Scholars believe that Jules Verne patterned Captain Nemo on Gustave Flourens (1838-1871), a French revolutionary and writer. Who was he?
According to Elihu Benjamin Washburne, who authored Recollections of a Minister to France:
Gustave Flourens was quite a notable member of the [Paris] Commune. He was well known to many members of the American Colony of Paris, and I have often heard them speak of him.
He was a young man of excellent family, a son of Pierre Flourens, a professor in the College of France, and perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences. He was an accomplished scholar and a man of much intelligence, but he early imbibed those revolutionary ideas which in the end cost him his life.
He had travelled much and written interesting books. Connected with the press during the last days of the Empire, he combated Napoleon III, with great vehemence.
Being obliged to leave France, he went to Holland and thence to London. He was tried and convicted for his connection with the complot of Blois. He was sentence (in contumaciam) to hard labor for life.
The revolution of the 4th of September opened the door for his re-entry to his native Paris. On the 31st of October, he was a leader in the attempt to seize the government of the National Defence in the Hotel de Ville. Tried by a court-martial for this offence, he was sent to the prison of Mazas, but he was subsequently released by a mob.
The insurrection of the 18th of March brought him again into prominence. Elected a member of the Commune, he was afterward invested with a military commission, and on the 2d day of April, he headed a military demonstration to go out on the Route de Rueil. In a skirmish which took place, Flourens was mortally wounded. (Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869-1877, Volume 11663, by Elihu Benjamin Washburne, page 208.)
William Butcher, a translator of Twenty Thousand Leagues, found a clue to his belief that Nemo was patterned on Gustave Flourens when he studied Paris in the Twentieth Century (at page 204 of the paperback edition):
...Clear similarities exist with Nemo's scientific and revolutionary activities and his romantic rebellion. A vital clue is provided by Paris in the Twentieth Century, set in 1960, which describes its hero as "pass[ing] in front of the Sorbonne where M. Flourens was still giving his lectures with the greatest success, still keen, still young" (he occupied a chair at the Natural History Museum at twenty-five). See The Mysterious Island, by Jules Verne, Sidney Kravitz, Arthur B. Evans, note 2 for Chapter XVI, at page 650.
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Credits
Image of Gustave Flourens, public domain.
