Herge & Fanny – The First Kiss

An exclusive extract from Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline.

Chapter 9: Toward Fulfillment, 1950-1958

Some felt that Hergé had reached his peak with The Red Sea Sharks. Here was the culmination of his golden age, which had started more than twenty-two years earlier with The Blue Lotus. As always, Germaine’s influence could be felt throughout the book; she was with him his wife during good and bad times over three decades. Her mark on the work is less in the technical details than in the moral dimension of the story. She was upright, rigorous, and demanding about all things, traits largely inherited from her long work with Father Wallez. This encouraged perfectionism in her husband, pushing him toward the heroic and his Boy Scout instincts, which had always remained a part of him. Her impact on his behavior seems less profound, as he would always be the first to concede.

His readiness to acknowledge his indebtedness to Germain may have been sincere, but it was also colored by guilt. In 1952, between two interims of crisis resulting from his depressive state, the Hergé couple went through a terrible year. Speeding along the highway at the wheel of his Lancia, Georges Remi had a serious accident. He emerged unscathed, but Germaine was left with a limp for the rest of her life. In addition, their friend Father Wallez succumbed to cancer. Toward the end, to help him recover from the effects of his imprisonment, the Remis took him into their home for three months. Georges, who stayed by his bedside as he lay dying, attended his funeral in his native village, one of only a few people present. He felt that he had lost a father.

In 1957 Hergé had turned fifty. To his readers, especially those of The Red Sea Sharks, he would always remain the same. However, he had changed, and he went through another serious crisis of conscience, which threw him into paroxysms of depression. Few outside of his very close friends and colleagues at the Studios were aware of it. It was there, where he least expected it, that the roof fell in.

In June 1956, Fanny Vlamynck, a lovely young woman of twenty-one, was hired as a colorist. After a trial period she was assigned regular duties. She had expected to meet a serious old man and instead discovered a mature man, reserved but warm. She admired him instinctively, the man more than the artist. Like everyone else, she had read Tintin though had never been a devotee of comic books. They seemed to understand one another, and at the usual afternoon tea, when the little group at the Studios came together to relax and laugh, their glances crossed.

Five months after she had been hired, just before the weekend preceding All-Saints’ Day, they found themselves alone in the elevator at the Hergé Studios. They kissed between the fifth floor and the lobby. On leaving her in front of the door at 194 avenue Louise, Hergé was no longer the same man. From now on there would be a before and an after in his life, and, consequently, in his work.

Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline is a brand new biography being launched this week in the UK and in the USA in a couple of week’s times. Published by Oxford University Press. It is available on Amazon.co.uk and on Amazon.com.

Text (c) Pierre Assouline and used with permission.
Tintin is a registered trademark of Moulinsart, who are not associated with this book or this blog.