Jacques Futrelle and the Thinking Machine

John Heath Futrell was born on April 9, 1873 in rural Georgia, about 40 miles south of Atlanta. As a kid he had worked part time as a "printer's devil", and although his folks were teachers - his dad even taught in college - John decided to skip college and go into journalism right after high school. Somewhere along the line he also adopted the name "Jacques" and added an "e" to his surname.

You'd think as a Southerner and growing up in the years immediately after Reconstruction, Jacques would do his best to stay well below the Mason-Dixon Line and not want to have anything to do with them damn Yankees. But that was far from the case. Jacques started work on the Atlanta Journal in 1893, and then the next year hopped a train up north and worked for the Boston Post. He then returned to Georgia and in 1895 married a local girl, Lily May Peel. Back in Atlanta, he started the Journal's first sports department.

May (as she preferred) was herself a writer, and she and Jacques soon returned North where Jacques landed work on the New York Herald. He was the "telegraph editor." That is, he selected and edited the stories coming over the telegraph wires, then the most rapid source for national and international news.

The Spanish American War came along in 1898, and the story is that news came flying through the wires so fast that Jacques was on the job almost 24/7. The work was so demanding that once the war was won - and it lasted only 3 months - he had to recuperate at his sister's house in Scituate, south of Boston. Evidently, Jacques wasn't the only Futrelle that found New England congenial.

Jacques is often cited as being from Huguenot stock, but the name John Futrell is actually English. That Jacques altered his name was only discovered fairly recently when a writer found the 1900 New York Census. There Jacques gave his name as John and from his listed parents, spouse, and children, it's clear that John is indeed our Jacques. In fact, we also learn that John and May's son, born in 1898, was likewise named John (Jr.) and likewise changed his name to Jacques (Jr.). Jacques, Jr., followed his dad into journalism and wound up on the editorial staff of the Washington Post.

Be that as it may, in 1902, Jacques, Sr., decided to give journalism a break. He left New York with May and the kids (a daughter, Virginia, had been born in 1897) and returned to Georgia to manage a small theater. This, of course, was live theater as films, although gaining ground, were rare enough that there were few theaters dedicated for their showing.

As was common for (live) theatrical managers, Jacques also acted in some of his productions, and he even wrote the occasional play. It was also at this time that he seems to have started writing mystery stories. But after a couple of years in the theater business, he returned to journalism - and the North - and ended up on the editorial staff of the Boston American.

At the turn of the century newspapers were central to modern life. Every town had at least two (New York had about 30), and papers were the only medium for keeping up with politics, current events, or sports. Believe it or not, you could learn something happened - and we're not joking - well within a week of the actual event! Why, the world was not only getting smaller, but it was practically a dimensionless point!

But most of all, newspapers had become the primary vehicle of passive entertainment. By the late 19th century, photoengraving had become a practical method of reproducing images, and the papers could not only be peppered with photographs, but comic strips, word games, and puzzles as well. Papers even printed short stories.

The best stories - for the papers - were the serials. That is, stories that were spread out over more than one issue. So to find out how the hero got out of the fine mess he was in, you had to keep buying the paper. Serialized fiction remained part of newspaper publication into the 20th century and even carried works of major authors.

So when Jacques sat down in 1905 and wrote "The Problem of Cell 13" for the Boston American as a two part serial, he was following the mainstream practice. The main character was Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph.D., LL.D., F.R.S., M.D., M.D.S., - known as "The Thinking Machine".

Professor Van Dusen didn't seem to have any real job, despite his august (no joke intended) title and multiple degrees and associations. Instead he spent much his time giving advice to a newspaper reporter named Hutchinson Hatch and irritating his dinner guests by claiming that the mind is capable of anything.

It was during one of his dinners that the conversation turned to the limitations of the mind, and one of the guests - a Dr. Charles Ransome - said that one couldn't think himself out of prison. Professor Van Dusen petulantly said a person who applied his mind and made a successful escape was doing the same thing. As the argument goes on, Professor Van Dusen then challenges his listeners to put him in a prison anywhere, anytime, and he can escape.

Evidently Dr. Ransome had a lot of clout since a couple of phone calls set up the experiment at the nearby (and fictional New England) Chisholm Prison. It doesn't seem like the warden was asked, but he readily went along with the test even though he would have to divert resources from guarding his other prisoners to satisfy the egos of a few eggheads.

"The Problem of Cell 13" was not only a serial but also part of a contest. The readers were invited to send in their solution to the "fine fix" Professor Van Dusen was in. Two readers came up with what was more or less the correct answer, and the story also launched a demand for more Thinking Machine adventures. Soon Jacques left newspaper work for full time free lance writing, and by 1906 he had accumulated enough stories to publish the first Thinking Machine collection. This volume was followed the next year by another.

It's sometimes been said that the Thinking Machine stories disappeared until they were reprinted in the mid-1970's. That's not exactly true, and there were editions of the stories put out in the late 1950's and early 1960's. Before that a number of Jacques' stories were included in mystery anthologies and reprinted in magazines of the 1930's and 40's.

That said, even his biggest fans admit that there's good reasons why "The Problem of Cell 13" was reprinted repeatedly for over 100 years, but most of Jacques' other stories weren't. Certainly some of his stories are entertaining and amusing; "cute" perhaps, but scarcely deathless prose. If Jacques was not exactly a one-hit wonder, he was pretty close.

But we can't really fault Jacques since the Edwardian Era, after all, was a rather inconvenient time for gaining literary immortality. Unlike the Victorians, who saw their world as fixed and unchanging, the Edwardians recognized that change was in the air. The horse and carriage, music hall, and live theater were still the norms, but gas and whale oil lighting had lost ground to electricity, and what had been frivolous novelties - the automobile and the "kinematic pictures" - were slowly but surely elbowing their way into mainstream culture.

So technology was a hot topic for the Edwardian novelists. But like most high-tech fiction the stories come off as laughably naive regarding what the current know-how can achieve when read a century later. So Jacques' stories which rely heavily on the society and science of the era - such as "The Phantom Motor" and the "Flaming Phantom" - don't hold up that well while the stories where Professor Van Dusen simply uses his brain - i. e., the "Problem of Cell 13" - do.

But George Bernard Shaw (or someone) said that everyone deserves to be judged by the standards of his own time, and by the standards of his time, Jacques's stories were pretty good. His books were best sellers, and he managed to buy a large home in Scituate. By 1906 his books were being printed in England as well as in America. Not bad for a kid from Georgia.

As part work and part play, Jacques and May went to Europe in early 1912. He hoped to find additional markets for his books, and he and May saw the sights. On the night of April 9, Jacques, May, and some friends celebrated his birthday. Although the party lasted into the wee hours of the morning, Jacques and May still managed to reach Southampton in time to board the RMS Titanic and set sail with the rest of the passengers.

References

Jacques Futrelle, http://www.futrelle.com. Alas, this link must be listed for historical purposes but the website seems to have vanished!

"The Thinking Machine: The Enigmatic Problems of Professor Augustus S. F. X. Van Dusen, Ph. D., LL. D., F. R. S., M. D., M. D. S., Jacques Futrelle, Introduction by Harlan Ellison. Modern Library, 2003

100 American Crime Writers, Steven Powell, Palgrave Macmillan (2012).

"100 Years After Titanic: Remembering Jacques Futrelle", Ruth Thompson, http://www.wickedlocal.com/article/20120412/News/304129802/?Start=2. Considerable information about Jacques, much of it obtained by historian John Galluzzo.

"The Remarkable Life and Mysterious Heritage of Jacques Futrelle", The Venetian Vase, Steve Powell, http://venetianvase.co.uk/2011/01/18/the-remarkable-life-and-mysterious-heritage-of-jacques-futrelle/