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Oct. 21, 2011
Curious George’s fateful trip
VHEC exhibit illustrates how the Reys fled France in 1940.
CYNTHIA RAMSAY
Escape and cultural loss are two of the major themes of the Wartime Escape: Margret and H.A. Rey’s Journey from France exhibit, which opened Monday at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.
A program of ExhibitsUSA, a national division of Mid-America Arts Alliance and the National Endowment of the Arts, and organized by the Institute for Holocaust Education in Omaha, Neb., the exhibit relates in both words and illustrations the 1940 escape from Nazi-occupied France of the creators of Cecily G. (short for giraffe), Curious George, Whiteblack the Penguin and other memorable characters that have amused and educated millions of children worldwide. It is largely based on the 2005 book The Journey that Saved Curious George: The True Wartime Escape of Margret and H.A. Rey, written by Louise Borden, illustrated by Allan Drummond and published by the same company – Houghton Mifflin Co. – that published Curious George in 1941. It features framed art prints by Drummond and is supplemented by archival material from the DeGrummond Collection of Children’s Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi, including a letter printed in pencil from a young Curious George fan who liked reading about the monkey whose curiosity constantly got him into trouble because he, too, was “bad” like Curious George.
However, as much fun as the exhibit is, it deals with serious subject matter. “More than just the tale of a rousing escape from occupied France,” reads the promotional material, “this exhibition celebrates a timeless survival story, one that serves as a potent reminder of the power of human creativity and the cost when voices and visions are silenced by the impact of war.”
On June 12, 1940, the Reys were among more than five million people leaving Paris – two days before thousands of Nazi troops marched into the city. The Reys took few personal belongings with them as they fled on bicycles pieced together by Hans Rey but, among them, were the manuscripts for several children’s books, including The Adventures of Fifi, which was eventually retitled Curious George. This creation saved the Reys’ lives on more than one occasion, when soldiers, suspecting that the German-Jewish couple were spies for Germany, investigated the documents the couple was carrying, only to discover (to their apparent delight, according to the exhibit) that the papers were artwork and text for children’s books.
The Wartime Escape not only traces the Reys’ five-month journey by bicycle, train and boat through France, Spain and Portugal to Brazil and, finally, to the United States in October 1940, but also the story of how the couple met.
Both Hans Augusto Reyersbach and Margarete Elisabeth Waldstein were born in Hamburg, Germany; he in 1898, she in 1906. One of the images in the exhibit is Drummond’s depiction of Hans heading to Brazil in the 1920s, art supplies in tow and signature pipe in mouth, leaving Germany because of a lack of work. He had served in the army in the First World War, after which he studied at the University of Hamburg; by the time he moved to Rio de Janeiro, he could speak six languages, acquiring a seventh – Portuguese – while working in Brazil selling bathtubs and kitchen sinks as part of a family business.
While Hans was a self-taught artist, Margarete studied photography and art, including at Bauhaus. After a time in London, where she worked as a photographer, she headed to Rio de Janeiro in 1935. She had known Hans and his family in Germany, and reconnected with him in Brazil. The two were married in August 1935 and lived in their Rio apartment with two pet monkeys – another illustration in the exhibit by Drummond shows the couple at a desk, Hans drawing and smoking his pipe, Margret on the phone, while the two monkeys play with the telephone cords. (It was in Brazil that Hans shortened his surname to Reys and Margarete her first name to Margret.)
The couple honeymooned – as Brazilian citizens with Brazilian passports – in Montmartre, a neighborhood in Paris known for the many artists who lived there. They loved it so much that the Terrass Hotel, at which they had been staying, became their home for the next four years. Drummond’s depiction of the hotel, which was beside a cemetery, is a nighttime scene featuring tombstones, rats, black cats and bats; the Reys can be seen on their fifth-floor balcony.
It was in Paris that the Reys began working on their children’s books. One of the first to be published was Rafi et les 9 singes in 1939, which was published in English as Raffy and the 9 Monkeys in London that same year – in 1942, when it was published in the United States, it became Cecily G. and the Nine Monkeys. Regardless of its name, it was the book in which Curious George, then called Fifi, made his debut.
With the start of the war in 1939, many Parisians began leaving the city. While the Reys spent the last four months of the year at Château du Feuga, in the French countryside, they returned to Paris in January 1940. They continued working on various books and communicating with publishers about their many projects until May 1940, when Nazi tanks began entering northern France. In one watercolor, Drummond shows the chaos of Paris as thousands of refugees passed through the city on their way south, away from the fighting.
Luckily, the Reys were citizens of Brazil. Also, luckily, they had the financial resources to pay for all they would need for their escape, including visas, food, bribes, etc. And again, luckily, they had their manuscripts. Within a month of arriving in New York, they secured a four-book contract; a year later, Curious George was published. By the time that The Journey that Saved Curious George was published in 2005, Curious George had sold more than 27 million copies and been translated into more than 14 languages.
The Wartime Escape exhibit is recommended for visitors in grades 5-12, but will appeal to anyone who grew up reading the Reys’ books or enjoying the illustrations they did for other authors’ publications. It runs until Nov. 30 at the Holocaust Centre. On two Sundays, Oct. 23 and Nov. 27, VHEC will be open for people to see the exhibit from 1-4 p.m., with a guided tour and children’s storytime (for ages three to six) at 2 p.m. For more information, visit vhec.org.
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