The Mysterious Island. Jules Verne
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during the same first four months the settlers of MI have rebuilt most of civilization.
When Belle dreams of “a fine grotto, with diamonds on the walls” (“UR,” 62), this is a reference not only to Journey to the Centre of the Earth but to the “salt grotto” of The Swiss Family Robinson. Many pointed comments are indeed made about the Robinsons’ easy life, such as: “[the] climate where the rigors of winter are not to be feared. Each day they find, almost without searching, the animal or vegetable they need. They possess arms, tools, powder, clothing; they have a cow, ewes, a donkey, a pig, and a chicken; their wrecked vessel abundantly provides them with wood, iron, and seeds of every species!” (“UR,” 137)7
Hetzel commented on the manuscript, devastatingly and at length, as follows:8
The beginning lacks life, it’s slow. I think that the beginning should be a dialogue interrupted by a few lines of narration from time to time … the characters … are unformed and lifeless (fo 1); begin the description—+ on 25 March 1861 a vessel was floating on the surface of the pacific [sic] which is called deserted. (fo 2); what language does he speak? (fo 3); you’ve already got a Robert in Grant? (fo 36); [Flip] has not yet shown himself to be alive, even very lively (fo 40); say it briefly (fo 68); it’s awful, my good fellow, laugh [?], and it’s not gay, this mystery of the fire. It annoys without result (fo 141); have them rub some wood! … As soon as they’ve got fire, why don’t they make tinder with clothing, a flint, his knife. Flip and the children and the other person lack improvisation, imagination, and surprises. They don’t astonish, and don’t yet interest;9 suppose that Flip has been to the school of Chester … and find amusing or curious things. Sixty-two pages and not an invention that the last nitwit wouldn’t have found (“UR,” 238); let them make arms: a bow, a sledgehammer, a sling and arm the children. Relate their happiness to have a house to sleep in (239); but my friend … one calculates six days by the nature and occupation of the days, and it is puerile and absolutely impossible to make believe that they don’t know after six days where they’ve got to without making them pass for cretins (239); a hedgehog doesn’t need to be knocked out … say porcupine, if not the spines won’t be any use … also it’s not good as food (240); give them a telescope lens, with the sun they can light a fire (241); have a storm set fire to the wood, the children use their ingenuity to replace the knife, they replace the blade (241); one mustn’t put them in a banal grotto. Good god imagine something else, even if you have to stick them in a tunnel, a former volcano … have them enter the grotto by water, have chance send them there, have them fall in (243); you should shove them underground, in a former volcano. Everything needs to be extraordinary, nothing needs to produce repetition (243); make twenty-five pages from these 150 … They are too slow, not one of them is alive, your characters in all your books are life itself, energy itself; here, it’s a pile of languid beings. None is alert, lively, witty. Leave all these fellows and start again with new places and facts (242).
B. The Manuscripts of The Mysterious Island
MS1 of MI contains only the untitled second part and the third part, and has no comments by Hetzel; but it contains many corrections in red in the right-hand margin. MS2, often similar to the printed text, contains Part I, headed “The Castaways from the Sky,” plus Part II, without a title. It has not been recorded to date that Part III of MS2 carries the surprising title “Cyhiet Anardill.”) (or “Eghiet Anardill.” No trace has been found of any of these names, although “Anardill” shares a root with “anarchist.” Moreover, it is strange that the title should be “Prince Dakkar” in MS1 (added in blue, whereas Verne usually used black) and then “Cyhiet Anardill.” in MS2, since Prince Dakkar is of course the final form.
Part II of MS2 begins with a list in red at the top: “Cyrus Smith / Gideon Spilett / Harbert / Pencroff / Neb. / / Lincoln Island / Granite House / Rock-Funnel [in English].” Folio 81, naming the parts of the Island (MI, I, 11), is totally crossed out and replaced by 80bis and 80ter; fo 9, by 8bis and 8ter. In MS1 the sailor is called Cracroft until the return from Tabor (II, 15), and thereafter Pencroff; but “Cracroft Pencroff” in Part I of MS2 and “Pencroff” in Parts II and III. This implies that Part I of MS2 was written before Parts II and III of MS1. Guermonprez (“Notes,” 60) says that in MS2 Verne rubbed out Hetzel’s pencil comments; and that from fo 33 onwards the publisher’s comments are in ink, with Verne crossing them carefully out but also attaching pieces of paper to cover them up, although this practice has never been mentioned by other commentators.
Many dialogues are deleted from the first chapter of MS2, which ends: “Off we go, my friends: let’s save our leader.” In MS1 the reporter is initially a stuffy and rigid Unionist officer, perhaps Smith’s adjutant, unlike the cheerful Spilett; and he is called “Captain Robur”! Robur, meaning “oak” in Late Latin (cf. “Verne” which means “alder”), is of course the hero’s name in Verne’s The Clipper of the Clouds (1886) and Master of the World (1904). In MS2 Spilett, whose earlier name is “Nol,” “Not,” or “Nat,” admits he does not know how to swim well (fo 19); and “Smyth Smith”10 (fo 10–12) has “a thick clump of beard” (fo 8bis) but no moustache, and “does not smile very often” (fo 8bis). Given that he is “lean, bony, and lanky,” he may be modeled on Lincoln (although the illustrator does not see him like that).
On fo 51 in MS2, Verne adds a variant: “Gédéon Spilett, in turn but calmly, kneeled down near Cyrus … Then he got up again, saying: / ‘I see full well that I will have to change my article.’” The reason that it is deleted again must be the poor taste of the joke that he had thought Smith dead. On fo 70 we read “Neb, on a piece of paper which he found in the pockets of his master, wrote the word ‘Come’ with his blood and attached it to the collar of the dog.” This sentence was perhaps removed because Neb cannot easily draw his own blood.
In MS1 a couple of jaguars reluctantly retreat from the settlers. In MS2 Hetzel adds a cryptic comment that the Island has not always been uninhabited (Guermonprez, “Notes,” 60). In the inventory of items found in the chest is included “a history of British domination in India.”11 On fo 34, Verne crosses out a long section of Hetzel’s comments, but does not seem to have changed the text as a result.
The portrait of the settlers’ qualities (I, 13) is added in the margin of fo 90, presumably under Hetzel’s pressure. “Divine Providence” (fo 95) is replaced by “the Author of all things” (I, 4). The publisher comments that Verne has not left enough time for the settlers to complete their various tasks; Verne accordingly replaces “The third week in December” (MS2) with “The first week in January” (II, 8). Hetzel also suggests that the settlers entrust a message to a bottle or a bird, but Verne pointedly replies: “Gideon Spilett had already thought several times … of throwing into the sea a message enclosed in a bottle … But how could they seriously hope that pigeons or bottles could cross … 1200 miles …? It was pure folly.” (II, 11)
When Jup is captured, Hetzel says “why don’t you make him an ape tamed by Nemo … Very comical … things could follow on from this, like for example during their first meal … / Cyrus is flabbergasted, goes pale, and does not say another word for the rest of the meal.”
Hetzel suggests “Balloon Harbor” to replace Verne’s “Secret Harbor”; and where Verne had written in English “North Mandible Cape” and “South Mandible Cape,” he scrawls “Hell, these names are incapable of striking French ears. If they mean anything, why not translate them?” (fo 158). Guermonprez (“Notes,” 17 and 73) states that most