Ingersoll Lockwood

(Still working on the presentation for this page - particularly with accented characters)

Works of interest:
1893: Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and his Wonderful Dog Bulger
1893: Baron Trump's Marvelous Underground Journey
1896: 1900; Or, The Last President

This author and these works have captured a significant amount of interest in recent years. I have since read the books to see what if anything I could find in them. The author is talented and his prose is both complex and notable. The children's novels are lengthy relative to the third work which is a quick read. A simple search will reveal the somewhat eerie details associated with these writings that were completed more than a hundred years ago.

First, obviously the name in the first two "children's" novels is remarkable. The subject's name was not actually Baron however. His actual name was Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp. Baron is a title that suggests nobility; though of low order, still noble. In the novels, Baron most often refers to his father as "the elder baron" who is of lesser fame relative to young Baron.

The name isn't the only similarity. Baron is described as flaxen hair with blue eyes as perceived by a blind man. Baron suffers an accident as an infant which results in thirty-two "lumps" which gave him a superior mental capacity. Baron was a very proud young man/boy, both arrogant and witty, who used his wit to amass a fortune, to save his family's heritage through merciless market manipulation but still maintained an element of respect for the poor. Through this fortune, he was able to journey the world lookng for marvel and excitement. And he certainly finds numerous encounters each with a different people who have evolved through environmental pressures to be largely human but vastly different and thus in many ways stronger. It's an interesting testament to adaptation in this regard.

If it were not for the name of main character, these two novels would have remained in hindsight. But because of the name given to young Baron, we open the pages to find a curious similarity in character and nature to that which is exhibited by "ruler of the world."

This passage is taken from the final pages of the first title:
"Look! the terrible storm-king is coming! He is a greater monarch than thou, O mighty Bo^-go^o^-go^o^!
...
Look again! See the black monster, how he draws nearer and nearer, his huge, shapeless, terrible body rolling and swaying as he rides along on his black wings, while, like a gigantic serpent, his tail drags over the fair earth, hissing, writhing and curling, now r on this side, now on that, now coiling upward to gather strength, now beating and threshing the plain with a roar mighty enough to plunge the stoutest heart into despair.
...
Thus it was a mightier king than Boo-goo-goo, one to whom in my despair, I had appealed for aid, caught up my loved Bulger and me and bore us away from Go^-gu^-lla^b, the Land of the Roundbodies."

In all fairness, that monster is directly identified as a storm. But that still begs a certain curiosity.

Baron is not a subject of the third title. The main character is Bryan, a notable name as well. The election of Bryan is eerily similar to what has been seen in the rising of "ruler of the world" and his actions are every bit as dividing. Bryan is the champion of the poor and trodden an attempts to tackle the monopoly over money and power by introducing a replacement currency made of the more common silver metal. The instantaneous boom experienced through the introduction of this accessible currency is immediately appreciated. But these actions do burst resulting in a cliff hanging climax which is worth the quick read.

One of Bryan's cabinet members was named Pence, but this in my opinion appears to be purely out of coincidence. Others trying to make something of these writings will cling to that coincidence. Before leaving you with passages taken from this third title, I conclude that I do not wish to make this more than it is. I do personally continue to find it curious. After reading, my interest in these works has waned but I cannot dismiss this yet one more curiosity connected though loosely with "ruler of the world."

Concerning Silver:
"You're our Saviour, you've cleaned the Temple of Liberty of its four horde of usurers. We salute you. We call you King-maker. Bryan shall call you Master too. You shall have your reward. You shall stand behind the throne. Your wisdom shall make us whole. You shall purge the land of this unlawful crowd of money lenders..."
"Throughout the length and breadth of the South, and beyond the Great Divide, the news struck hamlet and village like the glad tidings of a new evangel, almost as potent for human happiness as the heavenly message of two thousand years ago... All was peace and good will, for the people were at last victorious over their enemies who had taxed and tithed them into a very living death."
In regards to party control of the government:
"There would be nothing to stand between him and the realization of those schemes which an exhuberant fancy, untamed by the hand of experience, and scornful of the leading strings of wisdom, can conjure up."
"... a feeling that the old order had passed away and that the Republic had entered into the womb of Time and been boarn again."
"The American people are not in favor of life tenure in the Civil Service, that a permanent office holding class is no in harmon with our institutions, that a fixed term in appointive offices would open the public service to a larger number of citizens, without imparing its efficiency,"
..."each and every one of them supremely confident that in the distribution of the spoils something would surely fall to his share, since they were the "Common People" who were so dear to Mr. Bryan, and who had made him President in the very face of the prodigious opposition of the rich men, whose coffers had been thrown wide open all to no purpose, and in spite too of the satanic and truly devilish power of that hell upon earth known as Wall Street, which had sweated gold in vain in its desperate efforts to fasten the chains of trusts and the claws of soulless monsters known as corporations upon these very "Common People," soon to march in triumph"

Likewise, rumors that the inauguration would not be allowed were written of:
"THERE had been a strange prophecy put forth by some one, and it had made its way into the daily journals, and had been laughingly or seriously commented upon, according to the political tone of the paper, or the passing humor of the writer, that the 4th of March, 1897, would never dawn upon the American people..."