[adapted from Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]
With all the ruckus in Washington — and what is just the fourth U.S. president to face impeachment — it is interesting to look at a remarkable series of books written more than a century ago, novels that had astonishingly prophetic elements.
The precognitive handiwork was that of a writer and lawyer named Ingersoll Lockwood who wrote a series of novels in the late 1800s.
The titles of two, written for children: Travels and Adventures of Little Baron Trump and His Wonderful Dog Bulger (1889) and Baron Trump’s Marvelous Underground Journey (1893). You read that name correctly. The “baron” here was a title—not a first name, and thus is short an “r”—but the point remains and grows with each detail. The fictional Trump, archetype for a future president (remember, this is the nineteenth century!)—is a rich kid bored with his lavish lifestyle and fixated with foreign women—“distracted” by them—as well as the size of his brain, of which he often brags—even suing a tutor for learning more from him than he did from the tutor.
He travels to Russia in a life-changing journey during which he meets a “master of masters” named “Don.”
Possessed of a biting tongue, young Baron Trump has a personalized insult for everyone he meets (“Little Man Lump,” “Little Man All Head,” “Flip-Flop,” and “Sir Pendulum Legs,” in case this brings to mind “Little Marco” and “Crooked Hillary”). His own full name is actually Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Von Troomp—German, as the future president is part German—and constantly finding himself in quandaries that he must then escape.
Like the 45th future president, “Baron Trump” preferred familiar comfort food over exotic cuisine (McDonald’s, anyone?). And where, you might wonder, in Lockwood’s novels, did Baron Trump live?
“Castle Trump” on Fifth Avenue.
A century later, Donald J. Trump, of Trump Tower (on Fifth Avenue) would build a casino in Atlantic City named—“Trump’s Castle.” So close are the parallels that some have come to the conclusion—rather wildly—that President Trump was a time-traveler.
Conspiracists and delusionists alike wonder, if Trump inherited a travel machine, perhaps one designed by the inventor-genius-eccentric Nikola Tesla, with whom President Trump’s uncle, an MIT graduate, was an acquaintance. Lockwood was from Ossining, New York, the son of Munson Ingersoll, who founded a bank and was an intimate friend of Henry Clay. Ingersoll followed in dad’s footsteps, at one point appointed Consul to the Kingdom of Hanover by Abraham Lincoln. On his return he established a legal practice in New York City, dying in 1918 at the ripe old age (by nineteenth century standards) of seventy-seven, after writing Alice in Wonderland-type tales.
Do they have validity? You decide. Our take, as conservatives, is that there is a growing and ominous radicalization, and militancy, at both ends of the current political spectrum, auguring upheaval and perhaps something akin to a “cold” civil war (that could turn hot).
Uncanniest of all: Lockwood’s final novel was published in 1896. It was about an election and describes a “state of uproar” in New York City over an outsider winning the U.S. presidency. The name “Trump” is not in this Lockwood work, but the links are both clear and mystifying— focused on street protests in front of “Castle Trump” following the stunning victory of a populist candidate.
“Mobs of vast size are organizing under the lead of anarchists and socialists, and threaten to plunder and despoil the houses of the rich who have wronged and oppressed them for so many years,” Lockwood wrote. “The Fifth Avenue Hotel will be the first to feel the fury of the mob,” wrote Ingersoll. The chant: “Death to the rich man.”
A “terrible night for the great City of New York,” said the novel, which asked, “Would the troops be in time to save it?” The president in Lockwood’s novella is paranoid over the gold standard and fears—with good cause—a civil war. The downfall of America is at hand. A few months after the disturbances, the president appoints a man to his cabinet . . . named “Pence.” Oh, the shouts on the street: in November of 2016, you will recall, they were heard in various cities, including New York at Trump Tower. The title of this last Lockwood book: 1900, or The Last President.
[adapted from Lying Wonders, Strangest Things]
