![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/VRIL-port-150x150.jpg\" "\\"VRIL\\"")
<\/a><\/center><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nFrom left to right: Napoleon III, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Bovril advertisements, an aurochs from Sigismund von Herberstein’s book published in 1556 (the caption reads “I’m ‘urus’, tur in Polish, aurox in German (dunces call me bison)”), an aurochs from Lascaux, detail of the Ishtar Gate, title page of an early American edition of “The Coming Race”, The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Pavlovich Bryullov, omnibus edition containing “Paul Clifford’, Symmes’ Hollow Earth and his monument, Hanebau IV. <\/em><\/p>\nWhile Bulwer-Lytton\u2019s beings live in caverns, his invention caught on like wildfire with Hollow Earth proponents, who did not hesitate to borrow the conveniently vague vril power, which provided a most useful explanation as to how on earth (and especially inside it) the various superior (yet so strangely elusive) races scooted about and kept themselves warm and well-lit.<\/p>\n
The Hollow Earth idea had been around a century longer than tin cans, but had not caught on so well. By the beginning of the 18th century, much of the world\u2019s surface had been explored, measured and mapped, or at least had been encircled by surveyors and chopped up into empires. While portions of the world\u2019s oceans still were largely unexplored, it seemed there was not much left to discover above ground. Telescopes were turned to the night skies, the Montgolfier brothers had made the first public demonstration of a lighter-than-air machine, speculation began in earnest on the nature of the Moon (it was variously considered inhabitable, inhabited and hollow) but could there be a world beneath?<\/p>\n
The idea was not new, ancient myth is riddled with underworlds. The worlds below are traditionally those of the dead and the damned. Orpheus braved the Underworld to rescue Eurydice. Plato spoke of enormous subterranean tunnels both broad and narrow filled the earth’s interior. Dante wandered through the levels of Purgatory in Virgil\u2019s company and Christ Harrowed Hell for good measure. There has always been a lot of activity underground. The actual physical location and nature of Hell was hotly debated, and learned tomes penned on the subject, outlining depths, temperatures and access points.<\/p>\n
But then Science came along and scientific speculation began in earnest as to what was really down there. The Plutonists, who held fast to the volcanic origins of the Earth with a molten core, hurled epithets at the Neptunists, who believed rocks had formed from the crystallization of minerals in the ancient oceans.<\/p>\n
Astronomer Edmond Halley believed that all heavenly bodies were hollow, stating “Beneath the crust of the Earth, which is 500 yards thick, is a hollow void”. He based his theory on changes in the Earth\u2019s magnetic field, and believed that the aurora borealis consisted of luminous gas escaping from inside the globe. Since his calculations remained annoyingly unsatisfactory, he eventually affirmed that the Earth contained 4 hollow spheres, one inside the other. (Happily for his posterity, he is better remembered for the comet that bears his name than for his curious theories.) Swiss mathematician Leonard Euler (1707-1783) concurred, adding “mathematically the Earth has to be hollow”. (Next time you have a ten franc Swiss banknote in hand, do remember that the man on it thought the Earth was hollow.) Euler also stated that inside there was a central sun 600 miles in diameter, which provided daylight for the people who lived there. Another mathematician, John Leslie, claimed there was not one, but two suns inside the Earth. He named them Pluto and Proserpina. (This approach also had the merit of explaining why the temperature rose the deeper one descended underground.)<\/p>\n
But, the first true campaigner for a Hollow Earth was still to come.<\/p>\n
Captain John Cleves Symmes was born in New Jersey in 1779. A soldier from 1802 to 1816, he distinguished himself in the war of 1812 and went on to become a trader in St. Louis. In the spring of 1818, he published the following announcement:
\n
LIGHT GIVES LIGHT, TO LIGHT DISCOVER\u2014”AD INFINITUM.”<\/strong><\/center>
\nST. LOUIS, (Missouri Territory,)
\nNorth America, April 10, A. D., 1818
\nTo all the world – I declare the earth is hollow and habitable within; containing a number of solid concentrick spheres, one within the other, and that it is open at the poles 12 or 16 degrees; I pledge my life in support of this truth, and am ready to explore the hollow, if the world will support and aid me in this undertaking.
\nJOHN CLEVES SYMMES,
\nOf Ohio, Late Captain of Infantry.<\/strong><\/p>\nSymmes further proposed gathering “100 brave companions” for a polar expedition to prove his theory. The widths of these holes, said Symmes, were 4000 (for the North Pole) and 6000 miles (South Pole), meaning that an explorer on foot would not notice his gradual progress over the rounded lip of the aperture until he was inside the Earth. The centre of Earth\u2019s gravity, he added, was in the middle of the Earth\u2019s crust or skin (which was 500 miles thick). In 1822, Symmes petitioned Congress to finance the expedition. His proposal received twenty-five votes. Alas for Symmes, his ambitions attracted more mockery than money, and he died an embittered man in May 1829 at the age of 49. His son, Americus Symmes, erected a Hollow Earth monument (it looks rather like an ambitious doughnut) above his grave in Hamilton, Ohio. However, if he never saw his dream come true, historians agree that he did contribute to public interest in, and ultimately exploration of the polar regions, rather in the same fashion that the anonymous author of Prester John\u2019s famous letter (or the equally anonymous author in the shadow of Sir John Mandeville) contributed to the Portuguese drive to find a route around Africa to the Orient in the 15th and 16th centuries. One of Symmes\u2019 followers, a certain Jeremiah Reynolds, successfully lobbied Congress into agreeing to finance the 1838 Wilkes Expedition to the Antarctic. (Reynolds also penned a novella called \u201cMocha Dick\u201d, about the legend of a white whale, which certainly inspired a certain Herman Melville to write a tale which would become far better known.)<\/p>\n
Sometimes fiction and fact are so intertwined they cannot truly exist without each other.<\/p>\n
Shortly after, a New York herb doctor named Cyrus Teed proclaimed that Earth was indeed a hollow sphere but that humanity lived not on the surface of the globe, but inside<\/em>. (Teed was given to fooling around with electricity, and at one point shocked himself into unconsciousness. He was then visited by a \u201cdivine being\u201d who revealed to Teed that he was the next messiah after Jesus and gave him the task of revealing to the world the true nature of the Earth.) In the center of the hollow sphere was the sun, which was half dark and half light, giving the appearance of sunset and sunrise as it turned. Only the dense atmosphere in the center of the sphere prevented observers from looking up into the sky and seeing the other side of the world. Teed changed his name to Koresh, bought 300 acres of land in Florida, moved there with his several hundred followers and declared himself the messiah of a new religion, Koreshanity. He died in 1908. (He did not rise from the dead as he had announced beforehand, and after three days propped up in a bathtub in the hot Florida weather, his followers discretely inhumed him.)<\/p>\nIn a book called \u201cThe Phantom of the Poles\u201d, published in 1906, author William Reed stated: “The earth is hollow. The Poles, so long sought, are phantoms. There are openings at the northern and southern extremities. In the interior are vast continents, oceans, mountains and rivers. Vegetable and animal life are evident in this New World, and it is probably peopled by races unknown to dwellers on the Earth’s surface. \u2026I am able to prove my theory that the earth is not only hollow, but suitable in its interior to sustain human life with as little discomfort as on its exterior, and can be made accessible to mankind with one-fourth the outlay of money, time and life that it costs to build the subway in New York City. The number of people who can settle in this new world (if not already occupied) will be billions.”<\/em> When asked to elaborate, he hinted at a government conspiracy to cover up the truth. But of course. (Nor did it help that Peary and Henson reached the North Pole in April of the same year.)<\/p>\nEnterprising authors brought vril into it. French author Louis Jacolliot claimed to have found vril being used by the Jains in India. Helena Blavatsky inserted vril into \u201cIsis Unveiled\u201d (1877) and again into \u201cThe Secret Doctrine\u201d eleven years on. Happily, according to Blavatsky, the terrible power was in benevolent hands, whosever they were. Since then, it has been part of the fringes of Theosophist doctrine. In \u201cThe Story of Atlantis & the Lost Lemuria\u201d, published in 1896 by William Scott-Elliot, the Atlanteans have airships propelled by vril-force.<\/p>\n
Marshall Gardner claimed that the discovery of a frozen mammoth in Sibera in 1846 was proof of a hollow earth. According to him, the creature had wandered out through the hole at the North Pole and frozen solid, proof that mammoths still survived inside. His book \u201cA Journey to the Earth\u2019s Interior\u201d was first published in 1913 and again in 1920, years after Robert E. Peary had reached the North Pole. It was not taken seriously.<\/p>\n
United States Navy Admiral Richard Byrd flew over the North Pole in 1926 and the South Pole in 1929. He reported no holes leading to a world inside, though the cryptically vague entries in his diaries have fueled much hollow earth speculation.<\/p>\n
In a curious episode of WWII, accounts tell of an expedition sent in April 1942 by the Nazi command to the Island of Reugen in the Baltic Sea. The commander, Dr Heinz Fischer, an expert on infrared rays, intended to photograph the British fleet by turning his cameras upward and shooting across the centre of the hollow Earth, certain that infrared ray could more easily penetrate the atmosphere between. A secret Nazi base also apparently built flying saucers, powered by vril. Naturally, it was all hushed up after the war.<\/p>\n
But of course.<\/p>\n
By the way, there is a Nazi connection with Shambhala and Aghartha too. Covered up, possibly by the same Nazis who escaped in vril-powered saucers to underground refuges. The Haunebu III, built in 1944 by the Secret Vril Society, measured 70 meters in diameter, and could fly at 7000 kmh close to the ground (at 24,000 meters it did much better: 40,000 kmh). It had an autonomy of 8 weeks in flight and could transport 32 people. (Which of course makes good enough sense, since according to Jacolliot, the Aryans had originally migrated south from subterranean Thule to begin with. They were channeling the technology from an alien race near Aldebaran.)<\/p>\n
Shhh. Conspiracy. Cover-up.<\/p>\n
It doesn\u2019t really even make good science fiction.<\/p>\n
The Hollow Earth at last became a destination of choice for writers of utopist fantasy and science-fiction. Even Tarzan of the Apes has been there (it is populated by dinosaurs and cave men, who call it Pellucidar) The most popular novel is naturally enough “Journey to the Center of the Earth” by Jules Verne. From myth, with a brief detour into the realm of scientific speculation, the Earth is now hollow only in fiction.<\/p>\n
Which was what Bulwer-Lytton was writing in the first place, though of his novels, none have retained the savour of Bovril or the persistence of vril. He coined many phrases, though. “The great unwashed”, “pursuit of the almighty dollar”, “the pen is mightier than the sword” are three well-known ones. But perhaps the most famous, thanks to a beagle who is able to balance a typewriter atop his kennel, is “It was a dark and stormy night.” I didn\u2019t even know that Snoopy\u2019s novella existed beyond that first line. Here it is:
\n
It Was A Dark And Stormy Night
\nby Snoopy<\/center><\/p>\nPart I
\nIt was a dark and stormy night. Suddenly, a shot rang out!
\nA door slammed. The maid screamed.
\nSuddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon!
\nWhile millions of people were starving, the king lived
\nin luxury. Meanwhile, on a small farm in Kansas, a boy was
\ngrowing up.<\/p>\n
Part II
\nA light snow was falling, and the little girl with the
\ntattered shawl had not sold a violet all day.
\nAt that very moment, a young intern at City Hospital was
\nmaking an important discovery. The mysterious patient in
\nRoom 213 had finally awakened. She moaned softly.
\nCould it be that she was the sister of the boy in Kansas
\nwho loved the girl with the tattered shawl who was the
\ndaughter of the maid who had escaped from the pirates?<\/p>\n
The intern frowned.
\n“Stampede!” the foreman shouted, and forty thousand head
\nof cattle thundered down on the tiny camp. The two men
\nrolled on the ground grappling beneath the murderous hooves.
\nA left and a right. A left. Another left and right. An
\nuppercut to the jaw. The fight was over. And so the ranch
\nwas saved.
\nThe young intern sat by himself in one corner of the
\ncoffee shop. He had learned about medicine, but more
\nimportantly, he had learned something about life.
\n
THE END<\/center><\/p>\nBulwer-Lytton\u2019s opener, in context, went thus: \u201cIt was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents – except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.\u201d<\/em> The rest of the novel, entitled “Paul Clifford” (1830), is more in the same vein \u2013 except at occasional intervals, when the reader nods off. Snoopy\u2019s certainly reads better \u2013 and quicker.<\/p>\nBulwer-Lytton’s other novels are now all largely forgotten. The only one which is apparently still read (besides The Coming Race\u201d, which has a passionate if ever so slightly crackpot following) is \u201cThe Last Days of Pompeii\u201d, an allegorical epic. Bulwer-Lytton wrote the novel (published in 1834) after seeing a painting by the Russian romantic artist Karl Pavlovich Bryullov entitled \u201cThe Last Day of Pompeii\u201d in Milan. Bryullov, like Bulwer-Lytton, was famous in his day, though he too is now largely forgotten. Sir Walter Scott is reported to have spent an hour in front of the monumental canvas (4 and a half by 6 and a half meters) and declared that it “wasn’t a painting, but an epic”.<\/p>\n
Whatever he may have meant by that, he neglected to write a novel about it. Perhaps it\u2019s just as well. Here is the opening line of Bulwer\u2019s novel: \u201c’HO, Diomed, well met! Do you sup with Glaucus to-night?’ said a young man of small stature, who wore his tunic in those loose and effeminate folds which proved him to be a gentleman and a coxcomb.\u201d<\/em> From there on it continues in the same delightfully florid fashion until the eruption, with Glaucus (who represents the downtrodden Greek culture), his nemesis Arbaces (the deeper-trodden Egyptian legacy), Olinthus (up-and-coming Christianity), the whole chaperoned by the Witch of Vesuvius (!) Here is a passage from near the end:<\/p>\n“As he spoke there came that sudden illumination which had heralded the death of Arbaces, and glowing over that mighty multitude, awed, crouching, breathless\u2014never on earth had the faces of men seemed so haggard!\u2014never had meeting of mortal beings been so stamped with the horror and sublimity of dread!\u2014never till the last trumpet sounds, shall such meeting be seen again! And above those the form of Olinthus, with outstretched arm and prophet brow, girt with the living fires. And the crowd knew the face of him they had doomed to the fangs of the beast\u2014then their victim\u2014now their warner! and through the stillness again came his ominous voice:<\/p>\n‘The hour is come!'”<\/em><\/p>\n
For an author\u2019s legacy to be summed up by a ubiquitous meat extract in a potbellied jar and a philosophical beagle\u2019s one-liner seems a little unjust*, but that\u2019s the way things go and indeed it is not a negligible patrimony compared to those whose work is quite simply forgotten. And why all this concatenation of circumstance? Well, it just seems that sometimes history makes memorable fiction and vice-versa.<\/p>\n
It makes them both far easier to remember, at any rate.<\/p>\n
* His name also lives on (though he might well have not much appreciated the homage) in the annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, held by San Jos\u00e9 University\u2019s Department of English. The prize goes to the contestant who can pen the worst opening phrase of an imaginary novel.<\/em><\/p>\nSMAUG THE WOODEN<\/strong><\/p>\nWanted to share this: the work of J\u00e9rome Braure<\/a>. Take a look at his web site. Exquisite work for someone who considers it as a hobby.<\/p>\n
\n\n\n\n\n ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/SMAUG1-port-150x150.jpg\" "\\"SMAUG") <\/a><\/center><\/div>\n<\/td>\n\n\n ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/SMAUG2-port-150x150.jpg\" "\\"SMAUG") <\/a><\/center><\/div>\n<\/td>\n\n\n ![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/SMAUGWIP-port-150x150.jpg\" "\\"SMAUG") <\/a><\/center><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nON SITE <\/strong>
\nMy wonderful webmaster has recently been updating bits here and there on the site. So, please bear with us, if things change, disappear or are temporarily unavailable, it means an update is taking place. Thank you all for your support. Hopefully, the changes will be sorted out so rapidly you won’t even have noticed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Or A Certain Concatenation of Concomitance (Or Convolutions of Coincidence, It All Depends) In 1870, Napoleon III had a problem with Prussia. After having declared war on those pesky Prussians, he was preparing to mobilize 400,000 troops, and of course had to provision them adequately. So he wrote to suppliers across the Channel, with an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[194,197,192,193,198,191,154,195,196],"class_list":["post-821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chronicles","tag-beagle-fiction","tag-bulwer-lytton","tag-fluid-beef","tag-hollow-earth","tag-lyman","tag-napoleon-iii","tag-smaug","tag-vril","tag-vril-ya"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1PY8Y-df","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/821\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} | | |
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.john-howe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/VRIL-port.jpg\" "\\"VRIL\\"")
<\/a><\/center><\/div>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n