The stories of Babar are embedded in many an oldie’s childhood memory.
But it wasn’t until Laurent de Brunhoff died in March 2024 aged 98 (his father, Jean, the Babar creator, died from TB in 1937, aged only 37), that I realised how little I knew about Babar’s creators.
At the time, my youngest daughter and I were downsizing from a three-storey house to a two-bedroom flat. I’d had to rid myself of most of my books – a painful process which I’ve written about in these pages.
I’d sold some paintings and distributed the rest amongst friends.
Yet one artwork, a poster of Babar, survived the savage cull, along with a couple Babar books and a cuddly Babar, from whom my daughter (now 20) had never been parted.
Her Babar wears his green suit and felt crown and has travelled with her all over the world, stuffed into already bulging suitcases for holidays and providing a consoling presence in her spartan university digs.
During a conversation in the Oldie office, our sub-editor, Penny Phillips, mentioned that she and her husband have a poster above their bed depicting Babar and Celeste having breakfast in bed. It then transpired that Babar also holds a cherished place in the hearts of both our publisher and our editor.
On discovering this, I hurried home and went to my daughter’s bedroom to reread the books. There was her Babar propped up against the pillows beneath her Babar poster, loyal, dignified and also a little ludicrous, making him achingly huggable. He has been squeezed and wept into during countless bouts of homesickness, anxiety and teenage heartbreak. No other teddy bear or cuddly toy has stood the test of time.
So who was his creator?
Babar is arguably the invention of Laurent’s mother, Cécile de Brunhoff (1903-2003), a concert pianist. Laurent was five and his brother, Mathieu, four when Cécile began making up bedtime stories for them about a little elephant.
Allegedly, Mathieu was sick and the stories were designed to cheer him up. The place was Paris, the date 1931.
So enchanted were the little boys that they asked their artist father, Jean de Brunhoff, to illustrate them. Later that year, a family-owned publisher, Le Jardin des Modes, published The Story of Babar.
Jean de Brunhoff wrote only five more Babar books (six, if you count Babar’s ABC) before his premature death. He hadn’t written the last two (posthumously published) works, Babar and His Children(1938) and Babar and Father Christmas (1940) as books at all, but as black-and-white drawings for the British newspaper the Daily Sketch. Jean’s brother, Michel, was Editor of Vogue Paris and arranged for them to be coloured and published.
Laurent was 13 by then and helped with the colouring.
Laurent went on to study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and followed in his father’s artistic footsteps. After the war, he began working on his own Babar books, in strict imitation of his father’s style.
His first Babar book, Babar’s Cousin, That Rascal Arthur, was published in 1946 when Laurent was 21. Nearly 50 more followed. Babar became a global cultural phenomenon and one of the world’s most recognised children’s characters. Today, there are over 30,000 Babar publications in 17 languages. Laurent’s Babar’s Yoga for Elephants alone has sold more than 100,000 copies in America. Total Babar book sales are eight million.
Laura Bush recommended reading Babar stories when she set up her national reading initiative.There are 78 episodes of a TV series, broadcast in 30 languages in over 150 countries, making Babar one of the largest distributed animation shows in history. Yet none of the later books by the son has the resonance of those first six by the father.
Right near the beginning of The Story of Babar, Babar’s mother is shot and killed by a hunter, forcing young Babar to flee to the city (which looks very much like Paris).
There he is befriended by the kind Old Lady who clothes, houses and educates him.
When his two younger cousins, Arthur and Celeste, naughtily find their way to the city, he returns to the jungle with them, becoming engaged to Celeste on the way.
Meanwhile, the King of the Elephants eats a poisonous mushroom which kills him, leaving the way for Babar to be crowned King, on the basis that he has ‘come from the city and learnt a great deal from men’.
In The Travels of Babar (1934), Celeste and Babar set off on honeymoon in a hot-air balloon which crashes, marooning them on an island where Celeste is tied up and nearly eaten by cannibals. They are rescued by a whale and later an ocean liner, on which they’re handed over to a circus-owner and forced to join a circus. They escape and find the Old Lady’s house, and she joins them in the jungle.
In later books, a beautiful city, Celesteville, is built. Celeste gives birth to triplets, Flora, Pom and Alexander, while life continues to be full of risk. The elephants go to war with the rhinoceroses and their tyrannical leader Lord Retaxes. The Old Lady is bitten by a snake, Flora nearly chokes to death on her rattle, Pom flies over a cliff from runaway pram and Alexander is almost gobbled up by a crocodile.
In today’s world, where we mollycoddle and protect our children more than ever, while exposing them to the horrors of the internet, some parents find Babar’s story too traumatic for small children, particularly with his mother being shot so early on. Some book reviews practically carry safety warnings.
At the same time, the woke police argue – as they did with Tintin – that the authors are making a case for colonialism. Look at the educator Herbert Kohl’s essay Should We Burn Babar? or Ariel Dorfman’s The Empire’s Old Clothes.
In 2012, The Travels of Babar was removed from the shelves of a Sussex library in response to complaints about African stereotypes. There is no doubt that King Babar rules autonomously, albeit benevolently. Yet to view Babar through an anti-colonial lens is to miss the reasons we feel affection for his world.
The combined genius of the de Brunhoffs was understanding how we all yearn for a sense of order, stability and safety to counteract life’s turbulence. How perfect Celesteville looks, like an idealised version of Paris, with its rows of neat little houses and beautiful parks. Babar’s Kingdom is ultimately a utopia.
What we remember is not so much the dangers and tragedies Babar and his family face, but the kind strangers (human or otherwise) who rescue them and the multiple, resourceful ways Babar and those close to him overcome near-disaster.
Besides, as children, we love the idea of wild animals with human qualities or those that can interact with us. Witness the enduring popularity of Ant and Bee, Hugh Lofting’s Doctor Dolittle and Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
Babar represents a father figure – wise, fair, capable, educated, generous, gentle and kind. But it’s his playfulness, occasional hot-headedness and fretfulness that add a complex dimension to an otherwise unrealistic, unattainable virtuous paradigm. He can even look pompous in his spats and waistcoat. It’s precisely these flaws that render him vulnerable, human and utterly lovable.
It’s extraordinary how few words Jean de Brunhoff used to create Babar.
His image continues to provoke wistful, affectionate smiles everywhere – and a nostalgic yearning for a return to childhood.
The Oldie September 2024
