| One
would expect a submarine to be furnished for the maritime environment,
especially the Nautilus, which is after all a warship. However,
the illustrations to the early editions show elegant rooms with hardly a
hint of built-in furniture and other arrangements to resist the motion
of a ship at sea. The detail at right from one woodcut of the cell is a rare exception.
Jules Verne certainly understood the problem; he wrote part of the novel aboard his yacht Saint-Michel. William Butcher identifies Verne’s visit to Inzievar House in Oakley, Scotland as the source of the rich descriptions of the forward part of the Nautilus. Nemo himself says the contents of the salon are the "last mementos of those shores that are now dead" to him, a little of the land brought under the sea. We learn later in the novel that only the specimen cases are attached to the floor and the other furniture falls about the room when the boat is not on an even keel. I have followed this evidence in furnishing my Nautilus. These rooms are more appropriate for land than sea, but I think they are faithful to the novel. |
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