The Real Hergé, page 4
The Congo Free State operated as a corporate state, which was privately controlled by the ambitious Leopold II through the Association Internationale Africaine. Under his control, the Congolese were ruthlessly and violently exploited, and millions were killed.
The King ran a private army called the Force Publique which made the local people work as forced labour, while reaping all the resources from the country. The army would kill and abuse people randomly and viciously.
The appalling conditions in the Congo Free State under Leopold’s control were exposed in the early 1900s by the Casement Report, and widely publicised in the British, European and American press. The situation was a major embarrassment, and Leopold came under intense pressure to end his personal rule. The Belgian government stepped in to make the country an official colony of Belgium in 1908, and it was renamed the Belgian Congo.
In 1930s Belgium, there were conflicting reports of what was actually happening in what was now the Belgian Congo.
For Wallez, the area was ripe with possibility, and he was keen to extol the virtues of the country. He wanted to highlight the positives of colonialism to the young readers of Le Petit Vingtième, which is why he insisted on sending Tintin to the Congo for his next adventure. Wallez was adamant that Hergé should inspire his young readers to find out more about the Congo and encourage them to go and work there in the future.
Hergé, however, was not enthused with the subject matter. He wasn’t interested in the area and he knew little of what life was like in the Belgian Congo. His remit, he felt, was purely to draw fast and funny stories to engage Belgian children and turn them into lifelong Le Vingtième readers. With his very basic research consisting of a visit to a local museum – the Museum of the Congo in Tervuren – and seeking tales from newspaper reporters who had visited the area, he set to work. The resulting story was simplistic and featured extremely racist and violent scenes.
Tintin and Snowy are sent to the Belgian Congo on a reporting expedition. The pair encounter various Congolese people and wild animals, and get into a variety of slapstick-driven scrapes. Tintin eventually uncovers a diamond smuggling operation masterminded by the American gangster, Al Capone.
The story was once again a big success in Belgium, and Wallez was extremely happy with the work of his young protégé. In later years, Tintin in the Congo became a controversial subject due to the racist colonial overtones, as well as the violence towards animals and the glorification of hunting. A particularly gratuitous scene involves Tintin drilling a hole in a rhinoceros, and filling it with dynamite, before blowing the poor creature up.
Hergé would later say, ‘I didn’t like the colonists, who came back bragging about their exploits, but I couldn’t prevent myself from seeing the Blacks as big children, either.’ He also said in an interview, ‘I’m very permeable, very impressionable, which makes me an excellent medium. All my books carry the traces of the time when they were drawn. For Tintin in the Congo, the fact is that I was fed on the prejudices of the bourgeois society I lived in. It was 1930. The only things I knew about these countries were what people said about them at the time. Africans were no more than big children. “It’s lucky for them that we’re over there,” and so on. I drew Africans along these lines in the purely paternalistic spirit of the times in Belgium.’
Despite its unsophisticated narrative and simplistic humour, Tintin in the Congo was very popular with children. The comic strip ended on 11 June 1931 and Wallez, who was thrilled with the results of his brainchild, was busy arranging another extravagant stunt to celebrate. In the weeks before the comic strip finished, Le Petit Vingtième promoted the return of Tintin and Snowy with ‘Uncle Jo’ regularly discussing the upcoming event.
When the day came, fans swamped the Gare du Nord again to greet their hero. This time, a different actor was used for ‘Tintin’, as the previous boy, Lucien Peppermans, had grown too tall. So, it was a much younger Henri Dendoncker dressed as Tintin who arrived in Brussels alongside ten Congolese people, as well as a whole host of animals borrowed from a circus.
A crowd of more than 5,000 also congregated around the headquarters of the newspaper where staff were distributing sweets and African souvenirs. They arranged the same event in Liège in eastern Belgium, where a riot nearly ensued.
The whole event was slicker and more commercially-minded this time around, with the book already printed and ready to be sold on the big day. It was a huge success and Wallez couldn’t be happier. He increased Hergé’s salary which had started at 600 francs a month to 2,000.
Hergé was pleased with the success of the story and the recognition from his boss and mentor, but in later years, he admitted to being embarrassed by this particular tale. He was reluctant to keep the book in print due to the many offensive scenes, only eventually allowing it to be republished due to the continuing popularity.
However, due to the success of Tintin in the Congo, Hergé was given free rein over the next story. Wallez had finally given in to the cartoonist and allowed him to take the boy reporter wherever he wanted, so Tintin was at last heading to America.
Work-wise, everything was going well for Hergé, but his private life left a lot to be desired. The 24-year-old was still living at home with his family in a tiny attic room with a small round window, and his love life was going nowhere.
He was still smitten with Germaine, who he saw all the time in the offices and often collaborated with her. While Hergé would walk her home every night, and much as she enjoyed his company, she did not consider him marriage material as she was looking for an older, more mature man – someone more in the mould of her boss, Abbot Wallez.
Hergé was living at home and very much the young dandy wearing sharp tailored suits made by his mother. He was a prankster at heart and still extremely fond of the scouts, definitely not the cultured and refined man Germaine pined for. But his career was beginning to take off – he started to exhibit his work in galleries in Belgium and was interviewed in a couple of magazines. He was beginning to grow into the type of sophisticated man she could be interested in.
At this time Abbot Wallez had taken to encouraging the young pair to marry. As a mentor to both Hergé and Germaine, he was an extremely influential figure and this pressure was taken seriously by both of them.
And it wasn’t just Germaine and Hergé he was hounding to find a partner; Abbot Wallez was persuading everyone to tie the knot at this time. At one point he called a meeting and spoke to all single employees of the newspaper, ordering them to find husbands or wives.
Whether the meddling abbot was a factor or not, it was in 1931 that Hergé’s relationship with Germaine started to blossom. They would exchange long letters, full of feeling and emotion, but he was becoming despondent and unsure of how he should proceed. At Easter time he sought guidance from Father Edouard Neut at the Saint-Andre abbey in Bruges, where he had spent time on a retreat after finishing high school.
Hergé found the meeting an enormous help and wrote a long letter to Germaine to explain what he had learned. He told her how the priest was able to see into his heart so clearly, how he had the vision to see what Hergé was truly missing and longing for – and it was her. He confessed his deep attraction to her, and explained that he realised he needed to make changes to himself to be the person she wanted.
After his openness, the pair became much closer and a more romantic bond developed between them. Germaine went to Bruges to visit him while he stayed at the abbey and they went on day trips together. In May, they travelled to Paris with Hergé’s parents and visited all the major attractions, from the Eiffel Tower to the Arc de Triomphe.
Later in the year, they spent a day at the beach together and he would doodle and write in a sketch book how much she meant to him. He told her how happy she made him and she filled his life, which had been empty without her. He was very much in love with Germaine, later writing long passionate letters telling her how much he had changed, and that she was the catalyst, the instigating factor in this. He felt she had changed him for the better.
Germaine responded to his passionate words with more passion and would write long letters back to him, clearly swept up in the emotional exchange. However, much later in life, Germaine confessed that she had not been that interested in marrying Hergé.
Her suitor, though, was very keen and the Abbot continued to pressure the singletons in the office. Soon the couple were engaged. Germaine’s parents held a lavish engagement party at their home in Laeken on 21 February 1932 to celebrate the announcement, and the pair were very happy, along with the pushy Abbot.
While Hergé was finally content in his love life, he began to set his sights on another goal – he wanted a career he could be proud of. Tintin in the Congo had been a great success, but Hergé was not happy with his work. He was determined that Tintin in America would be different. It was a project Hergé was passionate about, an exercise in nostalgia for the keen scout, with the Red Indians recalling elements of his Scouting days, as well as the films he had loved to watch as a child.
He researched more thoroughly than he had for either of his previous works. Through a mixture of magazines such as the satirical Le Crapouillot, which showcased images of American skyscrapers, and books including Scènes de la Vie Future, which depicted the slaughterhouses of Chicago, he started to become interested in perfecting the details of the backgrounds in his work and making them as accurate as possible.
Originally called Tintin in Chicago, the story was meant to include Tintin defeating the Chicago crime syndicates, but soon, however, the boss escapes to the Wild West and Tintin follows suit. So Hergé got to write his Wild West story after all, heavily influenced by his Scouting days, which had revolved around camps and tents, warpaint and arrows, as well as all the other accoutrements that had accompanied the carefree hours in the Scouting troop.
Tintin pursues the gangster across the country, where he encounters a tribe of Blackfoot Native Americans before he eventually captures the criminals and defeats the crime syndicate.
The book has several digs at Americans, especially about the shoddy treatment of the Red Indians. In one scene, an oil spring is found on the land belonging to the Native American tribe. Prospectors appear immediately and, thinking the land belongs to Tintin, they offer tens of thousands of dollars. When they realise it is the Red Indians’ property, they offer 25 dollars and shuffle the tribe along. In a matter of hours, the area has been developed beyond recognition.
Hergé also comments on police corruption with scenes depicting Tintin being treated brutally by the officers for attempting to report the criminals. And there are digs at American capitalism, too; when Tintin delivers the crime boss Bobby Smiles to the police, he is hailed as a hero and offered sponsorship from a myriad of different groups.
Keen to highlight the plight of the Native Americans, Hergé made this a priority in the storyline, and Wallez’s anti-capitalism stance slotted in very well alongside. Once again, the story was a roaring success, and when Wallez orchestrated the third ‘homecoming’ event for Tintin, they drew the biggest crowds yet.
Due to the popularity of the series, various publishers began to show an interest in the character – and also in Hergé. In April 1932, one of Hergé’s former colleagues, Charles Lesne, who had just moved to work for Louis Casterman at his publishing house, Casterman, was keen to introduce Hergé to his new boss.
Hergé met with Casterman to discuss publishing opportunities with them and very quickly the publisher became the official printer of the Tintin books developed from the comic strips in Le Petit Vingtième. This was a relationship and collaboration that would last throughout Hergé’s life.
While Hergé was busy arranging new contracts and deals and developing his career, in his free time, he and Germaine were also planning their wedding which was fast approaching.
Hergé and Germaine married at the Saint-Roch church in Laeken on 20 July 1932 surrounded by a host of friends and family, and with their boss and mentor, Abbot Wallez, officiating at the ceremony. Hergé was 25 years old, Germaine was 26.
However much the Abbot had encouraged the two to marry and however much affection he had for the pair, he was still a hard taskmaster and had made them work late the night before the wedding to finish duties at the newspaper. After the big day, the pair went on a muchneeded honeymoon in Vianden, a beautiful town in Luxembourg.
When they returned to Brussels, the happy couple went house-hunting and finally chose a cosy apartment on the second floor of a building that was still being built in Schaerbeek, along rue Knapen, on the outskirts of town.
Hergé found space in the little apartment for a makeshift office and worked more and more from home. He was constantly sketching images from their life together in pencil or watercolour, usually of his new wife, who he adored. He would draw Germaine reclining in bed, cooking their dinner, or playing with their Siamese cat called Thaïke. He also drew a series of nude images in red chalk, which was a new direction for Hergé in terms of his art. He was clearly smitten with his new wife.
Indeed, they had a lot in common – they had both had a relatively unhappy childhood. Germaine’s parents were rather elderly and having lost a child before she came along, were very overprotective of her, which she had found quite stifling. They were both ambitious; Germaine wanted to be an actress, but this was an ambition that would remain unfulfilled, while Hergé’s career soared. And as they both counted Abbot Wallez as their mentor, he shaped their ideas about the world and had also been a major catalyst for their marriage.
They loved spending time together and Hergé would take reams of photos of the budding actress in various poses. The next year, they went on holiday with another couple to the Pyrenees. For Hergé this was familiar territory from his Scouting days, although the dynamic was different with partners coming along too. They went hiking and camped in tents, shuffling together meals as best as they could. Hergé was in his element, but for Germaine this was a complete nightmare, and she never went on a similar trip again. Hergé would rely on his Scouting groups for this kind of adventure in the future.
Life was good for Hergé. He was happily married to a woman he loved, he had a lovely apartment and his work was exciting – he couldn’t ask for more. But it was not to last.
In 1933, he was dealt his first professional blow. Le Vingtième Siècle printed a series of damning articles on construction problems with the Albert Canal. The language was particularly strong, and while the newspaper was never a publication to shy away from controversy, on this occasion it was deemed it had gone too far.
The director-general of the Bureau of Public Works, Mr Delmer, was furious. He stormed into Le Vingtième’s offices complaining he had been defamed and tried to start a fight with Wallez. Wallez did not fight back and Delmer was physically removed from the building by a group of journalists.
Delmer was so incensed at the way he had been treated that he took Le Vingtième Siècle to court. He lost the case, but the damage had been done. Regardless of the outcome, the owners of the newspaper were upset that their moralistic publication had been embroiled in this kind of scandal; they forced Abbot Wallez to resign from the position he cherished so much and he was sent to work in a tiny parish in Charleroi.
Hergé was devastated. He had lost his mentor and friend, the first person to introduce him to a more intellectual life, the person who had believed in him and ignited his career, the person who had facilitated his marriage to Germaine. He felt less and less attached to the newspaper now that the abbot had gone, and began to think about a different direction for his future.
At this time, he had a great deal of work creating advertisements and was well regarded in this field. In 1931 he had formed a collaborative group with a couple of friends that they had called ‘Hergé Studios’, which provided adverts for a range of smaller companies such as local shops, with more clients being added all the time.
By 1934 ‘Hergé Studios’ was incorporated and initially comprised Hergé, Jose De Launoir and Adrien Jacquemotte, but the group often descended into arguments. Just months later, the company was dissolved following the latest disagreement, and then reformed without Jacquemotte.
The company did well, with Hergé’s skills in advertising very much in evidence during the 1930s. He loved the creativity of the work, but in that period the Tintin stories would always take precedence.
Chapter 4
Tintin was about to set off for his new adventure. It was announced in Le Petit Vingtième on 24 November 1932 that Tintin had his sights set on new and exciting horizons.
In this new story, Tintin and Snowy take a well-deserved holiday, travelling to Port Said in Egypt, when they are pulled into a mystery. After meeting the eccentric Sophocles Sarcophagus, they discover a pharaoh’s tomb full of mummified Egyptologists, as well as boxes of cigars labelled with a strange symbol. To unravel the mystery, they travel to Arabia and India, eventually uncovering a gang of international drug smugglers.
The story was inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, and the stories in the newspapers concerning the ‘Curse of the Pharaohs’, where a curse is supposedly cast upon anyone who disturbs the mummy of an Ancient Egyptian person, and causes bad luck, sickness or even death.
In terms of style, this book is a world away from Tintin in America and everything that had gone before. Rather than a series of loosely connected comic strips, which were very clearly an assembly of weekly adventures, this had a coherent narrative with one main plot, and signifies the true beginning of the style that marked Hergé out as an iconic cartoonist.
Some of the scenes show his remarkable talent emerging, such as the inspired dream-like sequence in the tomb and the eerie scene in the Indian house. In this adventure, both Hergé and Tintin had matured and this resulted in a story with more drama and greater narrative cohesion.
