Chauncey C. Loomis
Encyclopedia
Chauncey Chester Loomis Jr. (1 June 1930 – 17 March 2009) was a Dartmouth professor of English and American literature, Arctic historian, documentary maker, and author best known for Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer (1971), described as “a concise and intelligent introduction to the history of Arctic exploration.”
. He grew up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts
, and attended Philips Exeter Academy. He earned a B.A. from Princeton University
in 1952, and an M.A. from Columbia University
in 1955. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War
before returning to teach English and American literature first at the University of Vermont
and then at Dartmouth College
, Hanover, where he remained from 1963 to his retirement in 1997. He served as chair of the department from 1977 to 1980. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1966.
In 1968, he led an expedition to Greenland
, one of five expeditions to the Arctic he made during his lifetime. On this first trip, he received permission to disinter the body of Charles Francis Hall
, a Cincinnati journalist who in had made two attempts (1860–63 and 1864–69) to find the grave of Sir John Franklin, and who himself died in the course of an 1871 attempt to reach the North Pole. Rumours had suggested that Hall had not died of natural causes.
Loomis received a Smithsonian grant to go to Greenland, dig up Hall’s body, take samples of the hair and fingernails, and send them for forensic analysis. Although he succeeded in doing so, the results of the analysis were not conclusive: the remains contained traces of arsenic, which could indicate poisoning, but since arsenic was a component of many medicines, it is possible that Hall had inadvertently overdosed himself.
This research expedition inspired Loomis’s well-known book, Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer, published by Knopf in 1971. A 2001 article by Sara Wheeler in the New York Times notes:
The book has been maintained in print by the Modern Library and was the subject of a CBC television documentary in the early 1970s. In 1981, the National Geographic Society cited the book in its Atlas of the World by marking the location of Hall's grave on its map of Greenland and noting:
Chauncey C. Loomis wrote many essays about the Arctic, most notably “The Arctic Sublime,” which appeared in Nature and the Victorian Imagination, edited by U.C. Knoepflmacher and G.B. Tennyson (University of California Press, 1977). This article focuses on the watercolours and drawings of early Arctic explorers and their relationship to their journals and narratives. He also wrote many reviews of books about the North for the London Review of Books
as well as articles about Thackeray, Joyce, Twain, and Stephen Crane for scholarly journals.
In 1996, Loomis, with art historian Constance Martin, annotated and wrote the introduction for an illustrated edition of Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853 by Elisha Kent Kane (R.R. Donnelley & Sons, 1996). He was a lifelong member of the Arctic Institute of North America.
Loomis was an avid fly fisherman and a keen photographer, and travelled to Peru, Kenya, and Sikkim, to photograph archeological sites, people, and wildlife. In 1964, he made a CBS documentary about muskoxen in Alaska, titled Wild River, Wild Beasts.
In retirement, he served on many boards and through the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation established a fund to help students from Berkshire County High School attend college. After his death, the Foundation received a $2 million bequest from his estate directed to a variety of education, health, social service, art and environmental organizations.
He died of lung cancer at Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
, at the age of 78.
“The Arctic Sublime,” in U.C. Knoepflmacher and G.B. Tennyson (eds.), Nature and the Victorian Imagination, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1977, pp. 95–112. ISBN 0520032292 http://books.google.ca/books?id=BJLcPTZsEpAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Nature+and+the+Victorian+Imagination&hl=en&ei=NYdNTYuPEYGB8gb4xKWrDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Arctic Profiles: Ebierbing (ca. 1837-ca. 1881),” Arctic, v. 39, no. 2, June 1986, p. 186-187. http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-2-186.pdf
“Arctic Profiles: Charles Francis Hall (1821-1871),” Arctic, v. 35, no. 3, Sept. 1982, p. 442-443. http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic35-3-442.pdf
Obituary: Constance Martin, Arctic, vol. 62, no. 3, September 2009, pp. 361–62.
Appreciation: http://visionsnorth.blogspot.com/2009/09/chauncey-loomis-1930-2009.html
Atlas of the World: National Geographic Society, 5th edition, Washington, D.C., 1981.
Biography
Chauncey Chester Loomis Jr. was born in New York City in 1930, the youngest of three sons of an industrial chemist and businessman, Chauncey C. Loomis, and his wife Elizabeth (née McLanahan). He was the brother of Stanley LoomisStanley Loomis
Stanley Loomis was the author of four books on French history: Du Barry , Paris in the Terror , A Crime of Passion , and The Fatal Friendship . Paris in the Terror was named one of the “books of the century” by the University of California, Berkeley...
. He grew up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Stockbridge is a town in Berkshire County in Western Massachusetts. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,947 at the 2010 census...
, and attended Philips Exeter Academy. He earned a B.A. from Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
in 1952, and an M.A. from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in 1955. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
before returning to teach English and American literature first at the University of Vermont
University of Vermont
The University of Vermont comprises seven undergraduate schools, an honors college, a graduate college, and a college of medicine. The Honors College does not offer its own degrees; students in the Honors College concurrently enroll in one of the university's seven undergraduate colleges or...
and then at Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, Hanover, where he remained from 1963 to his retirement in 1997. He served as chair of the department from 1977 to 1980. He completed his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1966.
In 1968, he led an expedition to Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...
, one of five expeditions to the Arctic he made during his lifetime. On this first trip, he received permission to disinter the body of Charles Francis Hall
Charles Francis Hall
Charles Francis Hall was an American Arctic explorer. Little is known of Hall's early life. He was born in the state of Vermont, but while he was still a child his family moved to Rochester, New Hampshire, where, as a boy, he was apprenticed to a blacksmith. In the 1840s he married and drifted...
, a Cincinnati journalist who in had made two attempts (1860–63 and 1864–69) to find the grave of Sir John Franklin, and who himself died in the course of an 1871 attempt to reach the North Pole. Rumours had suggested that Hall had not died of natural causes.
Loomis received a Smithsonian grant to go to Greenland, dig up Hall’s body, take samples of the hair and fingernails, and send them for forensic analysis. Although he succeeded in doing so, the results of the analysis were not conclusive: the remains contained traces of arsenic, which could indicate poisoning, but since arsenic was a component of many medicines, it is possible that Hall had inadvertently overdosed himself.
This research expedition inspired Loomis’s well-known book, Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer, published by Knopf in 1971. A 2001 article by Sara Wheeler in the New York Times notes:
- Chauncey Loomis [is an]… accomplished writer … and his “Weird and Tragic Shores,” recently reissued ... in the Modern Library’s Exploration Series, unravels the expedition brilliantly and also offers a concise and intelligent introduction to the history of Arctic exploration. … Loomis conjures flesh and blood from the flimsy old journals and lifts the story from the pincers of the pack ice into the warm, fathomless and infinitely more thrilling realm of the human spirit.
The book has been maintained in print by the Modern Library and was the subject of a CBC television documentary in the early 1970s. In 1981, the National Geographic Society cited the book in its Atlas of the World by marking the location of Hall's grave on its map of Greenland and noting:
- A dissension-plagued U.S. expedition to the North Pole was disrupted when leader Charles Francis Hall died here in 1871. Permafrost preserved his body, which was exhumed in 1968 by Chauncey Loomis, who found that Hall had been poisoned with arsenic.
Chauncey C. Loomis wrote many essays about the Arctic, most notably “The Arctic Sublime,” which appeared in Nature and the Victorian Imagination, edited by U.C. Knoepflmacher and G.B. Tennyson (University of California Press, 1977). This article focuses on the watercolours and drawings of early Arctic explorers and their relationship to their journals and narratives. He also wrote many reviews of books about the North for the London Review of Books
London Review of Books
The London Review of Books is a fortnightly British magazine of literary and intellectual essays.-History:The LRB was founded in 1979, during the year-long lock-out at The Times, by publisher A...
as well as articles about Thackeray, Joyce, Twain, and Stephen Crane for scholarly journals.
In 1996, Loomis, with art historian Constance Martin, annotated and wrote the introduction for an illustrated edition of Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853 by Elisha Kent Kane (R.R. Donnelley & Sons, 1996). He was a lifelong member of the Arctic Institute of North America.
Loomis was an avid fly fisherman and a keen photographer, and travelled to Peru, Kenya, and Sikkim, to photograph archeological sites, people, and wildlife. In 1964, he made a CBS documentary about muskoxen in Alaska, titled Wild River, Wild Beasts.
In retirement, he served on many boards and through the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation established a fund to help students from Berkshire County High School attend college. After his death, the Foundation received a $2 million bequest from his estate directed to a variety of education, health, social service, art and environmental organizations.
He died of lung cancer at Fairview Hospital in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Great Barrington is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,104 at the 2010 census. Both a summer resort and home to Ski Butternut, Great Barrington includes the villages of Van...
, at the age of 78.
Selected published works
Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971, ISBN 0394451317. http://openlibrary.org/books/OL5698980M/Weird_and_tragic_shores Translated into French as Le Robinson de la banquise, published in Paris by Paulsen, 2007.“The Arctic Sublime,” in U.C. Knoepflmacher and G.B. Tennyson (eds.), Nature and the Victorian Imagination, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1977, pp. 95–112. ISBN 0520032292 http://books.google.ca/books?id=BJLcPTZsEpAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Nature+and+the+Victorian+Imagination&hl=en&ei=NYdNTYuPEYGB8gb4xKWrDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
“Arctic Profiles: Ebierbing (ca. 1837-ca. 1881),” Arctic, v. 39, no. 2, June 1986, p. 186-187. http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic39-2-186.pdf
“Arctic Profiles: Charles Francis Hall (1821-1871),” Arctic, v. 35, no. 3, Sept. 1982, p. 442-443. http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic35-3-442.pdf
Edited work
Kane, E.K., Arctic Explorations: The Second Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, 1853, 54, 55. Edited by Chauncey Loomis and Constance Martin. Chicago: Donnelley & Sons, Lakeside Classic Series, 1996.Further Information
WorldCat listing: http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Loomis%2C+Chauncey&dblist=638&fq=ap%3A%22loomis%2C+chauncey+c%22&qt=facet_ap%3AObituary: Constance Martin, Arctic, vol. 62, no. 3, September 2009, pp. 361–62.
Appreciation: http://visionsnorth.blogspot.com/2009/09/chauncey-loomis-1930-2009.html
Atlas of the World: National Geographic Society, 5th edition, Washington, D.C., 1981.