When the remarkable Boston-born business man and Presidential candidate, George ‘Citizen’ Train, saw the extraordinary popularity of Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days he protested ‘He stole my thunder. I’m Phileas Fogg.’

Train’s own well-publicised 80-day journey around the world – not counting the days he spent among French revolutionaries and in prison – took place in 1870. Realising that the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad in May the previous year had made the circling of the world that much easier, he was determined to make the most of this advantage. As his biographer Allen Foster writes, Train was eager ‘to set a new round the world record that would bring him fame and glory’.

With his private secretary and cousin, George Pickering Bemis, Train travelled to San Francisco from New York in readiness for sailing to Japan. The evening before their departure Train gave a talk at Maguire’s Opera House in defence of Chinese immigrants. He was pelted with eggs and heckled and one witness reported a gun being fire, but he continued to speak calmly in face of the hostile audience. He set sail for Yokohama the next morning on board the clipper Great Republic. Arriving in good time, the two travellers went straight to Tokyo where Train caused a sensation by visiting the public baths, a place where nude foreigners were rarely seen.

Train and Bemis passed quickly through Hong Kong and arrived in Saigon in time to catch the ship the Donai which was bound for Marseilles via the Suez Canal, stopping briefly en route at Singapore. They docked in Marseilles and Train booked a front suite of apartments at the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix. Train later wrote in his autobiography:

It was the hour of the Commune, or, as it was styled there by many, the ‘Red Republic’, was born. I was on a tour of the world, the voyage in which I eclipsed all former feats of travel, and circled the globe in eighty days. This served Jules Verne, two years later, as the groundwork for his famous romance Around the World in Eighty Days…

Following the recent fall of the Second Empire and the chaos of the Franco-Prussian war, tension was rife in the city and Train soon found himself caught up in the political plotting. A delegation of the Internationale revolutionary group came to him at his hotel asking him to speak at a rally of 6,000 people assembled in the opera house. He wrote:

I had decided to trust to the inspiration of the moment, when I should stand face to face with that volatile French audience.

From the moment I entered the opera house, packed with excited people from the stage to the topmost boxes, I was possessed by the French revolutionary spirit. The fire and enthusiasm of the people swept me from my feet. I was thenceforth a ‘Communist’, a member of their ‘Red Republic’.

Allen Foster takes up the story:

When the shouting died down Train explained that he was merely stopping off in Marseilles while on a trip around the world. But since they had asked him, he would be glad to do what he could for their movement, as a small token of payment for the ‘enormous debt of gratitude’ owed by his country to France for Lafayette, Rochambeau and de Grasse.

Next Train gave a crowd-pleasing rendition of The Marseillasie, which thrilled the crowd no end. Caught up in the moment, he urged that France should not yield an inch of French soil to the Prussians.

For the next three weeks, Train gave speeches up to seven times a day from his hotel balcony, urging the crowds ‘To Berlin! I will lead you and we will surround and besiege the German capital as the Prussians have the French capital – La Belle Paris!’.

One morning Train was looking out his hotel window when he saw an army marching down the street. Thinking these were revolutionaries he rushed onto the balcony to shout ‘Vive la Commune’. An ominous silence followed, puzzling Train. When he spotted a city official, M Gent, among the soldiers he realised these were not revolutionaries but government troops. Suddenly a shot rang out as someone attempted to shoot Gent. The column of soldiers halted and five men stepped out to form a firing squad aiming at the vociferous Train. Train wrapped himself in the flags that were hanging by his window and shouted:

Fire, fire, you miserable cowards! Fire upon the flags of France and America wrapped around the body of an American citizen – if you have the courage!

The soldiers rejoined the other troops and continued marching.

Public opinion turned against the Commune following the assassination attempt on Gent and Train was soon asked to leave the city. Leaving his cousin to finish packing their belongings, he set out in the company of General Cluseret, the revolutionary military leader. Both men were arrested in Lyons. It took Bemis a week to track Train down and he was only able to visit him in his cell following the intervention of the novelist Alexander Dumas, a friend of Verne’s. After 13-days imprisonment Train was escorted by two secret service agents to Tours and the offices of Leon Gambetta, one of the founders of the Third Republic. Gambetta quickly realised that Train was not a threat and simply ordered him to leave the country. Train and Bemis were taken to the coast and put on a ship to Southampton. The final leg of their 80-day journey was the voyage to New York from Liverpool on the Abyssinia.

You can read more about Train in the readers’ guide.