Jules Verne Forum

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Which Vernian are you?

From: Harry Hayfield <harryhayfield~at~googlemail.com>
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:24:17 -0000
To: "Jules Verne Forum" <jvf~at~gilead.org.il>

BlankThanks to the wonders of Facebook and the various quizzes people keep
sending me, I have determined that I am most akin to Mrs. Barbicane because
"You are loved by those around you, however your friends and family do there
best not to excite your for fear of your bouts of senility. When it comes to
family and friends in trouble, nothing will stand in your way to help them.
You are a survivor"

To which I would say, "That's alright I suppose, but how is it that I feel
more like Phileas Fogg then?". So I decided to have a scour through the
texts I have for Around the World in Eighty Days and found this little
passage:

"He was said to look like Byron: his head at least, for his feet were beyond
reproach - but a mustachioed and bewhiskered Byron, an impassive Byron, one
who might have lived for a thousand years without ever growing old...He was
not lavish, nor, on the contrary, avaricious; for, whenever he knew that
money was needed for a noble, useful, or benevolent purpose, he supplied it
quietly and sometimes anonymously. He was, in short, the least communicative
of men. He talked very little, and seemed all the more mysterious for his
taciturn manner. His daily habits were quite open to observation; but
whatever he did was so exactly the same thing that he had always done
before, that the wits of the curious were fairly puzzled"

Well, I will grant you I am not Bryonic (for starters I don't consider
myself to be any good at poetry although in the millennium I did construct a
eight line rap for a theatre production I was on) and I certainly do not
have a moustache or beard. I can agree with his sentiments on money
(especially living as I do on just £53 / $82 / €110 a week as a registered
carer) but I do collect for local charities (most notably the Poppy Appeal)
and always do so with very little fuss. However, on the subject of lack of
communication I fail (and badly), give me a subject I know even a modicum
about (say for example British and American elections, the Olympics. the
Commonwealth Games or indeed the weather) and it's very difficult to get me
to stop talking and thanks to things like Facebook and Twitter I suppose you
could say my daily habits are open to observation but whether I generate any
curiousity due to my postings I have no idea (as most people generally
ignore them).

My personal feelings are that I feel more like Fogg than anyone else in
Verne's books simply because of the fact that he's a Victorian Briton who
manages to do things his own way and seems content in those ways just as I
do. For example, give me a general election campaign and I spend the whole
time analysing polls, doing forecasts and tallying seats as they come in.

Does this sound like a reasonable explaination of why I feel more like Fogg
than anyone else and if so, who do you feel most like?

Received on Sun 21 Feb 2010 - 14:24:32 IST

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