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George Francis Train was the real Phileas Fogg



Around the World in Eighty Days is one of the world's most popular adventure novels. Few people realise that Jules Verne's classic tale of a race around the world against time was inspired in part by the incredible life of an eccentric American businessman.
Amongst other things, George Francis Train was the real Phileas Fogg. He was also, at different times, a capitalist, communist, royalist, revolutionary, genius, lunatic, visionary prophet, fool, pacifist, warmonger, presidential aspirant, candidate for Dictator of the U.S.A., transportation pioneer, globe-trotting traveller, writer and, ultimately, an eccentric.

Train enjoyed great success in all his varied careers. He was a contradictory and impulsive character - an extraordinary figure who led an incredibly jam-packed life. The one thing that can be said with certainty about him was that at heart he was all-American.

One fine July morning in 1870, the aptly named Train, a wealthy Boston businessman, set out on one of the most famous journeys ever made. He travelled around the world in eighty days, excluding some time spent in a French prison. Two years after his return he found himself immortalised in Jules Verne's celebrated novel. Verne's protagonist was named Phileas Fogg, but the source was obvious. Train was sickened to see his crowning achievement appropriated by another.

"He stole my thunder," he protested. "I'm Phileas Fogg." Train, who managed to cram several lifetimes into one by doing everything at incredible speed, was never one to be modest about his own achievements. He was always an inspired self-publicist.

Verne's Phileas Fogg was a clipped, precise Englishman, a pillar of the Reform Club; Train, on the other hand, was an erratic, unconventional Bostonian and a dyed-in-the-wool Yankee. Fogg was a cool, unemotional man - Train was impulsive and explosive. Fogg made the journey for a bet in the best British sportsmanlike manner; Train did it for the sake of it and for the glory. While Fogg brought back a princess, Train probably only brought back dirty laundry. Train's Passepartout (Fogg's faithful servant-companion) was his long-suffering cousin and private secretary, George Pickering Bemis.

Train's birth was every bit as dramatic as his life. He was born in 1829 during a snowstorm in Boston. Soon after his birth the family moved to New Orleans to start a new life. Tragically, George found himself orphaned at the age of four when a yellow fever plague wiped out his family. He was raised by his strict Methodist grandparents in Boston; they hoped to make a clergyman out of him. In the event, he became an atheist.

Train had his own plans for the future. He joined his uncle's shipping firm and advanced rapidly by his own merit, becoming a partner by the time he was only 21.while still only a teenager train was instrumental in the building of some of the world's largest and fastest ships for the firm.

Three years later Train set up his own trading house in Melbourne, Australia. It was tremendously successful on both personal and commercial levels. As one of the most prominent Americans in Australia he helped promote better transport and commercial institutions. At one point he was offered the presidency of the abortive Five-Star Republic.

In Europe, Train rubbed shoulders with an assortment of royalty and communists, and took some time off to dash to Russia for a chat with the Czar's brother, the Grand Duke Constantine. Racing back to France, he persuaded the Queen of Spain to back the construction of a railway in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. This was the beginning of the Atlantic and Great Western railroad. He also promoted and built the first tramways in Britain in the face of strong opposition. It did not help matters that Train bravely supported the unstable and by no means secure Unionist cause in the face of fiercely hostile British opposition.

Train is often called America's first foreign correspondent because of the informative letters and articles he sent to American newspapers about the numerous countries he visited. On his triumphant return to America, Train's popularity and reputation soared. He immediately launched into political and commercial ventures. He promoted the great Union Pacific railway despite the advice of short-sighted industrialists, such as Vanderbilt, who told him it would never work. Train made a fortune from real estate when the great railway running from coast to coast opened up huge swathes of western America.

Train also found the time to run for the office of President of the United States of America. His campaign was not helped when he grew bored in the middle of it and decided to make a whirlwind trip around the world in eighty days. On his return journey he got caught up in revolution in France. He claimed to have helped set up the short-lived Marseilles Commune aiding the communist take-over of the city. He was attacked by soldiers and almost shot, imprisoned, and allegedly poisoned, but certainly treated badly. It was left to his omni-competent assistant Bemis to organise a rescue attempt. He enlisted the intervention of the French novelist Alexandre Dumas (a friend Train and Verne had in common), the U.S. President, and of the New York Sun and the London Times to free him. Eventually he was bailed out and expelled. Bemis wryly commented: "It is doubtful if any other man was ever so politely put out of a country as was George Francis Train."

Having lost a precious thirteen days, the gentlemen hired a private train and raced across France to the Channel. Once in England, Train headed straight for Liverpool, caught a boat by the skin of his teeth and arrived in New York exactly eighty days after setting out, excluding his forced stop in the Lyons prison. Arriving back in America, he recounted his adventures for the benefit of newspaper reporters. Train was quite correct to believe that Jules Verne used him as a model for Phileas Fogg in his famous novel Around the World in Eighty Days. There are several "coincidences" between the real adventure and the fictional one undertaken by Fogg that suggest Verne plagiarised Train's life story. Overall, Train managed to lap the globe four times, beating records each time. On his final attempt he did it in sixty days.

Train was dismissed as a crank when he supported the then disputed cause of women's suffrage. Due to political wrangling he was imprisoned and declared a lunatic after he supported Victoria Woodhull in a libel case. Train took his cue from the verdict and set off on a new career as a professional crank.

He stood for the position of Dictator of the United States, charged admission fees to his campaign rallies and drew record crowds. He became a vegetarian and adopted various fads in succession. Instead of shaking hands with other people, he shook hands with himself, the manner of greeting he had seen in China. For a time he also refused to talk to anyone, except children, and wrote messages on a pad when he wanted to communicate. These were means, he explained, of storing up his psychic forces. He even invented a new calendar based on the date of his birth.

In his old age Train turned his attention to the children he met daily in New York's Central Park, who, he declared, were alone worth talking to. When he died, more than two thousand children trudged through a bitter January night to place their tributes of flowers on his bier. Beggars and industrialists were seen side by side paying their tributes to this remarkable man.

Few people have lived the kind of rip-roaring adventurous life as did George Francis Train. The world is a poorer place for it.