by Jules Verne
For the moment, we cannot think of returning to France.* There are not many means of transport between the north and south of Norway. I am therefore forced to wait for the steamship which makes the fortnightly run to North Cape.
So it is here, in the midst of the good people who saved us, that I am revising the tale of these adventures.* It is scrupulously accurate. Not a single fact has been omitted, not the slightest detail exaggerated. It is the faithful narration of an incredible expedition through an element inaccessible to man, although progress will open it up one day.
Will I be believed? I do not know, but it is not all that important. What I can proclaim now is my right to speak of the seas under which I covered 20,000 leagues in less than ten months; and to speak of that submarine journey around the world, which has revealed so many of the wonders of the Mediterranean and Red seas and of the Pacific, Indian, Atlantic, Arctic, and Antarctic oceans!
But what became of the Nautilus?* Did it resist the embrace of the Maelstrom? Is Captain Nemo still alive?* Is he continuing his terrifying reprisals under the ocean, or did he stop with his last massacre? Will the waves one day wash up the manuscript containing the story of his whole life?* Will I finally discover his name? Will the nationality of the sunken vessel tell us Captain Nemo’s own nationality?
I hope so. I also hope that his powerful vessel overcame the sea’s most terrifying deep and that the Nautilus survived where so many ships have perished!* If that is the case, if Captain Nemo does still inhabit his adopted oceanic homeland, may hatred die down in that wild heart! May the contemplation of so many wonders quench his desire for revenge! May the lawgiver disappear and the scientist continue his peaceful exploration of the seas! If his destiny is strange, it is also sublime. Do I not understand it myself? Have I not lived ten months of that extranatural existence?
So, to that question which the Book of Ecclesiastes posed six thousand years ago, ‘Hast thou walked in the search of the depth?’,* two men, amongst all men, now have the right to reply. Captain Nemo and I.*
Appendix 1
Inception
In a letter to Verne dated 25 July 1865 the writer George Sand suggested that he should write an under-sea novel. Verne may have written an outline in August 1866, but stopped work until 1868 to finish the Illustrated Geography of France and its Colonies.
The novel often changed title: Journey under the Waters, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Waters, Twenty-Five Thousand Leagues under the Waters, Twenty-Five Thousand Leagues under the Seas, and Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Oceans. The definitive title may have been Hetzel’s idea.
Two manuscript versions (‘MS1’ and ‘MS2’) are known to exist of Twenty Thousand Leagues, both written in 1868–9 and now kept in the French National Library, with an online version freely available.1 MS1 I (i.e. vol. 1, dating from the second quarter of 1868) corresponds to chapters 11 onwards of Part One, and MS1 II (first and second quarters of 1869) to Part Two. MS2 I (third quarter 1868), headed ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Oceans’, and MS2 II (third and fourth quarters of 1868) again correspond to the two parts of the book.
In MS1, chapters I 12 and 13 form a single unit; and 14–16, only two chapters. Some of the titles are different: ‘The Coalmines of Tenerife’ instead of the published ‘Underwater Coalmines’ (II 10), ‘An Attack’ for ‘A Massacre’ (II 21), and ‘Maelstrom’ for ‘Captain Nemo’s Last Words’ (II 22).
The second document, used to prepare the proofs, is more legible than the first, but contains, naturally, much less unpublished text. These vital documents, apparently in Verne’s hand, remain almost completely unknown. Scores of exegetes have pored over the intensive, sometimes bad-tempered, epistolary exchanges with the publisher about the closing chapters. But the manuscripts, which constitute the primary evidence of most of the changes, have scarcely been read since the 1860s: apart from my own publications, only one article, written forty years ago, has been published.2
It should be noted immediately that these earlier drafts of the novel are often classic Verne, sometimes preferable to the familiar version, so that one can regret many of the alterations — and suspect that they were introduced on Hetzel’s initiative. Indeed the publisher’s involvement is shown by the many partly-erased pencil marks and comments in the margins of MS2, usually beside changes in the text: some are even initialled ‘H’. On occasion Verne retraces the pencil amendments in ink, meaning that it is Hetzel’s contribution which is published.3
In a few pages, these precious documents cannot be explored in any great detail. The notes at the end of the volume cite some of the important variants in the successive versions of the book. Here, a few significant facets and themes will be studied, looking specifically at how Twenty Thousand Leagues could have been — was — different from the published version.
In both manuscripts, we see a different Nemo, more independent and more intransigent. In addition to being an engineer, naturalist, writer, and freedom-fighter, ‘Juan Nemo’ — perhaps an allusion to his Hispanic pride or grandiloquence or his anti-Don Juan lifestyle — is a composer. The music he prefers to ‘all the ancient and modern’ is his own: a striking image of a solipsistic artist short-circuited by his isolation. The incongruous Christian element in the published text is generally absent, including Nemo’s cry of ‘God almighty!’ When scores of Papuans invade his ship, the captain simply electrocutes them, without remorse.
The sentence uttered every day by the crew is at this stage ‘Nautron restoll loni virch’, even harder to decrypt. The location of Nemo’s home port, which Verne takes pains to hide, is given away as near ‘Tenerife’. There is an allusion to Walter Scott; and a debt to Alexandre Dumas fils, Verne’s friend, mentor, and collaborator, is also acknowledged.
MS2 contains a different agreement between Nemo and Aronnax concerning life on board: it has three conditions rather than one and makes the passengers ‘prisoners’ rather than ‘guests’, with the doctor formally undertaking never to escape. But in a final dialogue, Aronnax throws in Nemo’s face his moral right to leave, who throws back: well, go then!
Whereas in the closing words of the published work Aronnax suggests that the captain should change his ways (‘may hatred die down in that wild heart’, etc.), in the first manuscript he is resoundingly praised as ‘impregnable’ and as ‘the man of the waters, in his final homeland. The free man!’
In the Margin
As in Verne’s other drafts, the margin of MS1 contains a treasure trove of information about the inception of the novel and the author’s private, even intimate life, as well as Hetzel’s and Verne’s doodles and drawings.
Beside the main text appears an intriguing note: ‘photographic prints so as to see using a magnifying lens. See savages Robinson’ (I 22 fo. 56).4 Although examining photographs with a magnifying glass could in theory be used to identify the ships harassing Nemo, in practice the idea does not appear in any version of Twenty Thousand Leagues. Nevertheless, scrutinizing a print in search of clues will be crucial in The Mysterious Island (1874) — making this apparently the first reference to the manuscript which will evolve into that novel.
Also in the margin of MS1, there appears a list of chapters, written in June or July 1868, a unique summary amongst the well-known Extraordinary Voyages. It begins with the title of a chapter already written, before setting out half of the chapters still to be composed:
198 Torres Str. | 19 A Few Days on Land | 20 Universal Thunder | 21 The Indian Ocean | 22 A Pearl Worth 10 million | 23 Œgri [sic] Somnia | 24 The Coral World || Volume 2 | 1 The Red Sea | 2 Santorini | 3 Lighthouse | 4 Mediterranean (I 19 fo. 43).5
The book does not contain a description of a ‘lighthouse’ in the Mediterranean — is this perhaps that of Alexandria, the last of the Seven Wonders of the World, whose underwater remains were discovered in the eighteenth century? Moreover, given that ‘4 Mediterranean’ will become ‘7 | The Mediterranean in 2448 Hours’ (MS1 II 7 fo. 27)
, it is possible that Verne, while aiming for a second volume of twenty-four chapters, planned to write about four more chapters set in European waters than were actually published.
The order is also surprising. In this summary, chapter ‘22 A Pearl Worth 10 million’, set off the coast of Ceylon, is placed before ‘24 The Coral World’, whereas in the manuscript text itself (II 3 fo. 8) and in the published book, it will be placed three chapters after ‘The Coral Cemetery’6 (MS1 I 22 fo. 57). In other words, chapters ‘23 Œgri Somnia’ and ‘24 The Coral World’ were planned at this early stage to take place between Ceylon and the Red Sea — waters that were partly French, and formed a cul-de-sac in 1868–9, just before the Suez Canal was opened. These two chapters are largely devoid of geographical clues — facilitating the transfer — but in the following drafts they will take place much further east, somewhere between Ceylon and Australia. They relate, crucially, the surreptitious drugging of Aronnax and the violent episode that leads to the death of a crew member and his underwater burial beneath the coral. The change in the order of episodes may have come in sum from a wish to locate these mysterious events in waters dominated by the British.
The draft manuscript also has about fifteen brief annotations in the margin, which reveal unsuspected sources for the novel — and the care with which it was documented. For example, opposite a description of a seabed of flowers, as if ‘strewn with diamonds, emeralds, and other gems. | We were struck with admiration, with astonishment’ (I 24 fo. 60), the margin reads: ‘Grat. 49, 51’. There follow three blank lines, which in the second manuscript will be filled with a development of the feelings of admiration and astonishment. It can be easily checked that such references, opposite passages describing strong emotions, are citing De la physionomie et des mouvements d’expression (Hetzel, 1865), by physiognomist Louis-Pierre Gratiolet: his page 49 describes the physiological reactions to beauty, page 51, those produced by astonishment.
Other sources explicitly indicated in MS1 are the Revue géographique and the Bulletin of the French Geographical Society. Another series of references consists of a single character, invariably ‘2’, ‘R.’, or ‘Z’, followed by two or three digits. For example, the Gulf of Aden is subject to a ‘current of 82 in May. Dict. 2 406’, information not used in later drafts.7 A search shows that this entry refers to Dictionnaire français illustré et encyclopédie universelle (1847), edited by Dupiney de Vorepierre and Jean-François-Marie de Marcoux; and that in all such cases the page references and information are scrupulously accurate. Again, ‘R. 82’, opposite a passage about American clams, refers to Le Fond de la mer (The Bottom of the Sea), by Léon Renard (Hetzel, 1868).8 Similarly, the notes in the margin beginning with ‘Z.’ refer, as can easily be verified, to Le Monde sous-marin (The Submarine World — Hetzel, September 1868), by Frédéric Zurcher and Élie Margollé.9
Climax
In the published book we have little information about the submarine’s final route towards the Arctic, a frustrating gap since Verne was deeply attached to the waters in question. He visited the British Isles at least fourteen times and sailed along the north coast of France at every opportunity. Having gone round the world, the writer heads for the English Channel, but creates a geographical vacuum at the very spot where he is composing his masterpiece.
Fortunately both manuscripts conserve passages that disappeared before publication, of significance because they constitute the only descriptions of France in Verne’s first thirty novels. In one, Nemo and Aronnax explore the Channel floor; in another, the narrator conjures up medieval visions from the dark cliffs near Le Havre. In a delightful seascape, finally, the Nautilus communes with a happy dawn of sunny tranquillity somewhere near Belgium.10 While the pace of the chapter has to be maintained, we can still regret this fine vision of a peaceful European sea:
The sky was white, the air calm. Not a breath of wind. On the sea, slight regular ripples created intersecting diamond shapes. The sun picked them out in sparkling points. The water, like liquid emerald, heaved in broad billows that the Nautilus did not even feel. In the quivering haze, a few distant fishing boats and two or three luggers with flaccid sails faded indistinctly away. The smoke from a steamer traced a motionless cloud on the backdrop of the sky (II 22).
In the first manuscript, Nemo ardently supports the ship Le Vengeur du peuple (The Avenger of the People), a core element of the ‘Republican legend’, now reposing in a ‘grand heroic tomb’ (MS1 II 21 fo. 80). Such features are evidently a defence of the downtrodden and the values of the French Revolution. However, they disappeared in the reworking of the novel under the direction of Hetzel, who did not allow Verne to touch on even slightly controversial matters.
In MS2, before Nemo’s final counter-attack, his exchange with Aronnax is franker and less courteous. The captain gives a self-justification which is similar but not identical to the published version: ‘Do you know who you are imploring? A man expelled from his country, tyrannically exiled, far from his wife, far from his children, whom the suffering killed . . . For the last time, keep quiet!’11
Then, after the submarine has passed through the ship, a horror-stricken but fascinated Aronnax observes the underwater death-throes. The manuscript again contains more melodrama: ‘There, a poor little cabin boy, as if enchained in the pale flame, twisted in a last convulsion’. Whereas the book version refers to Nemo’s ‘terrible reprisal’, both manuscripts call it his ‘bloody execution’.
The antepenultimate chapter’s closing words are also different, with aggression the dominant emotion:
. . . his eye shining, fixed to one side, his teeth uncovered under his raised lip, his body stiff, his fingers clenched, his head hunched in his shoulders. A veritable statue of hatred, such as he had already appeared to my eyes in the seas of India.12
In the correspondence, Verne promises that he will delete: ‘the horror that Nemo inspires in Aronnax at the end, and remove that appearance of hatred which Nemo has on seeing the ship being sunk, and will not even make him assist at this sinking’ [29? April 1869]. In other words, his concession merely involves the epiphenomena of what the doctor observes and feels about Nemo, rather than the captain’s actions themselves. Nor does he entirely honour his undertaking, for, although Aronnax is not present at the attack and the cabin boy’s convulsions are sacrificed, the good doctor does devour every gruesome detail of the ship’s descent.
Much of the published closing battle seems in fact to have been Verne’s fourth attempt to depict a menacing warship.
The first volume of the first manuscript contains an unknown scene in the Torres Strait, the second half of which is highly significant. Aronnax, Ned, and Conseil distinguish a ‘three-master’ in the distance, not displaying any flag, but which they recognize. Nemo is beside himself with rage:
For half an hour more we remained watching in silence. Soon the ship appeared in full view and was easy to recognize as armour-plated, probably of the French Solférino type. But as for its nationality, we could not judge at this distance, for no flag fluttered at its gaff; but a thin pennant, whose colours we could not distinguish, hung down from the truck of its mainmast.
‘And you cannot identify, Ned, whether it is British, Russian, French, Italian, or American’ [sic]
‘No, Dr Oyonnax, the colours of its pennant blend in with the sun’s rays, so I can’t recognize anything.’
But as for him, Captain Nemo seemed to have recognized the ship; for a sort of muffled cry sprang from his breast; his foot struck the metal of the platform, and his right arm made a violent gesture, like a threat.
I looked at Nemo. He was no longer the same man; he was transformed. I would not have recognized him (I 21 fo. 56).
If part of this scene seems familiar, it is because the end of the last paragraph will be reused by Verne, first of all in the climax of the draft manuscript, where Nemo again tangles with a warship (perhaps the same as in the Torres Strait?). Although the text is slightly c
hanged, the key words are retained, especially: ‘a great warship with a ram, of the Solférino type, an armour-plated double-decker’ (MS1 II 21 fo. 78). Then, in the second volume of the second manuscript, Verne again writes the same description of the vessel: ‘a great warship, with a ram, an armour-plated double-decker of the Solférino type’ (MS2 II 21 fo. 119). Even in the published book, the wording survives, except for the term ‘three-master’ and the identification of the class: ‘a great warship with a ram: an armour-plated double-decker’ (II 21).
The terminology common to the three descriptions thus includes ‘of the Solférino type’. Not only was this class indeed constructed in France, but the only vessels built — the Magenta and the Solférino — also constituted the capital ships of the French Imperial Navy.
Although the novelist maintains in his letters that any identification has been eliminated, the class of this name was instantly recognizable due to its almost rectangular shape. In any case, the Magenta and Solférino were the only ships in the world to have two rows of guns on two decks, three mainmasts, armour-plating, and a ram. In short, and despite Aronnax’s question,13 such a characterization could only be applied to two vessels worldwide, both of French construction and nationality.
If the ship is French, what nationality would Nemo be? As we saw in the Introduction, one possibility is that the captain shares the same nationality, even if, in the versions of the novel revised by the publisher, Verne feels obliged to remove most of the signs of a Gallic origin. Captain Nemo, exiled from his homeland, would then be viscerally opposed to the regime in place since 1848, that of Napoleon III.
