The Real Hergé by Sian Lye

Author:Sian Lye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Artists, Architects, Photographers
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books
Published: 2021-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

On 22 May 1947, Hergé turned forty. This milestone birthday is often a time of introspection, but for Hergé, he was at his lowest ebb. The aftermath of the war had taken its toll on the artist – he had friends in jail for their actions during the Occupation, and he struggled with feelings of guilt as he had not acted very differently to them. He was grieving for his mother, and his relationship with his brother was strained. The continuing conflict with his agent was draining him. Even his work, which he had done, head down, since leaving school, he found unfulfilling, and he was arguing constantly with Germaine, who had stuck with him and supported him in his work, and whom he had previously said he cherished so dearly.

His birthday was not a time for celebration. He was depressed, he wasn’t sleeping and suffered terribly with outbreaks of boils and eczema as he often did in times of extreme stress or unhappiness. A bout of boils was one of the reasons he had been allowed to leave military service when the war had initially broken out. He was struggling again now with the same physical symptoms, as well as tiredness, which made him irritable.

Hergé saw a variety of doctors, and they all came to the same conclusion – he needed rest. Accepting their advice, he dropped his work midway through a Tintin story and, leaving Germaine behind in Brussels, he took Marcel Dehaye to stay with his friend Marius Chopplet who lived near the parish of Father Bonaventure Fieuillien. He asked Germaine to talk to Raymond Leblanc and explain the situation to him.

He needed rest and relaxation. His nerves were frayed and anything could upset him at this stage. It was when the kindly Father Fieuillien came to see him one day and asked for his opinion on some etchings he had done that Hergé realised quite how poor a state he was in.

After talking with the priest for a while, he excused himself and asked to leave. Marcel Dehaye accompanied Hergé and looked after him as he left to stretch out in the grass a distance away from the village. He was truly exhausted.

It was then he understood the condition he was in. Even the slightest thing, which in this particular case had been giving his opinion on the priest’s etchings, left him completely drained and on the verge of tears. He wrote to Germaine to explain what had happened and how he was feeling.

Germaine was patient with her husband and replied soon after to reassure him that the conflict with his agent was being dealt with. To comfort her husband, she told him that the lawyers were dealing with the issue and that they were telling the agent he would lose the case. She consoled him and told him that everything would work out in the end, and added that the bad guys will be punished, ‘just like they are in The Adventures of Tintin’.

Meanwhile,

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