(Excuses for the unrelated post,
Chrissie - I didn't see your reply!)
Chrissie:
Now that Soviets have a translation that literally places him in Belgium, the case for London is now conflicting.
You're starting to convince me that they're all French now...!
Chrissie:
As for the monks, it could be possible that Tintin is bilingual and speaking English. Perhaps as English is so widespread that the monks understand English, even if it's not their first language, but that's my opinion.
That's actually quite true - I believe there was a British invasion on Tibet once, which might explain it. Either that, or - as I should have suspected earlier - Tintin and Haddock learned some Tibetan beforehand, just in case.
Chrissie:
Another that bothers me in one the Herge himself done. In the reprint of Cigars, having the Destination Moon book. I don't know if it's fixable.
Unfortunately, it isn't - at least until the copyright expires.
An interesting update (or confusion) on the debate...I was battling through a few more pages of
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (published 1771; written by Tobias Smollett), when I noticed the following incident:
The Bramble family have just arrived in London. They attend a party, where they meet members of the aristocray. A rather forgetful ex-spy named Mr. Barton "recognises" Bramble's nephew, Melford, "and seizing me by the hand, 'My dear
Sir Francis! ... when does your excellency
set sail? ... eat stewed prunes in the
passage ... .'"
(Incidentally, Melford confirms that he is not Sir Francis.)
All this leads to me ask the impossible: with the knowledge that he was not really a novel-reader, is there any proof that Herge read the book before he began planning the
Unicorn set?
If there is no concrete evidence for that, then I will ask: does anybody know what the French King was at the time of Sir Francis?
If it turns out that Sir Francis was around in Smollett's time, then that means that he could easily have been friends with Mr. Barton.
This thus means that he was either English, French ("[Barton] had been...in France"), or even Spanish ("traversed all Spain") with perhaps a modified name (Francisco, etc. = Francis), though to stretch it slightly, he may have been Scottish, too (the Bramble family visit Scotland later in the book, so it is possible).
We can infer from the text that he probably doesn't live in England, so that lowers the possibility of his being Scottish or English (though he very well might be!); in which case, he is either French or Spanish - though, judging from his hairstyle, out of the four, French is most likely...then again, if he was Spanish, then he may have had his hair done like that simply to fit in.
However, if it turned out that Sir Francis' King was not living long enough for the possibility of Sir Francis going on holiday to London, then I sincerly apologise for leading everybody on a wild goose chase!