Steam House: Demon of Cawnpore

The Steam House #1

by Jules Verne

Achmed Abdullah's name was once synonymous with adventure. He published dozens of novels and hundreds of short stories in the pulp magazines of the early 20th century, thrilling millions of readers throughout the world.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Science Fiction, Classics

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1880

About the author

Novels of French writer Jules Gabriel Verne, considered the founder of modern science fiction, include Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873).

This author who pioneered the genre. People best know him for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870).

Verne wrote about space, air, and underwater travel before people invented navigable aircraft and practical submarines and devised any means of spacecraft. He ranks behind Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie as the second most translated author of all time. People made his prominent films. People often refer to Verne alongside Herbert George Wells as the "father of science fiction."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_V...

Reviews

[Revanth Ukkalam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel is a brilliant guide to colonialism and an expression of imperial thinking in its full bloom. Often reminiscent of Kim (which is a later work), the Demon of Cawnpore/The Steam House/Death of Nana Saheb is a travel-adventure novel set across India sometime after the suppression of the Rebellion of 1857. Verne to me was a childhood hero - someone who romanticised exploration and travel. He has always been somebody whose imagination knew no bounds. In this novel however there is no Nautilius, no space travel but instead a here-and-now political operation: capture of the rebel, the 'demon of Cawnpore' Nana Saheb. Using this operation Verne goes all out in depicting Raj India - the fascination with elephants (the only sci-fi bit in this book is Behemoth an elephant shaped steam-run vehicle, which also gives the book its original name), temples, esoteric Sadhus, ferocious tigers and all other typical exoticities India is associated with. I had a guilty amusement in seeing Verne be stark racist and hopped onto Behemoth to revisit Varanasi, Allahabad, and Lucknow. What Verne should definitely be commended for is his obsessive research. In a matter of three pages he could cram everything that there was to know for somebody soon visiting the Aurangabad travel circuit. After all, empire is a panopticon.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first half of The Steam House, a minor Verne novel about a party of Europeans (mostly English though the
narrator is French) traveling through northern India in
what we might call luxurious trailors pulled by a a steam-powered elephant. Very little happens in the first book
--they escape a forest fire and defeat 3 real elephants in a pulling contest--but their travels are intercut with
plotting by Nana Sahib (a real person) a surviving leader
of the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and it is implied he will
be encountering them later on. I understand from notes that
the original French was more symmpathetic to the Indian side, but the English version I read accepts the traditional English view of the mutiny --Nana Sahib is called the Demon of Cawnpore because he was blamed for a
massacre of English women and others there.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of Jules Verne's stories are among my favorites--such as "journey to the Center of the Earth." But this book will not be added to that list. To be fair, this is only Part 1 and perhaps Part 2 will be a big improvement. However, this is really one of Verne's travelogues and I wish a map of Victorian Age India had been included. We follow some British imperialists ( accompanied by a Frenchman ) as they tromp around "In-jah" in a steam engine-driven mechanical elephant, the white sahibs blasting away at any animal life they encounter. So if you think I don't sympathize very much with the main protagonists, you would be right. I wish some tigers would eat them!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this when it was published in the Fitzroy Edition by Ace books when I was a kid. At the time, I loved it and anything by Jules Verne. Very Victorian adventure story based on the 1857 Mutiny in India against the British. Today, the story would play out differently, but author's can only write in the age in which they exist and with the knowledge of events as colored by their backgrounds and the mores of the society and culture. As a ten year old, it was a great read for me back then.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess there's a good reason I'd never heard of this one before, it's not very good.

[Tentatively, Convenience · Rating 3 out of 5]

review of
Jules Verne's The Demon of Cawnpore
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - March 15, 2013


Verne's popularity was catapulted by his fantastic travel stories, such things as Five Weeks in a Balloon & Around the World in Eighty Days, a series his publisher entitles "Les Voyages Extraordinaires". While many of these were too fantastic to be based on actual traveler experience, Journey to the Center of the Earth & From the Earth to the Moon, eg, others might've had their details based on Verne's hypothetical readings of travelogues.

That seems to be the case here. The Demon of Cawnpore, Book One of The Steam House consists largely of description of areas traversed in India. In other words, Verne seems to've done his research.

The introduction by I. O. Evans writes that: "The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 had threatened Jules Verne with financial ruin. His fortunes were restored not so much by one of his most successful stories, Round the World in Eighty Days, as by the play based upon it. The star-performer in this was reputed to be the elephant, lent by the London Zoo and warmly welcomed by the Parisians; they had not seen such a creature for years, most of the animals in the Jardin des Plants having been killed during the siege of Paris for food." [..] "His biographers suggest ironically that he may have this debt to this creature in mind when he excogitated "Behemoth," the mechanical elephant whose adventures dominate both of the books which form The Steam House." (p 5)

The Steam House being The Demon of Cawnpore followed by Tigers and Traitors, a sequel wch I, alas, don't have a copy of - thus my reading of The Demon of Cawnpore seems incomplete. & therein lies a problem: many series bks leave the reader hanging somewhat but The Demon of Cawnpore mostly just seemed inadequate by the end. It started off very promising w/ a steam engine run mechanical elephant capable of pulling 2 houses, a sortof Recreation Vehicle on a grand scale - placed in the context of an anti-imperialist revolt in British-occupied India. But it fizzled out in anticipation of its sequel. Evans' intro continues:

"Impressed and at the same time horrified by the stern efficiency with which the British had suppressed the Indian Mutiny - for in his time the world was not so accustomed to reprisals as it is today - Verne ingeniously worked into his narrative the aftermath of the Indian Mutiny. In the original version he devotes a whole chapter to the Mutiny and its suppression,* [*Omitted in the present edition as holding up the story and lacking in interest.] so tendential that his original translators disavowed responsibility for its "facts or sentiments" in a foot-note!" - p 6

I call the reader's attn to the admission here that the publishers omitted a chapter present in the original bk! Shame on them!! This is the Fitzroy edition published by Ace! Don't bother to read this one, try to find an edition w/ the chapter omitted here! I will. Evans continues:

"He realized with some prescience that the quelling of the Mutiny had not put an an end to nationalist aspirations in India, and this gave his plot a dramatic interest which otherwise it would have lacked, as well as a somewhat tenuous factual basis. Nana Sahib was in fact a ringleader in the mutiny and is accused of being responsible for the massacre at Cawnpore; defeated, he took refuge in the jungles at the foot of the Himalayas, and is believed to have perished there. As, however, his actual fate is uncertain, Verne could plausibly represent him as having survived and plotting a further insurrection." - p 6

& this use of Nana Sahib as a character couple w/ the mechanical elephant gives The Demon of Cawnpore fabulous promise. Interestingly, the racism of The Begum's Fortune, written only a yr before, is largely gone here (see my review here: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17... ). Yes, the only black character is a cook &, therefore, a servant - but one so esteemed for his cooking abilities that a negative opinion from him is respectfully feared: "He presided over his saucepans with the air of a high priest and distributed his condiments with the accuracy of a chemist. Monsieur Parazard was vain, it is true, but so clever that we readily pardoned his vanity." (p 52) Captain Hood, the hunter, is out in search of game to bring back to the travelers w/ the steam-powered mechanical elephant but is unable to find anything: "He had only come out now in the character of a purveyor, and thought of the reception Monsieur Parazard would give him if he returned with an empty bag." (p 137) But the social world of servants & the filthy rich marches on in Verne as both a sign of accepted classism & as a gimmick to justify the wealth that enables certain fantastic things to get done. It's mainly criticized in connection w/ the Indian Rajas & not w/ the British heros.

There is, however, a criticism of British imperialism somewhat implicit in the sympathetic treatment given to Nana Sahib, who's described as a murderer but still credited w/ much justification of the Indian rebellion. EG: "In one day twenty-eight rebels were blown from a cannon's mouth - a fearful sentence, many times afterwards carried out during the mutiny of 1857." (p 21) Verne does not approve.
The novel starts w/ ""A reward of two thousand pounds will be paid to any one who will deliver up, dead or alive, one of the prime movers of the Sepoy revolt, at present known to be in the Bombay presidency, the Nabob Dandou Pant, commonly called...." - commonly called Nana Sahib; a "presidency" in this case meaning a district.

""Woe betide those who fall now into the power of Dandou Pant! Englishmen have not seen the last of Nana Sahib!"

"Nana Sahib! This name, the most formidable to which the revolt of 1857 had given a horrible notoriety, was there once more, flung like a haughty challenge at the conquerors of India." - p 17

"It was but too true. The Mahratta prince, Dandou Pant, adopted son of Baji Rao, Peishwar of Poona, known as Nana Sahib, and perhaps at this period the sole survivor of the leaders in the great insurrection, had dared to leave his inaccessible retreats amid the mountains of Nepaul. Full of courage and audacity, accustomed to face danger, crafty and skilled in the art of baffling and eluding pursuit in every form, he had ventured forth into the provinces of Deccan, animated by hatred intensified a hundredfold since the terrible reprisals taken after the rebellion." - p 29

The trip by mechanical elephant is somewhat born out of the narrator's criticism of traveling by train. When asked how his cross-India trip was he complained of having been "blinded": "I don't want to speak evil of railroads, Banks, since it is your business to make them; but let me ask you whether you call it travelling to be jammed up in the compartment of a carriage, see no further than the glass of the windows on each side of you, tear along day and night, now over viaducts among the eagles and vultures, now through tunnels among moles and rats, stopping only at stations one exactly like another". [..] ""Ah, well, then, you had better take to the great trunk road and walk!"" (p 18) Wch is what the character has decided to do. This leads to an alternate seemingly fantastic proposal that is eventually realized:

""The best plan of all," said I, "would certainly be to carry one's house with one."

"Oh, you snail!" cried Banks.

""My friend," replied I, "a snail who could leave his shell, and return to it a pleasure, would not be badly off. To travel in one's own house, a rolling house, will probably be the climax of inventions in the matter of journeying!"" - p 25

""Well said!" exclaimed Captain Hood. "Hurrah for the steam horse! I can almost fancy I see the travelling house, invented by Banks the great engineer, travelling the highways and byways of India, penetrating jungles, plunging through forests, venturing even into the haunts of lions, tigers, bears, panthers, and leopards, while we, safe within its walls, are dealing destruction on all and sundry! Ah, Banks, it makes my mouth water!" - p 28

Yes, this depiction of Hood may be comical but the undertone is that he's a bit of a murderous maniac - & he's British. Hood is 'comical' but I can't help but think that Verne is taking more than a little crack at cultural insensitivity:

""My dear Maucler," answered Banks, "the strictest rules will give way before the offer of a few rupees! The Brahmins must live."

""I don't see why they should," bluntly said Captain Hood, who never professed toleration towards the Hindoos, nor held in respect, as his countrymen generally do, their manners, customs, prejudices, and objects of veneration. In his eyes India was nothing but a vast hunting ground, and he felt a far deeper interest in the wild inhabitants of the jungles than in the native population either of town or country." - p 68

It's fun for me to see the occasional Latin expression creep in - an indicator that this bk was written at a time when education wd've more commonly included such things: ""A first-class engineer who is an artist, a poet in iron and steel into the bargain, is a rara avis amongst us!"" (p 43) Rara avis = rare bird. While today's 'necessities' might be a cell-phone & a laptop, these travelers 'needed' "sideboards and buffets loaded with all the wealth of silver, glass, and china, which is necessary to English comfort." (p 46)

Yes, things were different in those days, it's casually mentioned that one place "is the wealthy center of the opium trade" - a destructive addiction imposed on much of the world by British military mercantilism. There's also plenty of the 'exoticism' one wd expect from a writer of popular travel stories targeted at people not likely to ever travel to India themselves:

"Here some of the faithful, stupefied with "bang" (which is liquid opium mixed with a decoction of hemp) were suspended on branches of trees, by iron hooks plunged into their shoulders. Hanging thus, they whirled round and round until the flesh gave way, and they fell into the waters of the Phalgou.

"Others, in honour of Siva, had pierced their arms, legs, or tongues through and through with little darts, and made serpents lick the blood which flowed from the wounds." - p 71

But in these days when people like Fakir Musafar have rediscovered the Sun Dance ceremony of Plains Nation Native Americans & in wch piercings & the like are common fashion accessories, such physical events are probably less potently described than they were in Verne's times. On the other hand, passages like the following still pack a wallop:

"Several alligators of great size lay on the white sand, as if drinking in the early sunlight. Motionless, they were turned towards the radiant orb, as if they had been the most faithful votaries of Brahma. But the sight of several corpses floating by aroused them from their adoration.

"It is said that these bodies float on the back when they are men, and on the chest when they are women, but from personal observation I can state that there is no truth in the statement. In a moment the monsters hard darted on the prey, daily furnished to them on the waters of these rivers, and with it plunged into the depths." - p 80

The image of women reputed to float chest downward is presumably meant to evoke the weight of their breasts causing that position. Verne even comes up w/ some unexpected etymology: "The darkness within the room contrasted strongly with the lightning that flashed without. We had presently a proof that we were ourselves strongly charged with the electric fluid, when, to our infinite astonishment, we perceived our saliva to be luminous. This phenomenon, rarely observed, and very alarming when it is so, has been described as "spitting fire."" - p 123

One has to wonder whether Verne's somewhat sympathetic depiction of other cultures than his own fails here: "The musicians, who played tambourines, cymbals, and tom-toms, belonged to the school which thinks more of noise than of harmony; but there were besides scrapers on guitars and four-stringed violins, though their instruments had never been in a tuner's hands." (p 147) Methinks Verne's description here is based on something he read by someone very underknowledgable about music.

Verne even gets into some sympathy for exploited workers: "the working of his mines, the product of which are most esteemed in the markets of Benares and Allahabad, employs a large number of Hindoos. They are very hardly treated, condemned to the severest labour, and running a great chance of being decapitated as soon as their work is no longer required: so it is not to be wondered at that the Nana found many amongst them ready to fight for the independence of their country." (p 169)

All in all, this was a good bk - but its fizzling out in anticipation of a sequel that I might never read was a bit disappointing.

[Martijn Vsho · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not one of his better novels. I was excited about it at first but the plot is just awful in this one. There is not much exciting or captivating about it, except for the invention. I think a large part of it is because many of the English editions break up Verne's book The Steam House into two books and the lack of plot and development in the first half is much more noticeable now. I really hope the second half Tigers and Traitors is much better.

At the same time, it's always fun to see what Verne dreams of and what places he chooses to explore. The invention and location are definitely interesting, but I found that there was a lack of amazement for this invention past the first couple chapters.

"All that has been done, that can be done, will be done in machinery." (p.42)

"Off with you, Behemoth!" (p. 50)

[Doodles McC · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another Victorian British Empire story (set in India) from Jules Verne, that I read as a child but did not particularly like.

[Dipankar Mitra · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly not the best of Jules Verne, but it is an endearing read anyways. The initial few chapters seem well written, and it looks like the author has done his research well. As the journey of the party starts in their "Steam House", the description of the journey from Calcutta to Kanpur is very well described. Growing up in Bihar, I have taken numerous train trips along this route, and I was surprised by the attention to detail. Right up to the descriptions of local customs along Gaya. The plot is set in the aftermath of the 1857 uprising against the British, and at least in the first few chapters, the author and French translator manages to keep their tone neutral and unbiased.
The book takes a turn for the worse in the later chapters, devoted to the time in the Himalayan Terai and the Vindhyas. Firstly the tone becomes dramatically pro-imperialistic, and quite racist. The British colonel is always praised as "brave" and "dignified" even in the face of death, while the Indian resistance are termed as "savages" and "brutes". The tone morphs quite suddenly, and it almost feels like a different author took over! Secondly, the lack of research and understanding of the Indian wildlife is very apparent. This makes some of the scenarios depicted with wild animals quite unconvincing and even comical. Lions were never in the Himalayan foothills - the Asiatic lion population existed in the plains of west and central India. Nor would tigers and leopards and panthers unite in a targeted attack on a human camp. The combination of the overly imperialistic tone and the ridiculous depiction of animals in the second half of the book detract from an otherwise interesting read.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another favorite. Exotic India, like it probably never was, but it should have been. Lots of adventure and you've got to love any book that features a steam powered elephant.

[Mina · Rating 2 out of 5]

They invented an elefant car!! They invented an effing elefant car!!!