“The world has grown smaller, since a man can now go round it ten times more quickly
than a hundred years ago” (12-13).
Likely written on Jules Verne’s yacht the Saint Michel at some point during the rise of the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), in which Verne joined the Le Crotoy domestic guard and relocated his family to Amiens, upon publication Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours became a smash-hit bestseller for Verne. It was first serialized in Le Temps magazine from November through December 1872, dates which in fact match the timeline of events in the novel, prior to its publication as a novel in 1873. At the time of writing, a distraught Jules Verne was facing personal debts, his father had recently died, and he had witnessed a public execution (an all-too common event in those days) which had utterly disturbed him. But Verne nevertheless continued to be inspired by the extraordinary industrial technological developments in his lifetime which made the possibility of circumnavigation more than just a pipe dream. In particular, there was the completion of the transcontinental railroad in the United States (1869), the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), and the connection of the Indian railways (1870). Previously, global travel was reserved for only the riskiest of adventurers, but now it was a real middle-class possibility.
Around The World In Eighty Days is another splendid work of speculative fiction by Jules Verne. It follows the pattern of his very best novels in that chaotically unfolds like a carnival of delights, with a comically fast-paced narrative saturated with seemingly limitless knowledge of geography, anthropology, and scientific research. As with most of Verne’s novels, Around The World In Eighty Days features an indefatigable, eccentric, independently wealthy Victorian gentleman, in this case, an Englishman named Phileas Fogg: “one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said he resembled Byron –at least that his head was Byronic; but he was a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without growing old… Certainly an Englishman, it was doubtful whether Phileas Fogg was a Londoner” (1).
The year is 1872. Phileas Fogg lives at No. 7 Saville Row, Burlington Gardens (which is, as Verne writes, the house where Irish-born playwright and MP Richard Brinsley Sheridan died in 1814, even though in reality Sheridan lived at number 14 and he died in 1816, not 1814). At any rate, Phileas Fogg is said to be about forty-years-old, with no wife or children (“which may happen to the most honest people”), and he lives his life according to a rigid daily schedule of activities, almost akin to a machine. He takes his regular meals at the Reform Club at the same time every day –“If to live in this style is to be eccentric, it must be confessed that there is something good in eccentricity” (3).
On this particular day October 2, 1872, he dismissed his valet boy James Foester for apparently delivering shaving water at eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit instead of eighty-six, and has now hired a thirty-year-old Frenchman named Jean Passepartout (whose surname was given to him because he has a natural aptness for moving from one business to another). Passepartout previously worked a panoply of odd jobs –as an itinerant singer, a circus-rider, a professor of gymnastics, a sergeant fireman in Paris, an English valet, and now he is looking for a most tranquil life (little does he know what is in store!)
Later that day, during a game of cards at the Reform Club, Phileas Fogg and several gentlemen discuss recent news about a bank robber who made off with fifty-five thousand pounds from the Bank of England and mysteriously escaped, leading to a discussion of how easy it is to travel around the world in this day and age. Soon, a wager is struck among several gentlemen (Stuart, Fallentin, Sullivan, Flanagan, and Ralph) who collectively bet twenty thousand pounds that Fogg cannot complete an eighty-day trip around the world, from October 2nd to December 21st. Surprisingly undaunted by this challenge, Fogg leaps into action, accepting the bet and pledging to use his passport as evidence of his travels, but his friends simply agree to trust his word as a gentleman of honor. Very quickly, the voyage becomes a news media spectacle.
“I will bet twenty thousand pounds against anyone who wishes that I will make the tour of the world in eighty days or less; in nineteen hundred and twenty hours, or a hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred minutes. Do you accept?” (16).
But as Fogg quickly departs with his skeptical valet Jean Passepartout (who has accidentally left his gas-burner on at home), an investigator named Detective Fix decides to follow them, believing Fogg may actually be the missing bank robber. The duo embarks, first taking a rail to Dover and onward to Calais, then they venture from Paris to Turin, and aboard the steamer Mongolia to Suez from Brindisi to Bombay, then onward to Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong, Yokohama, San Francisco, New York, and hopefully back to London –all within eighty days.
Some of the most exotic travelogue moments in this book occur when they arrive in India, where the British crown still maintains “a real and despotic dominion.” Consider the following passage:
“The railway, on leaving Benares, passed for a while along the valley of the Ganges. Through the windows of their carriage the travellers had glimpses of the diversified landscape of Behar, with its mountains clothed in verdure, its fields of barley, wheat, and corn, its jungles peopled with green alligators, its neat villages, and its still thickly-leaved forests. Elephants were bathing in the waters of the sacred river, and groups of Indians, despite the advanced season and chilly air, were performing solemnly their pious ablutions. These were fervent Brahmins, the bitterest foes of Buddhism, their deities being Vishnu, the solar god, Shiva, the divine impersonation of natural forces, and Brahma, the supreme ruler of priests and legislators. What would these divinities think of India, anglicized as it is to-day, with steamers whistling and scudding along the Ganges, frightening the gulls which float upon its surface, the turtles swarming along its banks, and the faithful dwelling upon its borders?” (84).
Even though the papers in England had said that the rail across India was laid between Bombay and Calcutta, the travelers are shocked to find that fifty miles of rail from Kholby to Allahabad has yet to be completed. Here, they are forced to procure an elephant and a Parsee guide (as well as a friendly expert on the Indian countryside named Sir Francis Cromarty) who all lead them through the jungle until they are forced to quickly hide in the trees when a group of Brahmins praising the goddess Kali approaches them through the brush, brandishing a drugged female human sacrifice, or “suttee,” who will be burned alive beside her rajah husband, per the religious custom. With twelve hours to spare, Fogg and Passepartout decide to save the woman, and suddenly in this moment, those of us reading along begin to sympathize with Phileas Fogg; he becomes an admirable character who is accomplishing something more than just a mere vanity trip:
“As for Passepartout, he was ready for anything that might be proposed. His master’s idea charmed him; he perceived a heart, a soul, under that icy exterior. He began to love Phileas Fogg” (71).
When Passepartout dramatically leaps onto the woman’s funeral pyre in a nearby pagoda, disguised as the woman’s rajah husband, all the religious attendees bow in fearful prostration which allows Passepartout to rescue her from certain death and she decides to join the men in their escape. They soon learn that she is a wealthy merchant’s daughter named Aouda and was educated in a European manner. However, when they arrive in Calcutta, Phileas Fogg is brought to trial over his violation of Indian religious custom, but instead of denying the accusations, he simply pays his bail and the travelers board the The Rangoon, a boat headed for Singapore and Hong Kong –all the while, Detective Fix is hot on their trail.
In Hong Kong, they plan to catch a steamer called The Carnatic, but Fogg accidentally misses its departure. Meanwhile, Passepartout disappears after drinking in an opium den where he was confronted by Detective Fix over his master’s robbery. Desperate to detain Fogg, Detective Fix drugs Passepartout with opium and abandons him. Passepartout later emerges in a daze on the deck of The Carnatic where his friends are nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Fogg and Aouda have missed The Carnatic so they commandeer a vessel called The Tankadere and sail onward to Yokohama from Hong Kong and Shanghai over tempestuous seas. In Japan, they are finally reunited with Passepartout who, after spending time in a Japanese teahouse, has joined the Honourable William Batulcar’s traveling circus troupe. At any rate, the three travelers (joined by Detective Fix) board the paddle-wheel steamer General Grant which is bound for San Francisco. Previously, Aouda decided not to stay behind in Hong Kong because she claims to have a relative in Holland.
After a long journey at sea, they finally arrive in San Francisco and Passepartout is astounded by what he sees:
“Passepartout was amazed by all he saw. San Francisco was no longer the legendary city of 1849 –a city of banditti, assassins, and incendiaries, who had flocked hither in crowds in pursuit of plunder; a paradise of outlaws, where they gambled with gold-dust, a revolver in one hand and a bowie-knife in the other: it was now a great commercial emporium… The lofty tower of its City Hall overlooked the whole panorama of the streets and avenues, which cut each other at right-angles, and in the midst of which appeared pleasant, verdant squares, while beyond appeared the Chinese quarter, seemingly imported from the Celestial Empire in a toy-box. Sombreros and red shirts and plumed Indians were rarely to be seen; but there were silk hats and black coats everywhere worn by a multitude of nervously active, gentlemanly-looking men. Some of the streets –especially Montgomery Street, which is to San Francisco what Regent Street is to London, the Boulevard des Italiens to Paris, and Broadway to New York –were lined with splendid and spacious stores, which exposed in their windows the products of the entire world” (158).
Following a raucous political rally, the travelers board a rollicking transcontinental train from Oakland to Sacramento which carries them over the Sierra Nevada, into the state of Nevada where they pass buffalo herds that bring the train to a stop on the tracks, and eventually into Utah (the land of the Mormons, which are described as perhaps equally exotic as the Brahmins in India), and then over the Rocky Mountains and through the Wyoming and Colorado territories and onward to Omaha, Nebraska, wherein Fogg very nearly confronts another passenger in a duel, but the face-off is interrupted by a surprise attack by a band of Sioux Indians. Passepartout briefly disappears again to fight off the Indians but he is rescued by Fogg. They all board a sledge (or “wind sledge”) which takes them from Omaha to Fort Kearney, past Chicago, Pittsburgh, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, until, at last, they arrive on the Hudson –but tragically they have just missed The China, a boat which is bound across the Atlantic to Liverpool. Instead, they board another nearby boat called The Henrietta when Fogg offers two thousand pounds apiece for a trip back to Europe. After they embark, Fogg institutes a mutiny among the sailors against Captain Speedy such that Fogg redirects the ship not to Bordeaux but Liverpool, though it actually makes landing in Ireland, and the travelers then race to Dublin and onward to Liverpool and London.
When they arrive, Fogg is immediately arrested by Detective Fix, who still believes Fogg is the bank robber. With time running out and Fogg trapped in prison, all hope seems lost for winning the bet, but just then Detective Fix suddenly releases Fogg when he learns that the true culprit he has been seeking has actually been arrested three days prior in Edinburgh, a man named James Strand.
“Having made the tour of the world, he was behind-hand five minutes. He had lost the wager!” (228).
Quickly, Fogg hires a special train to London, and after a timing confusion on his part (concerning the international date line), Phileas Fogg returns to face his fellow gentlemen from the club once more, and having won the wager, he has spent nearly nineteen thousand pounds on the voyage (almost half his fortune), only to now gain it all back again. The voyage is described as a resounding success.
“At the fifty-seventh second the door of the saloon opened; and the pendulum had not beat the sixtieth second when Phileas Fogg appeared, followed by an excited crowd who had forced their way through the club doors, and in his calm voice, said, ‘Here I am, gentlemen!’” (238).
“Phileas Fogg had accomplished the journey round the world in eighty days! Phileas Fogg had won his wager of twenty thousand pounds!” (242).
In the end, Phileas Fogg marries Aouda, and the novel ends on an appropriately comical note:
“Phileas had won his wager, and had made his journey around the world in eighty days. To do this he had employed every means of conveyance –steamers, railways, carriages, yachts, trading-vessels, sledges, elephants. The eccentric gentleman had throughout displayed all his marvellous qualities of coolness and exactitude. But what then? What had he really gained by all this trouble? What had he brought back from this long and weary journey? Nothing say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as it may appear, made him the happiest of men! Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?” (243-244).
Contrary to popular mythology, there is no hot air balloon in Around The World In Eighty Days! I was surprised to find that none of the characters fly around the world in a balloon in the novel (although the idea is very briefly mentioned in Chapter 32 when the travelers try to locate a mode of transportation across the Atlantic, and Passepartout muses –“Still, some means must be found to cross the Atlantic on a boat, unless by balloon –which would have been venturesome, besides not being capable of being put in practice” (214). But there is no further pursuit of travel by balloon and Fogg simply buys his way aboard The Henrietta at this point instead. So where did this popular misconception come from? Why does every copy of Around The World In Eighty Days seemingly feature a hot air balloon in its cover artwork? Perhaps it originated with Jules Verne’s earlier classic Five Weeks in a Balloon (1863), the first book in his series dubbed “Voyages Extraordinaires” which was wildly successful and afforded him a measure of financial independence, allowing him to leave his job as a stockbroker. Or it my have even emerged more recently with the award-winning 1956 film adaptation starring David Niven, Cantinflas, and Shirley MacLaine. The film deviates significantly from the novel but it does feature a notable sequence with the characters flying aboard a balloon. Regardless of these misconceptions, Around The World In Eighty Days has left an indelible cultural impact. For example, upon its initial publication, many readers assumed the serialized novel was a true story, and people have since attempted to set the world record for circumnavigation, some of whom were inspired by Verne’s novel. In November 1889, for example, Nellie Bly set out to beat Phileas Fogg’s eighty-day record (which she soon accomplished, sharing her account in Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World before publishing a bestselling book Around The World in Seventy-Two Days). And today, the Jules Verne Trophy is still awarded annually to the fastest circumnavigation of the world by yacht.
Jules Verne apparently had many sources of inspiration for Around The World In Eighty Days, he later confessed to having “a number of scientific odds and ends” bouncing around in his head. He had read an article in Siècle many years earlier which claimed a man could travel around the world in eighty days. And some time later, in response to an audience member question at a lecture he delivered in April 1873, Verne described his inspiration for the change of day that occurs in the story as coming from an 1872 article in Nature magazine as well as Edgar Allen Poe’s 1841 short story “Three Sundays in a Week.” However, earlier sources may have included Italian traveler Giovanni Francesco Gemelli Careri’s 1699 book entitled “Voyage Around the World,” as well as various early publications by railroad companies about the possibility of traveling around the world via steam train, or a series of letters published by American William Perry Fogg (note the similar last name to Phileas Fogg) in The Cleveland Leader newspaper about his trip around the world, or Englishman Thomas Cook’s own 1972-organized tourist trip around the world (the first of its kind) which may have been the initial article Verne read in a Paris café, among various other travelogues. Around The World In Eighty Days was made into a highly successful stage production in his lifetime, running for some fifty years. It justifiably became a major financial boon for the “father of science fiction.”
Verne, Jules. Around The World In Eighty Days (1873). Seawolf Press, Orinda, CA, 2018 (based on the original 1873 illustrated editions). Translated by Geo M. Towle.
Thank you for sharing the additional literary/historical/geographical facts. I have read this story three different times w/ my kids over a decade, and I didn’t know these things about the book or Verne. And the trivia about the hot air balloon…I guess I never thought of that either!!
Such a fun and adventurous read!!