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Mr. Phileas Fogg lived, in 1872, at No. 7, Saville Row, Burlington
Gardens, the house in which Sheridan died in 1814. He was one of the
most noticeable members of the Reform Club, though he seemed always to
avoid attracting attention; an enigmatical personage, about whom little
was known, except that he was a polished man of the world. People said
that he resembled Byron--at least that his head was Byronic; but he was
a bearded, tranquil Byron, who might live on a thousand years without
growing old.
Certainly an Englishman, it was more doubtful whether Phileas Fogg was
a Londoner. He was never seen on 'Change, nor at the Bank, nor in the
counting-rooms of the "City"; no ships ever came into London docks of
which he was the owner; he had no public employment; he had never been
entered at any of the Inns of Court, either at the Temple, or Lincoln's
Inn, or Gray's Inn; nor had his voice ever resounded in the Court of
Chancery, or in the Exchequer, or the Queen's Bench, or the
Ecclesiastical Courts. He certainly was not a manufacturer; nor was he
a merchant or a gentleman farmer. His name was strange to the
scientific and learned societies, and he never was known to take part
in the sage deliberations of the Royal Institution or the London
Institution, the Artisan's Association, or the Institution of Arts and
Sciences. He belonged, in fact, to none of the numerous societies
which swarm in the English capital, from the Harmonic to that of the
Entomologists, founded mainly for the purpose of abolishing pernicious
insects.
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