Young Poirot

MarcWatson-Gray

Has anyone wondered what Hercule Poirot would have been like as a young man or young Belgian policeman ?

Would it be fun to see his mannerisms and detection methods develop into the Poirot that we all know and love and see what influenced /affected him ?

If filmed.Who would be your ideal Young Hercule ?

Griselda

What a fantastic idea. What do we know about him? I think he had know relative lack of money. I think he tells someone this. I think his family was ordinary and there were numerous siblings. I think his methods would have been meticulous. He would have attached importance to the precise facts of a case. What would have been different is the sense of pride in his powers. He would not have been permitted that arrogance, or that independence to do things his way. Unusually, for the viewer, he would be seen following instructions, and having to go surreptiously to follow up his own leads. In this sense, it strikes me, the older Poirot we know and love is different to Miss Marple because she did have to go surreptiously with her following leads; often she had been warned off a case and told she was just an amateur: never Poirot. I think I would suggest that we don't pay too much importance to appearance when casting a 30or so year old Poirot. Never will we find that egg shaped head with a trace of hair coverage, and quite those green eyes. We've just got to settle for acting ability to portray the characteristics. He probably wouldn't have been allowed those moustaches in the force. We could have him doing his own private detection work on the side. I don't know enough modern actors to think, although a face does come to mind. How old - a different thought - is Johnny Depp?

MarcWatson-Gray

I have always imagined him as a seriously minded young Police Officer,who was secretly devastated to be losing his hair at a young age and taking quite a ribbing from his fellow officers.

He then makes the decision to grow the most luxurious of mustaches to deflect from his hair loss and/or to improve his self esteem.(I think Griselda that late 19th/early 20th Century Police Officers could wear facial hair,though I'm not certain ??)

I don't know about any love in his early life.His attention to detail and methodical thinking might have been difficult to deal with and would he have been (at a young age)purely focused on his career ?

Do you think that his attention to detail and methodical thinking (however successful ) may have grated on his colleagues ?

Griselda

Yes, I think his method would have grated. I don't think that a scientific approach of recording everything, and testing theories with the fact - empirically, you could say - was really at the heart of the professions. i bet it was more hierarchical: you might have been given a specific job to do, but not,as a junior, have access to all the information. He might have had to find this out through his own covert efforts. Tali will know more, because she has answered a post of mine about The Pale Horse by explaining how the sciences were gaining a hold in the professions, and academia, and in people's thinking. He loved a Countess later in life, didn't he. It was in a short story, and televised. He might have had some unsuccessful adventures which had given him a devastatingly accurate insight into the female psyche, which he used to good effect in his later sleuthing. Would you like to dramatise that one case he speaks about to Mr Satterthwaite as having been a failure for him earlier in his career? ( see Three Act Tragedy). I really think yours is a splendid idea, and a prequel far more fruitful this trying to do classics like Death on the Nile and Murder on the Orient Express differently or better than they were done before. I hope Kenneth Brannagh reads this.

GKCfan

I often wonder which were the most influential cases that shaped his detection style and worldview.  We only see "The Chocolate Box" in its entirety, but we know from Curtain that once he was forced to shoot a criminal in the line of duty, and we also know about the soap-boiler who poisoned his wife in order to marry a blonde secretary.  

The problem with theorizing about Poirot's youth is that the handful of clues scattered throughout the books tend to be suspect– Poirot has a habit of making up details in order to win people's confidence or extract information.  He mentions many relatives, nieces, and nephews, but these may all be fictional.  He does say in Three Act Tragedy that his family was poor growing up– one wonders if the police force was one of the few professional avenues open to him.

Griselda

That's a good point, GCK Fan, that he makes up stories to suit his needs, like, as you say, the nephew , ie, the one with mental health problems, so convenient when tracing a potential hidey hole for someone - in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. However, hard though it may be to be strictly faithful to Agatha Christie's designs, Marc has hit upon, I still feel, an excellent way to have some fun with a drama, and to explore Poirot the man, his sensibilities, motives and values. If a director got it, wrong, well, it would be ok, at least they didn't butcher a bone fide Christie story. The BBC drama Death at Pemberely taking a view of the next installment of Pride and Predjudice was good, but if it had been awful it wouldn't have mattered - it was a brave try, and nothing ventured nothing gained. Creatively, it is amazing how, with a blank canvas of imagination, you can often project and access your subconscious feelings about who the character is, that is based upon every jot of revealed information. It's is a bit like a teacher getting sixteen year olds to role play and improvise, it allows you to create something meaningful.

MarcWatson-Gray

The fact that he can easily make up details and relatives (we assume)maybe also helps paint a picture of him.Did he make up stories and friends as a child through necessity of loneliness  or in order to fit in ?

Is his need for symmetry and order in all things due to a unstructured and dysfunctional family life  ?

As you say GCKfan. Maybe the Police force was one of the few professions open to him that would give him (in his view)a better life

Griselda

There is also the issue to be considered that much of how we see Poirot is governed by the narrator. So, Hastings thinks it is appalling to listen at doors, and to read other people'sletters ( as Poirot does with Nick's letters in Peril At End House) so he gives us to think that Poirot is a bit extravagant in his methods and surprising. But what would Inspector Japp say? He might say, 'It's routine to read letters and snoop, in the police force" . I'm not sure what I think - was Poirot committed to the big truths, but unscrupulous in petty matters?. Hastings is always too charmingly naive to be our guide. But what of telling untruths? Would Japp stoop to doing this, and we're policemen allowed to lie to witnesses in those days? I do see your point, Marc, that character and upbringing may have shaped this, and perhaps there are interesting clues to the man's true character. Poirot may quite used to lying because children around him lied when he was a kid, it is easy for him to fall into these ways when such is demanded by the greater good of solving a crime and saving a innocent person from the gallows. On the other hand, it could be that he is the consummate professional who will do what it takes to solve a crime, and really we are stuffed when trying to read his character because he, and Christie, have kept it for us.

Anubis

It is an interesting question about all literary detectives: why do they do it, why do they like to pry into personal affairs, even at risk to themselves. Nicholas Meyers' "The Seven-Percent Solution" hypothesizes that Sherlock Holmes became a detective "to punish the wicked", as a result of the trauma that he suffered when his father murdered his mother. A similar idea could be developed for Poirot, who does seem to have great respect and admiration for the "mother", but never mentions anything about the "father". Perhaps Poirot's father died relatively young, or deserted the family, leaving his mother to raise the family in straitened circumstances. However, even at a young age, Poirot would have been an intelligent chap, and if it were really necessary to get a lucrative career to support his family, he could have become a banker or lawyer. I expect a lot of people who join the police do so because they want to serve the public, but perhaps HP did so because of some dark episode in his past that made him want to "right wrongs" or to "punish evil-doers".

MarcWatson-Gray

I'll bet George,his "Well trained" servant would have picked up a clue or two ?? Not that he would have snooped,but he may have come across the odd photograph or letter perhaps ?? It would be interesting to see Poirot from his point of view had that been written ??

Griselda

I was wondering Anubis, as GKCFan suggests, was the police force one of the few callings that you could start in regardless of whether you had connections or money? To train as a lawyer you probably needed serious money to pay for a long training: ditto medicine. Politics required, perhaps, some social influence. In the force, you train on the job, or the beat, and, if tv cop dramas are anything to go by, you can get promoted quite readily if you are thorough and succeed in your work. ( Probably, a bit like the army, if you are able to rise through the ranks - or if you were then. ) But I agree with your hunch. I think a deceased father, or an abandoning one, would both explain Poirot's early circumstances, and his cynicism and awareness of how wrongs can have ripples effecting all those connected to you. I do agree, Marc, that a butler would have a very particular insight into Poirot, and also how he suffered when undertaking investigations which he felt he wouldn't solve; and whether there were certain clients he turned away, and what seemed the reason why. That would make an enjoyable drama, it could be cosy and feel good, a view from George's perspective, showing the vulnerabilities and ordinary side of Poirot that we don't get to see as we only read about his professional ego. I'd like all the social history details of the butlering work he carried out. The drama could touch on some actual stories too. And it would give a director freedom to indulge their fancies without desecrating the original Agatha Christie plots.

Tommy_A_Jones

SPOILER ALERT!!! Read The Big Four, He didn't have a Brother

Anubis

Griselda, I believe that in the 1800s, the church and the army were open to the impoverished. Poirot seems to be genuinely religious, so perhaps he aspired to be a priest, but there was some reason why he could not. In any case, these were by no means the only opportunities. My maternal grandfather and all his male siblings were born in the 1880s and developed good careers with few connections and less money. (The female siblings were expected to contract good marriage alliances of course.) For instance, my grandfather became a banker at 16 and one of his brothers became a lawyer. 

Griselda

That is extremely interesting, Anubis. I had no idea that law was accessible, and banking surprises me too. It is so rewarding to gain some first hand primary source information to flesh out and make three dimensional the information one has about a time in history. Those times were probably more encouraging of social mobility than our times - if the candidate was prepared to work hard at his prospects.

GKCfan

Here are my personal thoughts on the potential existence of Achille Poirot:

http://legacy.agathachristie.com/insight/papers/2009/04/06/did-achille-poirot-really-exist/

taliavishay-arbel

Anubis, I'm not sure you are right about the possibility of improvershed people being able to advance in the army or clergy in the 1800's, at least not in England. In several of Jane Austen's novels, she mentions that Livings (i.e. jobs for anglican pastors) are bought, and for significant sums of money (see Edmund in "Mansfield Park" and Edward in "Sense and Sensibility);  the same about officers' commisions in the army (See Wickham in "Pride and Prejudice"), and the study of law is expensive (again, Wickham in "Pride and Prejudice"). The only "gentlemany" career open to people without money is the navy (See "Persuasion"), and one of the characters there actually laments that the navy is the means of advancing people from a low class in society to a higher class!, .However, by the end of the 1800's, when Poirot was a young man, things could have been different - and certainly in Belgium, about which I know practically nothing...

Griselda

Thank you for your scholarly research, GKC Fan. I would like to accept the alternative interpretation for the ending of Curtain.

shana

I think the most reliable source of information on HP would be AC herself. Has anyone tried to collect all references to HP's past from all the novels and short stories of AC? And of course possible information AC has given in autobio"s, interviews or in her own notes.

What should be held in account is that the references won't always add up as they were thought of at different moments and intervals of AC"s writing career.

Anubis

Talia, I do not say that all people those days should have been able to "advance" in the military or clergy, but they certainly would have been able to secure positions in these professions. And again, I can rebut your contention that only people who had money could enter law with the counterexample that my great uncle Kenneth did become a lawyer, without the benefit of being well-to-do. I think he was an apprentice, although I am not sure of that. Of course, the opportunities in Belgium in the 1850s–1860s (presumably when HP was a young man) could well have been different from those a half-century early in Regency England.

taliavishay-arbel

You are right, Anubis, While studying the Law was expensive, there were other ways, like becoming a clerk to a lawyer, studying nights on your own, and passing the bar examination. In the U.S., the classic example is Abraham Lincoln. Good for your Uncle!

PeterJKH

AC gives us only a few clues on the early life of Poirot.

 

I know Poirot once mentions his mother (I can’t recall in which story), a real matron of the family and working hard to give her children a good upbringing. Although Poirot states that they were poor, I rather see his family as (lower) middleclass, as Poirot obviously has had a good education in his youth. Not only does it show in his general knowledge, but otherwise he never would have been able to climb the ranks in the Belgian police force as he obviously did.

 

Interestingly, he never mentions his father, or his father’s occupation, so I thought it could be possible that he lost his father at a very young age and never really knew him.

 

Maybe that is where his discipline and methods come from – from his mother. Being a widow, she needed to be methodical and disciplined to keep her family and household in good order, and so Poirot may have inherited that from her.

 

In “The Chocolate Box”, the only case we know from his days with the Belgian police force, he mentions his sister Yvonne, to whom he seemed to be pretty close in that story. Although Poirot mentions having had more siblings, Yvonne is the only one we really get to know.

 

Question is: why didn’t he stay in touch with them, or at least with Yvonne, during his time in England?

 

Of course, there is a chance he actually did, but that it is just not mentioned in the stories, because it did not play a role in them. But my guess is that Yvonne (and possibly his other siblings) died in WW1, when Belgium was attacked and occupied by the Germans and that Hercule was the only one to escape to England.

 

The only other fact we really know, is that he worked for Interpol and that he worked together with Japp in 1904 (the Abercrombie case) and on another case that involved a criminal with the name of Baron Altara, whom they captured together.

 

Also is mentioned that he fulfilled a very delicate mission in WW1, that even involved the Belgian royal family and the King himself, but no details are given on that one either. But maybe that is how he managed to get to England – with the help of the King and other influential people?

 

Well, those are my two cents.

taliavishay-arbel

PeterJKH, That wasn't two cents - more like a fortune! 

GKCfan

Poirot mentions growing up poor in Three Act Tragedy.  Of the course of the series, Poirot frequently makes up details about his life (a mentally disabled nephew, even a wife).  In Cards on the Table, he mentions nieces that he's buying presents for, but that could all be a ruse.  One wonders though (MINOR SPOILERS), if Poirot didn't really have any nieces, what did he do with those seventeen pairs of silk stockings?