Recently, I started to tell some tales to my son, before he goes to sleep. I soon found myself in shortage of good novels and fairy tales, which usually I tell by heart, as I remember them from my childhood. This turned out to be not so good, for he's listening to the full correct version at the kindergarten and remarks promplty all the deviations he finds in my "adapted" versions. So instead of falling asleep, he has much fun in criticize the poor storyteller.

So I took out some books from my pre-teen age, wich offer the possibilities of a more structured plot, divided into rather short chapters. Of course pirates tales are his favourite ones, but I re-discovered also Jules Verne. This man was a genius! So we're reading together "Around the World in 80 Days". It's incredible, I still feel the "thrill" myself! Do You remember?

Phileas Fogg

Phileas Fogg lives at No. 7 Saville-Row, Burlington Gardens, a fashionable upmarket area of 1870's London. He is quite wealthy, although none of the other characters in the novel know how he acquired his money. He does not appear to have any occupation and very little is known about his earlier life (the novel specifies on occasions that he is a natural sailor, but the reasons for this remain unknown. Likewise, he appears to be well-travelled, but the details of his past travels remain elusive). Despite his mysterious and vague background, Mr Fogg is highly knowledgable about a great variety of subjects and analyzes every news story with impeccable logic. Due to his large fortune and excellent credit history, Mr Fogg is a member of the Reform Club on Pall Mall, an exclusive political establishment for liberally-minded men. Mr Fogg does not have any surviving relatives and by his own admission, does not have very many friends, apart from a circle of men at the Reform Club with whom he regularly plays his favourite game of whist.
Mr Fogg lives alone, with one manservant, in his house on Saville-Row, which is modern and comfortable but fairly cold and uninviting. Phileas Fogg appears to use his house only for sleeping, and spends every day at the Reform Club, where he takes his meals and spends his time reading newspapers and playing whist.
He appears to be familiar with a variety of topics which seem out-of-character for a member of London's high society. When served with a suspicious rabbit pie at an Indian railway restaurant, he clearly identifies the pie as being made with cat meat, which one would not expect a member of the Reform Club to be familiar with. Mr Fogg exhibits remarkable courage, selflessness, and chivalry at several points in the novel - after winning the small fortune of twenty guineas at whist, he does not keep the money but gives it to a beggar he passes in the street. In India, he risks his wager and life to rescue Aouda from death, and when his train is attacked by Sioux warriors in the United States, he again risks his wager and life to lead a military mission to rescue Passepartout from the Sioux. In San Francisco, Mr Fogg bravely defends Aouda from drunken revellers using only his fists, and when faced with the prospect of a duel, accepts the offer without flinching. In many respects, Phileas Fogg fits the stereotype of the "stiff upper lip" eccentric English gentleman.
In terms of personality and social actions, Phileas Fogg appears on the surface to be a cold and obsessive character. His personal life is strictly governed by bizarre and neurotically precise standards, such as the exact temperature of his morning toast and the number of steps it takes him to walk from his house to the Reform Club each day. At the beginning of the novel, it is revealed that Mr Fogg's strict demands have driven his manservant, James Forster, into a nervous breakdown, prompting Mr Fogg to hire Passepartout. When Passepartout arrives at the house for his job interview, he finds Mr Fogg sitting like a statue in his silent living room, watching one of his innumerable clocks. He retains this composure throughout most of the novel, until rescuing the beautiful Indian princess Aouda, with whom he falls in love. By the end of the novel, Aouda's influence has prompted Phileas Fogg to abandon his cold and mechanical exterior, and the novel ends with him having become a warm and kind character, happy and content in his new life with Aouda.

The Reform Club

The Reform Club was originally a private gentlemen's club situated on the south side of Pall Mall (at number 104), in central London. It has admitted ladies since 1981. In 1977 its subscriptions were amongst the highest in London.
It was founded in 1836 by Edward Ellice (1783-1863), a Whig Whip, whose riches came from the Hudson Bay Company but whose zeal was chiefly devoted to securing the passage of the Reform Act 1832. The new club, for members of both Houses of Parliament, was meant to be a centre for the radical ideas which that Bill represented; a bastion of liberal and progressive thought which became closely associated with the Liberal Party, which had largely succeeded the Whigs by the middle of the 19th Century. Brooks's Club, the headquarters of the old Whig aristocracy, was not prepared to open its doors to a flood of new men, so preliminary meetings were held in Ellice's own house to plan a much larger club, which would promote "the social intercourse of the Reformers of the United Kingdom". To this day, candidates for the club are required to express their support for the principles of the Reform Act. When a Liberal Member of Parliament "crossed the floor" to join or work with another party, he was expected to resign from the club.
Until the decline of the Liberal Party, it was de rigeur for Liberal MPs to be members of the Reform club, which almost constituted another party headquarters, although the National Liberal Club, formed under Gladstone's Chairmanship, was established in 1882, designed to be more 'inclusive', and was geared more towards Liberal grandees and activists in the country.
The building, like its neighbour the Travellers Club, (number 106), was designed by Sir Charles Barry and opened in 1841. The new club was palatial - literally - the design being based on the Farnese Palace in Rome. The Reform was one of the first clubs to have bedrooms, and its library contains some 50,000 books, mostly political history and biography.
With the decline of the Liberal Party in the mid-20th century, the club increasingly drew its membership from civil servants in the Treasury, as a counterpart to the neighbouring Travellers Club, which became synonymous with Foreign Office officials.


The proposed "round-the-world" trip schedule:

London / Suez - rail and steamer (7 days)
Suez / Bombay - steamer (13 days)
Bombay / Calcutta - rail (3 days)
Calcutta / Hong Kong - steamer (13 days)
Hong Kong / Yokohama - steamer (6 days)
Yokohama / San Francisco - steamer (22 days)
San Francisco / New York - rail (7 days)
New York / London - steamer (9 days)
Total: 80 days

The whole Plot

Fogg accepts a wager for £20,000 from his fellow club members, which he will receive if he makes it around the world in 80 days. Accompanied by his manservant Passepartout, he leaves London by train at 8.45 p.m. on October 2, 1872, and thus is due back at the Reform Club at the same time 80 days later, on December 21.
Fogg and Passepartout reach Suez in time. While disembarking in Egypt, he is watched by a Scotland Yard detective named Fix, who has been dispatched from London in search of a bank robber. Because Fogg matches the description of the bank robber, Fix mistakes Fogg to be the criminal. Since he cannot secure a warrant in time, Fix goes on board of the steamer conveying the travelers to Bombay. During the voyage, Fix gets acquainted with Passepartout, without revealing his purpose.
Still on time, Fogg and Passepartout switch to the railway in Bombay, setting off for Calcutta, Fix now following them undercover. As it turns out, the construction of the railway is not totally finished, so they are forced to get over the remaining gap between two stations by riding an elephant, which Phileas Fogg purchases at the prodigious price of 2,000 pounds.
During the ride, they come across a suttee procession, in which a young Parsi woman, Aouda, is led to a sanctuary to be sacrificed the next day. Since the young woman is drugged with the smoke of opium and hemp and obviously not going voluntarily, the travelers decide to rescue her. They follow the procession to the site, where Passepartout secretly takes the place of Aouda's deceased husband on the funeral pyre, on which she is to be burned the next morning. During the ceremony, he then rises from the pyre, scaring off the priests, and carries the young woman away.
The travelers then hasten on to catch the train at the next railway station, taking Aouda, with them. At Calcutta, they finally board a steamer going to Hong Kong. Fix, who had secretly been following them, has Fogg and Passepartout arrested in Calcutta. But they jump bail and Fix is forced to follow them to Hong Kong. On board, he shows himself to Passepartout, who is delighted to meet again his traveling companion from the earlier voyage.
In Hong Kong, it turns out that Aouda's distant relative in whose care they had been planning to leave her there, has moved, likely to Holland, so they decide to take her with them to Europe. Meanwhile, still without a warrant, Fix sees Hong Kong as his last chance to arrest Fogg on British soil. He therefore confides in Passepartout, who does not believe a word and remains convinced that his master is not a bank robber. To prevent Passepartout from informing his master about the premature departure of their next vessel, Fix gets Passepartout drunk and drugs him in an opium den. In his dizziness, Passepartout yet manages to catch the steamer to Yokohama, but neglects to inform Fogg.
Fogg, on the next day, discovers that he has missed his connection. He goes in search of a vessel which will take him to Yokohama. He finds a pilot boat which takes him and his companions (Aouda and Fix) to Shanghai, where they catch a steamer to Yokohama. In Yokohama, they go on a search for Passepartout, believing that he may have arrived there with the original connection. They find him in a circus, trying to earn his homeward journey.
Reunited, the four board on a steamer taking them across the Pacific to San Francisco. Fix promises Passepartout that now, having left British soil, he will no longer try to delay Fogg's journey, but rather support him in getting back to Britain as fast as possible (to have him arrested there).
In San Francisco, they get on the train to New York. During that trip, the train is attacked by Native Americans, who take Passepartout and two other passengers hostage. Fogg is now faced with the dilemma of continuing his tour, or going to rescue Passepartout. He chooses the latter, starting on a rescue mission with some soldiers of a nearby fort, who succeed in freeing the hostages. To make up for the lost time, Fogg and his companions hire a sledge, which brings them to Omaha, Nebraska, where they arrive just in time to get on a train to Chicago, Illinois, and then another to New York. However, reaching New York, they learn that the steamer for Liverpool they had been trying to catch has left a short time before.
On the next day, Fogg starts looking for an alternative for the crossing of the Atlantic. He finds a small steam boat, destined for Bordeaux. However, the captain of the boat refuses to take the company to Liverpool, wherupon Fogg consents to be taken to Bordeaux. On the voyage, he bribes the crew to mutiny and take course for Liverpool. Going on full steam all the time, the boat runs out of fuel after a few days. Fogg buys the boat at a very high price from the captain, soothing him thereby, and has the crew burn all the wooden parts to keep up the steam.
The companions arrive at Queenstown, Ireland, in time to reach London via Dublin and Liverpool before the deadline. However, once on British soil again, Fix produces a warrant and arrests Fogg. A short time later, the misunderstanding is cleared up--the actual bank robber had been caught several days earlier. In response to this, Fogg, in a rare moment of impulse, punches Fix, who immediately falls to the ground. However, Fogg has missed the train and returns to London five minutes late, assured that he has lost the wager.
In his London house the next day, he apologizes to Aouda for bringing her with him, since he now has to live in poverty and cannot financially support her. Aouda suddenly confesses that she loves him and asks him to marry her, which he gladly accepts. He calls for Passepartout to notify the reverend. At the reverend's, Passepartout learns that he is mistaken in the date, which he takes to be Sunday but which actually is Saturday due to the fact that the party traveled east, thereby gaining a full day on their journey around the globe, by crossing the International Date Line.
Passepartout hurries back to Fogg, who immediately sets off for the Reform Club, where he arrives just in time to win the wager. Thus ends the journey around the world.

Wonderful.

Have fun.

BR/zespri