From Venus to Antarctica by John Dunmore

Author:John Dunmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography/General
ISBN: From Venus to Antarctica
Publisher: Exisle Publishing Pty Ltd
Published: 2008-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

13. DUMONT D’URVILLE, NOVELIST

1835–36

The d’Urvilles settled down to quiet family life at La Juliade, the modest country residence Adèle had bought a few years earlier. Jules told a friend that he was happy enough, pottering about in his garden, but he also worked at the Toulon naval headquarters, having been appointed a permanent member of the standing court of enquiry and of the barracks supervisory committee. This, he admits, did not take up a great deal of his time, but he does not seem to have regretted what others might have regarded as inaction forced on him by the indifference of ungrateful superiors:

I seldom leave my bastion [he wrote to his friend Isidore Le Brun] apart from going off to preside over some court-martial; I am fully employed on philological studies, but I have given up geography, which in the way I see it can only be dealt with in Paris ... Those gentlemen who form part of the government are leaving me on the scrapheap, as I had foreseen they would; and so I am waiting for the time when I shall be able to retire, in another five years; I would even take early retirement, if such a request would not be considered a resignation, which would deprive my family, which has recently been increased through the birth of a child, of its income ... There are probably few people in France who care less than I do about political issues. I don’t read the newspapers, for what would be the point? Am I not already well aware that a small clique of rakes are leading an immense mob of dumbclucks, dupes or accomplices? [1]

Adèle was happy to be back in her native province and in the home she had bought for them while he was away sailing in the Astrolabe. She did some gardening, picked fruits from the small orchard, made jam, and looked after her aged father, who was now retired and was none too well. The old man was fond of his son-in-law, with whom he had always got on well, and had some years back given his daughter the not inconsiderable sum of 3,000 francs – which she had cautiously invested in government bonds without telling her husband. When he discovered this, D’Urville had grumbled about this secretiveness, which he interpreted as an indication that she did not trust his impulsive nature.

It may have been at this time that he turned back to the novel he had been working on several years previously. The help he received from Louis Reybaud when he was writing his Voyage pittoresque may have triggered this, and D’Urville may have discussed the idea with him. Reybaud was born in Marseilles, where he had managed a sugar refinery with his brother. He moved to Paris in 1828, becoming a journalist and a political activist somewhere to the right of the socialist movement – politically, he has been compared to Robert Owen. He is credited with providing D’Urville with the historical

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