The Square Pegs by Irving Wallace Page A

Verne’s fortune was made. It is known that he bought a yacht, and it is said that he acquired a mistress. Until his death in 1905 his villa in Amiens was a Mecca for travelers.
    Inspired by Fogg, a Hungarian army officer named Lubowitz rode from Vienna to Paris in fifteen days to win a bet, and was received as a guest by Verne for two days. In 1889 an aggressive brunette from the New York World , Nellie Ely, carrying gripsack and shoulder bag, paused on her journey into fame to burst upon the surprised Verne in his tower room at Amiens and inform him that she would beat Phileas Fogg’s record. Verne was politely doubtful, but wished her luck. Miss Ely lowered Fogg’s record by eight days.
    In 1901 a journalist representing the Echo de Paris , Stiegler by name, interrupted his sixty-three-day tour of the world to shake hands with Verne in the Amiens depot. In the best of humor, Verne glanced over his visitor’s shoulder and said: “But I don’t see Miss Aouda.” Stiegler smiled. “Reality is inferior to the imagination, Monsieur Verne. I didn’t even meet her.”
    They all paid homage to Verne, except the one who was really Phileas Fogg. George Francis Train and Verne never met. And Train would not condescend to visit the man he felt owed him so much.
    Around the World in Eighty Days was filled with incidents and activities that closely paralleled the life and travels of George Francis Train. There were differences, of course: Verne had Fogg travel east around the world, whereas Train had actually traveled west. Verne made Fogg a mechanical man, whereas Train was an impulsive, explosive human being. But the handsome, bewhiskered Fogg had in common with the handsome, mustached Train a reputation for eccentricity, a compulsion to read newspapers excessively, a lack of interest in sightseeing when on the road, a predilection for squalls and typhoons, and an utter disregard for the extravagances involved in chartering special transportation.
    In his 100,000-word autobiography, dictated in thirty-five working hours and published the year before his death, Train made constant claim to being the prototype for Phileas Fogg. In recording his account of the trip, he stated: “I went around the world in eighty days in the year 1870, two years before Jules Verne wrote his famous romance, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours , which was founded upon my voyage.” Speaking again of the eighty days, he wrote: “Jules Verne, two years later, wrote fiction of my fact.” And in summarizing his four trips around the world, Train said: “One of these voyages, the one in which I put a girdle round the earth in eighty days, has the honor of having given the suggestion for one of the most interesting romances in literature.”
    Once, in London, on a second and faster journey around the globe, shortly after he had been declared insane by a Boston judge (though, actually, few ever seriously thought him insane), Train exploded to English reporters: “Remember Jules Verne’s ‘Around The World In Eighty Days’? He stole my thunder. I’m Phileas Fogg. But I have beaten Fogg out of sight. What put the notion into my head? Well, Fin possessed of great psychic force.”
    As a matter of fact, the author Verne and the merchant Train had much in common. Both were interested in the growing technology, in mechanical progress, in speed. Both ranged far ahead of their time. It was only their methods that differed. Verne confined his dreams of progress to paper, where they were acceptable; Train tried to make his real, and was often rebuffed.
    Train was Phileas Fogg for eighty days, but he was much more for almost eighty years. Beside him, the fictional Fogg was a one-dimensional dullard. For no author could have invented Train or transferred all of him to manuscript, and made him half believable.
    George Francis Train was born in Boston on March 24, 1829. As an infant he was taken by his family to New Orleans, where his father opened a general