Jules Verne · a new plain-English translation from the original language
In the year 1872, the house at number 7 Saville Row, Burlington Gardens—the very one where Sheridan had died in 1814—was occupied by Phileas Fogg, Esq., one of the most singular and most noticed members of the Reform Club of London, though he seemed to make it his business to do nothing that might attract attention.
So it was that one of the greatest orators who do England honor had been succeeded by this Phileas Fogg, an enigmatic figure about whom nothing was known, except that he was a thoroughly gallant man and one of the handsomest gentlemen in English high society.
He was said to resemble Byron—in the head, for his feet were beyond reproach—but a Byron with a mustache and side-whiskers, an impassive Byron who might have lived a thousand years without growing old.
English, most certainly, Phileas Fogg was perhaps not a Londoner. He had never been seen at the Stock Exchange, nor at the Bank, nor in any of the counting-houses of the City. Neither the basins nor the docks of London had ever received a ship whose owner was Phileas Fogg. This gentleman sat on no board of directors. His name had never sounded in any inn of court, neither at the Temple, nor at Lincoln's Inn, nor at Gray's Inn. He never pleaded before the Court of Chancery, nor the Queen's Bench, nor the Exchequer, nor the Ecclesiastical Court. He was neither an industrialist, nor a trader, nor a merchant, nor a farmer. He belonged neither to the Royal Institution of Great Britain, nor to the London Institution, nor to the Artisans' Institution, nor to the Russell Institution, nor to the Western Literary Institution, nor to the Law Institution, nor to that Institution of Combined Arts and Sciences which stands under the direct patronage of Her Gracious Majesty. In short, he belonged to none of the many societies that swarm in the capital of England, from the Armonica Society to the Entomological Society, founded chiefly for the purpose of destroying harmful insects.
Phileas Fogg belonged to the Reform Club, and that was all.
To anyone surprised that so mysterious a gentleman should be counted among the members of that honorable association, the answer is that he got in on the recommendation of Messrs. Baring Brothers, with whom he had an open line of credit. Hence a certain "standing," owing to the fact that his checks were regularly paid at sight against the balance of his current account, which was invariably in credit.
Was this Phileas Fogg rich? Unquestionably. But how he had made his fortune was something even the best-informed could not say, and Mr. Fogg was the last person one would think to ask about it. In any case, he was lavish with nothing, yet not miserly, for wherever some contribution was lacking for a cause noble, useful, or generous, he supplied it quietly and even anonymously.
All in all, nothing could be less communicative than this gentleman. He spoke as little as possible, and seemed all the more mysterious for being silent. And yet his life was there for all to see; but what he did was so mathematically always the same thing that the imagination, unsatisfied, went looking beyond it.
Had he traveled? Probably, for no one had a better command of the map of the world than he. There was no spot so remote that he did not seem to have some special knowledge of it. Sometimes, but in a few words, brief and clear, he set straight the thousand rumors circulating in the club about lost or missing travelers; he pointed out the true probabilities, and his words had often seemed as if inspired by second sight, so surely did events end up bearing them out. He was a man who must have traveled everywhere—in his mind, at the very least.
What was certain, however, was that for many long years Phileas Fogg had not left London. Those who had the honor of knowing him a little better than the rest attested that—except on that direct route he walked each day to come from his house to the club—no one could claim ever to have seen him anywhere else. His only pastime was reading the papers and playing whist. At this game of silence, so well suited to his nature, he often won, but his winnings never found their way into his purse and made up a considerable sum in his charity budget. Besides, it should be noted, Mr. Fogg plainly played for the sake of playing, not to win. The game was for him a contest, a struggle against a difficulty, but a struggle without movement, without travel, without fatigue, and that agreed with his character.
Phileas Fogg was known to have neither wife nor children—which can happen to the most honest of people—nor relatives nor friends—which is rarer, in truth. Phileas Fogg lived alone in his house on Saville Row, which no one entered. Of its interior there was never any question. A single servant was enough to wait on him. Lunching and dining at the club at times fixed to the second, in the same hall, at the same table, never entertaining his colleagues, never inviting a guest, he came home only to sleep, at midnight exactly, never making use of those comfortable bedrooms the Reform Club keeps available to the members of the circle. Out of twenty-four hours, he spent ten at his residence, whether sleeping or attending to his grooming. If he took a walk, it was invariably, at an even pace, in the parquet-inlaid entrance hall, or on the circular gallery, above which curves a dome of blue stained glass supported by twenty Ionic columns of red porphyry. If he dined or lunched, it was the club's kitchens, its pantry, its larder, its fish-store, its dairy, that supplied his table with their succulent reserves; it was the club's servants, grave figures in black coats, shod in shoes with padded soles, who waited on him with a special porcelain and on admirable linen of Saxony cloth; it was the club's cast-crystal glassware that held his sherry, his port, or his claret mixed with cinnamon, maidenhair, and cassia; it was, finally, the club's ice—ice brought at great expense from the lakes of America—that kept his drinks in a satisfying state of freshness.
If to live under such conditions is to be an eccentric, one must admit that eccentricity has its good side!
The house on Saville Row, without being sumptuous, recommended itself by its extreme comfort. Moreover, with the tenant's unvarying habits, the service it required was slight. Still, Phileas Fogg demanded of his one servant an extraordinary punctuality and regularity. That very day, the 2nd of October, Phileas Fogg had dismissed James Forster—the fellow being guilty of having brought his shaving water at eighty-four degrees Fahrenheit rather than eighty-six—and he now awaited his successor, who was to present himself between eleven and half past eleven.
Phileas Fogg, sitting squarely in his armchair, his two feet together like those of a soldier on parade, his hands laid on his knees, his torso erect, his head high, watched the clock's hand advance—an elaborate instrument that showed hours, minutes, seconds, days, dates, and year. On the stroke of half past eleven, Mr. Fogg was to leave the house, following his daily habit, and make his way to the Reform Club.
At that moment, there came a knock at the door of the little sitting room where Phileas Fogg was.
James Forster, the dismissed man, appeared.
"The new servant," he said.
A fellow of about thirty came forward and bowed.
"You are French, and your name is John?" Phileas Fogg asked him.
"Jean, if it please you, sir," replied the newcomer, "Jean Passepartout, a nickname that stuck to me, and that my natural knack for getting myself out of scrapes had earned. I believe I'm an honest fellow, sir, but, to be frank, I've tried my hand at several trades. I've been a traveling singer, a circus rider doing trick vaulting like Léotard and dancing on the tightrope like Blondin; then I became a gymnastics teacher, to make my talents more useful, and lastly I was a fire brigade sergeant in Paris. I even have some remarkable blazes on my record. But it's now five years since I left France, and, wanting a taste of family life, I've been a valet in England. Well, finding myself out of a place, and having learned that Monsieur Phileas Fogg was the most precise and the most stay-at-home man in all the United Kingdom, I came to your door in the hope of living quietly here and forgetting even this name of Passepartout..."
"Passepartout suits me," replied the gentleman. "You come recommended to me. I have good reports of you. You know my terms?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. What time do you make it?"
"Twenty-two minutes past eleven," replied Passepartout, drawing from the depths of his fob an enormous silver watch.
"You are slow," said Mr. Fogg.
"Forgive me, sir, but that's impossible."
"You are four minutes slow. No matter. It's enough to note the difference. So, from this moment, eleven twenty-nine in the morning, this Wednesday the 2nd of October, 1872, you are in my service."
That said, Phileas Fogg rose, took his hat in his left hand, set it on his head with the motion of an automaton, and vanished without another word.
Passepartout heard the street door close a first time: it was his new master going out; then a second time: it was his predecessor, James Forster, leaving in his turn.
Passepartout was left alone in the house on Saville Row.