The Other Log of Phileas Fogg

INTRODUCTION

How much did Jules Verne know of the real story behind Around the World in Eighty Days?

He could not have had all the facts. If he had, he would have been afraid to write the story in any form. Yet, he drops so many hints and ambiguities about Phileas Fogg that he must have suspected something. No other account of the famous global dash, and there were many of these, contain any such allusions or obliquities.

Did Verne get a glimpse into Fogg’s secret notebook, the other log of his eighty-day voyage? It doesn’t seem likely. He may have heard of it somehow and gotten from someone a few passages from it. But if he had, he would have been no more informed, though much more puzzled, than before. The secret log was written in the syllabary symbols of Eridanean A. Only one of the ancient blood, or an enemy Capellean, or a human foster-child, could read this. None of these would have imparted to a mere human the information in the strange writing.

There are always traitors, of course. Sentiency implies both loyalty and treachery.

Consider a few of Verne’s hints about Phileas Fogg. He might live a thousand years without growing old. His admission to the exclusive Reform Club was mysterious. The bankers Baring had recommended him, but why did they do so? No one knew where Fogg or his money came from. Yet the reluctance of the upper-class mid-Victorian Englishman to accept anyone without a “good” family background or money is well known. He seemed to be a creature of absolutely undeviating habits. Not only could the neighbors set their clocks by his routine, they must have wondered if he were truly human and not a clockwork robot. Certainly, he seemed either inhuman or unhuman.

Yet he had a heart. He himself admitted that he had one, when he could afford it. He could sit unmoving for hour after hour as if he were a big frog watching unblinkingly for the juicy flies of time.

And had he traveled, this man who confined his activities to a very small area of the world? He seems to have known most of the world, even the far-off places.

“The unforeseen does not exist,” he was heard to say more than once. Does this mean he had clairvoyance? Or does it indicate something more credible but far more sinister? Why did this Englishman, fixed on a track like a locomotive of the Great Western, suddenly jump the track and take off across the horizon?

Why? There are many whys which Verne does not answer.

The existence of Mr. Fogg’s other log was not known until 1947 when the house at No. 7, Savile Row, Burlington Gardens, London, was undergoing some repairs. This house, as everybody knows, was once occupied by the famous and witty but penniless playwright and Member of Parliament, Richard Brinsley Sheridan. He died in distressing circumstances in 1816, not in 1814, as Verne says. During the tearing down of a wardrobe wall, a small diary was found in a hollow space between two walls. This seems to have been in good condition until a hole in the roof permitted water to flow over it. Some of the pages were entirely ruined and parts of others were illegible. Enough of the unknown writing was left to become a cause célébre among cryptographers and linguists the world over.

In 1962, the writing was recognized as neither a code or cipher but a hitherto unknown language. This would still be untranslatable if it had not been for the discovery of some notebooks in a house in rural Derbyshire. This was in the manor once owned by a Sir Heraclitus Fogg, baronet. These consisted of notes written to help an English-speaking child learn the language. With these referents, a noted linguist of the University of Oxford, Sir Beowulf William Clayton, fourth baronet, tackled the material found in No. 7, Savile Row. He managed to translate at least a third of what was left.

I was the first to hear about the translation because it was my researches into the life of General Sir William Clayton, first baronet, father of Phileas Fogg, which enabled Fogg’s childhood home to be located and, hence, the illuminating notebooks.

The long-abandoned Fogg Hall was searched by my English colleague, the aforementioned linguist, a great-grandson of Sir William Clayton by his tenth wife, Margaret Shaw. Sir Beowulf’s investigation resulted in the finding of the child’s parallel texts and the consequent partial translations. From the notes furnished me by Sir Beowulf I have reconstructed the story behind Verne’s story: The Other Log of Phileas Fogg.