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GEOGRAPHERS
Biobibliographical
Studies
VOLUME 32
GEOGRAPHERS BIOBIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES
This volume is part of a series of works, published annually, on the history of geography undertaken
on behalf of the Commission on the History of Geography of the International Geographical Union and
the Commission of the International Union on the Philosophy and History of Science. Chair: Professor
Jacobo García-Álvarez, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Departamento de Humanidades: Geografia,
Historia Contemporánea y Arte, C/Madrid 133, Edificio 17, Despacho 17.2.14, Getafe 28093, Spain.
Other full members: Professor Michael Heffernan, School of Geography, University of Nottingham,
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK; Professor Jean-Yves Puyo, Département de Géographie,
Laboratoire Société, Environnement, Territoire, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour, Domaine
Universitaire, 64000 Pau, France; Professor Tamami Fukuda, School of Environmental System
Sciences, Osaka Prefecture University, 1–1 Gakuen-cho, Naka-ku, Sakai, Osaka 599–8531, Japan;
Professor Joao Carlos Garcia, Departamento de Geografia, Facultade de Letras, Universidade do
Porto, via Panorâmica s/n, 4150–564 Porto, Portugal; Professor Guy Mercier, Centre interuniversitaire
d’études sur les lettres, les arts et les traditions (CELAT), Département de géographie, Université de
Laval, Pavillon Charles-De Koninck, Local 6259, Québec G1K 7P4, Canada: Professor Judite do
Nascimento, Departamento de Ciència e Tecnologia, Universidade de Cabo Verde, Campus do
Palmarejo, Praia, Santiago, Cabo Verde; Professor Leon Vacher, Department of Geography, Morrill
Hall 118A, Southern Connecticut State University, 501 Crescent Street, New Haven, CT 06515–1355,
USA; Professor Perla Zusman, CONICET/Instituto de Geografía, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Puán
480, 4to piso, CP 1406, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina; Professor Jan Vandermissen,
National Committee for Logic, History and Philosophy of the Sciences, Paleis der Academiën,
Hertogsstraat 1, B-1000 Brussels, Belgium: Professor Charles W. J. Withers, Co-Editor Geographers
Biobibliographical Studies, Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh, Drummond Street,
Edinburgh EH8 9XP, UK. Honorary Chairs: Professor Anne Buttimer, University College Dublin, School
of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy, Newman Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland;
Professor Vincent Berdoulay, Département de Géographie, Laboratoire Société, Environnement,
Territoire, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour Domaine Universitaire, 64000 Pau, France.
GEOGRAPHERS
Biobibliographical
Studies
VOLUME 32
Edited by Hayden Lorimer

and Charles W. J. Withers
on behalf of the
Commission on the History of Geography
of the International Geographical Union and the
International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science
Bloomsbury Academic
An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
First published 2013
© Hayden Lorimer, Charles W.J Withers and Contributors, 2013

© International Geographical Union/Unione Internationale Geographique, 2013
Hayden Lorimer and Charles W. J. Withers and contributors have asserted their right under
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editors and Authors of
this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any
information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the
publishers.
No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining

from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury
or the author.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: Hardback: 978-1-4725-1235-2

ePDF: 978-1-4725-0933-8
ePub: 978-1-4725-1164-5
Series: Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, volume 32

Contents
The Contributors vi
Introduction Hayden Lorimer and 1

Charles W. J. Withers
Raoul Blanchard (1877–1965) Hugh Clout 6
Emmanuel de Margerie (1862–1953) Hugh Clout 33
Pierre Monbeig (1908–1987) Hugh Clout 54
Charles Robequain (1897–1963) Hugh Clout 79
Richard Lawton (1925–2010) Colin G. Pooley 104
William John Talbot (1908–1995) Michael E. Meadows 124
Antonín Strnad (1746–1799) Jan Kalvoda and 137

Eva Novotná
Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke (1791–1858) Elizabeth Baigent 149
Index 165
9781472512352_FM_Final_txt_print.indd 5 6/28/2013 3:41:23 PM

The Contributors
Elizabeth Baigent is Reader in the History of Geography at the University of

Oxford.
Hugh Clout is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at University

College London and a Fellow of the British Academy.
Jan Kalvoda is Professor of Physical Geography at Charles University in Prague.
Eva Novotná is Head of the Geographical Library and Director of the Map Collection
of the Faculty of Science at Charles University in Prague.
Michael E. Meadows is Head of the Department of Environmental and Geographical

Science at the University of Cape Town and Secretary General and Treasurer of the
Executive Committee of the International Geographical Union.
Colin G. Pooley is Professor of Social and Historical Geography at Lancaster

University, UK.
9781472512352_FM_Final_txt_print.indd 6 6/28/2013 3:41:23 PM

Introduction
This volume of Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies brings together essays on four

Frenchmen, a Czech, and three Englishmen, one of whom became a South African by
prolonged residence and the focus of his work. The lives of our eight subjects extend
from the late Enlightenment (in the case of the Czech astronomer-mathematician and
‘physical geographer’ Antonín Strnad), incorporating the early nineteenth century and
that era of ‘polite science’ in metropolitan Regency Britain in which Sir Arthur de
Capell Brooke was active, to the first decade of the twenty-first century, in whose clos-
ing year Richard ‘Dick’ Lawton died, the British historical and population geographer.
For the Frenchmen, Raoul Blanchard, Emmanuel de Margerie, Pierre Monbeig and
Charles Robequain, and also for William (‘Bill’) Talbot, English-born (in 1908) but
based in South Africa from 1936, their lives embraced – and in several ways profoundly
shaped – the institutionalized establishment and professionalization of geography as
a university discipline, particularly, for the majority of them, after 1945. In terms of
subject matter, no clear distinctions between ‘human’ and ‘physical’ geography are
apparent in our subjects’ work, nor, in a sense, is such a distinction appropriate to
historiographical analysis of it. True, each had an emphasis to their work that might,
with hindsight, mark them as more or less one or the other: the independent scholar
Emmanuel de Margerie was so much a physical geographer that he was a geologist in
the eyes of some contemporaries, and Lawton practised a resolutely human geogra-
phy with historical emphases, albeit that, post mortem, he is taken to merit the term
‘complete geographer’. In most instances and if any single label is to be used, our essay
subjects in this volume were regional specialists, either by doctoral training (a distin-
guishing feature of the French), or from later career emphases, or both. Even de Capell
Brooke, so evidently not a geographer by profession but someone who professed geog-
raphy’s importance in an age when notions such as professionalization, disciplinary
identity and subject bodies were taking their modern shape, was a regional expert, on
Scandinavia.
As preface to the individual appraisals which follow, we outline here the salient features
of our subjects’ lives and works in the order in which they appear before commenting
on four themes – the idea of networks; the place of fieldwork; the role of regionalism
as method; and the development of institutional homes for the subject – that thread
through the lives of our eight subjects.
Raoul Blanchard was a committed Alpinist: not in the sense of a mountain climber,
but in terms of the region, the city, Grenoble, on whose geography he authored a major
work and the journal Revue de Géographie Alpine over which he had much influence. Having
produced his doctoral thesis on Flanders, Blanchard turned to Grenoble and to study of
the Alps from 1906, using his ‘labo’ there (regional laboratory) to promote geography
as a form of public discourse, to establish a geographical centre that, in time, would
come to challenge the Sorbonne in Paris and to produce pioneering works of urban
9781472512352_Intro_Final_txt_print.indd 1 6/27/2013 10:14:28 AM

2 Introduction
geography and regional review. Blanchard also undertook studies of Quebec and other
parts of Canada. There, in his Alpine work and in his doctoral enquiries, Blanchard fol-
lowed a ‘formula’ that drew directly upon his tutelage under Vidal de la Blache, starting
his geographical analysis with reference to the physical environment and its influence
upon human life before examining the evolution of regional character over time and
ending with attention to the area’s present-day economy and social circumstances.
Like Blanchard but for an earlier period, the life and work of Emmanuel de
Margerie was shaped by his involvement in the development of the geographical and
geological sciences in North America, as a translator and compiler and as a field sci-
entist. He was recognized by the American political and scientific communities for his
contribution to their role in the peace negotiations at the end of World War I. But de
Margerie’s greater impact lay as a conduit into French and European geography of
those ideas in the earth sciences then emanating from America in the final decades
of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. William Morris Davis praised
de Margerie’s monumental La Face de la Terre which was published in several volumes
between 1897 and 1918, but as a compendium and synthesis more than as a work of
original research.
Pierre Monbeig is one of several of our subjects whose geographical career was
affected by war. Unlike Blanchard (exempt from active service for health reasons) who
used his doctoral knowledge of Flanders to write geographical accounts of the region
during World War I, or Charles Robequain, a prisoner of war for nearly two years in
World War II, Monbeig’s intended doctoral work on the Balearics was interrupted by
the Spanish Civil War. He turned instead to study of the rapidly changing economic
and social geography of Brazil. In this he was tremendously successful, undertaking
work on what we might think of as ‘pioneer geographies’, both historically and in the
contemporary context of Brazil’s rapid transformation from the 1930s and early 1940s,
before returning to France in 1947. In this, he helped establish strong bonds between
the Brazilian and French geographical communities. In France, Monbeig pioneered
new approaches in geography that built upon Vidalian method and these, while no less
regional in focus, helped him to embrace the then emergent social sciences in advanc-
ing in the 1960s what might now be called ‘development geography’.
Like that of Monbeig, Charles Robequain’s testing ground for his geographical
research lay beyond France, in his case the Far East, notably the colonies of French
Indochina, Malaysia and Indonesia. ‘Context matters’ is an instructive axiom for all
historical and biographical study of geography and geographers: Robequain’s life and
work is a pertinent reminder of why this is so. His doctoral work, Le Thanh Hoá, pub-
lished in 1929, and some of his later works on French Indochina, should be seen as
transpositions into that setting of the regional methods associated with the ‘traditional’
Vidalian approach. In his integrative vision of geography based upon understanding
a region’s physical dimensions before turning to its sequential human occupation, and
in his recognition of the importance of cultural difference, Robequain effected a sensi-
tive engagement with the colonial-tropical world of the Far East. One commentator
has spoken of his doctoral work as the ‘birth certificate of tropical geography’. But
Robequain’s work was at all times mediated by a view of colonialism as beneficent,
of France as the arbiter of others’ development and by a faith in the application of
European, notably Vidalian, geographical regional method in explanation of countries
and peoples who, by the later 1950s, were straining against Europe’s political and intel-
lectual hegemony. This is not to consider Robequain’s work ‘dated’. It must be read
against the grain of its own making, not by others’ later and different standards. That
Robequain’s work illustrates the ‘end game’ for a certain sort of regional approach
even as it helped establish a new sort of geography altogether is an interpretive position
afforded only in hindsight.

Introduction 3
Richard Lawton was a one-institution geographer, remaining at the University of

Liverpool throughout a 35-year-long academic career, although he continued to publish
well into ‘retirement’. Lawton was an historical geographer whose specialist focus lay in
studies of population and of cities. Nineteenth-century Britain, particularly its census
enumerators’ records from 1851, provided fertile research terrain for both topics, often
in combination. Lawton helped establish new perspectives on rural–urban migration,
on urban ethnic identity and on city life during a formative period in that country’s
geographical transformation. Lawton also worked tirelessly to develop geography – in
Liverpool, and throughout the United Kingdom – through the various administrative
offices he held.
William Talbot’s career, like that of Lawton in Liverpool, Blanchard in Grenoble
and Monbeig in Brazil, involved development of geography’s institutional status, in
Talbot’s case in the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. And like Robequain in
the French Far East, Talbot’s engagement with the question of colonial-settler relations
in the hey-day of apartheid was ‘politically neutral’. Talbot’s interests lay in investigat-
ing through contract research the tacit environmental accord being at once established
and threatened between white farmers, stock holders, government bodies and soil ero-
sion more than they did with helping to engineer new social contracts for the country
as a whole. This is to report, not to condemn. In other respects, Talbot’s vision was
national and improving: his Atlas of the Union of South Africa in 1961 is testimony to the
value of geographical information in planning for national economic development:
geography applied as a form of future land use.
Antonín Strnad was equally motivated by the application of geographical knowl-
edge. But his was an age before departments and the subject boundaries they presume,
an age wherein academic study of geography embraced the Classical distinctions of
chorography, geography and cosmography and when the study of geography, strictly
description of the earth as a whole, incorporated mathematical geography and astro-
nomical geography as well as physical geography, the identification of the different
physical features making up the terraqueous globe. Strnad’s intellectual world looked
to early modern compendia and to others’ assumed truths, expressed in atlases and
almanacs. It looked, too, to Enlightenment reason, when what was to become science
as method depended upon first-hand observation, shared recognition of mathematics
as surrogates for phenomena that could not be seen (such as Prague’s temperature and
atmospheric readings, for example), and to teaching his students that the world’s geog-
raphy depended less upon God than the Jesuits either proclaimed or supposed.
Like Emmanuel de Margerie – with whom we might expect there to have been
little by way of common ground in other respects – Arthur de Capell Brooke was no
professional geographer, being both a traveller and of independent means. But he was
no less committed to geographical insight obtained through first-hand encounter and
by credible sources than his counterparts here. For Brooke, his was an age in which
categories we too commonly take for certain – ‘science’, ‘profession’ and ‘professional’,
‘academic discipline’ and, even, ‘geography’ (in its ‘modern’ institutional associations) –
were nascent, in formation, rather more than agreed-upon categories. Brooke’s literary
works may not be books of geography in disciplinary terms, though they are impor-
tant accounts of travel and geographical description. But his role as a leading figure
in helping establish one of the key institutions of British geography is of paramount
importance.
We have cautioned above about the inappropriate use of simple terms to define
these proponents of geography given its different dimensions in different places at dif-
ferent times. We would likewise caution about any unwarranted teleological interpreta-
tion in terms of geography’s chronology. And we would, of course, resist forcefully any
temptation to see Strnad’s work as the necessary forerunner to geography’s ‘modern’

4 Introduction
development with de Capell Brooke, British geography’s hitherto unheralded midwife,

as some sort of peculiarly sociable agent of transition between what geography had
earlier been and was then, and later disciplinary declarations as to what it is and should
in future be.
The term ‘network’ (as a noun and, less properly, a verb) has had considerable cur-
rency in recent years in the social sciences. Things and people are said to be ‘networked’,
to have epistemic and personal connections of varying strengths effective over different
geographical distances and social spaces. Networks presume connectivity. Networks are
intimate but may transcend proximity. Yet, if so much is networked – information, com-
modities, cultures of financial exchange, social interaction and so on – there is a danger
that nothing is gained by the term: it is in danger of losing analytic purchase precisely
because it enjoys widespread currency. Networks have to be shown to have content and
to do something with that content. What is clear from assessment of our subjects here
is how much geography, whatever it was taken to be and by whom, depended upon
the activities of individuals working in networks of social association one with another.
For de Capell Brooke, geography was a form of sociable and convivial exchange. His
network was elite white men, their medium polite conversation and the informed dis-
play of artefacts. The object was collective self-improvement. Intellectual exchange and
companionship was its own reward. For Strnad, geographical knowledge came not only
from instrumental readings and textual exegesis, but it came also from weak links over
distance – networks of distant associates, from men who in all probability he never met
face to face. Their medium was correspondence. For the French geographers here,
their associative networks were formative and direct, personal and pedagogic: Raoul
Blanchard from Vidal de la Blache and as teacher of Charles Robequain who, when
absent from the Sorbonne in the later 1950s, had his classes taught by Pierre Monbeig.
Their medium was a shared method. Talbot was lauded by Lyde, supported by Sauer.
De Margerie had little by way of such networks to work within, in France at least: with-
out formal training and a teaching position, his networks were sustained by engagement
with others’ works further afield. His medium was translation. These observations are
to make a simple yet important point: documenting the making of geography as some-
thing undertaken somewhere sometime by some people requires knowing and showing the
somehow.
For many geographers, that somehow is fieldwork. If it is true, still, that ‘being in
the field’ has a certain epistemic cachet – that is, being in the outdoors rather than the
library or the archive carries with it associations of work in the ‘real world’ – then it is
also true that we need to take seriously within our histories of geography’s somehow
the development of those practices in the field that shaped the subject, the field so to
say, of geography. We could do worse than study walking in geographical enquiry. Like
others, Blanchard walked to collect information. He used the act of walking to order
his facts when talking: the cadence of his walking even echoed in the rhythm of his
written prose. Robequain’s work in French Indochina, detailed as much of it was, was
dependent upon native interlocutors and translation in the field. Pierre Monbeig may
well merit the description offered of him here as ‘the founding father of modern geog-
raphy in Brazil’, but his geographical parenthood was shaped in different languages
and by walking and talking with his students in the streets of São Paulo. Simply, these
essays illustrate (although they do not exemplify) the different means by which geo-
graphical knowledge was secured and this topic requires further attention.
Our essay subjects here also collectively illustrate the once central place of regional-
ism as a method and as an end in view, notably in academic geography. This is espe-
cially so of the French, and of the Vidalian School in particular. In his promotion of
an Alpine or Grenoble ‘School’, Blanchard saw the regional overview as one high form
of the geographer’s art; Lawton, for all his historical interests, turned, like Talbot in

Introduction 5
South Africa, to study of his home region, Merseyside, in contemporary economic con-
text; Robequain’s application of European regional methods to document the chang-
ing circumstances of a then rapidly-changing French IndoChina came too late. But
even there, as well as in the colonized and tropical world of Brazil, the application of
regional method helped ensure that geography, perhaps especially in Europe between
the end of World War I and the mid-1950s, was distinguished from within, and recog-
nized from without, as the subject of areal differentiation. Here, we can see how and
where this was so and trace the interplay between method and discipline, individuals
and national communities, in particular context.
Our subjects also demonstrate the complexities of geography’s institutional origins.
Modern Brazilian geography owes much to French geographers, and to Monbeig per-
haps especially. French geography was coloured by its exposure to the effects of coloni-
alism, in Africa as well as in the Far East. In France, the growth of a Grenoble ‘School’
of local geography was always part of Blanchard’s vision for the subject, arriving as he
did in what he took to be a ‘geographical desert’. In Cape Town, the establishment of
the department owes much to Bill Talbot’s efforts, and, for Liverpool, a debt is owed to
Dick Lawton. In Britain, one leading geographical institution owes much to men, hith-
erto neglected, who sat down together to dine and to converse. In Prague, the teaching
of geography in Charles University in the later eighteenth century bore signs of its early
modern roots and heralded new beginnings for the subject as part of a more evidently
utilitarian naturphilosophie. In these institutional settings no less than in individuals’ lives
and works, context matters.
Hayden Lorimer Charles W. J. Withers
University of Glasgow University of Edinburgh

Raoul
Blanchard
1877–1965
Hugh Clout
Raoul Blanchard belonged to the small group of men who were direct disciples of Paul
Vidal de la Blache. After doctoral research on Flanders, Blanchard devoted a large part
of his career to the French Alps, where he headed the Institut de Géographie Alpine,
edited the Revue de Géographie Alpine and prepared doctoral students to occupy univer-
sity chairs in France. In so doing, he challenged the Parisian hegemony of French
academic geography. His studies of Grenoble and Annecy were pioneering works in
urban geography. Starting in 1917, Blanchard taught for part of the year in North
American universities, while retaining his chair in Grenoble. Sojourns at Harvard and
in Québec led to a massive research project on French Canada. At the age of 60, he
started a major investigation into the geography of the Western Alps, making this
the most studied region of France. In retirement, he moved to Paris continuing his
remarkable productivity as an author, and received high academic honours. Among
his final books were two autobiographical volumes that covered the first four decades
of his life.
Education, Life and Work

Born on 4 September 1877 at Orléans, Raoul Blanchard was the son of Léon Blanchard
(b. 1850), who started work as a draughtsman in the town hall of Orléans in 1871 and
soon moved to the municipal service for water supply and street lighting (Blanchard
1961, 17). Raoul’s paternal grandfather had worked on the Belgian railways at Namur
and then moved to Fives, the railway suburb of Lille in northern France. His maternal
grandparents, the Badiniers, were small farmers and vine growers on a property 15 km
north-east of Orléans, where Raoul’s mother, Emilienne, had been born. After early
education from an order of nuns, Raoul progressed through primary school to the lycée
(state secondary school) in the city. There he was taught geography, history and German
by Louis Gallouédec (1864–1937), who would abandon doctoral work for a career as
9781472512352_Ch01_Final_txt_print.indd 6 6/27/2013 10:54:54 AM

Raoul Blanchard 7
inspector of schools and successful author of numerous textbooks (Joumas 2006). In

his baccalauréat (school-leaving) examination, Raoul did well on his written papers and
excelled in the orals. His examiner, the colonial geographer Marcel Dubois (Geographers
Vol. 30), gave him a mark of 19/20 for history and geography that were studied jointly,
remarking that 20/20 was given ‘only to God’ (Blanchard 1961, 130). A score of 38/40
in science made him one of the leading scholars in the cohort for 1895, outdoing pupils
in the most fashionable lycées in Paris. He then left Orléans to study at the Lycée Louis-
le-Grand in Paris and to prepare for entry to the prestigious Ecole Normale Supérieure
(ENS), in the rue d’Ulm, which trained the nation’s intellectual elite.
Having passed the extremely demanding entrance examinations, Blanchard became
a pupil at the ENS in the autumn of 1897, embarking on ‘the last three years of my
youth . . . that I remember as the most agreeable of my life’ (Blanchard 1961, 170).
Among his various tutors,
no-one impressed as much as Vidal de la Blache [1845–1917: Geographers Vol. 12].

He had greying hair, a well-trimmed beard, and magnificent eyes beneath thick
eyebrows. In a calm, slow voice, he gave his classes with his eyes raised to the
heavens. I think this was through shyness, since Vidal was a shy man, but that
added to the magic of his delivery. But what impressed us even more than his
physical appearance, provoking our respectful admiration, was his teaching. A
new science was arising before us, spelled out in harmonious phrases. I discovered
true geography . . . that was a description in vigorous terms and, at the same time,
an explanation drawing on the natural sciences and the human sciences. The
whole world was revealed to us . . . The class on Saturday mornings became the
centre of my week, to the point of letting me forget about lunch. Vidal, for whom
time did not exist, sometimes kept us until 12.30, instead of letting us go at the set
hour of noon. Hence, I arrived at the refectory to find that my friends had eaten
my share of the dessert, of which I was especially partial, but I scarcely cared.
(Blanchard 1918a, 1961, 197)
Blanchard also attended classes in physical geography given by geologist Charles Vélain
(1845–1925) in the science faculty of the Sorbonne, and it was Vélain who took him on
his first fieldtrip, a three-day excursion to the Pays de Bray at Easter time in 1898. The
chair and laboratory for physical geography were created in the Faculté des Sciences
in 1895, and Vélain was its first incumbent. His teaching dealt with the application of
geology to the interpretation of landforms. The Vidalians, including Emmanuel de
Martonne (Geographers Vol. 12) who would gain an international reputation as a phys-
ical geographer, were based in the Faculté des Lettres of the Sorbonne. Blanchard
found ‘the same enthusiasms that Vidal’s lessons had inspired [and] the joy of under-
standing, this time in the natural environment. Vidal participated on the excursion,
peacefully smoking his pipe, and also Lucien Gallois (1857–1941), his future successor
(Geographers Vol. 24). Together with Joseph Blayac (1865–1936, future professor of geol-
ogy), Emmanuel de Martonne (1873–1955) and Maurice Zimmermann (1870–1950),
we formed a dynamic little group’ (Blanchard 1961, 199).
With his first degree completed, Blanchard sought a topic for his diplôme d’études
supérieures, the equivalent of a masters degree by research. Vidal rejected his idea of
studying the Sologne area in central France, so Blanchard turned to Lucien Gallois for
advice, since he would replace Vidal at the ENS on 1 January 1899. Blanchard believed
him to be ‘a sympathetic, obliging and profoundly good man’. Gallois suggested ‘The
central provinces of British India’ as an alternative (Blanchard 1961, 215). This proved
impossible since Blanchard had ‘not a single word of English’ at that time. Finally

8 Raoul Blanchard
came agreement on the ‘Val d’Orléans’, with Raoul completing the dissertation to such
acclaim that Vidal published it in the prestigious Annales de Géographie (Blanchard 1903).
Blanchard and his fellow students were greatly impressed by Gallois.
We were a little unsettled, the first time we encountered our teacher, a large,
strong man, with a massive head, a beard and moustache, and thick eyebrows.
But we were reassured by his blue eyes that expressed his candour and goodness;
this was the true man; Gallois had goodness engraved on his heart. At the same
time, he was very aware of his duties as a teacher; among all our teachers he was,
undoubtedly, the most committed to giving us serious and complete lessons that
covered the whole programme. I will not speak of his modesty, which was almost
excessive, or of his kindness toward us; in all, he was what we called a fine chap
(un chic type). . . . He would continue to encourage me and help me in my career.
(Blanchard 1961, 226)
True to form, Blanchard did very well on the written part of his agrégation examination
(for those wishing to teach at the highest level in lycées) and excelled in the lesson on
a prescribed topic that was delivered before a panel of examiners; indeed, he came
first among all historians and geographers in 1900 (Blanchard 1961, 236). With this
result, he could have claimed an ‘Autour du Monde’ travel grant made possible by the
banker Albert Kahn, but he had not decided a topic for his doctorate and feared that
globetrotting might be a waste of money. He decided instead to move straight into
lycée teaching. He wanted ‘a change of air’ beyond Paris and would have welcomed a
school near Orléans, but there were no vacancies in the area and he was offered a post
either in the Ecole Navale in Brest, or in the lycée at Douai, some two-and-a-half hours’
train journey north of the capital. Declaring that he had no knowledge of oceanog-
raphy, he opted for Douai, which was ‘not unpleasant, since my father had been born
in Lille, and Belgium, the homeland of my dear grandmother, was very close’. With
secure employment, he endeavoured to ‘seek a thesis topic and work on it relentlessly
to become a university teacher as soon as possible’ (Blanchard 1961, 237).
In October 1900, Blanchard arrived in Douai to start teaching. Being ‘a great walker
and a geographer’, he wanted to explore the surrounding countryside but soon gave
up exploring the muddy roads that ran between ‘insipid plough lands. On the hori-
zon, there was the threatening silhouette of pit heaps and the tall chimneys of coal
mines. Everywhere, the sickening smell of sugar beet wafted out of the silos . . . I
missed the Val de Loire and confined myself to the town’ (Blanchard 1963a, 13). The
new teacher needed somewhere to live and followed up an advertisement by M. de
Lauwereyns who, it transpired, had an attractive daughter named Jane as well as an
empty apartment. Just a few months later, the young couple married on 10 April 1901;
they would have three daughters and a son. To obtain advice on doctoral research,
Blanchard approached Edouard Ardaillon (1867–1926), professor of geography at the
University of Lille, who had been one of his agrégation examiners (Blanchard 1961, 29;
Carré 1991). The promise of assistance from Ardaillon had contributed to Blanchard’s
decision to teach at Douai; within a few months, he had agreed to provide teaching
cover at the university while Ardaillon undertook fieldwork in Crete. When the profes-
sor returned from his Mediterranean research, he suggested ‘The northern plain of
France’ as a potential thesis topic, but Blanchard soon learned that his mentor knew
little about the area (Blanchard 1963a, 34). Eventually, Blanchard focused on ‘Flanders’
for his doctoral work, but he felt ‘desperately alone. I could not seek advice from my
patron, since he was hostile to my subject and would scarcely be able to guide me since
he knew almost nothing about it. I went to Paris to consult my old teachers; Vidal de
la Blache remained sibylline, and Gallois, with his customary modesty, declared that he

Raoul Blanchard 9
knew nothing about the topic. Hence, I had to gird my loins and walk, alone, into the
night’ (Blanchard 1963a, 35). This reaction was hardly surprising since, by choosing
Ardaillon, Blanchard had committed himself to an academic positioned outside the
Vidalian entourage at the Sorbonne.
Having found his topic, Blanchard decided that he needed time for research and
realized that he should move, together with his wife and infant daughter, to Lille where
archival and library resources were found. All this required funding and he turned once
again to Gallois for help. To his delight, ‘this excellent man argued my case with the
administration of higher education’ (Blanchard 1963a, 37). A bursary was forthcom-
ing, which allowed Blanchard to devote his time to research, while taking on some new
teaching assignments that helped the family’s finances. Ardaillon arranged for him to
teach economic geography at the Institut Industriel du Nord, and Charles Petit-Dutaillis
(1868–1947), then director of the Ecole de Commerce, hired him to give classes, which
were timed to suit his research agenda. At Lille and Grenoble, Charles Petit-Dutaillis
played an important role in promoting Blanchard’s career. The two men became firm
friends and hiking companions in the Alps; Blanchard later dedicated his second vol-
ume of memoirs to the memory of Petit-Dutaillis. Nonetheless, funds remained scarce
and Blanchard always walked from his suburban home in the faubourg Saint-Maurice
into central Lille rather than take the tram. He had strong legs and prided himself on
being able to overtake any pedestrian on the pavement. The municipal library con-
tained many publications on Flanders, but Blanchard needed to visit his study area,
‘to discover its landscapes with my own eyes, and try to explain them, and to under-
take the largest possible number of enquiries’ (Blanchard 1963a, 47). He devised a
questionnaire to structure his interviews but soon had to simplify it. He tried cycling
through the countryside but the roads were so poor that this practice had to be aban-
doned. Thereafter, he made all his ‘journeys on foot, wearing strong shoes, carrying a
rucksack, and spending the night in modest inns. These times of direct contact with
people and objects were among the best moments during these years of uncertainty’.
He estimated that he walked 4,000 km in northern France, Belgium and Holland, but
admitted that researching his thesis was nothing short of ‘purgatory’ (Blanchard 1963a,
47, 39, respectively).
Despite having obtained official letters of recommendation, his enquiries were viewed
sometimes with suspicion, and in Belgium he was briefly imprisoned on suspicion of
being a spy. Nonetheless, he completed over 400 detailed investigations throughout
Flanders. In 1904, he was welcomed by Fernand Van Ortroy (1856–1934), professor
of geography at the University of Ghent, and spent over a month working on Dutch-
language materials in its library. This was only achieved with very considerable help
from a bilingual assistant librarian, since Blanchard did not speak Flemish (Lentacker
1978, 14). By early 1905, the bursary was exhausted and in March Blanchard returned
to teaching, this time at the Lycée Faidherbe in Lille. Starting work at 5 o’clock each
morning, writing up proved to be surprisingly enjoyable. He explained this by his ‘happy
disposition: I write without hesitation or second thoughts; I do not prepare drafts, and I
do not massacre my lines with crossings out; whatever comes from my pen goes directly
to the printer’ (Blanchard 1963a, 66). This self confidence, combined with a formidable
power of detailed and accurate recall, would define the whole of his career.
At this time, doctoral candidates in France were required to submit a minor the-
sis – but no longer in Latin – in addition to a major one. Blanchard thought about
preparing a well-illustrated study of the area surrounding Orléans but this was rejected
in favour of an analysis of changes in population density in the département of the Nord
during the nineteenth century (Letters from Blanchard to Demangeon, 26 September
1905; 12 October 1905). Assistance was found to perform the necessary 6,670 divisions
(involved in dividing the population of each commune by its area for successive censuses

10 Raoul Blanchard
throughout the century), and to prepare the detailed maps (Letter from Blanchard to
Demangeon, 19 October 1905). Blanchard decided that he would submit his work at
the University of Lille rather than at the Sorbonne, ‘as had always been done, since
this would be a way of expressing my gratitude for the welcome and the help I had
received from Northerners’ (Blanchard 1963a, 72). However, to be successful his career
would need the blessing of the Sorbonne and he had the temerity to send a draft copy
of his thesis to Vidal, requesting that he read it and prepare a report for the examin-
ing panel in Lille (Letters from Blanchard to Demangeon, 28 July 1905; 15 August
1905). Not surprisingly, Vidal indicated that he was too busy and declared that ‘the
task should fall on Demangeon, Ardaillon’s successor as new professor of geography at
Lille’ (Blanchard 1963a, 74). Having completed his exemplary thesis on La Picardie only
one year previously, Demangeon was a close friend (un camarade) from the ENS and the
two men addressed each other informally (nous nous tutoyions). Blanchard believed that
Demangeon’s ‘judgement would be frank, vigorous and objective’, and was reassured to
learn: ‘This will be a great thesis, old chap’ (Blanchard 1963a, 75).
Under the chairmanship of the dean, philosopher Georges Lefèvre (1862–1929),
an examining panel was assembled, comprising Ardaillon (by now recteur of the académie
of Besançon), Charles Barrois (1851–1939) the professor of geology at Lille, historians
and good friends Charles Petit-Dutaillis and Alexandre de Saint-Léger (1866–1944),
and Demangeon (Geographers Vol. 11) as the rapporteur. Vidal declined an invitation
to participate and proposed Gallois, who agreed to serve on the panel. Blanchard
believed that he had ‘a jury of gold: all friends, and I was on informal terms with two
of them’ (je tutoyais deux d’entre eux). One the eve of the examination, Ardaillon inter-
rogated Blanchard about the thesis and then ‘responded vaguely about what he might
say on the following day’ (Blanchard 1963a, 75). On 8 May 1906, members of high
society in Lille packed the examination hall, since a doctoral defence, which was – and
still is – held in public, was a rare event in the city (Davy 1966, 45; Lentacker 1992).
Members of the jury duly probed and praised, with Demangeon behaving more for-
mally than Blanchard had expected. However, Ardaillon proclaimed that the can-
didate did not display ‘the geographical spirit’ in his work (Blanchard 1963b, 76).
Blanchard was dumbfounded, ‘since no-one could say anything more cruel; this was
condemnation with no hope of reprieve’. His halting response was cut short by his
mentor, who then proceeded to ‘praise my talent, and expressed whole-hearted con-
fidence in my success. Reading the consternation on the faces of other members of
the jury, I recognized what they – like me – now understood: he had not read the thesis
(underlined in the original). From that day, everything was over between Ardaillon and
me’ (Blanchard 1963b, 76). Others did not share Blanchard’s opinion, with Ardaillon
being described as ‘a distinguished professor, a scholar for the future’ and ‘a brilliant
teacher’ who, during his tenure at Lille, had fought tirelessly to acquire funds to estab-
lish a geographical laboratory in three rooms of the University, and to furnish it with
maps, books, periodicals and equipment, making it a model of its kind (Cantineau
1901, 115). Having trained as an historian, Ardaillon subsequently subscribed to the
Vidalian conception of ‘modern geography’ and Vidal praised him for his energy and
intelligence (Ardaillon 1901; Carré 1991, 117).
Despite this embarrassing incident, Blanchard was proclaimed ‘doctor of letters,
with all possible honours’. Several newspapers carried abstracts and maps from his
thesis of which many copies were purchased, with the print run of 2,100 copies being
sold out by 1909 (Houbron 1906, 278). After celebrations with family and friends,
Blanchard returned to the Lycée Faidherbe. He was disappointed not to be appointed
at the University of Rennes, but soon he was presented with a choice between two
newly created lectureships in geography, at Clermont-Ferrand and Grenoble (Hamelin
1959, 13).

Raoul Blanchard 11
In the autumn of 1906, Raoul, Jane and their children, Henriette and Guillaume,
moved to the Alpine city, where its small university had under a 1,000 students in its
three faculties of law, science and letters. ‘As a man of the plains’, Blanchard ‘felt a little
disarmed by the mountains; [he was] ready to like them . . . but barely understood them’
(Blanchard 1963a, 105). To resolve this shortcoming, he attended classes and fieldtrips
given by geologist William Kilian, who was a poor lecturer but excelled in the field,
indeed ‘no-one knew the Alps better than he did’. Despite being appointed to teach
geography, Raoul was shocked to learn that the dean, Jean de Crozals, had suspended
instruction in history and geography since he believed applicants were inadequately
prepared to study for that degree. Hence, the new lecturer in geography was charged
with teaching a special course to foreign students, mainly Germans, who were ‘the real
hope of the faculty’ of arts, and with instructing 200 army officers preparing for the
entry examination for the Ecole Supérieure de la Guerre (Blanchard 1963a, 91, 97,
respectively). Dean de Crozals even paid for a ‘fine new projector’ but Blanchard had
few illustrations and had to request copies from Demangeon (Letters from Blanchard
to Demangeon, 10 November 1906; 20 December 1906). The dean was duly satisfied:
however Blanchard wanted to create an Institut de Géographie Alpine. He even per-
suaded Kilian to allow him to use a room despite the fact that he had no students.
To promote geography, Blanchard delivered a public course of evening lectures
about the population of France, with the audience swelling from a dozen to over 100
(Blanchard 1963a, 104). The fortunes of this ‘very tall, slim young man with laugh-
ing eyes and a thin, intelligent face’ continued to improve, as he undertook his first
Alpine enquiry into settlement in the high Queyras area, and as the newly appointed
recteur, Petit-Dutaillis, his doctoral examiner from Lille, reinstated teaching of history
and geography in the autumn of 1907 (Daniel-Rops 1958, 7; Allix 1966, 17). The
Collection Perpillou-Demangeon, housed in the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris, con-
tains a number of letters sent by Blanchard to his friend Demangeon during the first
decade of the twentieth century. Despite all the challenges and disappointments that
had confronted him in Grenoble, Blanchard declined invitations for vacant university
chairs in Lille and Lyon. Still living on a lecturer’s salary, Raoul and Jane had ‘acquired
a taste for Grenoble and its fine mountainous environment’; indeed the young geogra-
pher felt that he was ‘already devoted to the Alps’ (Blanchard 1963a, 117). Even ‘more
curious’ was the reaction of his wife, ‘a daughter of the North, who was as resolute
as myself in refusing [to leave]; she simply preferred to live in the Dauphiné’. Other
attractive invitations would come Blanchard’s way in future years, including two to
become a recteur (with overall charge of all aspects of state education in a particular
region), a chair at the Sorbonne and a full-time position at Harvard, but his response
remained resolutely negative.
In October 1908, Blanchard found space for his proposed ‘labo’ in six rooms on
the rue Très-Cloîtres in property adjacent to the cathedral, which had been used by
the Bishop of Grenoble prior to the legal separation of church and state in France
in 1902. In addition to strengthening academic contacts by meeting geographers in
Switzerland and Germany, including Albrecht Penck in Berlin, he spread the word
about the ‘new geography’ during visits to schools and teacher-training colleges in
south-eastern France, and through his lectures to local army officers. Lacking knowl-
edge on English at this stage, he did not venture across the English Channel and would
never visit Britain (Guichonnet and Masseport 1975, 133). Continuing to start work at
5 o’clock each morning, he prepared research publications and devised courses for his
students but the number of geographers in each annual cohort was only about half a
dozen in these early years (Blanchard 1963b, 5). His teaching methods embraced ques-
tioning his pupils about topics under discussion, encouraging them to interrogate him,
undertaking map work and going on fieldtrips when copious notes had to be taken by

12 Raoul Blanchard
participants. These day-long or half-day trips were made on foot in the countryside sur-
rounding Grenoble every other Sunday. In addition, at Easter a full week was devoted
to an annual excursion in a part of south-eastern France when long distances were
covered on foot. Blanchard recalled that in the years preceding World War I, he was
‘young of heart and spirit; liking to laugh, sing and joke; and the students greatly appre-
ciated the way their patron (boss) behaved’ (Blanchard 1963a, 144). In a more serious
vein, he required his pupils to read and discuss recent geographical publications in vari-
ous European languages. This demanding immersion into the discipline of geography
proved very effective and some of Blanchard’s earliest disciples proceeded to doctoral
work and eventually would become university professors. This early cohort comprised:
Philippe Arbos at Clermont-Ferrand (Geographers Vol. 3); André Allix at Lyon; Ernest
Bénévent at Aix-en-Provence; Daniel Faucher at Toulouse (Geographers Vol. 31); Charles
Robequain at Rennes (Geographers, this volume); Jules Blache at Nancy (Geographers Vol.
1); Henri Onde at Lausanne; Jean Robert at Poitiers; and Maurice Pardé, Paul Veyret
and Germaine Vernier who remained at Grenoble.
In 1911, Blanchard completed his study of Grenoble that was a pioneering work
of urban geography and initiated contacts with the Touring Club de France, which
requested him to address its members in Paris about the geography of tourism
(Blanchard 1911; Berdoulay 2001). This presentation proved highly successful and
the Touring Club funded him to go on a research mission in Corsica to investigate the
island’s potential for tourism (Blanchard 1963a, 149). In January 1913, he produced
the first issue of the Recueil des Travaux de l’Institut de Géographie (known as the Revue de
Géographie Alpine from 1920), which presented research by himself and his advanced
students on many aspects of the Alps (Chamussy 2011). After so much hard work, he
was delighted to learn that funds had been allocated to create a professorial chair for
him from the autumn of 1913. Relations with Vidal had improved and Blanchard
responded positively to a request to write a volume on ‘Western Asia’ for the great,
multi-volume Géographie Universelle that Vidal was coordinating for the Armand Colin
publishing house. Using a memorable phrase, Blanchard declared: ‘Vidal, like God
the Father, divided the world amongst his disciples, serving the oldest ones first’ and
giving them the choicest morsels, such as parts of Europe (Blanchard 1963a, 153).
There was no question of visiting the Near East, so Blanchard worked entirely from
publications in German, English and Italian as well as French. ‘Sitting at my table
morning and evening, and smoking countless cigars, it was forced labour’. By the
spring of 1914, the manuscript was handed to Vidal, who required some excisions.
On 1 July, it was delivered to the publisher who did nothing with it once war was
declared. Blanchard felt that ‘Armand Colin lacked flair and courage, since if they
had published my book in 1915, one would have found descriptions of theatres of war
in the Middle East, the Dardanelles, Arabia, Mesopotamia, Palestine; it would have
sold like hot cakes’ (Blanchard 1963a, 153). A decade later he would receive a grant to
spend three months in the Middle East during 1925, thanks to the ingenuity of Gallois,
Vidal’s successor as academic editor of the Géographie Universelle (Blanchard 1926a;
1963a, 154). His much-delayed volume was greatly improved by inclusion of his field
observations (Blanchard 1929).
In 1914, Blanchard was exempted from military service because of asthma,
emphysema and myopia (Blanchard 1963a, 178). In addition to his university duties,
he helped in the local military hospital and at the préfecture, and taught in the lycée
to cover for young teachers who had been mobilized. During the war, most of his
students were young women, who duplicated their lecture notes for their male coun-
terparts in the army. Blanchard ensured that the Revue de Géographie Alpine continued
to appear each quarter and was proud that his was the only French geographical jour-
nal to come out without interruption. In 1915, he published a seminal article on the

Raoul Blanchard 13
structure of the Alps, and used his detailed knowledge to trace military operations in
Flanders for readers of the Revue de Paris (Blanchard 1915a,b). He followed this with
five accounts of other theatres of war, and delivered a series of public lectures on the
relationship between geography and war, which drew large audiences. His second
urban geography monograph, on Annecy, was published in 1916.
During 1916, Petit-Dutaillis invited him to spend the term between February and June
1917 as exchange professor at Harvard University (Blanchard 1963a, 189). Blanchard
was well aware of the dangers associated with crossing the Atlantic at this time, espe-
cially the presence of German submarines off the west coast of France, but to teach
in the United States came as a unique chance. He recalled, ‘I was 39 years old, I had
seen only part of Europe, and my only sea crossing had been to Corsica! It was impos-
sible to turn down this opportunity’ (Blanchard 1963a, 189). Leaving his wife and four
children in Grenoble, and entrusting Maximilien Sorre to cover his teaching (on Sorre,
see Geographers Vol. 27), he sailed first class from Bordeaux, arriving at New York on 8
February. There were then few students of geography at Harvard and even fewer able
to follow his lectures delivered in French. Among a handful of followers were Roderick
Peattie (1891–1955), future professor at the University of Ohio, and Millicent Todd
(1880–1968), who would collaborate with Blanchard on The Geography of France, a small
textbook for use by American servicemen in Europe, and who would translate Vidal’s
essays on the principles of human geography (Blanchard and Todd 1919b; Blanchard
1963a, 193; Berman 1980) (on Millicent Bingham Todd, see Geographers Vol. 11). Upon
his return to Grenoble, Blanchard made the acquaintance of Aimé Bouchayer, a pow-
erful local industrialist, and turned some of his energy to analysing economic activities
in the French Alps and the hydro-electric resources of the mountains, as well as investi-
gating criteria for the definition of an ‘Alpes’ region.
Blanchard was 41 years of age when the armistice was signed. In his own words:
‘I had ceased being a young man and had reached maturity. My apprenticeship was
over’ (Blanchard 1963a, 213). His experience at Harvard proved decisive in shaping the
remainder of his career, opening a new field of research in Québec to complement his
sustained commitment to the western Alps. During the period from 1927 to 1936, his
calendar years were organized in three parts; teaching, writing and editing at Grenoble
during the second and third university terms, undertaking research in Québec during
the summer months, and then teaching at Harvard during the forthcoming first term,
when classes at Grenoble were covered by the hydro-geographer Maurice Pardé and
by other colleagues (Hamelin 1959, 19). From 1937, his North American visits were
directed more especially to research; he also delivered guest lectures to a wide range of
audiences. This routine was broken during World War II but resumed in 1948 and 1949,
when Blanchard taught at Montréal for a couple of months, with further teaching being
delivered at the Université Laval, in Québec City, in 1952 and 1958. During these North
American adventures, he travelled alone, leaving his family in France. With remarkable
chauvinism, he declared: ‘Since our marriage, I have become used to my wife sparing
me all the little duties and irksome jobs, and taking upon herself all the unwelcome tasks
so that I may devote myself to my work as a professor and a scholar’ (Blanchard 1963a,
162–3).
With a total of 15 visits to North America and sustained periods of fieldwork in
French Canada, as well as in the French Alps, the second half of the career of Raoul
Blanchard was highly productive. He had the great satisfaction of seeing doctoral
candidates complete their theses and move into university posts, and he would call
upon their support for his great project detailing the geography of the western Alps.
His patronage was not restricted to scholars working on French or Alpine topics, since
he supported others who researched distant lands that he had never visited (notably
Charles Robequain in Indochina). In addition, he trained numbers of future teachers

14 Raoul Blanchard
who would work in schools across southern France. The Institut de Géographie
Alpine remained in the cramped quarters secured in 1908, and the Revue de Géographie
Alpine continued to appear four times a year despite wartime censorship and shortages
of paper. Blanchard’s ‘labo’ served as the examination centre for agrégation candidates
in the ‘zone libre’, who would normally have been examined in Paris, prior to the
German occupation of southern France in 1942 (Perrin 1966, 107). Having been
active in Resistance work, in 1944 Blanchard succumbed to pressure to serve as dean
of the faculty of arts for the next four years (Derruau 1965, 176; Dussart 1966, 80).
Jean Robert had been taught by Blanchard during World War I, when he had the
privilege of being his student. From the very start, Raoul Blanchard made an impres-
sion on his disciples. ‘With his eyes shining behind his spectacles, his gaze penetrated
you, judged you and intimidated you. But rapidly, you gained your confidence. Few
teachers have merited the title of “Patron” (the boss), which we all gave him . . . Having
just a few pupils allowed our professor to get to know each one of them, to guide their
efforts, to direct their work, and to enthuse them by his talents as an educator . . . Those
who had the fortune of hearing his lectures have never forgotten them and remain
proud to have belonged to his “Grenoble School”’ (Robert 1965, 216).
In 1932, 30 of those students contributed to a 670-page volume of essays in his hon-
our, which also marked the first quarter century of the Institut de Géographie Alpine
(Anon. 1932). Evoking the crowded classroom in the ‘labo’, heated by a smoky, coal-
burning stove that was nonetheless welcome in the depths of the Alpine winter, Jacques
Bethemont recalled his first encounter with Blanchard in 1946, three decades after
Robert’s experience and less than two years before the professor’s retirement.
I found a very old gentleman, whose thin body and moustaches impressed us
as much as the fact that he had returned from the USA. The quality of his
American clothes showed up the mediocrity of European clothing at that time.
He had only just returned to Grenoble at the beginning of December, and the
new students spoke about him as if they were awaiting the Messiah. I was dis-
appointed when he started his course on the USA and declared that the most
recent statistics related to the disturbed wartime years and that the preceding
ones were gathered during the crisis years and, similarly, had little meaning.
The only ones that were reliable were those of 1928, the final year of prosper-
ity. I felt a discrete murmur of incomprehension pass around the room, and I
realised that the notion of ‘a great man’ was a relative term. How wrong I was.
As he delivered his course, our professor re-established his masterly status, by
quoting precise information and summarizing different opinions . . . He had
the reputation of being difficult at times (un personage truculent) and he certainly
was just that so on some occasions. For most of the time, he impressed us, even
intimidated us, but he was a model for us in many ways. (Bethemont, cited in
Daudel 2010, 64–5)
At this stage in his life, Blanchard suffered from arthritis. Writing was difficult, so he dic-
tated his latest work for two hours each afternoon and checked through the manuscript
the following morning. He explained his facility with words and his memorable turns of
phrase by the fact that he prepared his texts in his head during long hours spent walk-
ing, observing and thinking, and even when he was walking between his house and the
office. Bethemont maintained: ‘This practice of walking explained the rhythm of his
words, based on the rhythm of his paces, and it was this rhythm and rigour that could
be found in his teaching’ (Bethemont, cited in Daudel 2010, 65).
Required by educational policy to take retirement in 1948, Blanchard passed the
direction of the Institut de Géographie to his disciple, Paul Veyret (1912–88). However,

Raoul Blanchard 15
he remained in Grenoble, continuing to give classes for a few more years, editing the
Revue de Géographie Alpine (with Veyret 1948–54), and completing his great project on the
western Alps. Despite having rejected the attractions of a post in Paris (‘la Parisianite’ as
he called it) on at least one occasion, he moved to ‘a fine villa’ at Sèvres, a western sub-
urb of the capital (Blanchard 1963a, 16). Apparently, his relations with Paul Veyret and
fellow geography professor Madame Germaine Veyret-Vernier (1913–73) had become
strained, and in his final years he sent book reviews to journals other than the Revue de
Géographie Alpine (Rougier 1996, 120). Nor did he frequent the fine new building on the
sunny slope rising up to the Bastille that Veyret designed for the Institut de Géographie
Alpine, which was opened in 1961 (Vallade 2007, 212–13). In Paris, he was an active
member of the Council of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, which
allocated bursaries to enable doctoral candidates to complete their theses and provided
several support facilities, including a cartography unit and a documentation centre that
were of particular importance to geographers. In May 1958, he was honoured by titu-
lar membership of the Académie des Sciences Morales at Politiques, having been a
corresponding member since 1929 (Dussart 1966, 82).
During his retirement in Paris, Raoul Blanchard remained remarkably produc-
tive, writing a new study of the town of Annecy, completing summary volumes of his
research in the Alps and in Québec, assembling two volumes of memoirs, researching
the urban geography of Nice at the request of its mayor Jean Médecin, and finally
producing a little book on French Canada for general readers (Blanchard 1958a, b,
1960a, b, 1961, 1963a, 1964). His health was failing, however, and he died in Paris
on 24 March 1965, aged 87. Daniel Faucher, a disciple and long-serving professor of
geography at the University of Toulouse (Geographers Vol. 31), recalled that his mentor
remained ‘a terrible worker’, still getting up very early and working late into the night,
even though he said that his day would end at 9 o’clock (Faucher 1965, 159). With
understandable emotion, Faucher continued:
I knew he was ill: he had undergone several operations . . . A little while ago, I saw
him and his family at Sèvres. He told me that his legs were weak, but he was alert.
I feared the worst, and the worst has happened . . . For me, and for many of his
former students, it is a terrible loss . . . We shall miss him terribly, [he was] like a
father to his children . . . I feel like a very old orphan . . . He allowed me to enter
into the circle of his family and it is very painful for me to realise what we have
lost, his children, grandchildren, great grandchildren . . . He was our guide and
model; We owe him so much and [must try] to remain faithful to his spirit and his
teaching’. (Faucher 1965, 159)
Daniel Faucher was only five years younger than Blanchard, and their relationship had
been one of friendship rather than as master and pupil. Faucher spent his last two dec-
ades as a widower and his only child lived away from Toulouse, hence to be welcomed
into the Blanchard clan was especially appreciated.
Scientiﬁc Ideas and Geographical Thought

As a pupil of Vidal, Raoul Blanchard adopted an holistic view of the ‘new geography’
and was, in essence, an empiricist who gathered vast quantities of information through
direct observation, personal interviews, questionnaires and meticulous reading of pub-
lished sources. Then he distilled his information into syntheses, on the future of the
Alps, on French Canada, and many other topics (Blanchard 1958b, 1960b, 1964). He

16 Raoul Blanchard
was not a theorist and rejected over-arching explanations, such as the cyclical vision of
landscape development proposed by William Morris Davis (1850–1934) (on Davis, see
Geographers Vol. 5). Working in such challenging locations as the wetlands of Flanders,
the mountains of the Alps, and the northern milieu of Québec, he placed considerable
emphasis on the significance of physical factors in understanding human activity, none-
theless human geography was his preferred specialism (Pardé 1957, 160). In the words
of Bernard Debarbieux:
His thesis on Flanders is considered as one of the best products of the French
school of geography that renewed the discipline at the beginning of the 20th
century. His work was strongly influenced by the scientific and intellectual context
of the time; attached first of all and above all else to studying the influence of
the environment on human societies, adept at deploying an analytical method in
a regional setting, concerned to promote a ‘new geography’ . . . to the detriment
of the old dominant geography [of facts and figures] on the one hand and of
geology and history on the other, sensitive to the regionalist and agrarian influ-
ences of his time, he battled for a scientific and ideological cause that was applied
especially to the Alps’ and to Québec. (Debarbieux 1993, 116)
Published a year after Demangeon’s Picardie, Blanchard’s doctoral thesis was entitled
La Flandre: étude géographique de la plaine flamande en France, Belgique et Hollande, contained
530 pages, and was illustrated with 48 photographic plates, 76 maps and diagrams
and 2 fold-out maps. It bore the dedication: ‘To Paul Vidal de la Blache and Lucien
Gallois, my teachers at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. With respectful homage.’ His
appreciation was extended to Barrois, Petit-Dutaillis and, with what would prove to
be supreme irony, to his problematic mentor Ardaillon, who was mentioned ‘among
personal friends’ (Blanchard 1906a, viii). Thanks were also expressed to the Société
Dunkerquoise pour l’Encouragement des Lettres, des Sciences et des Arts, that he had
approached upon Ardaillon’s advice, which paid for the printing of La Flandre, and to
the Société de Géographie de Lille, which published his minor thesis.
Acknowledging that additional fieldwork and archival study would have produced
a fuller result, Blanchard first defined Flanders as a natural region and then devoted
five chapters to its physical geography. In a brief chapter of only five pages at the heart
of the book, he drew a fundamental distinction between the maritime plain and the
interior, before devoting four chapters to the formation of the cultural landscape of
Flanders through wetland drainage, fixation of shifting dunes and the creation of har-
bours. The remaining six chapters focused on agriculture, industry, settlement, commu-
nications, trade and ‘the problem of overpopulation’. He concluded that ‘the prosperity
of the area is the work of its people. Elsewhere, one could exploit resources offered
by nature; here one has to wrench them out, and this prolonged effort has not proved
sufficient; victim of its overflowing population, Flanders must continue to struggle and
suffer to make this unfavoured land more and more habitable’ (Blanchard 1906a, 521).
In his report for the Annales de Géographie, Gallois praised ‘this intelligent, patiently con-
ducted study, which is inspired by good geographical methods’ (Gallois 1906, 388).
Historian Lucien Febvre found the thesis ‘lively and alert’, declaring that monographs
being written by the Vidalians ‘clearly form a very interesting collection and merit close
attention by historians’ (Febvre 1907, 92). Conversely, François Simiand complained
that Blanchard was not analysing a single region but two – maritime Flanders and
interior Flanders – and that the first five monographs written by Vidal’s disciples var-
ied considerably in approach and thereby failed to demonstrate a clearly recognizable
methodology to differentiate human geography from sociology and other nascent social
sciences (Simiand 1906–9, 724).

Raoul Blanchard 17
To a later critic, Blanchard’s inability to communicate directly with Flemings and his
reliance on the testimony of educated French-speakers – and overwhelmingly on the
evidence contained in French-language publications – meant that he had no genuine
appreciation of the condition of Flemish workers in either town or country, and was
unaware of their political and cultural aspirations (Lentacker 1978, 15, 19). His views on
Flemish country people reflected his position as a representative of large, rich and pow-
erful France confronting rural poverty in Flemish-speaking parts of Belgium. According
to geographer Firmin Lentacker, they echoed the ‘superiority complex’ displayed by
many French commentators towards their much smaller northern neighbour.
After publishing a handful of articles on northern France, Blanchard focused
his research on the Alps, beginning with commissioned research on settlement in
the Queyras area, several geomorphological studies and a long essay on Grenoble
(Blanchard 1909, 1911). This last was a pioneering example of urban geography, which
drew on detailed observation and scrutiny of archival information, before highlighting
the importance of situation and site in explaining where the city was located and how
it evolved through time. The appearance of buildings in various neighbourhoods was
given preference over people living or working there. During World War I, Blanchard
employed a similar approach to chart the growth of the town of Annecy, and investi-
gated how the industrial economy of Grenoble and its Alpine surroundings had flour-
ished by virtue of distance from the battlefields of northern France and of growing
provision of hydro-electric power (Blanchard 1916, 1917a, 1918b). In August 1917,
Etienne Clémentel, the Minister for Trade and Industry, proposed dividing France into
economic regions, of which one would cover much of south-eastern France and be
known as ‘Les Alpes’ (Veitl 1996, 127). Such a region would have Grenoble as its chief
town and was favoured by powerful entrepreneurs in the city, including the metallur-
gist Aimé Bouchayer and the banker Georges Charpenay, who together founded the
Comité régional des Alpes françaises in 1918, which would be renamed the Association
des Producteurs des Alpes françaises two years later (Veitl 1994, 2001).
Upon his return from the entrepreneurial milieu of New England, Blanchard
appreciated that geographical principles might be applied to régional issues in the Alps.
Starting in 1919, he served as rapporteur to several Alpine organizations and traced the
variable support in local chambers of commerce for a proposed region stretching south-
ward from Lake Geneva. In 1920, he became president of the previously somnolent
Société de Statistique du Département de l’Isère, which he and Bouchayer revitalized to
promote regional development. Blanchard’s enquiries revealed that support for a large
Alpes region was uneven, with some groups of industrialists preferring to be associated
with Marseille, Lyon or Nice rather than Grenoble (Blanchard 1922a). Blanchard took
his findings to meetings in Paris, and prepared reports on manufacturing industries
in the Alps and the potential of hydro-electricity to stimulate further industrialization
(Blanchard 1923a, 1924a,c, 1926b, 1928a,b). His application of academic geography
to the cause of Alpine modernization remained vibrant for a decade but began to wane
in the late 1920s as circumstances changed. These included his commitment to teach at
Chicago in 1927 and then at Harvard for eight years beginning in 1928, the death of
his close friend and backer Bouchayer that same year and the financial crash of 1929
which curtailed the availability of funds.
Raoul Blanchard made his first visit to Ontario in 1927, but it was his appointment
at Harvard that formed the entrée into French Canada. Consultation of books and arti-
cles in the university library convinced him that this was ‘virgin terrain, as was the whole
of the Dominion where geographical studies were unfortunately neglected’, unlike the
good work in geology and ‘abundant historical studies, which were sometimes full of
interest’ (Blanchard 1935a, 7). Having commenced library work and having learned
‘how to beg’ for assistance, he began a programme of field research in 1929, supported

18 Raoul Blanchard
by the Milton Fund at Harvard, which would come to occupy the summer and early
autumn months each year until 1933 (Crist 1965, 602). Travelling widely,
on foot and with a knapsack on his back, as he did back in the Alps. Armed
with his enthusiasm, his notebook, a strong pair of boots and his characteristic
long ‘Gaulish’ moustache, he visited hills and valleys . . . observing landscapes,
taking notes, questioning priests, agricultural advisors, lawyers, administra-
tors, landowners and farmers. Some received him with open arms, whilst oth-
ers rejected his intrusion, but gradually his good humour helped him to gain
their friendship. This wandering Frenchman had won a psychological battle.
(Dagenais 1964, 134)
The novelty of the territory ‘for a man used to things in Europe’ and the sympathetic
welcome he received from the Québécois ‘filled him with joy as he undertook his explo-
rations and wrote up his work’ (Blanchard 1935a, 8). With the exception of occasional
car trips, his approach was very similar to that adopted in Flanders a quarter century
earlier. The result was his first series of ‘Canadian studies’ (Etudes canadiennes), com-
prising five long regional essays on the component parts of eastern Québec. These
appeared initially in the Revue de Géographie Alpine and were then brought together as
L’Est du Canada français, a double volume of 700 pages published by Beauchemin in
Montréal (Blanchard 1930a, 1931, 1932, 1933a, 1934b, 1935a). Although headings
varied, each essay began with a discussion of physical features, then proceeded to trace
the historical geography of settlement, and concluded with an examination of current
economic activities. Even the fifth essay, on Quebec City, was structured in a similar
way before summarizing the urban landscapes that Blanchard had visited on foot.
His second Canadian series covered the centre of southern Québec and also came
out as articles (Blanchard 1936, 1937, 1938a). They were written fast, their author
being driven by ‘the joy of discovery since, apart from the geological features, every-
thing remained to be said’ for the first time (Blanchard 1947b, 10). The text had been
prepared for Beauchemin early in 1939 and the proofs corrected in 1940 but ‘they
disappeared in a torpedo raid’. Blanchard was back in Grenoble and cut off from
Canada for the duration of the war, hence work on the volume could not recom-
mence until 1945. Nonetheless, this ‘war victim’ eventually appeared as Le Centre du
Canada français in 1947 (Blanchard 1947b, 10).
In 1938, Blanchard completed fieldwork on the plain of Montréal for the first part
of the final series and a 200-page article was published in the following year (Blanchard
1939). International events caused his study of the city of Montréal to be postponed
until 1946. This was a larger topic than anything he had tackled before and required
sustained library research and numerous visits to different neighbourhoods on foot and,
increasingly, by car (Blanchard 1953, 7; Tessier 1960, 6). His long article in the Revue de
Géographie Alpine followed the conventional sequence from physical geography to current
landscapes and activities, including ‘the drama of the races’ whereby Blanchard con-
trasted predominantly French-speaking districts with those that were mainly English-
speaking (Blanchard 1947a). The final element in the Canadian project involved the
country around Ottawa, and was undertaken in the summer of 1948, with the help of
Albert Tessier who drove around the 70-year-old author and assisted with enquiries.
The last articles came out in 1949; the two-part book on L’Ouest du Canada français did
not appear until 1953–4 (Blanchard 1953, 1954b). This lapse allowed Blanchard to
incorporate results from the 1951 census and to incorporate more information on the
social geography of the city of Montréal. His essay Montréal: esquisse de géographie urbaine
was republished in 1992 as a separate monograph, with redrawn artwork and a long
introduction by Gilles Sénécal (Berdoulay and Sénécal 1996). Appearing over a quarter

Raoul Blanchard 19
of a century, these monumental studies exceeded 2,000 pages of detailed description

and analysis, with Blanchard’s last essays being published when he was well into retire-
ment (Sanguin 1986). Blanchard’s first Canadian essays were rural in character and
were written at a time of economic depression, but the latter ones emphasized urbani-
zation, industrialization and economic modernization (Augustin 1997; Berdoulay 1997;
Di Méo 1997).
In 1937, Raoul Blanchard had embarked on a major Alpine project that he had
conceived on the eve of World War I. In the preface to the first of seven volumes (of
which four came in two parts), he wrote of the remarkable contribution of his disciples
in furthering geographical research in the mountains that gave rise to many articles in
the Revue de Géographie Alpine as well as an impressive array of doctoral monographs.
Early in 1937, he
joyfully put on his mountaineering boots to walk in the mountains once again. It
had been a long time since I had visited [the region] in its entirety; I do not think
that there is a single village in the western Alps that I have not at least glimpsed.
But I had much to gain by seeing the landscapes once again; and during my
recent hikes, I made very many enquiries. I believe more than ever in the value
of verbal enquiries . . . I operated at the rate of two enquiries for every three
communes, and I think I managed that rate. I have not neglected my bibliography,
which I kept up to date over twenty-five years. Finally, whenever I could, I used
archival documents. (Blanchard 1938b, i–ii)
Here was his tried and tested methodology being called into use once again. With the
wisdom of age and hindsight, he declared ‘I dare to say that this book is sincere, that
is to say that I have not tried to hide what I do not know or have not succeeded in
understanding . . . being at the age when one is roughly sure of what one is capable.
Too often, young people are afraid of revealing what escapes them, for fear of being
judged harshly. [Aged fifty] I am no longer at that stage; I can proceed more squarely
and declare my ignorance, and there is much of that. Work still remains for my succes-
sors’ (Blanchard 1938a, iii).
The first volume in the Alpine series was ‘written with an enthusiasm that makes
those around me smile. First of all, this is because I love Geography and I love the Alps;
it is also because I was happy to start on new work . . . I returned joyfully to fieldwork
and to personal research, the only things, it seems to me that can procure true satisfac-
tion’ (Blanchard 1938b, iii).
Over the next two decades, Blanchard ‘became known to village priests in the
Maurienne and to inn-keepers in the Oisans. He was the friend of a thousand school-
teachers in the mountains and of countless shepherds taking their flocks on the annual
transhumance. He had contacts everywhere from Geneva to Menton; not to mention
the valleys of the Piedmont’ (Gaillard 1965, 8). He duly wrote about each area of the
western Alps, using his trusted formula of natural conditions, historical geography
and the present economy. The first volume was produced by the Arrault publishing
house in Tours, while all the others came from Arthaud, based in Grenoble. Fieldwork
for the second volume, containing 50 pages on Grenoble, was undertaken before the
outbreak of hostilities in September 1939, but the text was not published until 1941.
Conditions worsened during the German occupation of the former ‘free zone’ (zone
libre) from spring 1942 to the winter of 1944–5, when the fourth volume on the south-
ern pre-Alps was in preparation. Blanchard declared, ‘This was a truly difficult period,
scarcely propitious to intellectual work, when the security of one’s person and one’s
goods was far from assured, especially at Grenoble. Going out to make enquiries had
become impracticable and, at times, dangerous. I had to interrupt my visits on 6 June

20 Raoul Blanchard
1944 and not restart them until the early winter. Dispatch of documents that I needed
was prevented or delayed. Some civil servants refused me access to information. I often
became very impatient’ (Blanchard 1945, 9).
At the best of times, this southern area was ‘a sort of scientific desert about which
geographical studies were extremely rare’ (Blanchard 1945, 9). Although conditions in
the Alps improved after the war, Blanchard felt compelled to complete his Canadian
work and was laid low by ‘a major surgical operation’ in 1947 (Blanchard 1949d, 9). In
1950, he started to investigate conditions in the adjacent Italian Piedmont and under-
took 200 enquiries in the next two years (Blanchard 1952, 8). Travelling on foot, he
was – once again – accused of being a spy, and the challenge of the Italian language and
of local dialects required help from interpreters. In 1956, he completed the seventh and
final volume that synthesized all his Alpine work. He concluded that the northern Alps
displayed remarkable modernization, thanks to manufacturing, hydro-electric power,
commerce, and tourism, and recorded population increase. The depopulated southern
Alps, however, remained problematic, but introduction of tourism and innovations in
agriculture showed promising signs (Blanchard 1956). By contrast, most of the Italian
Piedmont was backward when compared with adjacent areas of France.
Throughout these Alpine volumes, Blanchard frequently acknowledged help from
academics he had trained, past students, secretaries who calculated his statistics, took
down his dictation, and typed his manuscripts, and cartographers and photographers
who illustrated his work. Only in the final volume, when he was approaching 80 years
of age and ‘was uncertain about the future’, did he dedicate his work: ‘To my wife,
whose self sacrifice (abnégation) has allowed me to come to the end of this heavy task’
(Blanchard 1956, 9). And heavy it certainly was, exceeding 5,000 pages of meticulous
work, enhanced by 641 maps and diagrams, 36 fold-out maps and 603 pages containing
photographs. Yet, this was far from being his final work.
Inﬂuence and Spread of Ideas

From the moment he was appointed at Grenoble in 1906, Raoul Blanchard deter-
mined that geography should have an identity of its own, appropriate premises in the
university and suitable facilities for scientific research. The installation of his Institut
de Géographie Alpine in premises in the rue Très-Cloîtres two years later marked an
important first step in achieving these goals. It was there that Blanchard taught stu-
dents who demonstrated interest in and aptitude for geography, while ensuring that
those lacking commitment would be admonished and move to other studies (Gaillard
1965, 9). In his private office, he mentored advanced students who completed doc-
toral degrees prior to occupying university chairs across the French provinces, and
even at the Sorbonne. Charles Robequain and Marcel Larnaude both taught at the
Sorbonne, having been Blanchard’s students at Grenoble. He called these men his
‘marshals’, just as he referred to the student body, past and present, as his ‘family’
(Derruau 1965, 175). It was in the same room that he edited the Revue de Géographie
Alpine, that appeared under a more cumbersome title from 1913 to 1919, as the first
geographical periodical to emerge from a provincial university in France. In these and
many other ways he worked tirelessly to enhance his own visibility and to ensure that
the Institut de Géographie Alpine should compete successfully with the metropolitan
focus of Vidalian geographers at the Sorbonne (Broc 1993). It could not be denied that
‘this is indeed a complete school of local geography whose organization is as advanced
as that of the Parisian school – a very rare circumstance in France, where rather exces-
sive centralization is the rule. It is explained by favourable circumstances, of which a

Raoul Blanchard 21
young teacher [Blanchard], who is gifted with special organizing ability, has made the
most’ (De Martonne 1924, 44).
The rivalry between the ‘Grenoble school’ and the ‘Paris school’ of geography was
partly due to scientific differences, with Blanchard stressing the importance of geologi-
cal structure and glacial activity in explaining the physiography of the Alps, whereas
de Martonne placed less stress on glacial erosion and favoured the ‘cyclical’ ideas of
W. M. Davis (Claval 1998, 209). The rivalry needs also to be appreciated in personal
terms, and reference made to the mutual dislike between Blanchard and de Martonne,
Vidal’s son-in-law and successor. Both men were highly intelligent and had studied at
the Ecole Normale Supérieure, but de Martonne came from an intellectual family while
Blanchard originated from a petit-bourgeois background not far removed from manual
workers and peasants. The shy, rather cold son of an archivist had a totally different
character from Blanchard the extrovert. As André François-Poncet recalled: Blanchard
‘spoke loudly and said what he thought. He was naturally jovial and cordial, living
well and enjoying good food and good wine. He loved to laugh .. . . He found joy and
optimism in his own work and also in that of his pupils’ (François-Poncet 1966, 57). He
could, however, ‘“don a mask of severity” when he thought fit’ (Larnaude 1966, 77).
The breaking point in relations between the two men occurred soon after the
sixth inter-university excursion in 1910 that Gallois had asked Blanchard to lead in
the western Alps (Perrin 1966, 105). About 50 geographers from universities through-
out France and from abroad were in attendance, and tensions soon emerged. Antoine
Vacher (1873–1920), always something of a rebel, tried to drown Blanchard’s explana-
tion of the landscape by shouting rude words (on Vacher, see Geographers 31). To quote
Blanchard’s words, ‘the attitude of de Martonne displeased me even more; he chose to
ignore me and made the excursion with two or three others quite separately from the
rest of the group, whilst taking advantage of the accommodation I had found . . . I was
profoundly humiliated’ (Blanchard 1963a, 156). Blanchard wrote up his report on the
excursion for the Annales de Géographie and de Martonne replied ‘with a charming letter
. . . in which he congratulated me for my knowledge of the French Alps and informed
me that he would not work on the region any more, except to applaud my own success’
(Blanchard 1963a, 156). Less than two years later, new articles on the development of
Alpine valleys were appearing from de Martonne, advocating theories derived from
the work of W. M. Davis. Blanchard reminded de Martonne of his promise but was
informed that he ‘regretted that he was so interested in the Alps that he could not give
up work on them. This was war between what would soon be called the Grenoble
school and the Paris school (more precisely de Martonne and his pupils, since I have
always maintained cordial relations with Demangeon); it would last throughout my
career. Not that this state of belligerence pleased me; I am a man of peace as long as I
am not attacked’ (Blanchard 1963a, 157).
The state of war was expressed through Blanchard’s harsh reviews of doctoral work
by de Martonne’s disciples, especially when their research echoed the ideas of Davis,
and in sharp denunciation of work by any ‘Parisian’ researcher who dared to invade the
western Alps, which Blanchard and his students claimed as their own territory (Dresch
and George 1966; Broc 2003; Clout 2009). A further example of Blanchard’s feisty
character involved his relations with Wilfrid Kilian since the professor of geography
was interested in glaciated landforms, which the professor of geology regarded as his
own preserve. Blanchard insisted ‘I was placed in the wrong when I did not share his
views. But Kilian was very jealous of his reputation and took criticism badly . . . We
lived under a regime of armed peace; whenever I published work in human geography,
Kilian expressed warm congratulation; when it was physical geography, I was greeted
with glacial silence and he soon made cutting remarks. But I must admit that I and my
pupils expressed harsh views about some of Kilian’s work’ (Blanchard 1963a, 158).

22 Raoul Blanchard
In addition to promoting his own version of Vidalian geography in France, Blanchard

carried this approach to the United States, starting with the exchange professorship
at Harvard in 1917 and continuing through short appointments at Columbia (1922),
Chicago (1927), Berkeley (1932), Middlebury College, Vermont (1935), and the pro-
fessorial position held at Harvard from 1928 to 1936, whose president was impressed
by Blanchard’s out-going personality and attractive lecturing style (Anon. 1966, 11;
G. J. Martin, pers. comm.). He took advantage of his new contacts to publish sev-
eral articles in the Geographical Review and other American journals, as well as co-au-
thoring two textbooks (Blanchard 1917b, 1921, 1924a,b). A Geography of France, written
with and translated by Millicent Todd, was prepared for servicemen of the American
Expedition Force and did not appear in French; A Geography of Europe, co-authored and
translated by Raymond E. Crist (1904–94), was aimed at the undergraduate audience
in the United States (Blanchard and Todd 1919b; Blanchard and Crist 1935). Fluent
in French, Millicent Todd was Blanchard’s liaison person and translator at Harvard.
She interrupted her studies in 1918 to go to France where she performed volunteer
work in a YMCA canteen at Angers for six months. After the Armistice, she lectured
at the University of Grenoble under the aegis of the United States Army Education
Corps, and it was at this time that she prepared the textbook with Blanchard. She
then returned to the United States to undertake doctoral work and married Walter
Van Dyke Bingham, a psychologist. Her dissertation, ‘An investigation of geographi-
cal controls in Peru’, earned her a PhD in 1923 from the Geology and Geography
Department of Harvard (Berman 1980, 200). Her later life was devoted to editing
the papers of Emily Dickinson. Raymond E. Crist spent the academic year 1932–3
at the University of Grenoble as American Field Service Fellow under the auspices of
the Institute of International Education, having been a field geologist in Mexico and
Venezuela from 1926 to 1931. In 1937, he obtained a doctorate at Grenoble, for a the-
sis entitled ‘Etude géographique des llanos du Venezuela occidental’. He taught at the
universities of Illinois, Puerto Rico, Maryland and Florida, and undertook research in
various parts of Latin America.
In French Canada, Blanchard not only undertook extensive field research but also
presented a wide range of lectures on French, Alpine and Canadian topics to learned
societies, undergraduates (e.g. at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Montréal)
and members of the general public (Beauregard 1986). His first Canadian essay, deal-
ing with the Gaspé Peninsula, appeared in 1930 and was followed four years later by
a small text entitled La Géographie de l’industrie published by Beauchemin in Montréal
(Blanchard 1930a, 1934a). That contract began a long association with that publishing
house, which brought out his two-volume textbook on Géographie générale, a well-illus-
trated book entitled Le Québec par l’image, and three important volumes that assembled
his essays on the various regions of Québec (Blanchard 1935a, 1938–9, 1947b, 1949b,
1953, 1954b). In addition, Blanchard wrote a study of the territory of La Mauricie for
another publisher (Blanchard 1950a).
Through his writings and well-received lectures, he became known in academic cir-
cles in French Canada and was keen to establish a regular teaching commitment there.
On 30 September 1930, he informed the recteur of the University that he ‘would like to
interest the Université Laval in the captivating geographical study of Québec, follow-
ing the example of poor Jean Brunhes’, his friend who had just died (Hamelin 1959,
21) (Geographers Vol. 25). Three years later, he approached the Université de Montréal,
declaring ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to train a Canadian-French
school of geography.’ The financial crisis and subsequent wartime disruptions meant
that his ambitions passed unheeded, and it was not until the late 1940s that geography
departments were created in these two universities. In 1947, Blanchard was invited to
inaugurate teaching in the new department at Montréal but was unable to leave France

Raoul Blanchard 23
because of a surgical operation. Upon retirement in Grenoble, he was free to teach

in Montréal in 1948 and 1949, and subsequently at the Université Laval in 1952 and
1958. Despite the brevity of his courses and his commitment to gather information for
his study of Montréal City and for another book on the province of Québec, Blanchard
exercised an important influence of academics and students alike (Blanchard 1953,
1960b). He suggested research topics for advanced scholars but did not supervise doc-
toral candidates or sit on examining juries (Hamelin 1959, 23). In addition, he sug-
gested the names of French geographers to occupy visiting positions in Québec. He
declared to a former student, Louis-Edmond Hamelin, that he had not ‘been called or
sent’ to French Canada, but arrived ‘all alone, drawn by curiosity as a geographer’ and
because the people were French speakers (Hamelin 1959, 18). He rapidly felt accepted,
remarking on several occasions that Québec was his ‘second homeland’; indeed he was
recognized by some as ‘the leading craftsman in the creation of geographical teaching
in our universities’ in Québec (Blanchard 1960b, 8; 1964, 8; Dagenais, cited in Hamelin
1959, 20). To mark their appreciation, French Canadian geographers brought out a
volume of 40 essays in his honour (Institut de Géographie de l’Université Laval 1959).
Without doubt, Raoul Blanchard exerted great academic influence on his students
in Grenoble and Québec and, to a lesser extent, in the United States. His textbooks
on France and Europe were appreciated by English-language readers, and his volume
on L’Amérique du Nord informed francophone students on both sides of the Atlantic. His
research on the Alps and on French Canada was unparalleled in its meticulous inves-
tigation and intricate expression. His work on the Council of the CNRS and his presi-
dency of its committee for geography helped many young researchers (Guichonnet
1984, 251). He was honoured on both sides of the Atlantic, receiving the Charles
P. Daly Gold Medal of the American Geographical Society and the gold medal of
the Société de Géographie de Paris (both in 1956), the Osiris Prize of the Institut
de France (1957) and the gold medal of the CNRS (1960) (Anon. 1958; Perpillou
1965). Honorary doctorates were received from the Universities of Ghent, Laval and
Montréal (Hamelin 1959, 25). In the heart of Grenoble, the former rue du Lycée
was renamed ‘rue Raoul Blanchard’. The 1,158 m summit on the private estate of
the Seminary of Québec in the Laurentian Highlands was named after him, and the
geography department of the University of Nice, in the city where he conducted his
final research project, was given his name, thanks to Jean Miège, its professor and his
former student (Hamelin 1973, 484).
Many who knew Raoul Blanchard personally admired him greatly. Raymond E.
Crist, who had worked with him in Grenoble, insisted:
He found his inspiration in the fresh air of field observations; he shunned the
miasma of methodology. A day in the field with le Maître was a never-to-be-forgot-
ten experience; he communicated his enthusiasm to his students as he carefully
deciphered the cultural landscape, the palimpsest presented by the successive
outcroppings of cultural strata superimposed on the physical background. He
could analyse the historical evolution of the cultural landscape in much the same
way that a palaeographer interprets an ancient piece of parchment . . . [For
many students] he was the ideal, their shining example, an ever-present source
of counsel and encouragement. We still have in our mind’s eye the rugged frame
of this great oak of a man, the eyes alight with learning and humour; and in our
ears the echoes of his booming eloquence in faultless and picturesque French,
filled with telling adjectives and apt metaphors, given savour by a certain highly
individualized mixture of caustic comments, spicy jokes, and innocent persiflage.
(Crist 1965, 602–3)

24 Raoul Blanchard
Yet, almost half a century after his death, the intellectual legacy of Blanchard has
faded, partly because he never wrote a major textbook that would influence a genera-
tion, but also because of his unwavering empiricism, exhaustive attention to detail,
avoidance of theorizing and rejection of methodological debate (Guichonnet and
Masseport 1975, 134).
Conclusion
Raoul Blanchard lived a long and remarkably productive life, having over 300 research
articles and books to his name, together with countless notes, review articles and briefer
book reviews (Anon. 1959; Grivot 1966). He drove himself hard, both in the study and
in the field, having learned from his father to take pleasure in tasks well done, and from
his mother to select words effectively (Rougier 1996, 118). The vigour with which he
expressed opinions and his penchant for sarcasm made him enemies as well as friends
(Gaillard 1965, 9). His formidable memory that rarely required a manuscript to be
modified, and his physical stamina, which held firm well into his eighties were, arguably,
unique (Blache 1966, 27). Blanchard ensured that Grenoble was not only the leading
centre of geographical education in provincial France but was also a place where schol-
ars dared to challenge views emanating from the Sorbonne (Fourny and Sgard 2007). In
his own words, ‘There is only one place where one can really do geography: Grenoble’
(cited by Rougier 1996, 123). His pupils occupied university chairs and taught in high
schools across France and Québec. His copious studies on Flanders, French Canada
and the Alps exemplify the traditions of Vidalian regional geography, whereas his work
in urban geography and his involvement with Alpine regionalism were pioneer ventures
in their time. Never one for modesty, he was fond of saying, ‘Some geographers spend
their lives trying to define geography. As for myself; I make it’ (Crist 1965, 602).
Acknowledgements
My sincere thanks to Hugh Prince, Ian Thompson and John Tuppen for advice and
encouragement.
Bibliography and Sources

1. OBITUARIES AND OTHER REFERENCES ON RAOUL BLANCHARD
Allix, A. (1966), ‘L’Ecole de Grenoble’, in Association des Amis de l’Université de
Grenoble, In Memoriam. Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965. Grenoble: Université de
Grenoble, 17–9.
Anon. (1932), Mélanges géographiques offerts par ses élèves à Raoul Blanchard. Grenoble: Institut
de Géographie Alpine.
— (1958), ‘Presentation of the Charles P. Daly Medal to Raoul Blanchard’, Geographical
Review 48, 106–7.

Raoul Blanchard 25
— (1959), ‘Liste des travaux de Raoul Blanchard’, Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 3,

35–45.
Ardaillon, E. (1901), ‘Les principes de la géographie moderne’, Bulletin de la Société de
Géographie de Lille 35, 269–90.
Association des Amis de l’Université de Grenoble (1966), In Memoriam. Raoul Blanchard,
1877–1965. Grenoble: Université de Grenoble.
Augustin, J.-P. (1997), ‘De la description de Montréal à l’ébauche d’une géographie
urbaine’, in J.-P. Augustin and V. Berdoulay (eds), Modernité et tradition au Canada.
Paris: L’Harmattan, 137–51.
Augustin, J.-P. and Berdoulay, V. (1997), ‘Introduction: un monde nouveau: modernité,
tradition and jeux de miroirs’, in J.-P. Augustin and V. Berdoulay (eds), Modernité
et tradition au Canada. Paris: L’Harmattan, 9–19.
Berdoulay, V. (1997), ‘Raoul Blanchard observateur de la modernisation québécoise’,
in J.-P. Augustin and V. Berdoulay (eds), Modernité et tradition au Canada. Paris:
L’Harmattan, 37–50.
— (2001), ‘Dire la ville comme un tout: la stratégie narrative de Raoul Blanchard à
propos de Grenoble’, in V. Berdoulay and P. Claval (eds), Aux débuts de l’urbanisme
français. Paris: l’Harmattan, 83–93.
Berdoulay, V. and Sénécal, G. (1996), ‘Raoul Blanchard au Québec: continuité ou rup-
ture?, in P. Claval and A.-L. Sanguin (eds), La géographie française à l’époque classique,
1918–1968. Paris: L’Harmattan, 133–46.
Berman, M. (1980), ‘Millicent Todd Bingham’, Professional Geographer 32, 199–204.
Blache, J. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 53, 361–70.
— (1966), ‘Raoul Blanchard à l’œuvre’, in Association des Amis de l’Université de
Grenoble, 20–31.
Beauregard, L. (1986), ‘Raoul Blanchard à travers sa géographie de Montréal’, Cahiers
de Géographie du Québec 30, 271–9.
Broc, N. (1993), ‘Homo geographicus. Radioscopie des géographes français de l’entre-
deux guerres, 1919–1939’, Annales de Géographie 102, 225–54.
— (2001), ‘Ecole de Grenoble contre école de Paris: les Alpes enjeu scientifique’, Revue
de Géographie Alpine 89, 95–105.
Cantineau, E. (1901), ‘Une visite à l’Institut de Géographie de l’Université de Lille’,
Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille 36, 114–35.
Carré, F. (1991), ‘Edouard Ardaillon, 1867–1926’, Hommes et Terres du Nord 113–19.
Chamussy, H. (2011), ‘Une invention des Alpes’, Géocarrefour 86, 169–78.
Claval, P. (1998), Histoire de la Géographie française de 1870 à nos jours. Paris: Nathan.
Clout, H. (2009), Patronage and the Production of Geographical Knowledge in France. The
Testimony of the First Hundred Regional Monographs, 1905–1966. London: RGS/IBG,
Historical Geography Research Series, 41.
Crist, R. E. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Geographical Review 55, 602–3.

26 Raoul Blanchard
Dagenais, P. (1964), ‘Hommage à la mémoire de Raoul Blanchard’, Revue de Géographie

de Montréal 18, 133–5.
Daniel-Rops (1958), ‘Préface’, in R. Blanchard (ed.), Les Alpes et leur déstin. Paris: Fayard,
5–6.
Daudel, C. (2010), Jacques Bethemont: géographe des fleuves. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Davy, G. (1966), ‘Témoignage’, in Association des Amis de l’Université de Grenoble, In
Memoriam. Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965. Grenoble: Université de Grenoble, 45–7.
De Martonne, E. (1924), ‘Geography in France’, American Geographical Society Research
Series 4(a), 1–70.
Debarbieux, B. (1993), ‘La nomination des espaces géographiques dans les Alpes entre
1880–1930’, in P. Claval (ed.), Autour de Vidal de la Blache. Paris: CNRS, 109–22.
Derruau, M. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard’, L’Information Géographique 29, 175–6.
Di Méo, G. (1997), ‘L’analyse du phénomène industriel et de ses implications géo-
graphiques au Canada français, d’après Raoul Blanchard’, in J.-P. Augustin and
V. Berdoulay (eds), Modernité et tradition au Canada. Paris: L’Harmattan, 177–89.
Dresch, J. and George, P. (1966), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Annales de Géographie
75, 1–5.
Dussart, F. (1966), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Bulletin de la Société Géographique de
Liège 2, 79–82.
Faucher, D. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Revue Géographique des Pyrénées et du
Sud-Ouest 36, 159–60.
Febvre, L. (1907), ‘Une région géographique: la Flandre’, Revue de Synthèse Historique 14,
92–4.
Fourny, M.-C. and Sgard, A. (eds) (2007), Ces géographes qui écrivent les Alpes. Grenoble:
Ascendances.
François-Poncet, A. (1966), ‘Témoignage’, in Association des Amis de l’Université de
Grenoble, 57–66.
Gaillard, L. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Hommes et Terres du Nord 8–9.
Gallois, L. (1906), ‘La Flandre, par Raoul Blanchard’, Annales de Géographie 15, 383–8.
Grenier, F. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Canadian Geographer 9, 101–4.
Grivot, F. (1966), ‘Bibliographie des publications de R. Blanchard’, Annales de Géographie
75, 5–25.
Guichonnet, P. (1984), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, in P. Pinchemel, M.-C. Robic
and J.-L. Tissier (eds), Deux siècles de géographie française: choix de textes. Paris: CTHS,
252–62.
Guichonnet, P. and Masseport, J. (1975), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, in P. George
(ed.), Les géographes français. Paris: CTHS, 133–44.
Hamelin, L.-E. (1959), ‘Raoul Blanchard’, Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 3, 13–26.
— (1961), ‘La géographie de Raoul Blanchard’, Canadian Geographer 5, 1–9.

Raoul Blanchard 27
— (1973), ‘Connaissance de Raoul Blanchard’, Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 17,

483–8.
Houbron, G. (1906), ‘Bibliographie: La Flandre, par Raoul Blanchard’, Bulletin de la
Société de Géographie de Lille 46, 277–9.
Institut de Géographie de l’Université Laval (1959), Mélanges géographiques canadiens offerts
à Raoul Blanchard. Québec: Presses Universitaires Laval.
Joumas, G. (2006), Gallouédec, géographe de la IIIe République. Orléans: Paradigme.
Larnaude, M. (1966), ‘Une réconfortante amitié’, in Association des Amis de l’Université
de Grenoble, In Memoriam. Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965. Grenoble: Université de
Grenoble, 77–9.
Lentacker, F. (1978), ‘La Flandre de Raoul Blanchard’, De Frans Nederlanden/Les Pays-Bas
Français 11–23.
— (1992), ‘Aux premiers temps de l’Institut de Géographie de Lille, 1899–1906’, Acta
Geographica 91, 24–34.
Pardé, M. (1957), ‘L’activité géographique en France: le maître Raoul Blanchard’,
Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 2, 153–65.
Perpillou, A. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard’, Acta Geographica 57, 1.
Perrin, C.-E. (1966), ‘Témoignage’, in Association des Amis de l’Université de Grenoble,
In Memoriam. Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965. Grenoble: Université de Grenoble,
105–8.
Robert, J. (1965), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965’, Norois 12, 215–17.
Rougier, H. (1996), ‘Raoul Blanchard, 1877–1965 et l’Ecole de Grenoble’, in P. Claval
and A.-L. Sanguin (eds), La géographie française à l’époque classique, 1918–1968. Paris:
Sanguin, A.-L. (1986), ‘Le paradigme régional, la pensée géographique et l’œuvre
québécoise de Raoul Blanchard’, Cahiers de Géographie du Québec 30, 176–88.
Sénécal, G. (1992), ‘Présentation. Du ‘Montréal’ de Blanchard à la reconquête de la
ville’, in R. Blanchard (ed.), Montréal: esquisse de géographie urbaine. Montréal: VLB,
9–43.
Simiand, F. (1906–9), ‘Bases géographiques de la vie sociale’, L’Année Sociologique 11,
723–32.
Tessier, A. (1960), ‘Une amitié précieuse’, in R. Blanchard (ed.), Le Canada Français.
Province de Québec. Paris: Fayard, 5–6.
Vallade, O. (2007), ‘Le reflet d’une identité’, in M.-C. Fourny and A. Sgard (eds), Ces
géographes qui écrivent les Alpes. Grenoble: Ascendances, 203–16.
Veitl, P. (1993), ‘Un géographe engagé. Raoul Blanchard et Grenoble, 1910–1930’,
Genèses 13, 98–117.
— (1994), ‘Raoul Blanchard: dire et faire les Alpes’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 84, 81–94.
— (1996), ‘Raoul Blanchard, un géographe engagé, 1918–1928’, in P. Claval and
A.-L. Sanguin (eds), La géographie française à l’époque classique, 1918–1968. Paris:

28 Raoul Blanchard
— (2001), ‘Entre étude scientifique et engagement social. L’Institut de Géographie

Alpine de Raoul Blanchard, laboratoire de la Région économique alpine’, Revue
2. SELECTED WORKS BY RAOUL BLANCHARD

1902 ‘La pluviosité de la plaine du Nord de la France’, Annales de Géographie 11,
203–20.
1903 ‘Le Val d’Orléans’, Annales de Géographie 12, 307–23.
1906a La Flandre: étude géographique de la plaine flamande en France, Belgique et Hollande.
Dunkirk: Société Dunkerquoise pour l’avancement des Lettres, des
Sciences et des Arts (reprinted by Famila et Patria, Handzame in 1970).
1906b La densité de population du département du Nord au XIXe siècle. Lille: Société de
Géographie de Lille & Danel.
1906c ‘Le Jura’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille 44, 141–8.
1907 ‘La Flandre’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille 47, 78–86.
1908 ‘Le Queyras’, Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Lille 50, 206–11.
1910 ‘Sixième excursion géographique interuniversitaire (Alpes occidentales,
1910)’, Annales de Géographie 19, 412–39.
1911 Grenoble: étude de géographie urbaine. Paris: Armand Colin.
1914 ‘Les genres de vie en Corse et leur évolution’, Recueil des Travaux de l’Institut
1915a ‘La Flandre, théâtre d’opérations militaires’, Revue de Paris 22, 104–27.
1915b ‘Au long du front occidental’, Recueil des Travaux de l’Institut de Géographie
Alpine 3,111–43.
1915c ‘La structure des Alpes’, Recueil des Travaux de l’Institut de Géographie Alpine 3,
163–227.
1916 ‘Annecy’, Recueil des Travaux de l’Institut de Géographie Alpine 4, 369–463.
1917a ‘L’industrie de la houille blanche dans les Alpes françaises’, Annales de
Géographie 26, 15–41.
1917b ‘Flanders’, Geographical Review 7, 417–33.
1918a ‘Vidal de la Blache’, Recueil des Travaux de l’Institut de Géographie Alpine 6,
371–3.
1918b ‘Les transformations économiques dues à la guerre, Grenoble et sa
région’, Revue de Paris 25(1), 742–62 [Part I]; 25(2) 161–89 [Part II].
1919a (with P. Arbos) Abrégé-manuel de géographie. Paris: Belin.
1919b (with M. Todd) Geography of France. Chicago and New York: Rand
McNally.
1921 ‘The natural regions of the French Alps’, Geographical Review 11, 31–49.

Raoul Blanchard 29
1922a Etude économique sur la région des Alpes françaises. Grenoble: Chambre de
Commerce.
1922b ‘L’houille blanche dans le Massif Central français’, Revue de Géographie
Alpine 10, 353–96.
1923a Les forces hydro-électriques pendant la guerre. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France.
1923b (with D. Faucher) Cours de géographie: La France et ses colonies. Paris:
Gédalge.
1924a ‘Geographical conditions of water power development’, Geographical
Review 14, 88–100.
1924b (with D. Faucher) Cours de géographie. L’Europe, Les grands pays du monde. Paris:
Gédalge.
1924c ‘L’électro-métallurgie et l’électro-chimie dans les Alpes françaises’, Revue
1925 Les Alpes Françaises. Paris: Armand Colin (revised editions 1929, 1934).
1925 (with D. Faucher) Cours de géographie: cours élémentaire. Paris: Gédalge.
1926a ‘Le relief dans l’Arabie centrale’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 14, 765–86.
1926b ‘L’industrie des chaux et ciments dans le Sud-Est de la France’, Revue de
Géographie Alpine 14, 5–186.
1926c La Corse. Grenoble: Rey.
1928a ‘L’industrie de la papeterie dans le Sud-Est de la France’, Revue de Géographie
Alpine 16, 225–376.
1928b ‘La grande industrie chimique dans le Sud-Est de la France’, Revue de
1928c ‘Une méthode de géographie urbaine’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 16,
193–214.
1928d Les Alpes françaises à vol d’oiseau. Grenoble: Arthaud.
1929 L’Asie occidentale, in P. Vidal de la Blache and L. Gallois (eds), Géographie
Universelle, vol. 8. Paris: Armand Colin.
1930a ‘Etudes canadiennes: I, La presqu’île de Gaspé’, Revue de Géographie Alpine
18, 5–112.
1930b ‘La répartition de la vigne dans les Alpes françaises’, Revue de Géographie
Alpine 18, 219–60.
1931 ‘Etudes canadiennes: II, Le rebord Sud de l’estuaire du Saint-Laurent’,
Revue de Géographie Alpine 19, 5–143.
1932 ‘Etudes canadiennes: III, Le rebord Nord de l’estuaire du Saint-Laurent’,
Revue de Géographie Alpine 20, 407–531.
1933a ‘Etudes canadiennes: IV, Le Saguenay et le lac Saint-Jean’, Revue de
1933b L’Amérique du Nord: Etats-Unis, Canada et Alaska. Paris: Fayard.

30 Raoul Blanchard
1933c ‘Notes sur les côtes de Colombie britannique et d’Alaska’, Revue de

1934a La Géographie de l’industrie. Montréal: Beauchemin.
1934b ‘Etudes canadiennes: V, Québec, esquisse de géographie urbaine’, Revue
1934c ‘En Haut-Piémont et Ligurie’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 22, 485–510.
1934 (with A. de Saint-Léger) Le Nord: géographie, histoire. Paris: Bourrelier.
1935a L’Est du Canada français. Province de Québec. Montréal: Beauchemin.
1935b Grenoble: étude de géographie urbaine, 3rd edn. Grenoble: Didier and Richard.
1935 (with R. E. Crist) A Geography of Europe. New York: Henry Holt.
1936 ‘Etudes canadiennes, deuxième série: I, La région du fleuve Saint-Laurent
entre Québec et Montréal’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 24, 1–189.
1937 ‘Etudes canadiennes, deuxième série: II, Les Cantons de l’Est’, Revue de
1938a ‘Etudes canadiennes, deuxième série: III, Les Laurentides’, Revue de
1938b Les Alpes occidentales. I, Les Préalpes françaises du Nord. Tours: Arrault.
1938–9 Géographie générale, 2 vols. Montréal: Beauchemin.
1939 ‘Etudes canadiennes, troisième série: I, La plaine de Montréal’, Revue de
1941a Les Alpes occidentales. II. Les cluses préalpines et le sillon alpin, 2 vols. Grenoble:
Arthaud.
1941b ‘Lucien Gallois’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 29, 505–12.
1943 Les Alpes occidentales. III. Les Grandes Alpes françaises du Nord; massifs centraux;
zone intra-alpine. Grenoble: Arthaud.
1944 Déboisement et reboisement dans les Préalpes françaises du Sud. Revue de
1945 Les Alpes occidentales. IV. Les Préalpes françaises du Sud, 2 vols. Grenoble:
Arthaud.
1947a ‘Etudes canadiennes, troisième série: II. Montréal, esquisse de géogra-
phie urbaine’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 35, 133–328.
1947b Le Centre du Canada français. Montréal: Beauchemin.
1949a ‘Etudes canadiennes, troisième série: III. Les pays de l’Ottawa’, Revue de
1949b Le Québec par l’image. Montréal: Beauchemin.
1949c ‘Etudes canadiennes, troisième série: IV. L’Abitibi-Témiscamigue’, Revue
1949d Les Alpes occidentales. V. Les Grandes Alpes françaises du Sud, vol. I. Grenoble:
Arthaud.

Raoul Blanchard 31
1950a La Mauricie. Trois-Rivières: Editions du Bien-Public.

1950b ‘Montréal. Esquisse de géographie urbaine’, Revue Canadienne de Géographie
4, 31–46.
1950c Les Alpes occidentales. V. Les Grandes Alpes françaises du Sud, vol. II. Grenoble:
Arthaud.
1951 ‘L’agriculture du versant piémontais des Alpes occidentales. Les basses
vallées’, Revue de Géographie Alpine 39, 231–87.
1952 Les Alpes occidentales. VI. Le versant piémontais, vol. I. Grenoble: Arthaud.
1953 L’Ouest du Canada français. Province de Québec, vol. I. Montréal et sa région.
Montréal: Beauchemin.
1954a Les Alpes occidentales. VI. Le versant piémontais, vol. II. Grenoble: Arthaud.
1954b L’Ouest du Canada français. Province de Québec, vol. II. Les pays de l’Ottawa,
L’Abitibi-Témiscamingue. Montréal: Beauchemin.
1956 Les Alpes occidentales. VII. Essai de synthèse. Grenoble: Arthaud.
1957 ‘L’Amérique anglo-saxonne’, in G. Chabot, R. Clozier and J. Beaujeu-
Garnier (eds), La géographie française au milieu du XXe siècle. Paris: Baillière,
245–7.
1958a Annecy. Essai de géographie urbaine. Annecy: Société des Amis du Vieil
Annecy.
1958b Les Alpes et leur déstin. Paris: Fayard.
1960a Le Comté de Nice: étude géographique. Paris: Fayard.
1960b Le Canada Français. Province de Québec, étude géographique. Paris: Fayard.
1961 Ma jeunesse sous l’aile de Péguy. Paris: Fayard.
1963a Je découvre l’université: Douai, Lille, Grenoble. Paris: Fayard.
1963b ‘Les débuts géographiques de Jules Blache’, in J. Blache (ed.), Pages
Géographiques. Gap: Institut de Géographie d’Aix-en-Provence, 5–9.
1964 Le Canada français. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Chronology
1877 Born on 4 September at Orléans
1888–97 Secondary education at Orléans and in Paris
1897–1900 Studied at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm in Paris
1900 Passed agrégation d’histoire et de géographie, heading the list
1900–6 Taught in lycées in Douai and Lille
1901 Married Jane de Lauwereyns on 10 April; the couple had four children:
Henriette (b. 1902), Guillaume (b. 1904), Antoinette (b. 1907) and Colette
(b.1915)

32 Raoul Blanchard
1906 Defended doctoral thesis, La Flandre; appointed to lectureship in geogra-

phy at the University of Grenoble
1913 Elevated to the chair of geography at the University of Grenoble;
founded the Receuil des Travaux de l’Institut de Géographie (renamed the Revue
de Géographie Alpine in 1920)
1917 Taught at Harvard as visiting professor
1922–35 Taught in the United States: Columbia (1922), Chicago (1927), Harvard
(1928–36), Berkeley (1932) and Middlebury College (1935)
1925 Visited the Middle East for three months
1930–49 Publication of ‘Etudes canadiennes’ as articles
1935–54 Publication of ‘Province de Québec’ in book form
1938–56 Publication of volumes of Les Alpes occidentales
1944–8 Served as Dean of the Faculté des Lettres at Grenoble
1948 Retired from the University of Grenoble
1948–50 Taught at Université de Montréal
1952, 1958 Taught at Université Laval, Québec
1955 Moved to Sèvres (3 rue Maréchal-Gallieni)
1965 Dies on 24 March, in Paris

Emmanuel de
Margerie
1862–1953
Hugh Clout
Emmanuel de Margerie was an independent scholar who was tutored at home but went
on to receive many distinctions for his achievements. He developed remarkable skills
as an analyst of published works in English and German, a physical disability having
limited his participation in fieldwork. Apart from his two earliest books, his main pub-
lications involved translation and elaboration, or critical compilation. De Margerie’s
masterpiece was La Face de La Terre, which brought the ideas of Eduard Suess and his
own digest of subsequent theories to French readers. As an independent spirit, he was
unsuited to administrative work, and his directorship of the Service de la Carte géologique
de l’Alsace et de la Lorraine was a disappointment. De Margerie’s later books were idiosyn-
cratic compendia; however the second part of his Etudes américaines provides a valuable
history of geological exploration in the United States during the nineteenth century.
De Margerie was on the editorial board of the Annales de Géographie for almost 60 years,
but his preference was for geology and his conception of geography was essentially
physical. With urbane manners and blessed with a formidable memory, he shared his
erudition with scientists young and old but, without university training, did not gather
disciples. His publications remain a remarkable testament in the history of environ-
mental science.
Education, Life and Work

Marie-Pierre-Martin-Emmanuel Jacquin de Margerie was born on 11 November 1862
in the family home at rue de Bellechasse in the fashionable Faubourg Saint-Germain in
Paris, adjacent to the house occupied by veteran geologist Elie de Beaumont (1798–1874)
(De Margerie 1943, 102). His father was 42-year-old Eugène-Marie-François Jacquin
de Margerie (1820–1900), who was recorded on the birth certificate as a ‘property
owner’, and his mother was 35-year-old Thérèse-Charlotte (née Denion) (1827–1911).

34 Emmanuel de Margerie
The couple had married on 8 April 1847. Eugène was a model of piety, Commander
of the Pontifical Order of Saint-Gregory-the-Great, author of books on the virtues
of Christian faith and very active in a number of Catholic societies (Vogt 1999, 3).
Emmanuel’s uncle Amédée wrote on philosophical, political and religious issues, and
was professor at the University of Nancy before becoming Dean of the Faculty of Arts
of the Institut Catholique in Lille (Jacob 1954a, 21). The Jacquin de Margerie family
originated from the village of Margerie near Vitry-le-François in the Champagne area
but, despite the form of their name, did not belong to the nobility. Long settled in Paris,
the dynasty produced an impressive array of politicians, magistrates, diplomats, aca-
demics and writers (Jacob 1954, cxxiii; Auffray 1976). Emmanuel’s paternal grandfather
Armand Jacquin de Margerie (1790–1867) had spent all his career working in the land
registry of the affluent Parisian suburb of Neuilly and brought up his children to obey
‘the firmest and most orthodox Catholic religion’ (De Margerie 1943, 97). His maternal
grandfather Charles Dennion (1787–1871) originated from Nantes, served as a book
keeper with some legal training, and rose through the ranks to administer the estates of
several members of the upper aristocracy, including the Prince de Talleyrand and the
Duc de Montmorency. Investing his savings in the purchase of land around the capital,
he owned substantial areas that would be sold for building during the phase of urban
growth that accompanied the Second Empire from 1852 to 1870.
As the wife of a profoundly Catholic husband, Thérèse-Charlotte gave birth to
13 children of whom only 3 survived infancy. Like his older siblings, Elisabeth-Rose
(1852–1910) and Charles-Marie-Eugène (1855–1934), Emmanuel enjoyed a privileged
childhood with annual visits to the family’s property in the Savoie Alps and other holi-
days in Normandy, Brittany and the Pyrenees. The children did not attend school but
were taught at home by a succession of private tutors, with Emmanuel developing
a particular aptitude for learning languages, drawing and nature study (Fourmarier
1954, 282; Tobien 2008). Much later in life, he would single out Albert Dupaigne (sci-
ence), Victor Tockert (German) and Helen de Veer (English) for particular gratitude
(De Margerie 1943, 109, 115). As a result of his unconventional training, he did not
take the school-leaving certificate (baccalauréat) and hence was not qualified to enroll at a
state university or to develop a career as an academic. On the advice of his father and
of Albert Dupaigne, he indulged his teenage interest in mountain scenery by attending
lectures delivered at the Institut Catholique by Albert de Lapparent (1839–1908) who
had just been appointed to a chair of geology after having worked for the Service de la
Carte géologique de la France for many years. De Lapparent was a Catholic believer
who, in 1877, accepted the newly created chair of geology and mineralogy at the
Institut Catholique de Paris that had been opened in 1875 (then called the Université
Catholique) as an alternative form of higher education to the state university in the cap-
ital, the Sorbonne. De Lapparent rapidly discovered his true vocation as a teacher in the
lecture room, the laboratory and in the field. After 1890, his interests turned increas-
ingly towards geography, as he sought to turn this subject towards the natural sciences
and away from its traditional close link with history in France (Broc 1977b, 274–5).
Emmanuel de Margerie was captivated by this introduction to the principles of
geology and early in 1877, while not yet 15 years of age, was admitted to the Société
géologique de France, with a strong recommendation from de Lapparent, and he
remained an active member for the rest of his life (Fourmarier 1954, 282). He contrib-
uted to many of its publications, received its Prestwich Prize in 1912 and was elected its
president in 1899 and 1919. During his second term of office, he chaired an investiga-
tion into alleged falsification of evidence by Jacques Deprat (1880–1935), former head
of the Service géologique de l’Indochine, which found against the defendant (Durand-
Delga 1990; Osborne 2000). In 1878, during his sixteenth year, he had attended the

Emmanuel de Margerie 35
First International Geological Congress at Paris, arguably on the strength of his lin-
guistic skills rather than his scientific knowledge (Beckinsale and Chorley 1991, 139).
Thereafter, he would attend geological conferences virtually every year and would be
present at every international congress.
In 1880, when only 18, he had been involved in a serious carriage accident in Berry
which fractured his left leg and, after surgery, left it slightly shorter than the other.
This disability made walking long distances painful, but not impossible, and certainly
exempted him from military service. It also required him to devote less time to fieldwork
and hiking than he would have liked and accentuated his early disposition towards read-
ing and compilation. Nonetheless, armed with his stick and displaying a slight limp,
‘he did not hesitate to walk along difficult tracks’. Belgian geologist Paul Fourmarier
recalled that, despite de Margerie’s infirmity and rather sickly appearance, he was still
able ‘to follow his companions during excursions to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of
the Swiss Geological Society, when he was more than seventy years of age’ (Fourmarier
1954, 282; Durand-Delga 1990).
In 1882, he joined the Société de Géographie de Paris and attended five interna-
tional congresses prior to World War I: Paris (1889), London (1895), Berlin (1899),
Geneva (1908) and Rome (1913). Between the two world wars he attended interna-
tional geographical congresses in Cairo (1925) where he chaired the section on physical
geography, Cambridge (1928), Paris (1931) where he was on the organizing commit-
tee, and Amsterdam (1938). He also became involved with the great project launched
by Albrecht Penck (1858–1945) (Geographers Vol. 7) to produce a world map at the scale
on 1:1,000,000, and organized an international meeting in Paris in December in order
to advance this venture (De Margerie 1914a). Unlike most French geographers at that
time, de Margerie was a man of independent means, who had no formal academic
qualifications, never had to seek employment and used his time and his talents as he
wished. He joined countless learned societies, attended meetings, served on commit-
tees and both summarized and reviewed scholarly work. He commanded personal
funds enabling him to attend conferences in France and abroad, thereby ensuring
his participation in international networks of professional geologists and geographers,
and serving as a link between them. He undertook fieldwork in the Pyrenees and the
Jura, and travelled widely. Between 1879 and 1915, he went abroad on 27 occasions,
mostly to Europe and also to North America (1891, 1912, 1913), the Urals (1897) and
even to Spitsbergen (1910) (De Margerie 1938, 11–12).
De Margerie’s real talent was as a translator of and critical commentator on German-
and English-language publications, working initially with Albert Heim (1849–1937) and
more especially with Eduard Suess (1831–1914) (Broc 1977a, 81–3). He was competent
in several more European languages and made his encyclopaedic knowledge available
to other researchers, who were sometimes daunted by his erudition. Fourmarier recalled
his youthful experience of de Margerie’s visits to the University of Liège to see geologist
Max Lohest (1857–1926), when ‘he liked to inform me of the latest books and articles
that had appeared and were relevant to me; he was anxious to know if I, too, was aware
of them. At that time when I was at the start of my career [and] I spent all my free
time on fieldwork for my research. I could not devote time to reading everything that
had appeared abroad. Often I had to reply in the negative, but now I confess to telling
the occasional white lie to avoid causing too much disappointment to my interrogator’
(Fourmarier 1954, 282).
During the first decade of his publishing career extending from 1882 to 1892, de
Margerie placed his articles, critical notes and reviews almost exclusively in geologi-
cal journals, but in 1894 he was invited by Paul Vidal de la Blache (Geographers Vol.
12) to join the editorial board of the fledgling Annales de Géographie in place of the

36 Emmanuel de Margerie
colonial geographer Marcel Dubois (Geographers Vol. 30) who had been its co-founder
in 1891. Lucien Gallois, a disciple and colleague of Vidal’s, also joined the board in
1894 and was an obvious choice (Claval 1998, 80) (on Gallois, see Geographers Vol. 24).
However, the selection of de Margerie, who had no formal educational qualifications
of any kind, did not teach in a university or other institution of higher learning, and
published mainly in geological periodicals, is less easy to explain. In addition, the tradi-
tional Catholicism that had been imparted to him by his father was very different from
the lay, Republican sentiments shared by Vidal and his immediate disciples.
Two possible explanations may be advanced for this surprising appointment. First,
by the early 1890s, de Margerie was well known in international scientific circles and
Vidal was anxious that his ‘new geography’ should be recognized as scientific, and
different from the study of administrative units and the memorization of population,
products, capitals, capes and bays that had passed as ‘geography’. Second, de Margerie
was acquainted with the publisher Auguste Armand Colin (1842–1900) and was friendly
with Max Leclerc (1864–1932), his dynamic son-in-law and manager of the business
(Anon. 1900; De Margerie 1931). Armand Colin was already committed to publishing
the Annales de Géographie and was well aware that de Margerie’s bibliographic talents
and scientific contacts might be of value to the journal. There is no way of knowing
precisely how the editorial relationship between Vidal and de Margerie came about,
but Colin and Leclerc had sufficient faith in the geologist-geographer of independent
means and spirit to commit their firm to many of his publishing ventures.
Emmanuel de Margerie became a member of the editorial board of the Annales de
Géographie from 1894 until shortly before his death in 1953,
serving as a faithful companion in its development and success. His opinion was
always listened to with respect. The breadth of his erudition, and his astonish-
ing intellectual curiosity enabled him to keep up to date with the progress of
knowledge in all the areas intimately related to geography: geological sciences,
cartography, etc. [These characteristics] explained the quality of his advice and
the exceptional value of his collaboration. (Anon. 1953, 1)
Over the years, de Margerie contributed numerous book reviews to the Annales de
Géographie, including commentaries on the doctoral monographs of some of Vidal’s
immediate disciples such as Emmanuel de Martonne (1873–1955), who researched the
physiography of the Transylvanian Carpathians, and Antoine Vacher (1873–1919),
who analysed the physical geography of the province of Berry in central France (De
Margerie 1908a, 1909) (on de Martonne and Vacher, see Geographers Vols 12 and 31,
respectively). He also provided an even-handed review of the regional geography of
France authored by Jean Brunhes (1869–1930), finding plenty to praise in the text, and
stressing its likely appeal to a wide readership, but criticizing some of the illustrations
(De Margerie 1921) (on Brunhes, see Geographers Vol. 25). Some of the close disciples of
Vidal de la Blache were critical of the aspects of the work of Brunhes, hence the selec-
tion of de Margerie to review his book may have been a strategic choice (Clout 2003b,
348). In fact, the reviewer apologized to readers that his appraisal came out a year
after the book had been published (De Margerie 1921, 379). By virtue of his position
in scientific networks, de Margerie was well placed to write obituaries of distinguished
geologists and physical geographers who died in old age, such as de Lapparent, Suess
and General Gaston de la Noë (1836–1902) (De Margerie 1908b, 1914b, 1902a). He
also used his sensitivity and tact to record the death of Vidal’s students (e.g. Lucien
Marc, 1877–1914) and of Vidal’s own son Joseph (1872–1915) who were killed during
World War I (De Margerie 1915, 1916). Lucien Marc completed doctoral work on West
Africa, and was the son-in-law of Franz Schrader, having married his second daughter,

Emmanuel de Margerie 37
Marie. Joseph Vidal de la Blache served in the Section historique de l’Etat-Major de

l’Armée and wrote a thesis on the valley of the Meuse. In 1912, de Margerie had rec-
ommended Brunhes to the banker Albert Kahn, who appointed him to Director of
the Archives de la Planète project and funded the chair that Brunhes occupied at the
prestigious Collège de France (Letter from de Margerie to Brunhes, 26 January 1912,
reproduced in Beausoleil 1993, 91–3).
By contrast, de Margerie contributed only three major articles to the Annales de
Géographie, dealing with international cartographic ventures, the significance of river
profiles for interpreting landscape formation and the characteristics of two ‘crater acci-
dents’ (Crater Lake, Oregon and Meteor Crater, Arizona) that he visited in 1912 on the
occasion of the Transcontinental Geographical Expedition across the United States
under the direction of William Morris Davis (1850–1934) (De Margerie and Raveneau
1900b; De Margerie 1910, 1913a; Clout 2004) (on Davis, see Geographers Vol. 5). His
pertinent observations, acute questioning and formidable knowledge of the literature
led Davis to declare: ‘Mr. de Margerie is better informed in the geography and geology
of the United States than most Americans, not excepting members of the Geographical
and Geological Surveys’ (cited by Fourmarier 1954, 287).
By the outbreak of World War I, de Margerie had passed 50 years of age and
remained in Paris to work on various projects. He became a member of the Commission
de Géographie du Service Géographique de l’Armée and presumably undertook carto-
graphic work to assist the war effort, although no trace of that activity has been found
(De Margerie 1938, 5; Berdoulay 1981, 32). In 1919, he was awarded the Cullum
Geographical Medal of the American Geographical Society, with the ceremony in Paris
being attended by members of the American Commission to Navigate Peace, includ-
ing geographers Mark Jefferson and Major Douglas W. Johnson. When presenting the
medal, Ambassador Hugh Campbell Wallace declared: ‘No geographer or geologist
in France has given so much assistance to the American Expeditionary Forces, and his
co-operation with the Geographical Section of the Army will not be forgotten by any
who have come in contact with it’ (Anon. 1919, 416). Accepting the award, de Margerie
praised American geological science and then commented:
During the last three years I had the pleasure of receiving the visit of friends
from the other side of the ocean, most of them members of the [American
Geographical] Society, but not always identified at once under the military dress
of the time. The very meager help I could give them in matters connected with
their official duty gave me occasion to see something of what American efficiency
could be, in those heroic days. I shall never forget the enthusiasm and unselfish-
ness of these gallant men. Major Johnson . . . can take for himself a good part
of that compliment. Let me name also my friend Dr. Isaiah Bowman, whose
departure from Paris, a short while ago, remains a source of deep regret to me.
(Anon. 1919, 417)
From these remarks one may infer that de Margerie assisted the American geographers
who provided cartographic evidence at the Peace Conference.
Following the return of Alsace and northern Lorraine to France after the conclu-
sion of World War I, Emmanuel de Margerie responded to a request to head the
Service de la Carte géologique de l’Alsace et de la Lorraine that replaced the German
Geologische Landesanstalt von Elsass-Lothringen. Following an order from Maréchal
Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929), he had already reported to the French government on the
mineral resources of the region and its surroundings, and his glowing reputation was
reinforced by receipt of the Cullum Medal (De Margerie 1938, 109). De Margerie’s
fluency in German was a further recommendation for him to fill the post, and many

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She made a swift movement—then seemed checked by a vision of its
futility. The other door closed quietly and heavily. Stripped of the pose that
served her for strength, the vanity which served her for modesty, Barbara
sat in the leather chair which Ted had abandoned and let her ugly
imaginings consume her.
CHAPTER XXI
WALTER’S SOLUTION
T HE Thorstads had not gone back to Mohawk. Mrs. Thorstad had said
that she would stay in St. Pierre until they heard further from Freda and
since it was the school vacation her husband had agreed. After the first
shock of disappearance they had accepted Freda’s letter at its face value and
decided to wait for news from her. It was all they could do, in fact. One
alternative, publicity, advertising her disappearance, would have done only
harm and have looked cruelly unnecessary in view of her farewell letter to
her father. The other alternative, setting private detectives to work, would
have been too expensive and again her letters did not justify that. They must
wait. Mrs. Thorstad, after a bit, did not brood, nor indeed appear to worry
greatly. She was quickly allied with clubdom and petty politics and was
busy. Her husband, trying to interest himself in stray free lectures at the
University and in the second hand bookstores, grew rather pallid and thin.
They stopped at an inexpensive boarding house on the West Side. It was
a place of adequate food, adequate cleanliness and no grace. Mrs.
Thorstad’s reputation as a prominent club woman stood her in good stead in
these rather constricted surroundings where most of the guests were men of
sapped masculinity, high busted women dividing their time between small
shopping and moving pictures. The men were persons of petty importance
and men of small independence, but there was one strangely incongruous
person in the company. He was the editor of the scandal paper of the city, a
thin, elderly, eye-glassed person of fifty, who had maintained, in spite of his
scavenging for scandals, some strange insistence on and delight in his own
respectability. He was personally so polite, so gentlemanly, so apparently
innocuous that it was almost incredible to think of him as the editor of the
sheet which sold itself so completely on the strength of its scandal that it
needed no advertising to float its circulation.
There was a natural attraction between him and Adeline Thorstad. They
had mutually a flare for politics and intense personal prejudices
complicating that instinctive liking. They often ran upon the same moral
catch words in their conversation. Robinson began to be a “booster” for
Mrs. Thorstad. He saw her political possibilities and commenced to call
attention to her here and there in his columns.
It was one of Mr. Thorstad’s few occasions of protest.
“Shall you tell him to keep your name out of his paper or shall I?”
“But he’s said nothing that isn’t awfully friendly, Eric. I hate to hurt his
feelings. I’m sure he meant to be kind.”
“You don’t want to be featured in ‘The Town Reporter,’ Adeline. It
doesn’t—it isn’t right.”
She let the stubborn lines settle over her face.
“I don’t think the ‘Town Reporter’ is as corrupt as almost any of the
others.”
“Look at the stuff it prints!”
“But, my dear, if it’s true, isn’t there a kind of courage in printing it?”
He looked at her in exasperation, measuring her and his own futility.
“So you want to let that go?”
“I think it’s better not to hurt him, Eric.”
He shut the door of their room sharply and yet when she saw him again
he had regained his quiet indifference to her doings. The friendship between
her and the editor continued to flourish.
They were in the dining-room on Tuesday, the third of August, when the
morning papers were brought in. It was a sticky, hot, lifeless morning.
Halves of grapefruit tipped wearily on the warmish plates. No one spoke
much. The head of the silk department in Green’s was hurrying through his
breakfast in order to get down to inspect the window trim. The stenographer
at Bailey and Marshall’s had slipped into her place. Mrs. Thorstad was alert
determinedly, Mr. Thorstad sagging a little beside her. Robinson picked up
his paper first, casually, and uttered a low whistle.
“That’s a bit of news,” he said.
Several people craned and reached for the papers they had been too
indolent to open. A headline ran across the page.
PROMINENT CLUBMAN KILLS HIMSELF IN
FASHIONABLE CLUB
WALTER GRANGE CARPENTER, CAPITALIST, SHOOTS SELF

FATALLY IN EARLY MORNING HOURS. CAUSE
OF SUICIDE MYSTERY.
They gathered around the news without a particle of sympathy. No one
cared. He was a mystery and sensation—that was all.
“Funny thing,” said Robinson. “I wonder what was at the bottom of
that.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if it was the Duffield girl,” Mrs. Thorstad said
rather casually.
“Who was that?”
“You know—the political organizer who was sent here for the
Republican women.”
“Was Carpenter in love with her?”
“I think so. I saw him—well, perhaps I shouldn’t say—”
Robinson gave her a keen glance and let the matter drop. But that night
after dinner he sought her out again, segregating her from the rest of the
people. Mr. Thorstad was not there.
“What was it you were saying about that Miss Duffield?”
She hedged a little.
“Oh, I don’t like to talk scandal, Mr. Robinson. I’m no gossip. I never
liked the woman. I always believed she made a great deal of trouble and I
know she was not a good influence on my daughter. But I have no wish to
malign her. If she is responsible for this tragedy, she and her free love
doctrines have indeed wrought havoc—”
She paused abruptly.
“I wish you’d tell me what you know,” said Robinson. “I’ll confide in
you, Mrs. Thorstad. I heard from a certain source to-day that Carpenter left
this Duffield women everything he possessed. Every one seems to know
they were seen around town constantly until she went away. There seems to
have been considerable expectation that they would marry—surprise that
they did not. Well—you can see that any information added—”
“But what good would it do?” She pressed him, her utilitarian little mind
anxious for results.
“I’d rather like to know why Carpenter shot himself. So would other
people. If this woman is a menace she should be exposed.”
“She should indeed. An interloper, making trouble, trying to run politics
—”
He surveyed her amusedly, familiar with outbreaks of spite, waiting for
his point to win itself.
“You knew her well.”
“I worked with her closely. A brilliant person—clever, modern. Modern
in the way that these Eastern young women are modern. I did not approve
of many things she did. I did not approve of some of the things she said.
Then there was an incident which convinced me.”
She went on, a little deft prodding keeping her in motion, telling the
story of having seen Walter Carpenter come to Margaret’s room and of
having seen the letter from Gregory with its protestation that he must see
her, that he wanted “to unloose her emotions—not fetter her in marriage.”
How those words had imprinted themselves on Mrs. Thorstad’s mind!
There was great satisfaction in Robinson’s face.
“And this Gregory?”
She had thought that out too.
“Why it must have been that Gregory Macmillan. He came here later and
she talked of knowing him. I heard Mrs. Flandon speak of it.”
“Ah, the Sinn Feiner! Why, it’s perfect.”
She had a moment of fearful doubt.
“You wouldn’t quote me? There’d be no libel—?”
“My dear lady, I’ve no money to spend on libel suits. I’ll never get
mixed up in one. Every bit of my stuff is looked over by a lawyer before it
sees the light of print. Don’t you worry. I’d never implicate a lady.
Scourging a vampire”—he fell into his grandiloquent press language again
—“is an entirely different matter.”
“There’s such a thing as justice,” said Mrs. Thorstad bridling.
He nodded with gravity. They might have been, from their appearance,
two kindly middle-aged persons discussing a kindly principle, so well did
their faces deceive their minds.
So it happened that the next issue of the ‘Town Reporter’ carried in its
headlines on the following day—
WAS MYSTERY OF SUICIDE OF RICH CLUBMAN ENTANGLED
IN FREE LOVE PROBLEM?
There followed an article of subtle insinuation written by the hand of an

adept. It crept around the edge of libel, telling only the facts that every one
knew, but in such proximity that the train of thought must be complete—
that one who knew anything of the people implicated could see that
Margaret Duffield (never named) believer in all “doctrines of free madness”
had “perhaps preyed upon the soul of the man.” And then after a little the
“Sinn Feiner” came into the article, he too coming from groups who knew
no “law but license.” Ugly intrigue—all of it—dragging its stain across the
corpse of Walter Carpenter.
The news had come to the Flandons at breakfast too. Gage had come
down first and picked up the newspaper while he was waiting for Helen and
the children. He read it at a glance and the blow made him a little dizzy.
Like a flood there came over him the quick sense of the utter blackness of
Walter’s mind—more than any sense of loss or pity came horror at the
baffled intellect which had caused the tragedy. He stood, reading,
moistening his lips as Helen entered and lifted the children to their chairs.
“Any news, Gage?”
He handed it to her silently.
“Oh, my God!” said Helen, “How terrible! How awful, Gage!”
He nodded and sat down in his chair, putting his head in his hands. She
read the article through.
“But why, do you suppose?”
Then she stopped, knowing the thought that must have come to him as it
came to her.
“Poor, poor Walter!”
She went around the table to Gage.
“You’ll go down of course, but take a cup of coffee first,” she said, her
hand on his shoulder.
He roused himself.
“All right.”
Some one telephoned for Gage and he said he would come at once to the
club. They went on with the form of breakfast. The children chattered. The
room shone with sunlight. Helen, through her shock and grief, caught a
glimpse of the shrinking of their trouble against this terrific final snuffing
out of life. Abashed at the comfort it gave her, she drew away from the
thought.
But it made her tender to Gage. It kept persisting, that thought. “It wasn’t
Gage. It might have been Gage. It might have been us. People like us do go
that far then. How horribly selfish this is. Poor Walter!” She suddenly
stopped short. She must telegraph Margaret. Margaret would have to know.
Whatever there had been between her and Carpenter, she must know.
Doubtless—perhaps—she would want to come to see him—Or would she?
She telegraphed Margaret as compassionately as possible. Yet it seemed
a little absurd to be too compassionate. Margaret wouldn’t like the shock
“broken.” She would want to know the facts.
The sun seemed brighter than it had been for days. Despite the grave
weight of sorrow on her spirit, Helen was calmed, attended by peace. She
was feeling the vast relief attendant on becoming absorbed in a trouble not
her own. It was not that her grief was not deep for Carpenter. He had been
Gage’s good friend and hers. And yet—it was almost as if in dying he had
deflected a tragedy from her, as if he had bought immunity for her with his
terrific price. She dared not tamper with the thought of what this might do
to Gage.
The mail man in his blue coat was coming up the steps. She opened the
door for him, anxious to do something, wondering if there would be a letter
from Margaret. There was. She laid the others aside and read that first. It
was a long letter full of thought, which at another time would have been
interesting. Margaret had wearied of Republicanism. She and many other
women were talking of the “League” again.
And Walter Carpenter lay dead. Was it relevant?
Helen put down the letter and looked through her others. There was one
from some hotel in Montana. She ripped it open and the first words startled
her so that she looked for the signature. It was signed by Freda Thorstad.
A swooning excitement came over Helen. She hardly dared read it.
Then, holding it crushed tightly, she went up to her own room. As she went
the children called to her. They wanted her to come and see the castle in the
sandbox.
“Soon,” she called to them, “I’ll be down soon. Mother’s busy—don’t
call me for a few minutes.”
She locked her door and read the letter. What had startled her was that
abrupt beginning “Asking for money is the hardest thing in the world—at
least nothing has ever been so hard before.” It went on “But I don’t know
what else to do, and I must do something. I can’t write any one else, partly
because no one else I know has enough money to send me and also because
I haven’t told any one except your husband about myself—and I suppose he
has told you. If he hasn’t he’ll tell you now that it is the truth. It’s this way.
My husband has been terribly sick and what money he had was stolen while
he was at the hotel before I got here. He’s still weak and of course he wants
to go home. But I haven’t dared tell him we haven’t any money because he
doesn’t know the maid picked his pockets while he was ill. We have to get
away from the hospital now that he’s well enough to travel—we don’t know
anybody in the city and there are his hospital bills to pay. The doctor told
me he would wait, but I can’t ask the nurses to do that. It seems almost
ridiculous for an able bodied person to be asking for money but we owe so
much more than I can earn that I must borrow. There doesn’t seem to be any
way to get money sometimes except by borrowing. I know I could pay it
back as soon as Gregory gets well again. I suppose you’ll wonder why I
don’t ask father. Well—he hasn’t as much money as we need. We need
nearly six hundred dollars to take Gregory to Ireland and pay the bills here.
Perhaps it would be better to get it from Gregory’s friends in Ireland. But I
know from what he’s told me that they all are trying so hard to do things for
the country with what little money they have that it would worry him to ask
them. And it would take too long. He mustn’t be worried, the doctors say,
and he must get back to his home soon. You know something about him for
I remember that I saw you at his lecture. He is really very wonderful and....
It isn’t as if I had a right to ask you either, except perhaps a kind of human
right.... You’ve been so kind to me, you and Mr. Flandon....”
Helen finished the letter with a rueful, very tired smile. Then she took it
into Gage’s room and laid it on his bureau where he would see it, when he
came in. He telephoned at noon to tell her that he was coming out; she kept
out of the way so that he would read the letter before she saw him.
He brought it to her and gave it back, folded.
“I suppose I should have told you that business but it was the girl’s
secret. She didn’t want it known and I stumbled on it.”
“I see,” she answered, inadequately.
“Looks like a bad situation for them, doesn’t it? I didn’t know, by the
way, where she had gone. I assumed she had gone to join him but I did
think Sable had driven her to do it. Evidently he sent for her.”
“And he nearly died.”
They paused in embarrassment. Helen held herself tautly.
“There’s an apology due you,” she began.
He held his hand out, deprecating it.
“No, please—you had every reason.” He changed the subject abruptly.
“Do we let her have the money?” He smiled for a minute. “Money’s
tight as hell. I haven’t got much in cash you know. But I don’t see how we
can refuse the girl.”
“We won’t,” said Helen.
“By the way, what I came out to say was that Walter’s lawyer thinks we
should send for Margaret Duffield. There’s a rumor that she is his legatee.
He had no family—his mother died last year. From what Pratt said he left it
all to Margaret. She’ll be rich.”
“I did wire her,” answered Helen, “an hour ago. I thought she ought to
know.”
“That’s good.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It was all in the paper. He shot himself a little after midnight. He was
alone in his room. It was evidently quite premeditated. There was a sealed
letter for his lawyer with instructions undoubtedly and everything was in
perfect order. He—he had simply decided to do it. And he has done it.
Something made him lie down—that’s all.”
He spoke reflectively, with a degree of abstraction that was surprising.
“Why do they think he did it?”
“Heat—not well physically. That’s what goes to the papers. Better
spread that. If the girl is involved, we’ll keep her name clear.”
“Oh, yes.”
“For Walter’s sake,” Gage went on. And then very slowly, he added, “I
wouldn’t like people to know that she got him.”
“Yet if it comes out that he left her everything, won’t people guess?”
“They won’t know. Nor do we know. Nobody knows except Walter and
he’s dead.”
They sent a second wire to Margaret requesting her presence for urgent
reasons and by night they had heard that she would come. The funeral was
to be on Friday.
It was Thursday evening when the “Town Reporter” bristled with ugly
headlines on the streets of St. Pierre. Walter’s body lay in the undertaking
“parlors” those ineffective substitutes for homes for those who die
homeless, in the brief period between their last hours among human kind
and the grave. No place except a home can indeed truly shelter the dead.
Walter lay inscrutably lonely, in the public parlor, mysterious in the death
which was a refusal to go on with life, a relinquishment so brave and so
cowardly that it always shocks observers into awe. As he lay there, a
raucous voiced newsboy outside the window ran down toward the main
throughfare, a bunch of “Town Reporters” under his arm, shouting, “All the
noos about the sooicide”—and in half an hour his papers were gone, some
bought openly, some bought hurriedly and shamefacedly. Hundreds of
people now knew the reason Elihu Robinson gave for the death of Walter
Carpenter, his version of the struggle in the stilled brain of the man he had
not known except by sight and hundreds of people as intimate with the
tragedy as he, wagged their heads and said wisely that this “was about the
truth of it,” with other and sundry comments on the corruption of the age
and particularly of the rich.
The Flandons read it with mixed disgust and anger. They knew it was the
kind of stain that only time could scrub away. It did not matter much to
Walter now that he was slandered. His suicide was a defiance of slander.
They were sorry for Margaret but not too much bothered by her reception of
such scandal if it came to her. It was only local scandal.
“The worst of it,” said Helen to Gage, “is tying Gregory Macmillan up
that way just as they were about to announce his marriage. I telephoned
Freda’s father this afternoon for I was going to tell him you had had a
business letter from her and knew where she was. It seemed wise. But
anyway he had just heard from her too. He was so happy, poor fellow. Now
to have this nasty scandal about his son-in-law will be another blow. I shall
go to see him and tell him that it’s an utter lie. I know from what Margaret
told me that there never was a thing between her and Macmillan.”
Mr. Thorstad had already taken the matter up with Elihu Robinson. He
had called him what he was and his white faced indignation was something
the editor preferred to submit to without resistance. But he was not without
trumps as usual.
“But who is your authority for saying that Macmillan was implicated
with this lady?” asked Mr. Thorstad, angrily.
He had not told that Macmillan was his son-in-law and the editor
wondered at his defense of Macmillan.
“My dear fellow,” he said with that touch of apologetic and righteous
concern with which he always met such attacks. “My dear fellow, your wife
told me that.”
CHAPTER XXII
THE MOURNERS
M ARGARET came, calm and yet clearly distressed beyond measure. It

was pathetic to see her control, to see that she could not even break
through it to the relief of abandonment. She was very white during the
day of the funeral and the ones succeeding it and her eyes met other eyes
somewhat reluctantly. She came on Friday morning and Helen had not been
able to persuade her to stay with them. She had gone to a hotel and from
there, quite simply to the parlors of the undertakers.
“Don’t wait for me, Helen—and I’d sooner be alone. I’ll be here a long
while, probably.”
Perhaps after all Walter and Margaret found relief in each other when the
grim parlor door was shut. At least at the funeral Margaret sat very quietly,
though the well-bred curious eyes of the little group of people strayed
unceasingly toward her. She went through it as she went through the
following days. It was soon known, before the will was probated, that she
was Walter’s legatee. There was a great deal of business to be done. Walter
had decided no doubt that the brief embarrassment of inheriting his fortune
was better than the recurrent fear of cramping poverty which had always
pursued her and of which she had told him. She saw the lawyers and his
business associates and discussed with them the best way of disposing of
Walter’s interests, and word of her coldness spread around rather quickly
and was considered to justify Mr. Robinson’s deductions.
Gage saw her at the funeral. He had not looked for her—had not felt
ready to see her. But in the semicircle of chairs facing the gray satin coffin,
he was so placed that his eyes met hers unexpectedly. When they did,
hostility glinted in his. “You got him,” they seemed to say—and hers looked
back steady, unrepentant, even though her mouth was drawn with pain and
sorrow.
It had hit Gage as it had Helen. The lightning had been drawn from him.
Walter’s death had roused in him an instinct of resistance which had been
dormant. He had no certain idea of what had passed between Walter and
Margaret but he knew what Carpenter’s point of view had been—how far
he had gone, how willing he had been to yield every concession to a woman
—to Margaret—in the belief that it would then be possible to build love on
a basis of comradeship. Walter had found failure, just how or why no one
knew except perhaps Margaret herself. Gage’s mind stumbled along
nervously, trying to analyze his and Walter’s failure. He remembered how
they had talked together about women, how Walter had said he would be
“willing to trust to their terms.” For some reason he lay dead of their terms.
And he himself—he had looked at himself in the glass an hour ago with a
kind of horror as if he saw himself for the first time in weeks. There was a
softening of his features it seemed to him, a look of dissipation, of
untrimmed thought, brooding. The memory of his face haunted him. That
was what came of being unwilling to trust to the terms of women. Either
way—
He looked across at Margaret again, quiet, firm, persistent through
tragedy, through all emotional upheaval, and a grim admiration shot
through his hostility. After all she was consistent. With all his admiration
for women, even at the height of his passion for Helen, he had never
connected her or any woman with ability to follow a line of action with
such consistency. He had some sense of what was going on in Margaret’s
mind—an apperception of her refusal to let this tragedy break her down.
He became conscious of Helen’s sigh. She sat beside him, her hands
folded loosely in her lap. The minister talked on, performing with decent
civility and entanglement of phrase, the rites of last courtesy for the dead.
Gage wondered what he and Helen would do. He was glad that the mess
about Freda Thorstad was cleared up. Not that it made any grave difference
except in a certain clearness of atmosphere. If she got a divorce she couldn’t
get it on those grounds. He wondered how their painfully sore minds could
be explained in a divorce court which was accustomed to dealing with
brutal incidents. Perhaps a separation would be better. He wondered how he
was going to provide for her decently. It was going to be a long job building
up the new practice. Things were breaking badly.
Some emphatic phrase of the minister, starting out of his droning talk,
brought Gage’s eyes back to the coffin. Strange how the sense of that silent
form within it gave him fresh energy. Life had got Walter. Women had got
him, in some obscure way. He felt his shoulders straighten with stubborn
impulse. They wouldn’t get him. Deftly and logically his thought became
practical. He would cut out all this thinking about women. He would—
perhaps he would get the Thornton business. It meant a big retainer. He
could have done it a few months ago. Now—he visualized old Thornton’s
tight mouth, keen eyes. He’d want value received. Have to get in shape—
cut out the booze—concentrate on business—men’s business. The actual
phrase took shape in his mind. Men’s business. By God, that was how
women got you. They got you thinking about them until you became
obsessed, obsessed with them and their business. It was so and it had
always been so. These new problems were not what people thought they
were. They were not sex stuff. Perhaps they altered the grain of woman—
changed her—but the adjustment of sex was as it always had been, between
each man and each woman. Let the women go on, be what they wanted, do
what they wanted. It made some of them better, some of them worse—put
new figures in the dance but it was the same dance. Even if it wasn’t the
minuet or the waltz there was still dancing. And there was choosing of
partners.
Every one stood up. Gage was standing too, with the rest, his vagrant
thoughts brought back from their wanderings to the ever shocking
realization that he was helping in the laying away of this friend of his and
the inevitable feeling that life was a short business for him and every one.
He fell back into triteness. You must play the game.
After it was all over he was standing beside Helen.
“I want to go to see Margaret,” said Helen. “I’ll go to her hotel now,
Gage.”
“Bring her home if you like,” answered Gage.
The ease of his tone startled Helen. She looked at him in quick surprise,
meeting his unexpected smile.
“I merely meant I thought I could be reasonably civil,” he said—and
with impulse, “I feel rather cleaned out, Helen. I’ll run down town now and
see what I can do before dinner.”
She thought, “He hasn’t had anything to drink for two days,” placing the
responsibility for his unwonted pleasantness on a practical basis. It cheered
her. She went to Margaret’s hotel and found her in her room, lying on her
bed and her head buried in the counterpane. It was the nearest to
abandonment that Helen had ever seen in her friend so she ventured to try
to comfort.
“It’s the awful blackness of his mind that I can’t bear,” said Margaret,
“the feeling he must have had that there was no way out.” She sat up and
looked at Helen somewhat wildly. “It frightens me too. For he had such a
good mind. He saw things straight. Perhaps there isn’t any way out. Perhaps
we are battering our heads against life and each other like helpless fools.”
“Did you love him?” asked Helen. It seemed to her the only vital point
just then.
Margaret threw her hands out futilely.
“I don’t know. I was afraid of what might happen if we married. Either
way it looked too dangerous. I was afraid of softening too much—of
lapsing into too much caring—or of not being able to care at all. He wasn’t
afraid—but I was. And—the rotten part is, Helen, that I wasn’t afraid for
him but for myself.”
She was hushed for a moment and then broke out again.
“It wasn’t for myself as myself. It was just that if our marriage hadn’t
been a miracle of success, it would have proved the case against women
again.”
“You mustn’t think any more than you can help,” said Helen. “It wasn’t
like Walter to want to cause you pain and I know he wouldn’t want you to
suffer now.”
“No, he was willing to do all the suffering,” said Margaret in bitter self-
mockery. “He did it too.”
She got hold of herself by one swift motion of her well-controlled mind
and stood up, brushing her hair back with the gesture Walter loved. “It’s not
your burden, poor girl. You have enough.”
“Not so many,” said Helen. “By the way, Margaret, you haven’t heard
about Freda Thorstad, have you?”
“Did she come back?”
“No—she wrote. She had married Gregory Macmillan secretly when he
was here. They sent her word that he had typhoid out West and she went to
him. Why she didn’t tell people is still a mystery.”
“Married him—Gregory? But she’d only known him four days.”
Helen nodded. “That’s just it. Isn’t it—” she stopped, fearing to wound.
“Magnificent—brave—foolish—” finished Margaret. Her voice broke
unaccustomedly. “It’s wonderful. Gregory will be a strange husband but if
she shares him with Ireland and—oh, it’s rather perfect. And so all that
nonsense about Gage being involved—”
“Was nonsense.”
Margaret did not ask further about Gage. She reverted to Freda and
Gregory. The news left her marveling, an envy that was wonder in her
remarks. She made no comparisons between Freda and herself and yet it
was clear that Freda wrought herself to another phase—a step on towards
some solution of thought.
Helen urged her to come to dinner.
“I’d rather not, I think. I’ll have a rest perhaps.”
“Then you’ll go out with us for a ride to-night?”
“Gage wouldn’t like it, would he?”
“He suggested your coming to dinner, my dear.”
They smiled at each other.
“Then I’ll go.” She turned swiftly to Helen. “Oh, work it out if you can,
Helen. Not working it out—is horrible.”
CHAPTER XXIII
RESPITE
F REDA was trying to mend a blouse. Her unskillful fingers pricked

themselves and it was obvious that even her laborious efforts could do
little to make the waist presentable. Its frayed cuffs were beyond
repairing. However, it would do until they got to Mohawk and she could get
the clothes which she had there. She had not written her mother to send her
anything. Nor had she spent any of the money the Flandons had sent for
such luxuries as new clothes. She had been uplifted when that check for a
thousand dollars—not for six hundred—had slipped out of the envelope
with Mrs. Flandon’s kind, congratulatory letter. Gregory’s three hundred
had been put back in his purse and then, as it gradually came over her
impractical mind that such a sum was totally inadequate to their need she
had told him that she had some money of her own—a little reserve which
had been sent to her. Naturally he had assumed her father had sent it and
later she thought she would tell him that it was a debt they had assumed and
make arrangements for paying it. Not now. He must not worry now about
the money. She looked across the room at him—their shabby little hotel
room, with its lace curtains pinned back for air and the shaky table desk
dragged up before the window. He had not been quite fit enough to travel
when they left the hospital, and she had insisted that he must try his strength
before they made the journey to Mohawk, the first lap on the way back to
Ireland. How eager he was to be off now—how impossible it was to check
him! She forgot the blouse and sat looking at him, sitting there unconscious
of her regard. His profile was outlined against the blank window opening,
still so thin, and yet so restored.
“It’s getting dark. You ought to stop now, Gregory. You’ll be worn out.”
He did not hear her. That was one of the things she had found out could
happen. Especially since this lot of mail had been forwarded from his
bureau, letters full of such terrible news for him from Ireland. His friends
were in prison—were killed. Devastation was spreading.
She rose, with a new air of maturity and crossed to him.
“It’s growing late.” This time she came behind his chair and bent her
cheek to his.
He moved absently.
“Yes, sweetheart—I’ll be soon through. I was writing to Larry’s widow,
poor girl. There seemed so much to say.”
“I know, but you must stop.” She used the appeal she had already
learned to use when he was bound to tax his fragile strength. “You’ll never
get back there unless you rest more.”
“Oh, yes I will. And when I do get back—how I’m going to start some
things in motion. It will be a terrible swift motion too. I’ve lost a sad
amount of time.”
Freda laughed and he looked at her. It was a laugh of pure amusement,
and so contagious that he joined her, jumping up from the letter to kiss her.
“No—you laughing rogue—not time lost in winning my bride. Mocker.”
Freda held him at arms length teasingly.
“I have you for a minute now, haven’t I?”
“You always have me. You don’t mind, darling, that they need me? You
wouldn’t—not share it with me?”
“Of course I share it. And I know I have you—when you remember me.”
He buried his lips in her hair and then drew her to his knees.
“Sweetheart, if you could know how they suffer—when you see—”
She composed herself to listen, knowing how it would be. He would
hold her close like this and tighter and tighter his arms would feel as he
explained and related. Then, in his excitement, he would loose her and
leave her, gently, while he paced up and down the room and forgot the
tenants in the next room and herself and everything in his impassioned
oratory.
So he was. That was Gregory. When he put her down she turned on the
light and picked up her sewing. It was not that she did not listen willingly.
She did. If she could not kindle in his flame she was warmed in the glow of
it. She too had come to care. Perhaps when they reached Ireland and she
saw for herself she would kindle too—she rather hoped so.
He stopped talking and his mind, relaxed, shot back to her.
“Do you feel well to-night, darling?”
“Of course. I’m the most indomitably healthy person you ever knew. I
can’t help it.”
“You’re so sweetly healthy that I keep forgetting to take care of you.”
She tossed the blouse from her restlessly and stretched her long arms
back of her head to make a cushion.
“It doesn’t bother me when you forget,” she told him. “I’m very glad
that it doesn’t, too. I’m glad I haven’t begun marriage by learning habits of
dependency. I think we’re rather lucky, Greg. Being us, as we are, with a
two day wedding trip and a crowning episode of typhoid and now a baby
and an Irish question ahead of us, we’ve learned how to stand alone. Mind
our own business instead of crowding into each other’s, you know.”
He did not know. A great deal of modern difficulty and problem making
had slipped by him. “You are an obscure young person,” he told her, “and
most divinely beautiful. I am going to get Francis Hart to paint you—like
that, with your head thrown back. I want a hundred paintings of you just to
compare with you, so that I can show that no painting can be as lovely as
you are.”
They spent a week in Mohawk and because Gregory found that Mr.
Thorstad knew Irish history with unexpected profundity and sympathy he
was content to spend much time with his father-in-law. They met on many
points, in the simplicity of their minds, the way they wound their thoughts
around simple philosophies instead of allowing the skeins of thought to
tangle—in the uncorrupted and untempted goodness of them both and their
fine appreciation of freedom—the freedom which in Mr. Thorstad had bade
his daughter seek life and in Gregory had tried to unloose the rigors of
Margaret Duffield. Gregory did not talk so much to Mrs. Thorstad. He was
apt, in the midst of some flight of hers, to look a little bewildered and then
become inattentive. She, however, took it for genius. The chastening which
she had suffered after that mistake of blackening Gregory’s name in
connection with Margaret had still some effect. She was anxious to wipe
that error out and to that end she worked very hard to establish the fame and
name of Gregory. His books were spread over the library table and she had
already, in characteristic method, started a book of clippings about him.
She spent a good deal of time with Freda. Freda was rather more gentle
than she had been, and interested honestly in many of the details of child
bearing that her mother dragged up from her memory on being questioned.
If Mrs. Thorstad felt disappointment in Freda, she tried very honestly to
conceal it but now and again there cropped out an involuntary trace of the
superiority which she as a modern woman was bound to feel over a
daughter who took so little interest in the progress of politics and listened so
much to her husband’s talk. She spoke of it once only and most tactfully.
“You must be careful not to be a reactionary, my dear. You are going
from the land of freedom and the land in which women are rising to every
dignity, to a country which may be—of course is bound to be—
comparatively unenlightened. I hope indeed that you have your children.
Two—or even three children—are very desirable. But you must not forget
that every woman owes a duty to herself in development and in keeping
abreast of the times which may not be neglected. I don’t want to hurt you,
dear. Of course I myself am perhaps a little exceptional in the breadth of my
outlook. But it is not personal ambition. It is for the sex. Did I tell you that
Mrs. Flandon talked to me when she saw me in St. Pierre about doing much
of the state organizing for the Republican women? She says she needs some
of my organizing ability. I shall help her of course. In fact I hope I may be
able to prevail upon your father to apply for a position at the University in
St. Pierre. I feel we have rather outgrown Mohawk.”
“But, mother, that means an instructorship again for father, and it’s a step
backward.”
“Not exactly that. Think of the advantages of living in the city—the
cultural advantages. And there is a great field open in municipal politics. I
have some strong friends there—and one gentleman—an editor—even went
so far as to say there might be a demand for me in public life in St. Pierre, if
I established residence there.”
“It would be pretty rough on father to pull up stakes here—”
The hint came again.
“My dear child, you must not be a reactionary. I do not like to see you
start out your married life with the idea of subordinating your life as an
individual to a husband, no matter how beloved he may be. It is not wise
and it is not necessary. Look back over our life. Have I ever for one moment
failed in my duty towards the home or towards my husband or child and has
it not been possible at the same time for me to keep progress before me

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Geographers Biobibliographical

Studies Volume 32 1st Edition Hayden

Geographers Biobibliographical Studies Volume 33 1st

Geographers Biobibliographical Studies Volume 38 1st

Hyperspectral Imaging (Volume 32) (Data Handling in

Fortschritte der Physik Progress of Physics Volume 32

Fortschritte der Physik Progress of Physics Volume 32

Fortschritte der Physik Progress of Physics Volume 32

Fortschritte der Physik Progress of Physics Volume 32

Fortschritte der Physik Progress of Physics Volume 32

Edited by Hayden Lorimer

50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway

First published 2013

© Hayden Lorimer, Charles W.J Withers and Contributors, 2013

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN: Hardback: 978-1-4725-1235-2

Series: Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies, volume 32

Introduction Hayden Lorimer and 1

Raoul Blanchard (1877–1965) Hugh Clout 6

Emmanuel de Margerie (1862–1953) Hugh Clout 33

Pierre Monbeig (1908–1987) Hugh Clout 54

Charles Robequain (1897–1963) Hugh Clout 79

Richard Lawton (1925–2010) Colin G. Pooley 104

William John Talbot (1908–1995) Michael E. Meadows 124

Antonín Strnad (1746–1799) Jan Kalvoda and 137

Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke (1791–1858) Elizabeth Baigent 149

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Elizabeth Baigent is Reader in the History of Geography at the University of

Hugh Clout is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at University

Jan Kalvoda is Professor of Physical Geography at Charles University in Prague.

Michael E. Meadows is Head of the Department of Environmental and Geographical

Colin G. Pooley is Professor of Social and Historical Geography at Lancaster

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This volume of Geographers: Biobibliographical Studies brings together essays on four

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Richard Lawton was a one-institution geographer, remaining at the University of

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development with de Capell Brooke, British geography’s hitherto unheralded midwife,

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Education, Life and Work

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inspector of schools and successful author of numerous textbooks (Joumas 2006). In

no-one impressed as much as Vidal de la Blache [1845–1917: Geographers Vol. 12].

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Scientiﬁc Ideas and Geographical Thought

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of a century, these monumental studies exceeded 2,000 pages of detailed description

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Inﬂuence and Spread of Ideas

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