This is Around the World in 80 Days week. That’s right, with its depiction of the Reform Club being so iconic, I’m going to do a separate post for 6 days this week, each one looking at a different version of Around the World in 80 Days, and how it depicts the Reform Club.
Today, I want to look at Jules Verne’s original novel, first serialised in instalments in 1872, and published in book form in 1873.
The Reform Club is, of course, the location of the opening wager which drives the subsequent action in the novel. It is used to anchor the story in a particular time and place, with the very first sentence informing us that in 1872 Fogg lived on Savile Row (within walking distance of ‘Clubland’), and the second sentence telling us:
“He was one of the most noticeable members of the Reform Club”
Alphonse de Neuville, ‘The Wager at the Reform Club’ illustration from the first edition of the book. The background does not particularly resemble the Reform Club, with far more floral decoration, and is much closer to the clubs of Paris of the time.
Much of what we know about Fogg is negative, restricted to what he does not do, and this includes his use of the Reform Club:
“He never used the cosy chambers which the Reform provides for its favoured members.”
Nevertheless, we learn that he used the Club daily, heading there from home at 11:30am.
The first-floor seating overlooking the central saloon of the Reform Club, the “large hall” in which Fogg’s wager would have taken place as members read the papers. (Photo credit: The Idler.)
As I have written before, the depiction of the Club in Verne’s novel is not particularly insightful or accurate. Or rather, it is noticeably out of date. The few details Verne gets right are clearly from second-hand, published sources. For instance, he describes the “nine windows” of the dining-room, something which could have been ascertained from the floorplans of the Club published in 1840. Verne is also correct in identifying the Daily Telegraph, Pall Mall, Standard and The Times as four publications which may plausibly have been found in the Reform Club and read in the “the large hall, a sumptuous apartment adorned with lavishly-framed paintings”, later described as “the great saloon of the club.”
The Library
We are told that Fogg has no study or library at home, as:
“at the Reform two libraries, one of general literature and the other of law and politics, were at his service.”
This is not entirely consistent with accounts of the history of the Reform Club’s library. Russell Burlingham’s 1991 pamphlet The Reform Club Library: A Retrospect, 1841-1991, states that the club’s library was focused around “history, politics and law”, with some 30,000 books acquired between the opening of the clubhouse in 1841, and 1873. Verne’s account therefore skips over the Club’s focus on political literature, just as he does on its strong political identity in the 1870s more generally, even though these were central to the Club’s raison d'être.
It is true that the Reform Club library would have been split among multiple rooms. Simon Blundell’s 1991 The Reform Club Library: A Guide informs us that Charles Barry’s original plan was indeed for a library split among two rooms, the ground-floor Morning Room (originally called the Parliamentary Library, with its complete set of Hansard) in the north-west corner, and the first-floor Smoking Room directly above it (originally called the Upper Library). Yet from 1853, the Club commissioned Barry to convert the Club’s vast rear first-floor Drawing Room running for more of the south of the building, into what has since been the main Library. Thus by the book’s 1872 setting, the Reform had at least three main library rooms, and relatively little in the way of general literature. It therefore seems likely that any descriptions upon which Verne based his account of the Reform Club were decades out of date.
The main Library of the Reform Club - converted from the old Drawing Room in 1853 - a “third library” of which Verne was apparently unaware in 1872. (Photo credit: Financial Times.)
The Reform Club’s membership
Verne’s description of the members:
“Andrew Stuart, an engineer; John Sullivan and Samuel Fallentin, bankers; Thomas Flanagan, a brewer; and Gauthier Ralph, one of the Directors of the Bank of England—all rich and highly respectable personages, even in a club which comprises the princes of English trade and finance.”
does not seem to particularly capture the Liberal Party of 1872. Where are the non-conformists, the Whigs, the manufacturers, the intellectuals, or the free-traders? And we are later told:
“the Reform Club was especially agitated, several of its members being Bank officials.”
Yet belonging to what was then such a politicised club might well have been frowned upon for supposedly apolitical Directors of the Bank of England, or other officials of the Bank - even if their presence at the Club serves a narrative purpose in the novel.
Although the Reform Club is generally portrayed as a reputable establishment, the book’s ‘outsiders’ from London society do not always regard its members with trust. Passepartout is very wary, suspecting their members of skullduggery:
“[Inspector] Fix, he thought, could only be an agent of Mr. Fogg’s friends at the Reform Club, sent to follow him up, and to ascertain that he really went round the world as had been agreed upon.”
And he even accuses Fix later of not merely being a Reform Club spy gathering intelligence, but of being more proactive:
“An agent of the members of the Reform Club, sent out here to interrupt my master’s journey.”
Indeed, while Fogg bears no ill towards his fellow members, it is clear that Passepartout regards the Reform Club’s members as the enemy, for when they are ahead of schedule:
“This is bad,” muttered Passepartout, “for the gentlemen of the Reform Club!”
Fix himself does not have a particularly high opinion of the Club either, for when protesting his innocence, he suggests:
“Mr. Fogg’s wager is only a pretext, of which you and the gentlemen of the Reform are dupes.”
Max Wulff’s illustration of the wager at the Reform Club, from a 1900 Berlin edition, which relocates the action to a much smaller room. Note that no room in the Reform Club matches these dimensions. (Picture credit: Meisterdrucke.)
Politics
More generally, I observed in Behind Closed Doors, of the many inaccuracies in Verne representing Fogg and the Reform Club:
“There could scarcely have been a less representative member of the Reform Club than the literary [Phileas] Fogg. The loudly political Reform Club, founded in the aftermath of the 1832 Reform Act, still requires members to sign a declaration of their agreement with the principles of that Act. The Club was a hotch-potch of earnest Whig, Liberal, Radical and Reformer politicos from across Britain. Its members could not talk anything but politics.
“Yet Fogg cuts a distinctly apolitical figure, and Jules Verne’s explanation is decidedly unconvincing: ‘The way in which he got admission to this exclusive club was simple enough. He was recommended by the Barings, with whom he had an open credit.’ This might have been a plausible enough explanation for many clubs, but not the Reform, with its growing waiting list and legions of avowedly political candidates queuing up to join, and pressing their case based on merit.”
We know Jules Verne to have been keen on travel in his own right; indeed, he had visited London on several occasions prior to 1872.
Yet there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that he ever visited the Reform Club. Indeed, it is likely that he never did so; and that wanting his hero to depart from a prominent and well-known London club, that he simply picked the name out of one of the many London guidebooks available at the time. At no stage does he indicate the slightest awareness of the Club’s guiding theme, as an earnest political club engaged in electioneering and Liberal thought in the 1870s. In fact, the description seems interchangeable with any number of other clubs of the day, of a purely social nature.
(A more appropriate choice of setting might have been the Travellers Club next door on Pall Mall. Indeed, as we shall see, the 1989 TV mini-series adaptation actually used the Travellers Club building as a filming location, doubling for the neighbouring Reform Club. Yet that would probably have reduced the novelty value of the wager: in a club where having travelled a distance of more than 500 miles from London is a requirement of membership, the members are likely to have been much less sceptical of further travels.)
I also observed in Behind Closed Doors:
“Equally puzzling is how no one had any idea where Fogg’s money came from; for the mid-nineteenth century was the era of the plutocrat, as the middle classes massively expanded – and clubs hugely reflected this, with members flaunting their wealth.”
This was particularly evident at the Reform Club, which contained its fair share of Liberal plutocrats, particularly by the 1860s and 1870s.
Gambling culture
One of the more misleading accounts of the Reform Club in the novel is its close identification with gambling culture. London Clubland in the 1870s did have a vibrant gambling culture - readers of my new book can view Betting Book excerpts which back up this point, and the Clubland Substack entry for the earlier Crockford’s gives a flavour of gambling clubs - but the Reform Club was not an example of this culture. Reformer could be abstemious to the point of piousness on gambling, with club rules curtailing bets to only modest sums. If the novel had been set in Brooks’s or White’s, that would have been a different matter.
Yet we see the ease with which a mild postulation on travel distances escalates into a highly consequential wager for £20,000 (around £3.2 million today), and are told:
“The news of the bet spread through the Reform Club, and afforded an exciting topic of conversation to its members. From the club it soon got into the papers throughout England.”
Verne later goes further:
“Everybody knows that England is the world of betting men, who are of a higher class than mere gamblers; to bet is in the English temperament. Not only the members of the Reform, but the general public, made heavy wagers for or against Phileas Fogg, who was set down in the betting books as if he were a race-horse.”
Verne did not seem to grasp how the Reform Club’s character, moulded by the Victorian Liberal Party, differed markedly from the gambling culture that was commonplace in other clubs.
Conclusion
Verne gives a fairly accurate description of a generic London social club with a strong gambling culture; but despite some architectural features being correct, his description of the Club left something to be desired. Given the original novel’s patchy portrayal of the Reform Club, it is little surprise that so many subsequent adaptations of the story across different media have deviated so drastically.
Further reading
Simon Blundell, The Reform Club Library: A Guide (London: Reform Club, 1991).
Russell Burlingham, The Reform Club Library: A Retrospect, 1841-1991 (London: Reform Club, 1991).
Jules Verne, Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours [Around the World in 80 Days] (Paris: Hetzel, 1872).