‘The Secret of the Earth’

The Secret of the Earth is an interesting lost-world novel by Charles Willing Beale (1845-1932), an author I have never heard who wrote but a handful of stories, most with a fantastical element, and some for the pulps. Thanks to Armchair Fiction for reprinting it as part of its Lost World-Lost Race series as #22.

What little I know of him is he was an engineer and resort hotel operator. So most likely wrote more as a hobby than anything else. His most well-known work, which has been reprinted a few times, is The Ghost of Guir House (1897). Not a normal haunted house tale, from what I gather, the ruins in the story allow for a utopian future vision to be held. Sounds interesting, and I may have to track it down. I understand that Dover Books collected it with four others in a volume titled Five Victorian Ghost Novels.

Another of his stories was serialized in The Cavalier in 1909: “Miss Jack, of Tibet.” All I know of this one is that it has “fantastical elements.” I wonder if it’s interesting enough to be reprinted?

The Secret of the Earth was published in book form in 1899. It’s been reprinted a few times since. In many ways it’s similar to other lost-world stories of the time, though I wonder why it’s not more well-known. It makes use of the “Hollow Earth” idea, with polar holes allowing for travelers to enter the underground world. Here this is done by two American brothers, who travel to England to get funding to build a new airship. One that is an anti-gravity one.

The brothers are twins. Gurthrie is mainly a writer and the narrator of the book. Torrence is an engineer and inventor, who came up with the technology of the anti-gravity engine that allows the airship to work.

After meeting a sailor who is down on his luck, Torrence is somehow mysteriously flush with money and had the funding to build the airship. After they launch the airship before others can stop them, Torrence announces the maiden voyage will be to the North Pole!

After a voyage across the ice, they find an island that is apparently inhabited by a stranded sailor, though they don’t rescue him. As they continue on, which should have taken them beyond the pole, they have instead entered into the Earth, through the polar hole into the interior! This is the “secret,” that the Earth is hollow, and we embark on a Hollow Earth adventure.

Torrence then gives some background. He explains the source of the funding. The sailor he met was another survivor of a shipwreck who had found the island at the entrance to the Hollow Earth, along with riches. But as no one believed his story, he was despondent. More interested in fame than fortune, he gave much of that fortune to Torrence to build the airship and prove the Earth is hollow and that he had discovered it. We also learn, as Torrence gives a history and “scientific background” of the Hollow Earth (similar to other works I’ve read, which I found interesting), that he had long been a believer in the Hollow Earth idea, and this was the reason he worked to invent his airship: to prove this!

For those not aware, the North Pole wasn’t reached until 1908, at which point this killed off, for most people, the idea of a Hollow Earth, though it still continued with some fringe types.

This Hollow Earth story, unlike later works, doesn’t have an interior sun (that idea would be proposed by Marshall Gardner in 1914 in his Hollow Earth theory, which influenced Edgar Rice Burroughs and later authors to add one in their Hollow Earths). Beale’s Hollow Earth is lit by sunlight coming from either of the two polar openings, which the electrifying interior atmosphere is able to diffuse, keeping the interior always lite. The interior has several continents, which are inhabited by various groups. Torrence theorizes that mankind originated in the Hollow Earth, but that the more “unruly” element were exiled to the outer world, to become the races and nations we now know.

The brothers do gather various riches from the Hollow Earth, and pass over several inhabited lands, but don’t make direct contact or converse with the people there. They do see strange sights and creatures, and soon leave via the South Pole opening. But in the South Pacific, they crash on an island when a component of their airship fails, and write up their tale and set it adrift. Sadly, the manuscript was damaged, so there were parts of the story that were unavailable.

This then ties back to the opening of the book, where we learn that the story had been found in a barrel by the crew of a Dutch ship, who didn’t understand what it said (not knowing English), and gave to the unnamed editor who published the tale. Unsaid is if any went searching for the brothers, as their location was given in the story.

Having read many works about the Hollow Earth, I am surprised it’s never mentioned, as I can’t recall hearing of it previously. It has some similarities to the earlier 1888 novel by James De Mille, A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, including the element of the story being found by a passing ship. De Mille’s novel has also been reprinted by Armchair Fiction in its Lost World-Lost Race series.

As someone who has researched the idea of the Hollow Earth, I found this work interesting, and think others will as well. Check it out.