Too much the dutiful son to abandon his law books, he spent an equal amount of time reading novels, poetry and plays, going without sleep to accommodate both fields of study. The théâtre had been closed in the early months of the 1848 revolution, but there was plenty to interest a young man determined to make the most of what the capital had to offer. Relations of his mother who had settled in Paris introduced Jules to literary salons that he attended as often as his resources would permit. Above all, he hoped to meet the author and playright Alexandre Dumas the elder, whom he described as ‘that demigod’. [ii] The longed-for introduction was effected and the hospitable Dumas took Jules under his wing, encouraging his interest in literature and the theatre. Within weeks of arriving in Paris, Jules was writing to his father of ‘the new and marvellous pleasure to be in immediate contact with literature’[iii] - sentiments that produced a flurry of anxious letters from Nantes that Jules soon learned to parry deftly. Inspired by Dumas, he began to concentrate on dramatic writing, and in the course of 1849 managed to complete a five-act tragedy, a two-act farce and a one-act comedy called Broken Straw, in addition to pursuing his legal and literary studies. The Paris théâtre reopened the same year and in 1850 Dumas, who was director of the Théâtre Historique, edited and produced Jules’s Broken Straw; it ran for twelve performances and attracted reviews that were kind, if not over-enthusiastic.

Jules spent two years in frantic activity, studying, writing, journeying to Nantes in the holidays to reassure his father, then returning to Paris to experiment with dramatic sketches and libretti. On passing his final law examinations, Jules refused the summons to return to Nantes, writing to his father - ‘I may become a good writer, but I shall never be anything but a poor lawyer... The only career for which I am really suited is the one I am already pursuing: literature.’[iv] Sustained by a small parental allowance, Jules stayed on in Paris and plunged into a punishing daily régime that began at five in the morning with a writing session, followed by research and study in the Bibliothèque Nationale, and ended with more writing late into the night. A meeting with the explorer and writer Jacques Arago had prompted Jules to add science to the list of his interests and he followed the latest discoveries in many fields assiduously, noting the results of his research on meticulous data cards that ultimately numbered over 20,000. He experimented feverishly with different forms of writing and in 1851 dashed off two short but promising works of prose fiction that were published in the journal Musée des Families, but his obsession with the theatre led him to concentrate on writing comedies, dramas and libretti, very few of which were ever published or performed.

In 1852, Jules became secretary of Paris’s Théâtre Lyrique, a position that entailed the demanding responsibilities of dealing with artistes, producing posters and seeing to all the details of stage management for little or no pay, but with the possibility of making contacts that would enable him to get his plays produced - a hope in which he was to be disappointed. Despite his dedication to the dramatic arts and his capacity for hard work, his temperament and talents were not ideally suited to the milieu he longed to enter or the theatrical pieces he struggled to write. Although he was witty and his gift for clever repartee was much admired among the circle of young artists and writers who surrounded Alexandre Dumas, Jules lacked the bonhomie that makes for success in theatrical circles. He did not make friends easily, had no time for conventional social pleasantries, and his manner struck many as curt and abrupt. As one of his friends put it, ‘he is a mixture of coldness and sensibility, of dryness and gentleness... like tempered steel he bends for those who are his friends, and remains stiff before those who are strangers’, while another observed ‘when one has the key one can see into him, but nothing will ever make him expansive about himself. [v] The key to Jules’s character lay largely in the prudent provincial values and stern moral principles that he seemed, at this stage in his life, to be trying to slough off like an unwanted skin. He had a seriousness of character that was utterly at odds with the frivolity of the theatrical farces then in vogue, and he had a deep dislike of emotional display that prevented him from writing convincingly excessive melodramas. Above all, he had a literal mind that always took precedence over his imagination. He could not abandon himself to flights of fancy unless he was convinced of the soundness of the premises on which the actions were predicated, and this more than anything explains his inability to produce convincing comedies of manners and emotional tragedies in which the characters and values were so different to his own.

Pierre Verne considered Jules’s association with the Théâtre Lyrique ‘bizarre’; [vi] resigned to the fact that his son would never be a lawyer, he had come to believe that Jules could become a good writer if his talents were directed into the right channels. In the same year that he joined the theatre, Jules wrote a third novella for the Musée called Martin Paz, based largely on Jacques Arago’s adventures in South America. Albeit in rudimentary form, this work displayed many of the elements that would typify Jules’s later books - the combination of imagination and solid fact, a visual approach to narrative and a concern with social issues - in this case the predicament of peoples of mixed race in Peru. On reading Martin Paz, Pierre Verne decided that Jules’s true forte was the novel, and tried to divert him from the theatre without success. The impasse continued until 1855 when Jules left the Théâtre Lyrique having failed to make his mark as a dramatist or impresario, but having overworked himself to the extent that he acquired a facial tic that would recur throughout his life in times of stress. He returned to the solitary life of a writer, and immersed himself in work. His passion for science now nearly equalled that for the stage, and he applied himself to trying to develop a new style of scientific writing in which technical phrases could be integrated into ordinary language, thus making science accessible and avoiding cumbersome academic periphrases. In his approach to science he represented the viewpoint of the intelligent and well-informed layman interested less in pure theory than in its practical application, and he most admired engineers, explorers and other men of action whose exploits and invention put theory into practice. While not a scientist himself, he numbered many eminent scientists among his acquaintances, and would often meet with them to discuss the latest scientific theories and technological innovations. But the theatre continued to distract him and he carried on writing unsuccessful comedies and plays.

Pierre Verne continued to provide encouragement and financial assistance, but his confidence in his son’s future received a heavy blow in 1856 when Jules fell in love with Honorine Morel, a widow with two children, and announced that he wished to marry and to go into stockbroking in partnership with Honorine’s brother. ‘One more illusion gone - my son, instead of being a writer, is to become a stock-jobber’[vii] lamented Pierre Verne, but he bought Jules a share in a stockbroking business and Jules married Honorine in 1857.