Hergé and the Ritz Hemingway Bar

Monday November 28 was only 6C, but it was sunny.  Our internet conked out on Sunday evening but luckily we could still connect to the network of the owner we had rented from for our first two days.  The owner of our present apartment dropped by Monday evening and will return with a new router on Tuesday.

Our first destination was the Grand Palais to see the Hergé exhibit.  Georges Remi was born in 1907 in Brussels and started drawing at an early age.  In 1924, he began signing his drawings as Hergé  (his initials reversed RG-- sounds like Hergé in French).

Poster for Exhibit

Hergé and Tintin

The exhibit was not organized chronologically.  It started with a few rooms with paintings done by Hergé in the 1960s and 1970s.  Once he became successful, Hergé started to both collect modern art and try his hand at painting.  His second wife Fanny Vlamynck encouraged him to paint.

On the left, a painting of Fanny

Hergé died in 1983.  He had been working on a last adventure about art thefts: Tintin et l'Alph-Art. It was never finished, but the early panels were on display.

The death of Hergé in Libération newspaper

Warhol silkscreen of Hergé - they met in New York and became friends

Tchang Tchong-Jen-- bust of Hergé 1981

Hergé often set the Tintin adventures in museums.  A Peruvian statute found in a Brussels museum featured in one of the stories.

Culture Chimu Peru-1100-1450 (from a Brussels museum)

At 12,  Hergé joined the Boy Scouts and travelled to summer camps in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Austria.  These adventures had a real impact on him and his subsequent stories.

In 1925, Hergé joined the subscriptions department of Le Vingtième Siècle, a daily paper run by a priest, Norbert Wallez.  In 1928, Hergé was asked to create a children's supplement called Le Petit Vingtième.  On January 10, 1929, Tintin and Milou ( Snowy in English) were born.  Their stories were found in Le Petit Vingtième and ran until 1940, when the paper shut down.

Le Petit Vingtième 

Pre war--- Hitler est un fou!

In addition to Tintin, Hergé also did commissioned work involving other characters.  Because Tintin didn't really have a family (except for his dog Milou, Hergé was asked to create a family comic.  Thus, the adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko (the monkey).  He was never as close to them as he was to Tintin.

1935

Another colour drawing

In 1940, Hergé finds himself without a newspaper to publish his comics.  He is offered a job at Le Soir, a Brussels daily run by the occupying Nazis.  The Tintin adventures first ran in a children's supplement entitled Le Soir Jeunesse until July 1941 and then directly in Le Soir as a daily comic strip.  Hergé was arrested several times in 1944 for questioning about his wartime activities.  He was finally cleared in May 1946.   It was during the war that Hergé finally adopted colour in his comics (The Shooting Star was the first coloured comic).

Many rooms had the rough drafts of his comics and the final version.  He was an excellent drawer and a perfectionist.

There was a whole room devoted to the Ads produced by Hergé and the launch of Atelier Hergé-Publicité.  He used his clean lines and simple messages to great affect.  He was very successful.
The following three photos document some of the Ads he worked on.

One of the main events from the thirties for Hergé was meeting Chang Chong-jen, a Chinese artist.  They met in Brussels in 1934.  They had a number of interests in common including painting and comics. Both were Roman Catholic and spoke French.  They collaborated on a new Tintin adventure called The Blue Lotus with an additional dimension in the narrative (humanity and sensitivity).  Chang encouraged Hergé to move away from stereotypes and to do more research for the foreign settings of his cartoons.   The adventures became more narrative, rather that just having the character briefly get involved in some fracas and then get out of it.

A panel from the Blue Lotus

The wise man wants a map, but the traveller needs a direction.

There were many excerpts from the first Tintin comic entitled Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.  Beautifully done in black and white.

During the war, the Germans wanted Hergé to reissue the story making the text more anti-Soviet.  He refused.

Hergé produced a large Christmas card in 1972 with all his major characters in the foreground, and many others in the background.  Most of the major characters carried signs.  There was a huge reproduction in one rom of the exhibit.

Captain Haddock with anti pollution sign

Alain in front of Tintin and Milou

At the end of the exhibit there was a video of Tintin being drawn and then a picture of Hergé.  I managed to take a photo capturing both images.

It was an interesting exploration of Hergé's life and the comic as art.  He has many followers today.


We walked down the Champs Elysées where there was a Christmas Market.  Lovely light on the trees.  Mostly fast food and lots of security guards.

Paris Christmas market runs from early November to early January

A holiday ferris wheel at Place de la Concorde

We walked up Rue Royale where Alain got his favourite Paris treat from Ladurée-- pain au chocolat pistache  (chocolate with pistachio).

Alain with his pain au chocolat pistache  

We then decided to go for a drink at the newly renovated Ritz Hotel.  Alain had promised me a birthday drink at the Hemingway Bar.  We have read books about the incredible history of the Ritz and the intrigues that went on there during World War II.  The Hotel (it originally opened in 1898 and hadn't undergone renovations in years) had been under renovations for the past four years and just reopened earlier this year.   

We got there about 5:30 p.m. and found that the bar didn't open until 6:00 p.m.  A woman working in the adjacent bar gave us a bit of history. The main Ritz bar opened in 1921 and was just for men.  A few years later, a smaller bar- now the Hemingway Bar- opened for women.  Hemingway, Cole Porter and many others drank there in the 1920s.  Cole Porter spent up to nine hours a day at the bar and famously wrote Begin the Beguine at the Bar.

Hemingway personally liberated the bar in 1944 as the Nazis were retreating.  It had been expected that General Leclerc, in command of the Allied troops, would be first on the scene.  However, before he got there, Hemingway in a jeep with some stragglers who had become separated from their units, pulled up at the Ritz and proclaimed its liberation. He then ordered champagne for everyone.  A short while later Robert Capa, the famous combat photographer, got to the Ritz, thinking he would be ahead of everyone, but was amazed to see that Hemingway had beaten him there.  Such great history!

Some of the newly remodelled Ritz sitting rooms

Alain waiting for the Hemingway Bar to open up

Beautiful cocktail service on the bar just beside where we were sitting

Wall of Hemingway photos including a number of Life covers

"The Ritz is Liberated"

The head bartender is known for his cocktail concoctions.  I had his secret "Clean Dirty Martini" which the menu calls "a pure work of art, clear as crystal but with the embracing taste of delicious green and black olives".  There was one green olive encased in an ice-cube and it was a superb, but potent drink!!

Behind the bar was a picture of one of its earlier incarnations.
There is a picture of Hemingway with Fidel Castro under the bust

Hemingway bust and typewriter

The bar with my martini

Puttin' on the Ritz!!

We were sitting at the bar and there was a table behind us with six Londoners having a party.  One of the men asked me to take their pictures and we got to chatting.  It turned out they had taken the morning train from London to Paris as a birthday surprise for one of the women (her 50th birthday).  They had lunch at the Eiffel Tower and were now having drinks at the Ritz before taking the train home to London.  As we started to leave, they asked us to stay and join them for some champagne.  This was an offer we could not refuse (Barons de Rothschild Ritz Millesieme 2008 champagne at 280 euros a bottle). The three women were architects that worked together and one of the men was a builder.  They were anti-Brexit and anti-Trump, so we all got along famously.  We all left the bar together about 45 minutes later- their final plan was to take the train home and then go for a drink at the Ritz in London.

We took the Metro back to the apartment for a late fish dinner.  A most memorable evening.