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Marlinspike: The Hall and its village namesake

rodney
Member
#1 · Posted: 24 Sep 2012 13:35
I've always been interested in the village which we never get to accurately see within the adventures.
The closest we get is the train station at the start of Crystal Balls.
It has been mentioned before by Harrock n roll in another forum, that whenever Marlinspike is mentioned a church steeple is always shown, for me it's a frustrating visual as I want to see more!
This also begs the question, would this represent a Catholic church, reflecting Herge's faith?

In addition, as a kid I always was wondering the silly things about the domestic Marlinspike day to day life:

1. How does Nestor do everything by himself?
2. Does Marlinspike Hall get their groceries delivered? I've only seen their milk/butcher runs?
3. Does the Captain get frustrated there's no garage for car parking?
4. Marlinspike Hall is huge, they need a bigger kitchen!

Finally I think showing Marlinspike village could have been interesting to start or round off an adventure. The Captain could have a humorous mishap or some sort, perhaps Abdullah could have run havoc in one of the stores causing grief!

Perhaps Herge simply thought the depiction of the village unnecessary, maybe he didn't need it and perhaps purposely left it as a point of wonder for the eager fan?
But hey, I wish he had given us some small bite!
mct16
Member
#2 · Posted: 24 Sep 2012 14:51
rodney:
Does Marlinspike Hall get their groceries delivered? I've only seen their milk/butcher runs?

It's not impossible. I was living in a French village in the 1970s where there were no shops so a van from a grocery store from a bigger town would often come round to sell their goods. These services disappeared over time as cars and superstores become more available. Ah, nostalgia!

rodney:
Does the Captain get frustrated there's no garage for car parking?

There might be a garage somewhere at the back where Max Bird leaves his car.

rodney:
Marlinspike Hall is huge, they need a bigger kitchen!

With only about four men, a dog and a cat to feed?
jock123
Moderator
#3 · Posted: 24 Sep 2012 15:45
Hi, rodney. For discussion of the lay of the land around Marlinspike, you might like to read through this thread, in which we got to the bottom of the location of the real life model for Moulinsart/ Marlinspike, the hamlet of Sart-Moulin, near the town of Braine-l'Alleud just to the south of Brussels.

Given that the general layout of the station and the surrounding countryside is shown to be much like the real-life counterpart, if we then assume that Moulinsart is the same, there isn’t actually a village there; it’s really nothing more than a few buildings, a cross-roads, level-crossing and the halt itself. The track is a (now dis-used) branch line from Braine-l’Alleud, and one assumes that those living locally would pop along to there to do the shopping.

It’s not too far to walk, either; Tintin is shown to alight at “Moulinsart l’Eglise”, which I speculate in the other thread might be Sacré-Cœur à Braine-l'Alleud; this amongst other steeples would be seen from Moulinsart (although there are several, and it depends in which direction you would look), but it would be the parish church for Sart-Moulin so it seems a good contender; to the question of the steeple being that of a Catholic church, the answer is almost certainly yes, and it’s nothing to do with Hergé’s faith - the Brabant is a predominantly Catholic region, and church steeples dot the countryside at very regular intervals. Anyone depicting the area would include at least one, I imagine!

As for the domestic arrangements, yes it does seem a little under-staffed; I’m on a train at the moment, so can’t check, but I’m sure that there’s a mention of a gardener (over and above the mistaken identification of Calculus as the gardener by the Paris Flash reporters), but that is about it. I suppose they just put dust-sheets over the furniture in the unused rooms.

Not sure on what basis you are judging the size of the kitchen - I’m not certain we ever see it, do we? There is the cut scene of Nestor reading, but that could be in his own quarters, or at least in a butler’s pantry (basically the office for his job).

Frustratingly Hergé was surprisingly cavalier about the layout of the house, so we end up with often incompatible renderings from book to book, and even scene to scene. Thus we sometimes see basement windows suggesting an expansive lower floor, which in large houses would be the kitchens (multiple kitchens were needed for different tasks, such as general cooking, baking, pâtisserie and puddings, etc.), plus laundries, work-rooms and sculleries.

However, these disappear, and are mostly not shown at all, so perhaps the Captain had them blocked off; you also have to allow for the fact that during construction of the house a large stone spiral stair-case was incorporated into the design, running from the vaults and cellars up to the ground floor, presumably passing through the basement/ kitchen level. It still leaves the question as to where Nestor does the cooking and washing up.

You might also want to look at:
Marlinspike: Can we map the Hall, the ground and village properly?
Linda UK
Member
#4 · Posted: 26 Sep 2012 00:22
My only memory of a brief kitchen scene is with Nestor, Calculus, and Prince Abdullah (while Tintin and Haddock are away abroad in Khemed) in The Red Sea Sharks - page.29, panels 6-11.

I think this is the only scene showing Marlinspike Hall's kitchen?
I too would love to see and know more!
The confusing layout and depiction of Marlinspike Hall's rooms was often too difficult to make sense of, or understand.
mct16
Member
#5 · Posted: 26 Sep 2012 13:52
Is it really that confusing? As I see it, if you face the building and go up the steps:

On your left is the Maritime Room where the "Unicorn" and its contents were once exhibited. That was discontinued (maybe after the furore of "Treasure" had died down) and it is later used for Wagner's piano in "Emerald". It then becomes a TV and living room where Tintin and Haddock hold their opening chat in "Picaros";

On your right is another living room where Haddock sits most of the time in "Emerald", then further on is a dinning room for breakfast ("Calculus Affair", "Sea Sharks") and other meals;

A kitchen at the back - good recollection, Linda UK;

Upstairs are bedrooms and bathrooms. They may have converted the room in which Tintin makes his phone call in "Unicorn";

Further up will be the servants (or in this case servant's) quarters, maybe some store rooms such as the attic where Tintin and Snowy hide in "Emerald".

Moderator Note: You'll find all of this discussed at some length in the thread linked to above, so let's try and keep things neat, and keep the matter of the interior over there, please.
Suffice it to say that, while it may be easy to make a list of places within the house, it is definitely a very different matter when it comes to making them fit to the exterior, and in relation to each other - how and where doors should be, how do the windows shown from the inside match windows shown on the outside?, etc. - never mind as to how one might fit in the staircases shown; one can say there's a kitchen "at the back", but we see both back and front of the house, and there is no indication of how it could be accommodated.
Harrock n roll for one has been beavering away at it for years, and has yet to succeed!

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