Can you imagine a novel where a boy named Trump embarks on thrilling adventures, discovers strange civilizations, and gets into trouble with natives for unintentionally insulting them in their unfamiliar language? Well, you don’t have to imagine it because it exists; however, its protagonist is not the ineffable former U.S. president, but another who calls himself Baron Trump. Interestingly, the youngest son of the magnate is named Barron, which has made this 19th-century literary saga—comprised of two works—a subject of fascination on the Internet and, consequently, in the U.S. press.
The original title is Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulger, published in 1889, riding the wave of popular juvenile fantasy stories that Lewis Carroll had set in motion twenty-four years earlier with his Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. This trend was updated in 1889 by Mark Twain with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, not to mention Jules Verne. The book wasn’t a success, but it didn’t seem to be a disaster either, as in 1893, the author was commissioned to write a sequel: Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey.
The author was Ingersoll Lockwood. He was a New Yorker, born in 1841, the son of a prominent military officer and lawyer who, as an anecdote, was the warden of the famous Sing Sing penitentiary. The son also studied law, but his professional life began in a more cosmopolitan manner, in the Kingdom of Hanover, where he was appointed consul by President Lincoln in 1862; he was the youngest member of the diplomatic corps. He spent four years in the European country, and upon returning, he practiced law in a firm he shared with his older brother Henry.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, he continued practicing law while pursuing an emerging literary career, perhaps inspired by his wife, Winifred Wallace Tinker, whom he married in 1884 and who also wrote. Eight years later, they divorced, and she remarried another lawyer with a passion for literature, Edward R. Johnes. He had published a book of poetry in 1872 and later focused on legal essays, while she concentrated on prose, writing several short stories and two novels. As for Lockwood, as mentioned earlier, he also took up the pen, and in 1889 he published the first novel mentioned.
The main character in Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulger is a German boy, well-off but prone to getting into trouble, named Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp. He lives in Castle Trump and thus adopts the nickname Baron Trump when he embarks on a fantastic journey, accompanied by his loyal dog Bulger, escaping from his luxurious but boring existence. Along the way, he buys a book of arcane knowledge, sues his tutors for owing him for all that he has taught them (and wins), and discovers new races with such strange names as the toothless and weightless Wind Eaters, the semi-amorphous Man Jumpers, and the Round Bodies.
As you can see, he’s quite a peculiar character, insisting on dressing in traditional Chinese fashion and rejecting all the girls who fall in love with him because he believes his intelligence is far superior to theirs. His strength is also superhuman, as he isn’t entirely human: he claims to have been born in the land of the Melodious Sneezes, where people sneeze musically. Despite how intriguing the plot may seem, the public didn’t show much interest, and the critics didn’t lavish it with praise either, which is why this saga didn’t become one of the classic children’s and/or young adult books of the 19th century.
That being said, it wasn’t a total disaster either, since, as mentioned earlier, Lockwood published a continuation four years later. This was the aforementioned Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey, in which the child protagonist travels to an underground Russia, where he boasts to the authorities of having a prodigious brain (a recurring theme in the book; in fact, his head is twice the normal size), discovers the land of the Transparent Folk, the village of the ants, and the Happy Forgetters (who, of course, forget him as soon as he leaves).
However, the pivotal moment for the topic that concerns us in this article came in 1896, when a new title hit bookstores: 1900 or The Last President, which, along with the previous ones, would prove fascinating a century and a quarter later. The author never imagined that his literary work would be revived and meticulously analyzed due to a series of elements that seemed insignificant at the time.
No one overlooks the nominal coincidences of Donald Trump-Don and Barron Trump-Baron Trump or Castle Trump and Trump Tower (where the billionaire’s official residence is located in the penthouse), just as the accusation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections was recalled, relating to how Baron Trump is guided to the first country he visits, Russia, by a man named Don, who is known as “the master of all masters.” But in the plot of 1900 or The Last President, New York is on the brink of collapse after citizens are divided over an alleged fraud in the presidential elections that gives victory to a populist candidate. And we all remember the controversy in the United States and the storming of the Capitol.
The plot of that novel includes elements that are familiar to us, such as electoral controversy, the U.S. presidency, political chaos, social polarization, and protesters marching through the streets of New York while destroying stores and wealthy homes… including the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where Trump Tower now stands. All of this went unnoticed and remained within the literary realm until 2017, when the famous television magnate became president, only to claim election fraud four years later.
In reality, Baron Trump is quite different from Donald Trump, as he is more open-minded, although he shares the experience of being insulted wherever he goes. The fact is that, believe it or not, there have been some extravagant minds ready to suggest that the former president is or was a space-time traveler because his uncle John was advised by Nikola Tesla, and that traveling between the present, past, and future helped him both to amass wealth and to affect his sanity. Others compare the real Trump to the villain from the Mario Bros movie or Biff, the antagonist in Back to the Future. The truth is that these delusions are not entirely new, as similar ones existed before, for example, about George Bush.
In 2017, a filmmaker named Leigh Scott, a fan of the former president, announced that he was seeking crowdfunding from his supporters to bring an adaptation of the novels to the big screen. He even uploaded a promotional video to social media, but nothing has been heard about the project since.
Surely, Ingersoll Lockwood would have been astounded to know the posthumous success of his literature, even if it’s relative. After all, in 1891, he had ventured into the genre of children’s fantasy with Wonderful Deeds and Doings of Little Giant Boab and his Talking Raven Tabib, which didn’t attract as much attention. He passed away without leaving descendants in 1918 in Saratoga Springs, where he spent his final years self-recluse.
His last work was a book of poems titled In Varying Mood, or Jetsam, Flotsam and Ligan (you know where the names of the moray eels from The Little Mermaid come from) and published in 1912, whose preface, written by him, seemed to be signed by none other than Baron Trump himself:
The end is almost here. I’m just waiting for the signal to set sail and begin my journey to the Isles of the Blessed in the distant western seas. At first, I was worried because my little bark, however sturdy, was too deep in the water. It was overloaded with vanities that would not be current and goods that would not be marketable in the Isles of the Blessed. Overboard! Now that I’ve lightened the ship, I feel better.
This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on August 21, 2024: «Las aventuras del barón Trump», la saga literaria decimonónica que tiene paralelismos con Donald Trump
SOURCES
Ingersoll Lockwood, Travels and adventures of Little Baron Trump and his wonderful dog Bulger
Ingersoll Lockwood, Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey
Ingersoll Lockwood, 1900 or The Last President
Jaime Fuller, Trump is the star of these bizarre victorian novels. And the Internet is losing its mind
Chris Riotta, Did an author from the 1800s predict the Trumps, Russia and America’s downfall?
Wikipedia, Novelas de Baron Trump
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