- Verne, Jules.
Une Fantaisie du Docteur Ox.
Seattle: CreateSpace, [1874] 2017.
ISBN 978-1-5470-6408-3.
-
After reading and reviewing
Jules Verne's
Hector Servadac last
year, I stumbled upon a phenomenal bargain: a Kindle edition of the
complete works of Jules Verne—160 titles, with
5400 illustrations—for US$ 2.51 at this writing, published
by Arvensa. This is not a cheap public domain knock-off, but
a thoroughly professional publication with very few errors.
For less than the price of a paperback book, you get just about
everything Jules Verne ever wrote in Kindle format which, if you
download the free Kindle French dictionary, allows you to
quickly look up the obscure terms and jargon of which Verne is
so fond without flipping through the
Little Bob. That's
how I read this work, although I have cited a print edition
in the header for those who prefer such.
The strange story of Doctor Ox would be considered a
novella in
modern publishing terms, coming in at 19,240 words. It is
divided into 17 chapters and is written in much the same
style as the author's
Voyages
extraordinaires, with his customary huge
vocabulary, fondness for lengthy enumerations, and witty
parody of the national character of foreigners.
Here, the foreigners in question are the Flemish, speakers
of dialects of the Dutch language who live in the northern
part of Belgium. The Flemish are known for being phlegmatic,
and nowhere is this more in evidence than the small city of
Quiquendone. Its 2,393 residents and their ancestors have
lived there since the city was founded in 1197, and very
little has happened to disturb their placid lives; they like
it that way. Its major industries are the manufacture of
whipped cream and barley sugar. Its inhabitants are taciturn
and, when they speak, do so slowly. For centuries, what
little government they require has been provided by generations
of the van Tricasse family, son succeeding father as burgomaster.
There is little for the burgomaster to do, and one of
the few items on his agenda, inherited from his father
twenty years ago, is whether the city should dispense with
the services of its sole policeman, who hasn't had anything
to do for decades.
Burgomaster van Tricasse exemplifies the moderation in all
things of the residents of his city. I cannot resist quoting
this quintessentially Jules Verne description in full.
Le bourgmestre était un personnage de cinquante ans, ni
gras ni maigre, ni petit ni grand, ni vieux ni jeune, ni
coloré ni pâle, ni gai ni triste, ni content ni
ennuyé, ni énergique ni mou, ni fier ni humble, ni
bon ni méchant, ni généreux ni avare, ni
brave ni poltron, ni trop ni trop peu, — ne quid nimis, — un homme
modéré en tout ; mais à la lenteur
invariable de ses mouvements, à sa mâchoire
inférieure un peu pendante, à sa paupière
supérieure immuablement relevée, à son
front uni comme une plaque de cuivre jaune et sans une ride,
à ses muscles peu salliants, un physionomiste eût
sans peine reconnu que le bourgomestre van Tricasse était
le flegme personnifié.
Imagine how startled this paragon of moderation and peace
must have been when the city's policeman—he whose
job has been at risk for decades—pounds on the door
and, when admitted, reports that the city's doctor and
lawyer, visiting the house of scientist Doctor Ox, had
gotten into an argument. They had been talking
politics! Such a thing had not happened in
Quiquendone in over a century. Words were exchanged
that might lead to a duel!
Who is this Doctor Ox? A recent arrival in Quiquendone,
he is a celebrated scientist, considered a leader in the
field of physiology. He stands out against the other
inhabitants of the city. Of no well-defined nationality,
he is a genuine eccentric, self-confident, ambitious, and
known even to smile in public. He and his laboratory
assistant Gédéon Ygène work on
their experiments and never speak of them to others.
Shortly after arriving in Quiquendone, Dr Ox approached the
burgomaster and city council with a proposal: to illuminate
the city and its buildings, not with the new-fangled electric
lights which other cities were adopting, but with a new
invention of his own, oxy-hydric gas. Using powerful
electric batteries he invented, water would be decomposed
into hydrogen and oxygen gas, stored separately, then
delivered in parallel pipes to individual taps where they
would be combined and burned, producing a light much brighter
and pure than electric lights, not to mention conventional
gaslights burning natural or manufactured gas. In storage
and distribution, hydrogen and oxygen would be strictly
segregated, as any mixing prior to the point of use ran the
risk of an explosion. Dr Ox offered to pay all of the
expenses of building the gas production plant, storage
facilities, and installation of the underground pipes and
light fixtures in public buildings and private residences.
After a demonstration of oxy-hydric lighting, city fathers
gave the go-ahead for the installation, presuming Dr Ox was
willing to assume all the costs in order to demonstrate his
invention to other potential customers.
Over succeeding days and weeks, things before unimagined,
indeed, unimaginable begin to occur. On a visit to
Dr Ox, the burgomaster himself and his best friend
city council president Niklausse find themselves in—dare
it be said—a political argument. At
the opera house, where musicians and singers usually so
moderate the tempo that works are performed over multiple
days, one act per night, a performance of Meyerbeer's
Les Hugenots
becomes frenetic and incites the audience to what
can only be described as a riot. A ball at the house of
the banker becomes a whirlwind of sound and motion.
And yet, each time, after people go home, they return to
normal and find it difficult to believe what they did
the night before.
Over time, the phenomenon, at first only seen in large
public gatherings, begins to spread into individual homes
and private lives. You would think the placid Flemish
had been transformed into the hotter tempered denizens of
countries to the south. Twenty newspapers spring up, each
advocating its own radical agenda. Even plants start growing
to enormous size, and cats and dogs, previously as reserved
as their masters, begin to bare fangs and claws. Finally,
a mass movement rises to avenge the honour of
Quiquendone for an injury committed in the year 1185 by
a cow from the neighbouring town of Virgamen.
What was happening? Whence the madness? What would be the
result when the citizens of Quiquendone, armed with everything
they could lay their hands on, marched upon their neighbours?
This is a classic “puzzle story”, seasoned with a
mad scientist of whom the author allows us occasional candid
glimpses as the story unfolds. You'll probably solve the puzzle
yourself long before the big reveal at the end. Jules Verne,
always anticipating the future, foresaw this: the penultimate
chapter is titled (my translation), “Where the intelligent
reader sees that he guessed correctly, despite every precaution
by the author”. The enjoyment here is not so much the
puzzle but rather Verne's language and delicious description
of characters and events, which are up to the standard of his
better-known works.
This is “minor Verne”, written originally for a
public reading and then published in a newspaper in Amiens,
his adopted home. Many believed that in Quiquendone he
was satirising Amiens and his placid neighbours.
Doctor Ox would reappear in the work of Jules Verne in
his 1882 play Voyage
à travers l'impossible
(Journey
Through the Impossible), a work which, after 97
performances in Paris, was believed lost until a single
handwritten manuscript was found in 1978. Dr Ox reprises his
role as mad scientist, joining other characters from Verne's
novels on their own extraordinary voyages. After that work,
Doctor Ox disappears from the world. But when I regard the
frenzied serial madness loose today, from “bathroom
equality”, tearing down Civil War monuments, masked
“Antifa” blackshirts beating up people in the
streets, the “refugee” racket, and Russians under
every bed, I sometimes wonder if he's taken up residence in
today's United States.
An English translation is available.
Verne's reputation has often suffered due to poor English
translations of his work; I have not read this edition and don't
know how good it is. Warning: the description of this book
at Amazon contains a huge spoiler for the central puzzle of
the story.
July 2018 