(20) La Maison à vapeur (The Steam House, 1880) (2 volumes) 116K words
The 20th novel of the Voyages Extraordinaries takes us to India. We had been there in Around the World in Eighty Days, but only in passing. Verne introduces here another one of his wondrous vehicles, although not one of his best known: the mechanical elephant, a steam-powered road vehicle that travelled along the paths and roads of India pulling two large carriages with all the comforts of a 19th-century house.
First read or reread?: This is a first read for me.
What is it about?:
Nana Sahib is wanted for the atrocities he committed during the Sepoy revolt in India in 1857. Ten years later, an engineer named Banks invites Colonel Munro, Captain Hood, a Frenchman named Maucler and their associates to accompany him on a tour of the northern parts of India via a unique conveyance. The conveyance's engine resembles a huge elephant, only this elephant is powered by steam. As the adventurer's head north it becomes obvious to them that Colonel Munro (whose wife was reported killed at Cawnpore) has plans to for revenge. Unknown to him, Nana Sahib has similar intentions. (Plot description taken from
http://epguides.com/djk/JulesVerne/works.shtml)
I have to admit that my first thought after reading about this vehicle was "OK, Verne is trying too hard. I mean, I can see the balloon, the Nautilus, the hollow projectile that travels to the Moon... but, a steam-powered elephant?" There are, of course, steam-engines designed to travel on roads instead of over rails, but this elephant walks on legs instead of using wheels, although the carriages it pulls go on wheels. It seems to me kind of unpractical, although nowadays they have built a giant machine inspired by Verne's elephant and it's a thing of wonder: search for videos of "Machines de L'ile Great Elephant" to see it.
Anyway, despite my initial misgivings about the vehicle, I'm fine with it after reading the novel. This felt a lot like a group of friends (the typical Victorian group that we expect in a Verne novel), traveling with an autocaravan all across India. Which is appropriate for the novel, because this is a trip done for pleasure, not for exploration.
This is a problem for Verne, actually. He was writing adventure books, but contemporary adventures, not historical adventures (they only seem historical to us because of how long ago they were written). The problem is that, in the last decades of the 19th century, while there were still unexplored parts of the world, most of the it was already known. And, like it or not, when it comes to adventure, exploration is more thrilling than tourism. Of course, Verne could have placed all his adventures in the depths of Africa, or the poles, or desert islands, or under the ground, or the sea... but it's not just the adventures he is interested in. He also wants to visit with us as much of the world as he can, and to be our guide and teacher about it.
So, this time, it's India's turn. Obviously, India was not unexplored, except for the most inaccessible parts of the Himalayas. It was, at the time, part of the British Empire, and a lot of it was densely populated. So we come across that problem: tourism is not as thrilling.
It's not the first time Verne deals with this. Books like A Floating City, Around the World in Eighty Days or Tribulations of a Chinaman in China also have this "tourism" feeling, and Verne manages not to let them become boring. Incidentally, those were all one-volume novels, while this one is two volumes. ¿Maybe this could get a bit too long for a travelogue?
I think Verne mostly avoids this pitfall. This is not the most fast-paced of his novels. Perhaps a few chapters of the first volume dealing with the cities they visit before getting to the Himalayas, or the first chapters of the second volume describing their hunting activities may try the patience of some modern readers, but I was fine with them (take into account that I enjoy Verne's Victorian style).
It's good that the plot is complemented by the story of the rebel leader Nana Sahib, a real-life leader who rebelled against Britain during the 1857 upraising and was responsible for several massacres of British civilians, including the wives and children of British officers. Then he disappeared without a trace after being defeated. In the novel he had survived, and was still full of hate for Coronel Munro, one of Verne's characters. The hate was mutual, because Munro's wife and mother in law had been murdered by Nana Sahib in the Cawnpore massacre, while Colonel Munro had killed Nana Sahib's lover, a leader herself in the rebellion, in the midst of a battle.
I enjoyed Verne's accounts of the Sepoy Mutiny. Despite his Victorian mindset, I think Verne was not completely unsympathetic to the Indian struggle for freedom (after all, didn't he make Captain Nemo a former Indian prince, sympathetic to all struggles against foreign oppression?). Here, Verne tells about the rebellion in a rather neutral way, describing atrocities committed by both sides, although Nana Sahib who, to be fair, was particularly savage in his methods, is the villain of the story, while Coronel Munro and the others, as representatives of European civilization, are the heroes. Certainly not an example of 21st century anticolonialism, but for his time Verne was not very imperialistic, although he shared the contemporary belief in the current superiority of Western civilization. I remember him discussing that in Five Weeks in a Balloon, where one of the characters said he believed Africa would the the most advanced part of the world in the future, once Europe's and America's natural resources were exhausted.
Anyway, the revenge plot between Nana Sahib and Colonel Munro helps keep the novel interesting.
There is a fair amount of hunting here, by the way. Captain Hood, one of the travellers, is a great hunter, much like Dick Kennedy in Five Weeks in a Balloon. For Verne, hunting for food or sport is part of the adventure, and clearly in the 19th century it had none of the negative connotations that it has for many people nowadays. There are some scenes where groups of animals make a coordinated attack on the caravan. I'm not an expert, but this sounded fanciful to me.
There are also dangerous storms, forest fires... even though India was not unexplored, there was still a fair amount of wilderness.
Most of the plot twists were predictable, and there was one particular point where the villains acted in a stupid way because of plot demands, but all in all this was a pleasant read. I was amused by the fact that, despite it being written in first person from the point of view of Maucler, a French traveller who was a member of the group, the last chapters change to third person since they told of events that Maucler did not personally witness. In fact, Verne explicitly warns us about this change in perspective. It did not bother me, but I wondered why he didn't just tell the whole story in third person, like most of his novels.
Enjoyment factor: I enjoyed it. This is not top-tier Verne, and because of that I wouldn't recommend it as the place to start, but it was still an interesting adventure and journey.
Next up: Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon