The Real Hergé, page 14
However, by 4 August 1949, Hergé had once again become ill and felt unable to work. The story was on hold, and the magazine hid the truth of Hergé’s ill-health. Instead they used it as a publicity stunt with the headline in the next issue reading, ‘Shocking news: Hergé has disappeared!’, to create a mystery for their young readers.
But Hergé was struggling – with work and with married life. He and Germaine were constantly at odds with each other. She left for Paris, while he visited Gland in Switzerland again, as had become his usual habit in times of stress.
He wrote to Germaine on 5 August 1949, examining the turmoil they had been through the previous year. He said he had wanted to be free, and had seen himself on the Colorado River or sailing for Buenos Aires on a cargo ship. He was attracted by the idea of the different ports of call, the palm trees and a girl in every port. He had imagined himself a ‘combination of Livingstone and Casanova’. But he said the worst aspect of his crisis was that he had taken it all so seriously, and of course, Germaine had inevitably done so, too.
Hergé realised how much drama he had caused and said he had ‘fought and shouted’ and had drowned himself in being tragic. He felt he had been overwhelmed with fatigue, and said that his brain hadn’t been working properly. He was tired and in desperate search of rest, and had just needed to remove himself from work and drop all responsibilities and worries.
The major problem the couple had at the time was that for Hergé, Germaine was inextricably associated with work. After all, they had met at work, she constantly helped him with his job and they even had the work studio within their house. For someone wanting to escape from their job, he found it difficult to be around her.
While he was still struggling with work and his marriage, he nevertheless wrote to Dehaye on 10 August to say that at least his ‘sentimentalerotic crisis is over’ and that ‘Don Juan-ism’ was no longer for him.
Edgar Jacobs offered some robust analysis and advice for his friend on 16 August. He wrote to Hergé to try to shake him out of his melancholic state, telling him it seemed as though he was trying to put on a little show, almost in spite of himself. He wanted his friend to grow up, and told him that the problems he was talking about were ‘the sorts of questions people ask themselves when they are between eighteen and twenty years old – the romantic period.’
He added, ‘What you are going through is perfectly human, and all these feelings (whatever Germaine says) are a matter of temperament… So, go! Flit and flutter from flower to flower! But don’t rush forward like a big bumblebee hitting a window-pane!’
Jacobs had had enough of waiting for Hergé to return to his responsibilities and did not mince his words. He told him that it was clear Hergé wanted to remain at any price the ‘Big Man’ that Germaine had wanted him to be, and it was also clear that he seemed to have forgotten that there was a man lying dormant in him, alluding to his numerous affairs.
He told Hergé that he was afraid of his work and that he flinched away from responsibility, just as his reputation was beginning to reach its peak. He wrote:
‘Wake up, old fellow! You’ve been spineless for long enough. You need to shake yourself and get back on the horse; an artist, no matter how highly thought of he may be, is quickly forgotten once he’s off the scene. You are responsible for the life of a newspaper that has a great deal of influence over young people, and that has the support and the ear of an even larger part of the public. You have to be confident in yourself – the thing has been launched in France and Italy – and at the end of the day there are two or three dozen people depending on you. I have the vague impression that you aren’t conscious of the success and the fantastic luck that have marked your career. If you spent a couple of years as a starving artist, you’d sing a very different tune. What more can you want, for the love of God! You have fame, wealth, and youth!’
He ended the brusque letter with:
‘And get it through your head that there are two things that matter in life; money and health! That’s all. Anything other than that is gravy. No work – no money; no money – no ‘little Switzerland’…’
Hergé was still unconvinced and reluctant to return to work. Germaine felt that Hergé’s trips to Switzerland indicated he needed a more balanced lifestyle, with more nature and more exercise. She suggested buying an old farmhouse in Céroux-Mousty, Brabant, and Hergé was keen. They started the process of buying the property. He asked Germaine to come and visit him in Gland, Switzerland, and she travelled down in September, where they spent time with friends, eating and rowing. But he was still not keen to come back to Brussels to work on the magazine.
By now, even Marcel Dehaye was becoming frustrated with Hergé and urged him to let them know when they could expect the next instalment of Tintin. He also encouraged the cartoonist to talk frankly with Raymond Leblanc, who he suspected was becoming increasingly angry at Hergé’s frequent absences. Hergé took his friend’s advice and returned to Brussels in time for a dinner to celebrate the third anniversary of the Tintin magazine.
The Adventures of Tintin started to appear in the magazine again on 27 October. Hergé had taken twelve weeks off, and the magazine showed their feelings about this with the cover of the latest issue, which depicted a handcuffed Hergé dragged back to work by his characters. Thomson says to him, ‘Enough laughter, my boy! Back to work!’
And with that, Hergé was back at the drawing board, working on Land of Black Gold until it was finally finished.
Raymond Leblanc had been very unhappy with Hergé’s absences and he wished that the magazine could do without him. He felt they couldn’t rely on the cartoonist as he had broken a string of promises to the editor. However, the magazine was still doing well and the pair had a contract together, so they had to remain cordial. The editor suggested that he should hire some more staff to take the burden off Hergé. While Hergé was keen to give away the more mundane technical jobs, he did not want an industrial, conveyor belt-style studio.
Now he was back, Hergé was keen to regain control. He had been very unhappy with the work of Andre Fernez, who had taken over from Van Melkebeke, and did not keep his feelings to himself. He criticised everything he had done for the magazine, and made life difficult for Fernez.
The artists on staff had now grown from the original four of Hergé, Jacobs, Laudy and Cuvelier to include Etienne Le Rallic and then Jacques Martin, followed by Willy Vandersteen and Bob De Moor.
Hergé was not one to pull any blows when it came to work and harshly criticised the efforts of most of the artists under him, bar Cuvelier, whom he felt a strong affinity with. He would have long talks with Cuvelier, who was also disenchanted with the medium of comic strips. Cuvelier looked at his work as just a job, but he had lofty ambitions to be much more and Hergé could empathise.
Chapter 13
Now Land of Black Gold was finished, Hergé could move on to a new story and he had plans to send Tintin to the moon in another double book adventure. He and his collaborators had been knocking the idea back and forth for a long time now. While he had been in crisis mode in Switzerland in the summer of 1948, he had confirmed to Marcel Dehaye that there would indeed be a new story and he had asked his collaborators to help.
Jacques Van Melkebeke and Bernard Heuvelmans had been working on a few ideas, which at the time Hergé had looked over with little more than apathy. Fast-forward to 1949 and the story had been through a series of revisions, and Hergé now used the work created by others to start his own story.
While Hergé ignored much of the development documents prepared by his staff and went in a different direction entirely, he did use some of the ideas word for word. However, when Heuvelmans would come to him many years later in 1962 asking for money to supplement the salary he had been paid at the time for his ‘scriptwriting duties’, Hergé robustly knocked him back, telling him there was no question of Jacques Van Melkebeke and Heuvelmans being scriptwriters of the story. While admitting that he had used some of the jokes they had suggested, as well as the scientific material, he firmly rejected the idea that they had come up with the scenario.
By November 1949, he firmed up Heuvelmans’ role and asked him to gather various documents concerning technical aspects of space exploration, such as pictures of atomic factories, lunar rockets and the interiors of spaceships, as if to ensure his staff knew exactly what was expected of them – no more filling in for the boss.
Fascinated by the thought of human space travel, which was a feat that had yet to be achieved, Hergé wanted extensive research into the area for the drawings to be as realistic as possible.
He also wanted to employ another assistant to help with the new story, and although Jacques Van Melkebeke had just been released from jail, Hergé did not employ his friend. Instead he brought in Albert Weinberg, who had studied law and then worked for various cartoonists. He would eventually create the Dan Cooper pilot stories for Tintin magazine.
Hergé requested that Weinberg help with the new project and also asked him to create the basic framework for his next story, Explorers on the Moon. They would meet at Hergé’s house and discuss the matter in detail, with Weinberg charged with the responsibility of finding ideas to fill out the story.
As a dutiful assistant, Weinberg helped Hergé with panels and gave suggestions, which Hergé took and used in his own inimitable way, condensing the material and restructuring extensively.
Hergé loved the topic of the new story and was in his element. He contacted Alexandre Ananoff, the Russian–French space expert, writing to him on 18 April 1950 asking for specific details of the instruments within the cockpit of a spaceship, especially their names and functions. Ananoff was keen to help Hergé in any way possible as he wanted children to be given accurate information on this subject.
After visiting the Center for Atomic Research of the ACEC, Hergé also contacted the director, Max Hoyaux. He immersed himself in the subject, bought a great number of books and became somewhat of an expert on space. His ultimate aim was to add a layer of accuracy never seen before in comic strips and he loved the challenge.
Working all hours on the new adventure, Hergé and his team eventually came up with the story of Destination Moon. The new instalment began in Tintin magazine on 12 March 1950 and ran until September of that year before being published by Casterman in 1953. The story revolves around Tintin and Captain Haddock, who are invited to Syldavia by Professor Calculus, where he is working on a confidential government project to send an astronaut to the moon. The story was a technical work of art and the readers loved the adventure and the meticulous drawings.
Over the duration of this project, there was a great shift in the way Hergé worked. On 6 April 1950, Studios Hergé public corporation was created, giving Hergé the technical support he needed. Hergé added Arthur Van Noeyen to his stable of artists and asked his friend Jacques Van Melkebeke to train him up.
To further separate work from home life, the Studios were now based in his Avenue Delleur house in Brussels, with Hergé making the newlypurchased country house in Céroux-Mousty his and Germaine’s main home. The Studios system now meant that Hergé had his own official team to help him with ongoing projects. He took on Bob De Moor as his primary apprentice at the Studios in March of the following year.
There were also great changes within Belgium itself. Since the end of the war, King Leopold III had been exiled in Switzerland with his second wife, Princess Lilian de Rethy, and his children. He had met with Hergé and formed a friendship while abroad, but desperately wanted to return to his homeland to resume his position as king and take over from his brother, Prince Charles, who was acting as regent in his absence.
A public referendum decided his fate in which citizens were asked to answer the question, ‘Do you believe that King Leopold should resume the exercise of his constitutional powers?’
The public were divided, and although the results were in his favour, with 57.68% answering ‘yes’, the people who voted ‘no’ were in a majority in Brussels and in Wallonia, which greatly upset Leopold. Nevertheless, he returned home on 22 July 1950, but there were protests in Wallonia in which four people were killed and more protests were planned for Brussels itself. King Leopold III felt he had no choice but to abdicate, passing over the throne to his son, Baudouin.
Hergé was incredibly disappointed for his friend. On 15 May 1950, he was dealt another blow. His contact at Casterman Publishing, Charles Lesne, who had been an enormous part of Hergé’s professional life for many years and had also become a friend and mentor, died suddenly of a heart attack.
Louis Casterman was moving away from the day-to-day tasks, so Hergé was left to deal with Casterman’s son, Louis-Robert, who was not interested in Hergé’s new ideas – his only concern was to keep the book sales high.
Although there were many changes, work was going well for Hergé. But towards the end of the summer, he began to feel very tired again, and by the time Destination Moon finished in September of that year, he was exhausted.
The story was planned as a double book, with a narrative that spanned two volumes, but rather than continue the weekly instalments, the adventure stopped abruptly in Tintin magazine – with the simple announcement: ‘End of part one’.
Hergé was suffering from another bout of depression, and left again for his bolthole in Gland, Switzerland, with Germaine. He was exhausted by even the smallest things, and suddenly developed a fear of the water. While he had previously loved to swim and row, he was now gripped with terror upon entering the lake.
In many ways he was worse than before, and couldn’t even complete letters to his friends. Germaine would have to take over a letter to Marcel telling him that Hergé was exhausted and that even a short trip to Geneva had left him in pieces. She said he needed around six months to properly recuperate.
Meanwhile, although they had bought the farmhouse in Ceroux as a family home, hoping it would offer Hergé the tranquillity he needed, the house needed a great deal of building work and was currently undergoing a renovation which only served to add to Hergé’s stress and anxiety.
They returned to Brussels at the end of September, but he was still unable to work. Abbot Wallez had been released from jail and came to visit the couple for a few weeks. He had recovered from his illness, and although he was weak, he managed to be very vocal. During his stay, he would discuss the unfairness of the Purge, the accusations, the war and the subsequent war trials at great length, which did nothing to settle Hergé’s already frayed nerves.
By February 1951, Hergé was struggling to cope. He wrote to his friend Paul Jamin, who was still in jail, waiting to be released, to tell him how he was feeling. He told him that he had been, and still was, extremely groggy. He said that he was suffering from overwork, with shredded nerves, awful insomnia, and attacks every time he made the mistake of sitting down at his work table.
He told his friend he had had to interrupt his stories in the magazine many times, and he felt that each time he had returned to work too soon, but this time he wouldn’t be starting work until he felt completely well again.
The country house had been another huge source of concern. Bought for peace and relaxation, the property had been a millstone around their neck. The house had needed extensive renovations, which had caused a huge amount of stress.
In the same letter, he told Jamin that he was shocked the entire house hadn’t collapsed yet, and he thought it could still happen. The developer had assured Hergé that the remodelling work would be done in six weeks. So far, it had been nearly a year since the work had started.
In the meantime, he said the costs were mounting fast: ‘The bills come with the speed of machine-gun fire. Boom! The joiner’s bill. Blam! The plumber’s! Pow! The architect’s! I’ve already spent a huge sum on architects; I’ve had to show two of them the door…’
Work was still halted on the Explorers on the Moon story, upsetting more and more readers. On 18 April 1951, Hergé wrote a letter to be printed in the magazine to address the issue and to provide an explanation for the absence of their favourite comic strip, saying:
‘Dear reader,
I don’t really know how to apologise for the long interruption of Explorers on the Moon. I have been telling you in pictures the adventures of Tintin, Milou (Snowy), and all their companions; and of Jo, Zette, and Jocko, and of Quick and Flupke, for more than twenty years. But though all of those rascals are tireless, unfortunately I am not like them!
Do you realize how much work is involved in a picture-story like the ones that appear in this magazine? Tell yourself that the cartoonist must be scriptwriter, decorator, costume designer, dialogue writer, and even sometimes actor (right, Edgar Jacobs?) all at the same time. He must also educate himself from books, journals, illustrated weeklies, and sometimes even actual places!
Imagine to yourself that all of this means research, reflection, and continuous work, and you will see that the job of “storyteller in images” is not a job that leaves time for any rest.’
He added that he had been ill and that doctors had recommended he take time off to rest, illustrating the letter with a picture of himself flopped in an armchair. Hergé was the only cartoonist of his time to place himself in the public eye in this way. He was also searingly honest in his replies to readers who asked where Tintin had gone and explained why he couldn’t work.
Hergé had added Bob De Moor to his stable of artists in Studios Hergé on 6 March 1951. De Moor had previously worked for the Flemish version of Tintin magazine called Kuifje, but even having this fast, competent addition to the team did not help matters. Still Hergé was not ready to work.
The relationship with Leblanc and other members of the team was becoming increasingly strained. Marcel Dehaye wrote to Hergé on 18 December 1951, to say that he, Jacobs and other colleagues and friends were disappointed with the way he was acting. He told him that he should either retire completely or stand with them so that they could succeed. They were asking him to be loyal to the ideals that he himself had conceived. Dehaye implored him to return by telling him that there was nothing more disappointing than seeing a master fall short, and that was what he was forcing them to experience.
