NOVEL HISTORY OF JULES VERNE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 77, 31 March 1928, Page 7 (Supplement)

NOVEL HISTORY OF JULES VERNE.

WAS HE BORN A POLE, LffiE JOSEPH CONRAD T CENTEX ARY QUERY. Just as France was ready to celebrate the centenary of Jules Verne's birth there from Warsaw an assertion that the immortal author of "Twentv Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" was not a born Frenchman at all, but & native of Plozk, some sixty miles N.W of Warsaw. ((1 A Cracaw newspaper shows that Jules Verne" was "Julius Olszewicz." ?nn of brothers died at the age of > the last one died in 1902 at the age of 101. The Cracow story of Jules Verne rather resembles that of Joseph Conrad. Julius Olszcwicz (it is said) went abroad when he was 18. After sensational adventures in Vienna, Trieste and Rome, he became clerk to a Paris stockbroker. Surname Means "Aldertree." When he took to novel-writing he dropped his office name "Olszcwicz," which is "Verne" (Aldertree). He was naturalised French some sixty years ago, and adopted the name of Jules Verne. That Jules Verne obtained late in life, a T birth certificate from the Maire of Nantes, the Cracow paper admits; but the town hall of Nantes was once burnt to ashes, and all the birth, death and marriage records were destroyed." So (argues Cracow) that proves nothing. Another argument put forward by the Cracow newspaper is that Jules Verne spoke the Polish language very fluently, an unusual thing in the case'of French authors. % It is understood that Polish admirers of the author of "Michel StrogofF* and "Round the World in 80 Days" will ask the French Government to make official inquiries at Nantes and in the archives of the Foreign Office to ascertain whether these "revelations" are "Glozelian" or not. "When Jules "\erne lived in Nantes he knew a schoolboy (so he declares in one of his works) who " did not like work, and was very often at the bottom of the class." The boy was, however, "quick at repartee, a good fellow, rather careless in his dress, audacious, and with remarkable powers of assimilation." That school boy is to-day M. Briand, the Foreign Minister of France!