Tintin Forums

I am currently reading an Edgar Wallace thriller from 1932, called The Feathered Serpent. For those of you who may not know the name, Wallace was a very prolific writer (174 novels, 24 plays and 160 films based on his works, plus radio and TV series providing further adaptations), who started out in Fleet Street, the home of London journalism for many decades, and now synonymous with the British press, albeit that few, if any, papers are actually located there now.

The Feathered Serpent must have been a very late work, as he actually dies in 1932, while in Hollywood working on the script for the original King Kong.

Anyway, Serpent features a hero who is (unsurprisingly) a Fleet Street journalist, and the thing which caught my eye was this passage, as he is being introduced to the reader (it's on the first page of chapter two):


I don't believe I've ever seen the association directly before, but this seems to me that perhaps there might have been a bit of playing to stereotype in Hergé's choice of garb for our boy reporter.

It might have been self-evident, or even expected by readers at the time, that an investigative journalist would be a person in plus-fours.

In the way in which private eyes are sort of associated with Humphrey Bogart-style trench-coats and fedoras, or given a Sherlock Holmes-style deer-stalker hat, might Tintin's trousers have been a common short-hand for a reporter?

Even if not used as a signal, Wallace's passage might be based on his knowledge and understanding of the press - that reporters did habitually wear plus-fours, when perhaps others didn't. Hergé, also being a newspaper man, might have understood that too, and included them out of experience.

Anybody else ever come across such a thing, or anything which might further build the association?

Maybe, although to me, that passage could also read as if it's referring to a stereotype of a 1920s gentleman private detective in the Lord Peter Wimsey mode, rather than necessarily a stereotype of an investigative reporter - in other words, the journalist's idea of heaven would be to be a fictional private sleuth, actually solving country house murders and suchlike and getting to wear plus fours (possibly understood by Wallace's readers to be the archetypal leg-wear of posh private sleuths of plays and novels of the time), rather than to just be a crime reporter (and having to wear ordinary trousers).

But I may be interpreting that wrongly; you're the one reading the book! I think I may have a copy of The Feathered Serpent somewhere on my bookshelves, but I don't think I've ever read it. If can I find it, I'll get it down for a read. But it may be another Edgar Wallace book I'm thinking of.

I see where you are coming from, John, but the context is different in the book.
The distinction is being made between the "fake" schemes that he "reads about in books", and the way things work in "reality".

To the character, he is in "reality', and he is identifying a message left at a crime scene - on a card, marked with a feathered serpent motif - as being the handy-work of someone who gets their ideas from "sensationalist literature", and who doesn't know that "real" criminals don't behave like that.

The reporter is therefore someone who lives, behaves and dresses like a "real" reporter, and not like a "sleuth in a book" (although quite obviously he is a "sleuth in a book", which is itself "sensationalist literature"...).

Yep, I see what you mean now. And I have indeed got an old second-hand paperback copy of The Feathered Serpent on my bookshelves (with a splendidly pulpy cover depicting a vampish blond woman woman in a red dress in some sort of unconscious or semi-conscious state).

I can't remember where or when I bought it - it must have been years ago - but I've never got round to reading it, so I shall do so soon!

Interesting theory, Jock - here might well be something in it!

Firstly, it would have made sense for those trousers to be worn by someone who needed to look smart and perhaps be doing some form of outdoor activity, like an investigative journalist. In the first few pages of Soviets Tintin seems to be wearing checkered pattern plus fours (or whatever you want to call them) as part of a suit; a bit of both fashion and practicality.

The only other plus-four-wearing, globetrotting journalist that I can think of is that chap Palle Huld, who's story came up fairly recently about him being a model for Tintin (which personally I'm not convinced about).

It could also simply be because that is what most (mainly young) men were wearing at that time; men's fashion in the 1920s was changing to a more casual style generally, with sports clothes and shorter length trousers, and not solely for practical reasons but also to project a sporty image and look fit and ready for purpose (much the same as today, I suppose).

I also wonder whether the trousers have something to do with reflecting Tintin's age, (again referring to the first pages of Soviets where his legs don't quite reach the floor when he's sitting down), since they were similar to the types of trousers worn by boys and younger men at that time (see this pic of Ronald Reagan in the 1920s).

It would be nice to find a few other examples to back up the theory though. I can't remember all of the examples of Hergé drawing reporters in the earlier books, but I just glanced at the reporters who appear in the b/w (and also colour) version of Congo (first page at the station and the ones that ask him for an interview later) and they aren't shown to be wearing them.
But then they're just ordinary hacks so maybe it was something that only young adventure journalists wore...? ;)