The Begum's Millions. Jules Verne

doctor in his day who outlined a germ-free civilization,²⁶ France-Ville is a society filled with rules and restraints, where sanitation police are constantly watching over its worker-citizens, who live in rigidly uniform houses (with strict rules and measurements). Everything must be in order, as a brochure distributed to its newest citizens states emphatically: “Two dangerous elements of disease, veritable nests of miasma and laboratories of poison, are absolutely forbidden: carpets and wallpaper” declares rule number 8. According to rule number 9, “Eiderdown quilts and heavy bedcovers, powerful allies of epidemics, are naturally excluded” (chap. 10). While “all industries and commercial ventures are freely permitted,” no one is allowed to be idle: “in order to obtain the right of residence, it is sufficient — provided that good references are supplied — to be able to perform a useful or liberal profession in industry, science, or the arts, and to pledge to obey all the laws of the city. Idle lives will not be tolerated” (chap. 10). Every inch of the citizens’ lives is regulated, and the motto that each must subscribe to is a mantra that is exhibited in all of the village’s rules and laws: “To clean, clean ceaselessly, to destroy as soon as they are formed, those miasmas which constantly emanate from a human collective, such is the primary job of the central government” (chap. 10). Parallel to Stahlstadt with its “Central Bloc” that watches over its beehive of productivity, France-Ville is also governed by a “Central Government” that passes down its own edicts for the good of its citizens. Although the government is well intentioned rather than militaristic, the tone of Verne’s description is indelibly linked to that of Paris in the Twentieth Century rather than to the Voyages extraordinaires. Furthermore, while Schultze fantasizes about turning France-Ville into a new Pompeii through his weapons of mass destruction, Verne overdetermines Schultze’s image by also thinking of it in terms of Pompeii, as if to confirm Schultze’s vision: “As for the walls, clad in varnished bricks, they present to the eye the splendor and variety of the indoor apartments of Pompeii with a luxury of colors and longevity which wallpaper, loaded with its thousand subtle poisons, has never been able to rival” (chap. 10).

      Although The Begum’s Millions ends on a happy note, with France-Ville not only saved but taking over Stahlstadt and making it economically viable again, it is hard to see it as a “happy ending” in so much as even the victorious “ideal” society is somewhat frightful and industrial productivity remains the highlight of the utopian societies created by the Begum’s fortune. Shockingly, Marcel refers to the defeated Stahlstadt as “the ruin of the admirable institution that [Schultze] had created” and declares that “we must not let his work perish” (chap. 18). Although Marcel and Sarrasin loftily plan on using Stahlstadt’s industrial infrastructure primarily as a deterrent to war — “You will have all the capital you need, and thanks to you we will have in a resuscitated Stahlstadt an arsenal of instruments such that no one in the world will think of attacking us! And, while being the strongest, we’ll also try to be the most just and bring the benefits of peace and justice to everyone around us” (chap. 18) — the novel ultimately proves that capital does fail us and can lead not only to aggression and exploitation, but also to depression, chaos, and potential global annihilation. In fact, the last line of the novel underscores the notion that the real utopian ideal put forth by the victors is essentially a capitalist-industrial one. Stahlstadt is merely converted into a more clement version of its old self: “We can thus be assured that the future will be in good hands thanks to the efforts of Dr. Sarrasin and of Marcel Bruckmann, and that the examples of France-Ville and Stahlstadt, as model city and factory, will not be lost on generations to come” (chap. 20). In this way, the “bridge” implicit in Marcel’s name is one that marries the ethics of the French system with the industrial prowess of the German one in order to create more efficient factory towns rather than dreamy utopian states.

      “We live in a time where everything happens — we almost have the right to say where everything has happened. […] Moreover, no new legends are being created at the end of this practical and positive nineteenth century,” Verne writes at the beginning of Le Château des Carpathes (1892, The Carpathian Castle).²⁷ If The Begum’s Millions was not initially one of Verne’s most popular works, and, despite its patriotic and timely anti-German vigor, was not as great a commercial success as his earlier, more Saint-Simonian works, perhaps it is because it ushers in a period of darker visions about government and nations only alluded to in prior novels. It is not surprising that the near apocalyptic struggle between the innocent France-Ville and the ruthless Stahlstadt takes place on American soil, which slowly becomes a land of failed social experimentation and a capitalist free-for-all in his later novels. In Le Testament d’un excentrique (1899, The Will of an Eccentric), for example, America becomes a giant jeu de l’oie game board for the billionaire William J. Hyperbone as his contestants race around the United States in order to win millions of dollars. In L’Ile à hélice (1895, Propeller Island), two millionaires create a floating city, Standard Island, for their comfort, but their dollar-driven utopia soon crumbles under the weight of its citizens’ conflicts. Even the charm of an America that can attempt to reach the moon, and where “nothing can astonish an American” in From the Earth to the Moon,²⁸ becomes dangerously absurd and destructive in Sans dessus dessous (1889, Topsy-Turvy), the cynical sequel to Autour de la lune (1870, Around the Moon), when Barbicane and J. T. Maston recklessly try to shift the axis of the globe in order to mine coal at the North Pole.

      “It has often been asserted that the word ‘impossible’ is not a French one. People have evidently been deceived by the dictionary,” Verne writes in From the Earth to the Moon. “In America, everything is easy, everything is simple; and as for mechanical difficulties, they are overcome before they arise. Between Barbicane’s proposition and its realization, no true Yankee would have allowed even the semblance of a difficulty to be possible. What is said — is done.”²⁹ Sadly, what was said often was done — by malevolent figures. As such, the early Verne’s confidence in America may seem naive in light of how he perceived the later part of the century’s excesses and unscrupulous motivations. By the same token, in real life, just as America would be transformed by robber barons and industrial injustices, its image abroad also changed, becoming, little by little, the “péril américain,” a land of exploitation rather than innocent idealism. As Marie-Hélène Huet has noted, the whole Verne-Hetzel literary project deflates in the face of the hard realities of the fin de siècle. Indeed, Verne could no longer afford to merely project cheerfully into the future for, as Huet remarks so succinctly, “the present had invaded the works.”³⁰

      When Verne and Hetzel discussed whether the crux of The Begum’s Millions should be centered on Schultze’s weapons and their destructive capability or, rather, on the political-philosophical differences between the two cities, Verne commented that “if we write for 15,000 readers, they’ll want [the former]. If we write for 1,500, perhaps a philosophical thesis might do the trick, but, in any case, it isn’t in the novel as it is now” (Correspondance, 294). Although the novel, in fact, sold around 17,000 copies — a big disappointment at the time, as were many of his later novels with similarly tenebrific undertones — Verne did manage to fuse the two approaches (cannons on the one hand, utopia/dystopia on the other), but his final product remains fascinating for many other reasons as well. Just as Marcel Bruckmann’s name could serve as a metaphor for his being a bridge between the two warring cities and nations, The Begum’s Millions can also be considered a bridge, not only between the “two Vernes” — the early, successful positivist and the later, dour pessimist — but between the two Frances as well. Just as France began the nineteenth century with a “bang” so to speak — as it explored new continents, created new inventions, and fostered a myriad of utopian, socialist philosophers such as Prosper L’Enfantin and Saint-Simon — the weary fin de siècle France would yield a darker, sometimes decadent, but often nervous literature, as a reaction to