5. Finally, the captain is definitely a man of somewhat dubious ethics. No matter how romantic a light is cast over his activities, he is guilty of destruction of shipping, murder, and possibly theft. To put it bluntly, he is simply a pirate, a pirate who has turned to financial advantage his extraordinary scientific skill and who maintains on land perhaps a small but necessarily a widely distributed network of secret agents, who at prearranged meetings provide him with essential information concerning the shipment of valuable cargoes.
On the basis of these conclusions I think that we can now advance the hypothesis which has already occurred to the reader: It is not likely that the portrait of Captain Nemo in Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea is a portrayal of a sinister figure well known to us-Professor James Moriarty? Let us examine some of the resemblances-or apparent lack of resemblances:
(a) Physical appearance: At first glance Nemo and Moriarty seem to have little in common save their high foreheads and stature, but consideration of their respective ages will modify this assumption. When first encountered in 1867 Captain Nemo is described as between thirty-five and fifty years of age, but when one realizes his strength, endurance, and agility, it is evident that between thirty-five and forty would be a much more accurate estimate. There seem to be no differences that the passage of twenty-five years will not account for. (In passing we may note that the Nemo-Moriarty identification here solves a problem which must have puzzled many Sherlockians: no matter how enraged Moriarty was, how willing to die, and how tricky the footing at Reichenbach may have been, he never would have hoped that a stooped, sedentary, elderly ex-mathematics professor could succeed, without even employing the element of surprise, in a physical assault upon a thirty-eight year old, six-foot athlete well known for his boxing, wrestling, and single-stick ability. Those of us in the teaching profession have often eyed the athletes infesting the rear row with thoughts of homicide drifting through our minds; yet we would only dream of a bare handed assault. If Moriarty were Nemo, though, the picture changes: a former athlete at the age of sixty or so may still possess great physical strength, and the consciousness of his youthful prowess and experience in violent conflict gives him the mental attitude which in a moment of desperation would make such an attack possible.
Captain Nemo could hardly have been born later than 1831; Mr. Edgar Smith has speculated that Moriarty was born about 1846, but so late a date seems improbable. It would make Moriarty about forty-six years old at the time of his death; yet the descriptions of his physical appearance in the “Final Problem” (pp. 544-45) and the Valley of Fear (p. 910) are more appropriate to a man in the sixties or even in the seventies than to a man in the forties. If we placed his birth about 1830 he would be around sixty-two at the time of his death, an age which agrees with the physical descriptions and with the approximate birth-date of Nemo.
(b) Educational leveclass="underline" Mr. Smith indicates that Moriarty came from a cultured background, as Nemo did. Both men were fond of art. Nemo had thirty old masters and Moriarty kept, at considerable risk, a very expensive Greuze in his study (Valley of Fear, pp. 910-11).
(c) Manner: Moriarty was a teacher, a member of a family with some military tradition (his brother, we know, was a colonel), and of so forceful and dominant a personality that the unhappy Porlock wobbled in his dishonest boots at a mere glance from the Napoleon of Crime. He obviously had little devotion to humanity in general. All are traits we have noted in Nemo.
(d) Biographical data: We know surprisingly little about Moriarty’s life, Certainly it would have been possible for him to drop out of sight for three or four years during his thirties without Holmes’ taking any particular notice of it. So brilliant a criminal could have buried all tracks so effectively that even the master could not uncover the Nemo episode after a quarter of a century.
(e) Mathematical and scientific genius: This has been amply demonstrated for both men.
(f) Another curious point of resemblance is to be found in Nemo’s interest in scientific men. Clearly the only sensible thing for a pirate captain to do when he found Aronnax, Land, and the valet squatting on top of the Nautilus was to attach a few heavy weights and drop them overboard. A man who practiced wholesale murder could have had no moral scruples about so trifling a gesture, but Nemo, a proficient amateur biologist, had discovered that one of these men was an internationally famous zoologist whose works were in his own library-and by this time the captain, whose only associates were a crew of hardbitten buccaneers, must have been desperately lonely for intellectual companionship. Consequently he saved Aronnax. (Incidentally, observe the smug satisfaction with which Nemo-Moriarty impresses his superiority upon a professional colleague such as M. Aronnax. There can be no doubt that this man was a college teacher.)
(g) A young mathematical genius of criminal tendencies is very likely to start his illegal career by engaging in some activity in which he can exploit his special talents. Only later, when Moriarty had the time, the capital, and the foundation provided by his information service for the Nautilus, would he develop a vast organization of pickpockets, burglars, thugs, and gunmen. Members of these particular criminal strata are not found on the campus in very great numbers.
It is, therefore, difficult indeed for the writer to resist the identification of Professor Moriarty and Captain Nemo and to refrain from suggesting that here we have the first major step up in a spectacular criminal career whose final step down was a long one to the bottom of Reichenbach Falls.
Philip José Farmer
