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(61) Le Secret de Wilhelm Storitz (The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz, 1910) (1 volume) 54K words


The 61st and second to last Extraordinary Voyage, the seventh one published posthumously, takes place in the fictional Hungarian city of Ragz. It's the last science fiction novel by Verne (if we don't count some futuristic technology in "The Barsac Mission"), and despite the urban setting it also has some elements of Gothic horror, combined in a way that reminded me of "The Carpathian Castle".


First read or reread?: First read for me.


What is it about?: French engineer Henri Vidal is invited by his younger brother Marc to visit him in the (fictional) city of Ragz, Hungary, on the occasion of his wedding. Marc is engaged to Myra Roderich, from a respected and well-liked local family. Before leaving Paris, Henri learns that a man named Wilhelm Storitz had proposed to Myra, but had been refused. Wilhelm, who is the son of a famous physicist and chemist, the late Otto Storitz, has sworn vengeance against the family that rejected him, claiming to have powers beyond human understanding. Soon it becomes apparent that Wilhelm's threats were not empty, and he uses his astonishing powers to harass the Roderich family in an attempt to prevent the wedding.


As always for these posthumous novels, I'm reading the version that was originally published as part of the Extraordinary Voyages, the one edited and modified by Michel Verne, and not Jules Verne's unedited manuscript. In the case of this novel, Michel's changes are less extensive than in the previous two novels: He just changed the timeframe, taking the story to the 18th century, and made a modification to the ending, making it happier.

Moving the story from the 19h to the 18th century seems rather pointless, since it doesn't really play a role in the story. According to the correspondence between Michel and the publisher it was done at the request of the publisher. Maybe he thought that taking the story back one century would make the popular superstition around Otto Storitz's work seem more natural, although I think that in fact the end of the 19th century would work better for the kind of scientific discoveries that his son Wilhelm put to such evil use.

The change to the ending is easier to understand, being an attempt to make the story more pleasing to the general public and therefore more commercial.

The plot here was a bit thin, and maybe it would have worked better as a novella rather than a novel. As a result, the first part is slow, which is something unusual in Verne's shorter novels (the one-volume ones). We get an account of Henri's trip to Hungary, and in the short section where he sails down the Danube we probably are treated to more descriptions about the river and the riverside cities than we got in "The Danube Pilot", where the whole novel was devoted to such a trip. Not that there are that many descriptions here, it's just that there were barely any in "The Danube Pilot".

The characterization is quite conventional. The female characters are delicate, quick to faint and lose their minds. I mean, Verne is a writer of his time, and I don't ask for all of his female characters to be like the title character from "Mistress Branican" or like Paulina Barnett from "The Fur Country", but this fragility was a bit excessive. The male characters are also pretty conventional, nothing like the Kaw-djer from the previous novel ("The Survivors of the Jonathan"), who was full of internal conflict.

Verne's dislike of Germany, which as I have commented elsewhere began after the disastrous Franco-Prussian war, is apparent here, while Hungary is described as being friendly with France.

The plot includes a couple of unlikely coincidences. However, even a minor Verne has good things to offer, and once the hostilities began in the second half of the book, the atmosphere became tense and frantic, in a very enjoyable manner. I think Verne made the right choice in telling the story from Henri Vidal's perspective, since for this kind of story a first-person narration makes the reader feel closer to the characters as they go through the whole ordeal.

Readers familiar with H.G. Wells' work will notice that the premise of this story is similar to one of Wells' most famous novels. Wells' novel was published before this one, and maybe Verne got the idea from there but, beyond the premise, the two stories are different. Still, the idea is more what one would expect from Wells than from Verne. After all, Verne's science fiction was usually more grounded on contemporary scientific knowledge, while Wells didn't let a lack of scientific basis deter him. This is definitely more a Wells kind of plot.


Enjoyment factor: I did enjoy it, despite some flaws. Maybe a minor work, but in the second half the atmosphere was suitably disquieting and the whole thing was entertaining.


Next up: The Barsac Mission