HERGE

I just got a copy of Pierre Assouline’s Herge: The Man Who Created Tintin, which, by quoting directly Herge’s first wife, substantiates, at last, the innuendoes of previous books about Herge to the effect that his first wife, Germaine nee Kieckens, didn’t love him much, which serves to explain and perhaps excuse Herge’s having an affair with a colorist on his staff while still married to Germaine. Later, after divorcing Germaine, he married his in-house paramour, Fanny Vlamynck.

Since most of the previous biographies were produced by persons with close ties to the Herge establishment, operated to a large extent under the watchful eye of Herge’s widow, the aforementioned second wife Fanny, the biographers’ slighting remarks about Herge’s first marriage and wife seemed like slurs, perpetrated to enhance the reputation of his second wife—take a breath here—rather than ascertainable fact. But Assouline, by quoting the first wife, Germaine, directly, confirms the erstwhile slights as fact not spiteful fiction. She confirms that theirs was not a love match—at least as far as she was concerned.

Assouline’s book, which I’ve only browsed through, not read with thorough attention, covers Herge’s love life in some detail (although not at all salaciously). In 1960, after 28 years of marriage and a four-year affair with Fanny, Herge left both women. Briefly. Then Fanny forced the issue, and Herge separated from Germaine. But it would take 17 years for her to grant the divorce. “Throughout, Germaine clung to the hope that he would return. He did not abandon her, either materially or morally. Until the end of his life, he would spend Mondays with her in what had been their home in Ceroux-Mousty.”

If the rest of the book is as detailed and fastidious as this, it’s a fine biography indeed. No pictures, though. Not even a photograph — except one of Herge on the dust jacket. Odd.