With the new Indiana Jones movie coming up in just a few short days, I figured that I would post a couple of blogs looking back at the fictional life of Henry Walton Jones, Jr. and the very real word in which his character lives.
For those who are not very familiar with the Indiana Jones films or the hit TV show The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles the next three posts are a look at Indy's life from it's start until 1935.
On July 1, 1899, Henry Walton Jones 'Junior' (aka Indiana Jones) was born in Princeton, New Jersey to Henry Jones, Sr., a professor at Princeton University, (born in Scotland, in 1872) and Anna Jones (born in Virginia, in 1878).
Nothing is really known of young Indy's life between his birth and May 1908. One must assume that his childhood up to this point was fairly typical of a young boy at the time. In 1908, Henry Jones, Sr. embarks on a two-year lecture tour around the world together with Anna and Indy. From here onward, young Indy will encounter plenty of life experiences that will shape his life and mold him into the man we come to know and love when we see him in the movies.
In May of 1908, while traveling with his family, Indy meets his tutor, Helen Seymour, in England and travels to Cairo, Egypt, where he meets T.E. Lawrence (1888-1935: a British soldier renowned especially for his liaison role during the Arab Revolt of 1916-18) aka: Lawrence of Arabia. Once there, Indy becomes involved in discussions about archeology, mummies, and the afterlife. He also travels to the Valley of Kings where he meets Howard Carter (1874-1939: the archaeologist who would eventually open the tomb of King Tutankhamon). Later, young Indy explores a tomb from which a fire-eyed Jackal is stolen. Later that month, Indy and his family travel to Florence, Italy where he and his mother meet Puccini (1858-1924: an Italian composer). Indy is tutored in basic physics (the laws of attraction) as his mother and Puccini deal with their own awkward romantic attraction.
In September of 1908, Indy visits Paris, France and meets Norman Rockwell (1894-1978: a 20th century American painter and illustrator) in the Louvre. They sneak out to streetside cafes where they meet several other artists. In November, Indy meets Princess Sophie (1901-1990), the daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914: an Archduke of Austria-Este whose whose assassination precipitated World War I), at a riding school in Vienna, Austria. Sophie becomes Indy's first love but he is forbidden from seeing her again. Despite this, Indy sneaks into Belvedere Castle to see Sophie and exchanges gifts with her.
In September, 1909, Indy returns to Africa with his father to visit a plantation near Nairobi. While there, Indy meets Teddy Roosevelt (1858-1919: the 26th President of the United States), who is on an expedition to collect specimens for the Smithsonian. Indy helps Roosevelt out when he and a local boy go looking for a rare gazelle, Burton's fringe-eared onyx. The safari teaches Indy a great deal about the relation between man and nature, and Indy actually discourages Roosevelt from shooting too many of the endangered gazelle.
The start of 1910 finds Indy in Benares, India where he learns a great deal about the various religions of the world. He has a discussion with Krishnamurti (1895-1986: a popular writer and speaker on philosophical and spiritual subjects) and Annie Besant (1847-1933), the leader of the Theosophist movement, about the Buddhist, Christian, Hindy and Moslem faiths.
Continuing his travels eastward in March, 1910, Indy next finds himself in Peking, China. Unfortunately, he becomes very sick just after visiting the Great Wall of China. A cold rainstorm and a carriage accident only worsen his condition. After much debate about the merits of Western medicine versus Eastern medicine, Indy is treated by a Chinese doctor. Somewhere around the same time, the family journeys through the countryside of Russia where Indy runs away from his father and meets an 80+ year old runaway, fabled Russian novelist and troglodyte Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).
A few years later in April of 1912, Indy visits England and is invited to high tea with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930: a Scottish author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes). Soon after, Indy travels on the ill-fated ocean liner, the Titanic. He and his tutor, Helen, narrowly escape the fate that claimed more than 1,517 lives.
Shortly after this, tragedy strikes the Jones family when Anna Jones contracts scarlet fever and dies.
Indy returns to the United States in June, 1912 while his father lectures in Boston. He travels a bit with Helen (it is her first time in America) along the New England coast and engages in a treasure hunt after hearing tales of Captain Kidd's exploits. Later that summer, in Utah, Indy acquires his famous fedora, some initial experience with a bullwhip and a lifelong horror of snakes. Indy also discovers that many treasures do not end up in museums, but rather in the hands of private treasure hunters when the Cross of Coronado is taken from some Indian ruins.
For the next two years Indy goes on many more adventures with his father, as his father has taken up quite an obsession: a quest to find the cup that Christ drank from at the Last Supper.
We end this blog in 1914, a year which saw the First World War escalate, the invention of the first true television, and Babe Ruth playing his first year of professional baseball. While the character Indiana Jones is the creation of someones imagination, the times and places in which his life is set were as real as the history books.
Tomorrow we'll see about Indy's life from 1915-1920.
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