass opinion as “the humbug.” Similarly, speculation caused by a golden meteor is at the center of The Meteor Hunt. Sadly, The Will of an Eccentric, so vital to understand Verne’s oeuvre as a whole, particularly in providing contrast to his most famous novel and his portrayal of the United States, has been almost unknown here save to a few devotees who have been fortunate to own one of the rare and expensive British editions that had represented its only appearance in the English-speaking world. At last it has been published in this country, the first American edition, a weighty book, unedited, with all the dozens of original engravings and the printing all freshly set, together with a lengthy afterword by me [Verne scholar Brian Taves -- Editor] to form an elegant volume. It is available at
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-will-of-an-eccentric/5163133
or just go to lulu.com and search “verne eccentric”. It is a book that any connoisseur of vintage literature, and America’s past, will welcome under his or her Christmas tree.
Some additional notes from Norm Walcott, publisher for The Choptank Press:
The following scarce Verne titles are now available in replica or re-edited formats from The Choptank Press, operated since 1995 by Norman Wolcott, a North American Jules Verne Society (NAJVS) member. These Heritage Editions are quality paperbacks with color, heavy duty covers and are superior to most mass market books. Full descriptions and ordering are available at http://stores.lulu.com/choptank-press or nwolcott2@post.harvard.edu
The Southern Star; or the Diamond Field George Munro (1884), Seaside Library, (138 pp) replica edition with original colored wrappers. Enjoy one of the better translations in its original format. 6"x9" $20
North against South; A Tale of the American Civil War (424 pp) Sampson Low (1888), replica edition with 65 illustrations from the original edition. Available in two formats: 6x9" $40; 8½ x 11" (for better viewing of the illustrations) $46, First US publication.
Clovis Dardentor Sampson Low (1897), replica edition (337 pp) with 45 illustrations, original red covers, and a colored illustration on the reverse. One of Verne’s neglected comedic tales. 6x9" $45, First US publication.
Hector Servadac: Travels and Adventures Through the Solar System George Munro (1877, 82 pp) Enlarged replica version of the Seaside Library weekly #43. First US re-publication. The most literal translation with 2 illustrations 8½ x 11" $17.00
Hector Servadac: Travels and Adventures Through the Solar System George Munro (1887, 554 pp) This version of Hector Servadac is a mammoth work containing. . .
(I) An enlarged replica of the Seaside Library edition # 43 as published by George Munro, New York, 1877;
(II) A typeset version of the same in large readable type;
(III) A new translation of the last 10 chapters from the original French by Norman Wolcott and Christian Sanchez in the literal style of the remainder of the book;
(IV) 100 illustrations from the original publications enlarged to 8½"x11" format. $48
The Blockade Runners; Dual Language Edition Scribners (1873, 119 pp) First publication of a Verne book on Lulu Press in 1995. Re-edited text includes enlarged illustrations and French original as an appendix. First modern dual language Verne book. 8½ x 11" $11.00
Proceeds from sales go toward the preparation of future volumes. All Heritage Editions have a Creative Commons 3.0 license permitting reproduction for personal or non-profit use.
Posted by ds at November 22, 2009 01:00 PM
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