The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (30 page)

Despite the success and
popularity of his books Verne had no time to pause. Over the next two years he
strove to meet his contractual obligation of three books a year, a demanding
schedule that was revised, in 1866, to two books a year. After completing the
three-decker adventure novel
Les Enfants du Capitaine Grant
(1865-67),
also known as
In Search of the Castaways
or
A Voyage Round the
World,
Verne felt he had earned a rest. During March and April 1867 he and
his brother Paul visited the United States. He only had time to spend a week in
America, travelling from New York to the Niagara Falls via Albany and Buffalo.
He was probably surprised to find that his work was known in America. His first
official American book publication was
Five Weeks in a Balloon,
which
did not appear until 1869, but his work was being pirated in magazines and
newspapers. His early story “A Voyage in a Balloon” had appeared in
Sartain’s
Union Magazine
as early as May 1852 and
From the Earth to the Moon
was
being serialized at that moment in the
New York Weekly Magazine. F.
Gwynplaine
MacIntyre has taken Verne’s visit to New York as the focus for the following
story, which is based upon authentic period records.

The crossing was fatal.
The first day out from Liverpool, the crew were hoisting the huge starboard
anchor when a capstan pin snapped, throwing the anchor’s full 80-ton weight
upon twelve sailors. One man was killed instantly, and four deckhands were
injured. On this westward crossing, the six-masted steam liner
Great Eastern
carried one hundred and twenty-three passengers bound for New York. Captain
Anderson personally asked the first-class passengers to offer a minute’s
silence for the dead seaman as his corpse was consigned to the waves.

Among the mourners on
the afterdeck were two Frenchmen: brothers, sharing a first-class stateroom;
the older brother’s publisher having paid 1,300 francs for their passage. The
sailor’s shrouded corpse was reverently carried to the rail, with no sound
except the creak of the rigging overhead. just before the dead mariner
disembarked for his last journey, the older of the two Frenchmen thought he saw
a movement within the taut canvas shroud. The dead sailor’s hand beckoned to
the passenger, and the dead sailor’s bearded face whispered:

“Monsieur Verne, in your
boyhood you ran off to sea. My fate might well have been your own, if your
voyage had taken a different heading?’

Then the shrouded form
went overboard, as the ship’s bandmaster piped a dirge. The passenger
shuddered, and banished the thought of that dead face. The imagined voice
perhaps had been the screech of the gulls overhead, or the breath of his own
conscience.

The crossing took eleven
days . . . and the
Great Eastern
was scheduled to begin her return
voyage precisely one week from arrival. Thus, when the world’s mightiest
steamship reached New York City’s harbour on the ninth of April, 1867, Jules
Verne and his brother Paul had only seven days and nights in which to
experience all they hoped to encounter of New York and Canada.

As the ship approached
the Bethune Street Pier of Manhattan, Jules Verne looked across the shore to
the city of Brooklyn, and he was astonished to see an immense wooden cylinder,
rising twenty-one metres above the ocean’s waves. “I marvel at such American
wonders,” he said to his younger brother, pointing over the ship’s rail. “What
is that tower, rising out of the sea?”

“There is no tower in
the sea,” said Paul Verne to his brother. “Jules, are you imagining another
novel?”

“Behold the future,
monsieur,”
whispered a voice at Jules Verne’s ear,
speaking French in an arcane accent.
“That cylinder is the caisson at Peck
Slip, for the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge. But it will not arrive until
May 1870, more than three years downstream of your present moment.”

As this whisper fell
silent, the tower vanished. In the excitement of his arrival in this new world,
Verne chastised himself for letting his imagination take the helm of his faculties.
There were enough
genuine
marvels on this American continent to propel a
score of novels.

“At least we have been
made welcome,” said Jules to Paul, as the brothers cleared the Customs station
at quayside, summoning porters for assistance with their steamer trunks. “See,
Paul? This time, I do not imagine what I behold. The streets and buildings of
Manhattan are draped with buntings in homage to our French
tricoleur.
Do
not tell me that this is the custom for America’s streets.”

Indeed, the lamp-posts
and rooftops of Manhattan were garlanded with draperies striped in patterns of
red, white and blue. Paul Verne — a former naval officer, now a stockbroker,
and in consequence more practical than his brother — seemed sceptical. “It does
indeed seem out of the common,
frère
Jules. Yet I scarce believe that
these decorations are in honour of France . . .”

An officer of the
English steamship, overhearing these words and conversant in French, touched
his visor and explained:
“Messieurs
Verne, today is April ninth. By good
fortune, we have arrived in New York on the very day when these Yanks are
celebrating the second anniversary of the end to their long Civil War. You will
find the Yankees more jubilant than usual, today at least.”

“A pity that we have
only one week in which to taste their hospitality,” said Paul Verne as his
brother summoned a cabriolet.

“As we have only one day
and one night in New York City before journeying north to the mighty Niagara,”
Jules Verne decreed, “let us billet ourselves in the finest hotel available.”

This proved to be at the
northwest corner of the crossroads where 23rd Street intersected Broadway: the
magnificent Fifth Avenue Hotel, a six-storey edifice of white marble. As the
Verne brothers strode between the six Corinthian pillars at the hotel’s
entrance, Paul remarked: “Let us take lodgings on the ground floor, so as to
avoid any stairs.”

His brother waved
airily. “I am a collector of wonders! Let us have berths on the topmost flight,
to obtain the best view of this magnificent city!”

Inside the hotel, an
astonishment awaited . . . for it was possible for both travellers to achieve
their desires in tandem: a view from a height with an absence of stairs. To
their delight, the Verne brothers discovered that the Fifth Avenue Hotel
contained the first and only passenger-lift in New York City. As the brothers
stepped into the brass-gated cage, an attendant in mauve livery touched his cap
and pressed a lever . . . and rapidly they ascended.

While Paul Verne
marvelled at the counterweights enabling the brass cage to rise through the
building, Jules Verne expressed astonishment at the elevator’s ingenious
gas-fitting. A long flexible tube of
caoutchouc
India rubber connected
the elevator’s twin gas-lamps to a pipeline in the hotel’s cellar, where a
spool on a revolving spindle paid out a reel of tubing as the elevator
ascended, then shortened it again as the elevator came downwards . . . so that
the interior of the passenger-lift was always lighted by a steady flow of
coal-gas. The attendant explained that the elevator was steam-powered, and that
the hotel’s management was pleased to advertise it as “the vertical railway”.

The Verne brothers’
suite in the hotel’s topmost storey faced east, on to Broadway. While Paul
admired the bedroom’s marble fireplace, Jules stepped on to the balcony and was
gratified to behold a magnificent view of Madison Square Park directly across
and below. Slightly north of the hotel — in the small island of asphalt where
Fifth Avenue met Broadway — was an obelisk in the Egyptian fashion, more than
fifty feet tall. At the foot of the spire appeared to be a tomb. Jules Verne
found himself wondering who might be entombed there, and at once came a voice
at his ear:

“Brigadier-General
William Jenkins Worth, late of the Mexican war. At your service,
Mr
Verne. I died of cholera in Texas in 1849, but the good
citizens of my native New York reinterred me here in ‘55, and now you behold my
. . .”

“Are you well, brother
Jules?” asked Paul Verne. Jules stared at his brother, then gazed once more at
the whispering obelisk. The spire was silent now.

The two voyagers put on
fresh clothes and prepared for their evening’s amusement. As Jules Verne was
clean-shaven, his grooming took scarcely a moment. Paul Verne, however, was the
owner of a dark brown spade beard, full moustaches, and deep side-whiskers
grown well past his chin, so there was much delay in the brushing of his facial
topiary. “While you are pruning your hedgerows, I will descend in that
delightful machine once again,” Jules Verne proposed to his younger brother. “Perhaps
I can reserve a
table d’hôte
for us both.”

The downward journey in
the hotel’s elevator was nearly as pleasurable as the ascent. The attendant
opened the brass gate upon reaching the lobby, and Jules Verne stepped forth .
. . into the sudden thundering path of a Roman chariot, pulled by four
galloping black steeds with roached manes. Verne leapt out of the way,
glimpsing the contorted face and plumed bronze helmet of the charioteer as the
steeds rumbled forth.

As the four black
stallions galloped past him, Verne saw the leftmost horse turn to confront him.
Now he heard the beast whisper:
“Your pardon, Monsieur Verne. Eight years
yesterwards, where the Fifth Avenue Hotel now stands, this selfsame spot
was
the site of Franconi’s Hippodrome, where chariot races
were . . .”
The stallion’s voice broke off
in midsentence as black steeds and bronzed charioteer vanished into the white
marble balustrades of the lobby’s staircase.

“Are you ill, brother?”
A familiar voice, a firm hand on his arm. Regaining his balance, Jules looked
into the hazel eyes of his slightly shorter brother. The lobby of the Fifth
Avenue Hotel showed no glance of chariots. Nearby, two businessmen were calmly
discussing whether the United States Congress proposed to intervene in Mexico
on behalf of Emperor Maximilian.

“I am . . . disoriented,
Paul.” The novelist smiled as a thought struck him. “You know, while we two are
Frenchmen abroad in New York, we naturally say that our hearts are still in
Paris. There are six hours’ difference between Broadway and my little house in
Le Crotoy, yes? That explains why I seem to be in two moments at once. I have
fallen between the clocks.”

“Then a good meal is
called for, and a self-respecting wine,” said faithful Paul, gently guiding his
brother towards the nearby sounds of tinkling wineglasses and violin music. “And
then, as we have only one night to spend in New York City, let us take our
evening’s entertainment in whatever place offers the greatest number of wonders
in the smallest possible space.”

BARNUM & VAN AMBURGH’S
MUSEUM & MENAGERIE
proclaimed the lettering on the
roof of the three-storey clapboard building at 539 Broadway between Spring and
Prince Streets.

The admission price was
reasonable: only thirty centimes, or
cents
as these Americans called them. Jules Verne and his brother
entered, and found themselves among astonishments. From the antechamber, a
profusion of finger-posts pointed down a series of corridors: “COSMORAMAS”, “GRAND
AQUARIA”, “THE LEARNED SEA-LION”. “THIS WAY TO THE HAPPY FAMILY”. To avoid the
surging crowd, the Verne brothers stepped into a small vestibule to one side,
from which Jules could see an adjoining salon, filled with a double row of
glass exhibition cases and waxworks. Some of the gawking customers outside the
glass cases seemed more grotesque to him than anything within the cases.

“Which of these miracles
shall we behold first?” Jules asked his brother. Before Paul could reply, a
distinguished figure strode towards them: a man in a tailcoat with a gold chain
across his waistcoat. The newcomer had distinctly Levantine features — a long
curly beard, a hooked nose, thick eyebrows — and Paul Verne was distressed to
see his older brother cringe at this man’s arrival.

“Which of you is Jules
Verne?” asked the bearded man, glancing at Paul and then settling on his
brother. “Ah,
monsieur!
I welcome you!” He extended his hand. “The
concierge of the Fifth Avenue sent word of your visit. As proprietor of this
museum, I. . . I. . . is something wrong?”

Verne had recoiled
visibly from the Levantine’s attempt to shake his hand. “You are . . . are you
Mister Barnum?” Jules Verne asked.

Directly behind the
bearded stranger, Jules Verne could see a crowd of spectators gaping at a
life-sized waxwork of the famous Siamese brothers. Suddenly these people and
the waxwork vanished. In their place stood a weird effigy: the likeness of a
naked man, ten feet tall, carved in what appeared to be black obsidian, with
arms folded across his muscular chest, his stone body contorted in a semblance
of pain.

The dark effigy turned
its head, and spoke:
“Greetings, monsieur. I am the Cardiff Giant: a
notorious hoax that will make headlines two years from now. Well, actually I am
not the genuine hoax: I am the hoax of the hoax. Mister Barnum will attempt to
purchase the original for exhibition in this very hall. Upon being rebuffed,
Barnum commissioned sculptors to construct me as a counterfeit of the original.
In 1871, I will be . .”