(1816–87) in Paris, Franz Boll (1849–79) in Rome, or Willy Kühne (1837–1900) in Heidelberg. Accounts of these experiments were published in journals that Verne perused on a regular basis such as the Comptes-rendus of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, the Musée des familles, or the Revue des Deux Mondes.
There exist at least two other possible (nonscientific) sources for this idea of optograms used by Verne. One, also mentioned by both Moré and Jean Jules-Verne, is a short story called “Claire Lenoir,” first published in 1867 by Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (and later reprinted in 1887), a copy of which was found in Verne’s personal library. Interestingly, in Villiers’s narrative, the fictional protagonist supposedly reads an article describing optograms published in the minutes of the Académie des Sciences de Paris.36 The other possible source is Jules Claretie’s novel L’Accusateur, published in 1897. This detective novel features a sleuth named Bernardet who, having read Boll’s and Kühne’s articles, photographs the eyes of a victim whose murder he is investigating. He finds inscribed on the dead man’s retinas the image of one of the victim’s friends and promptly has him arrested. It is eventually discovered, however, that the incriminating image is a small portrait that the murdered man was staring at when he was killed. It is interesting to note that Jules Claretie, elected to the Académie Française in 1888, was also responsible for one of the first books of literary criticism on Verne (Jules Verne, Paris: A. Quantin, 1883), so it is quite likely that Verne was familiar with his work.37
From beginning to end, The Kip Brothers stands as one of Verne’s more explicitly visual novels. References to perception and sight abound in the text: from the opening Zolaesque scene in the Three Magpies tavern where the villainous characters Vin Mod and Flig Balt are on the lookout for new recruits; to the trial where the fate of the Kip brothers hangs on the testimony of various eyewitnesses; to the efforts of Mr. Hawkins who “sees” the goodness in the heroes despite the visible evidence against them; to the “eye-opening” conclusion where only an enlarged photo of the victim’s retinas ultimately proves they were framed.38 Again and again, the twists and turns of the plot hinge on what can be seen, on what is hidden from view, and on what looks to be but is not. Given this thematic focus, it is significant that, during this time of his life, Verne was suffering from vision problems—severe cataracts, especially in his right eye. He described his condition in a 1901 letter to his old friend Nadar, saying, “I’m almost blind, and will remain so until my cataract operation. I no longer recognize anyone in the street, barely see what I write, and live in a fog.”39 Verne also frequently refers to his condition in his correspondence with his publisher Hetzel fils. In 1902, for example, during their discussions about adding a subtitle to each of the two volumes of The Kip Brothers (the second volume would be subtitled, interestingly, “The Eyes of the Dead”), Verne writes, “I still have not undergone that cataract operation, and I won’t decide on it until I can no longer read. … But up until now, my left eye has been sufficient.”40 Whether because of doctor’s orders or because, as Verne himself claimed, he did not wish to risk surgery so long as he could see enough to continue reading and writing, the cataract operation would never take place.
The main source for the plot of Verne’s The Kip Brothers is the true story of the Rorique (sometimes spelled Rorick) brothers whose trial became a highly publicized news story in France in the mid-1890s. On June 20, 1894, Verne wrote a letter to his brother Paul in which he confides: “A story that has always touched me is the one about the Rorique brothers, [whose death penalty is] now commuted. There is perhaps something to think about there.”41 Thus, the idea of fictionalizing what came to be known as the “Rorique Affair” was clearly on Verne’s mind as early as 1894. During the final decade of his life, Verne had an Italian correspondent named Mario Turiello and, in three letters to him (written on January 15, May 25, and November 24, 1902), the French novelist links the Rorique Affair directly to The Kip Brothers, saying: “My new novel, The Kip Brothers, which was inspired by the story of the Rorique brothers, has two volumes”; “It’s the story of the Rorique brothers that inspired The Kip Brothers, of which the first volume will soon be available”; and “You say that you didn’t grasp what I meant about the story of the Rorique brothers. Obviously, you don’t read a lot of newspapers. About ten years ago, these fine gentlemen were judged in France and sent to prison for having murdered their captain.”42
Here is the story of the Rorique/Degrave brothers, as summarized by Marcel Moré in his Le Très curieux Jules Verne (120–23):
In July 1892 in Ponape, Micronesia, two brothers from Ostend, Belgium, Léonce and Eugène Degrave (sometimes spelled Degraeve), but better known under their assumed name of Rorique, were accused of having fomented a mutiny on board a French schooner named Niuorahiti, belonging to a Tahitian prince. After having allegedly killed the captain, at least one passenger who represented the cargo company (a certain Mr. Gibson) and several of the crew, the brothers then took command of the ship, modified her, and used her for piracy in the South Seas. Their principal accuser was the (mulatto) cook aboard the vessel named Hippolyte Mirey, a very suspicious character himself and one who was probably involved in the mutiny. After their arrest, the Rorique/Degrave brothers were transferred to France where they were put on trial for murder and piracy.
During the proceedings, it was discovered that, earlier in their career, they had once been recognized and celebrated as true heroes: during a storm at sea, they had single-handedly saved the captain and crew of a Norwegian three-master called the Pieter. But there were also reports of their having lied about having been castaways while in the Cook Islands in 1891. To the charges against them, the Rorique/Degrave brothers repeatedly proclaimed their innocence, saying that the murders had indeed been the result of a mutiny among the crew but one that they had helped to put down. As for the charges of subsequent piracy, they refused to confess to any wrongdoing. Many French citizens who followed the case, including Verne, believed them innocent. Their conduct during the trial was deemed praiseworthy; the brothers remained stoic to the end and asked only to stay together, whatever their fate.
Despite the fact that the prosecution’s case was based on highly questionable witnesses, on December 8, 1893, the Rorique/Degrave brothers were judged guilty on all counts. The tribunal condemned them to death—a sentence that was commuted a few months later by French president Carnot and changed to life imprisonment at hard labor. Léonce died in prison on March 30, 1898. Eugène, who was pardoned the following year, went back to France and wrote his memoirs, which were published in 1901 as Le Bagne (At Hard Labor).43
Perplexingly, a few years later, Eugène abandoned his wife and child and again took up a life of travel and adventure. In 1907 he was seen in Trinidad working as a local policeman. He died in 1929, murdered in a jail cell in Pamplona apparently after having become involved with smuggling a large number of Colombian emeralds out of South America. And, in a final bizarre twist to this tale, the French writer Alfred Jarry demonstrated that portions of his book, Le Bagne, were actually plagiarized from the Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym by Edgar Allan Poe.44 Here ends Moré’s account of this tale.
Were the Rorique/Degrave brothers, in truth, the innocent victims of conspiracy and judicial error that Verne and others believed them to be? Probably not. But it is clear, not only from his correspondence but also from the strong similarities in plot, names, and characterization, that Verne patterned The Kip Brothers directly on their story, both idealizing and immortalizing them.45 Of course, at the time of the novel’s initial composition in 1898, Verne could not have known that Eugène would eventually be pardoned, return to France, write and publish Le Bagne, and then have his life end tragically amid very suspicious circumstances. But—and this point is crucial—Verne did revise his manuscript during the summer and fall of 1901 before submitting the first part (volume 1) to Hetzel fils on September 2 and the second part (volume 2) to him on October 27. And he was still correcting proofs as late as March 1902.46 During both periods when revisions to the text were being made—along with changing its title from Les Frères
