Pierre Lecomte du Noüy at his lab, Pasteur Institute, Department of Molecular Biophysics, Paris, c. 1930. Unknown photographer. University of Arizona Special Collections, MS174, Box 51.
Pierre André Léon Lecomte du Noüy, biophysicist and philosopher, was born in Paris in 1883. He spent much of his childhood in the town of Étretat, Normandy. In 1904, Lecomte du Noüy was drafted in the military, and assigned to the 26th Battalion of Chasseurs à Pied. He attended the Sorbonne in Paris, graduating from law school in 1907, although he never practiced law. His 1911 marriage to Jeanne Lucienne Eugénie Double ended in divorce in 1922. He married New York socialite Mary Bishop Harriman in 1923.
During World War I, Lecomte du Noüy served with the Chasseurs à Pied, then with a unit headed by physician Dr. Alexis Carrel. His first publication was about the cicatrization of wounds.
He went on to work at the Rockefeller Institute in New York beginning in 1920, and in 1927 for the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where his wife Mary worked alongside him. Mrs. Lecomte du Noüy served as a translator and laboratory assistant throughout their marriage. The couple escaped Nazi-occupied Paris in 1942, arriving in New York in 1943. Between this time and his death in 1947, Pierre Lecomte du Noüy traveled the U.S. on a lecture circuit describing his experiences in Paris under German occupation.
In his most well-known publication, Human Destiny, Du Noüy argued that science could not explain all evolutionary phenomena or the origin of life, and a transcendent cause, God, directed the evolutionary process.
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy on horseback in Canyon de Chelly, AZ, 1922. Photographer unknown. University of Arizona Special Collections, MS174
Travels in the West
Mary Du Noüy’s biography of her husband includes references to his travels in the West; after their marriage, she accompanied him on these trips as well. Her recountings provide hints regarding the circumstances in which the jewelry pieces might have been acquired, and also paint a vivid picture of his motivations.
Early Influences:
- As a young boy in France, he was entranced with American cowboy culture fueled by extensive reading, a result in part of frequent illnesses which required bed rest. Among other skills he picked up as a youth, he taught himself to rope.
Tales of ranch life had fascinated Pierre since early childhood. He was already an excellent rider and a fair roper. The arrival of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show had created a furor all over France, and renewed his yearning to lead the life of a cowboy (p. 39).
He was already sufficiently expert to impress some young cousins by catching their two Shetland ponies when he and his mother stopped at their home in Crétail during the summer of 1894 (p. 23).
- Le Comte du Noüy’s first trip to the U.S. was in 1902, and included stops in Texas and Wyoming.
From the day he set foot in Austin, Texas, where he fitted himself out and bought a horse for $50, Pierre was completely captivated by the West. He loved everything about it: the people, the climate, the desert, the coloring of the rocks, the sunsets, the starry nights spent in the open with his horse tethered beside him, and above all the feeling of liberty in the wide open spaces where he could ride for hours unhampered by fences, undisturbed by any sign of man (pp. 39-40).
- In 1906 and 1907, while serving in the military, Lecomte du Noüy was active in the Blue Star Cowboys Club, a group consisting of himself and five of his friends who shared a love of the U.S. West.
They occasionally galloped through the Bois de Boulogne or even the city streets dressed in chaps, rough shirts, colored scarves and sombreros, twirling their ropes above their heads and emitting bloodcurdling yells to startle the amused Parisians (p. 50).
The equipment had been bought from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show when it returned to the States after touring Europe. Pierre more than once took an active part in the performances and became fast friends with all the troupe from Cody down (pp. 50-51).
Letter to Lecomte du Noüy dated 1906 from Pedro Esquivel, a champion vaquero and star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, regarding Lecomte du Noüy’s opportunity to purchase horse gear from the show. University of Arizona Special Collections, MS174, Box 51.
- A Calgary Herald article from July 01, 1911 (p. 9), titled Texas on the Paris Stage, reported:
While Englishmen are often to be found in odd corners of our western prairies, they seldom go home and wrote dramas on the subject. But a Frenchman who used to live in Texas, Mr. Pierre Lecome du Nouy, has made such good use of his western experiences that [illegible] “Maud” has scored a hit at the Odeon theatre in Paris.
Although of the very best French family and destined to the bar. P. Lecomte du Nouy, after passing his legal examinations with brilliancy and practicing successfully for some time, decided to leave civilization behind him, and started to get as far from Paris as he could. He did it by working on a ranch in Texas for quite a long time, living the regular cowboy life.
- He took subsequent trips West throughout his life. Lecomte du Noüy’s destinations included Prescott Arizona in the summer of 1920 where he participated in the town’s Frontier Days.
Pierre Lecome du Noüy, Prescott, Arizona, date: 5 Juillet 1920. MS174, Box 51.
Pierre Lecomte du Noüy in his roping attire. Date on back: Mardi, 11 Fvre 1906, France. Location not identified but likely outside of Paris where he was stationed as a member of 26th Battalion of Chasseurs à Pied. Photographer unknown.
In 1922, he visited the Navajo Reservation, camping in Canyon de Chelly, staying with a trader in Chinle, and being hosted by Roman Hubbell in Ganado.
The rain is starting to fall; it is not funny!. . .Every ten minutes the road seems impassable but we pass and arrive around seven o’clock at the Ganado post where Ramon Hubbel [sic] and the whole Hubbel [sic] family, of Spanish descent and as such possessing the grand manner of the cavaliers, welcomes us. Don Ramon invites us, organizes a dinner, and puts the house at our disposal in the most amiable terms. After breakfast I show them some roping tricks on their insistence. They explain the name given me by the Navajo boys at Fort Defiance: ‘Ajichli’ (He who catches many animals with the lasso). (p. 120, citing letter from du Nouy to Mary, August 14-19, 1922)
In 1922, he visited the Navajo Reservation, camping in Canyon de Chelly, staying with a trader in Chinle, and being hosted by Roman Hubbell in Ganado.
The rain is starting to fall; it is not funny!. . .Every ten minutes the road seems impassable but we pass and arrive around seven o’clock at the Ganado post where Ramon Hubbel [sic] and the whole Hubbel [sic] family, of Spanish descent and as such possessing the grand manner of the cavaliers, welcomes us. Don Ramon invites us, organizes a dinner, and puts the house at our disposal in the most amiable terms. After breakfast I show them some roping tricks on their insistence. They explain the name given me by the Navajo boys at Fort Defiance: ‘Ajichli’ (He who catches many animals with the lasso). (p. 120, citing letter from du Noüy to Mary, August 14-19, 1922)
- His last trips to the West, to the Grand Canyon in the summer of 1938 when he also attended the Gallup Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial; to a ranch in Montana in 1943; and to a dude ranch in Bayfield, Colorado called Tee La Wuket in 1946, were in search of the peace and quiet that allowed him to write the book for which he is best remembered, Human Destiny (1947). Mary Lecomte du Noüy accompanied him in these forays.
Unfortunately, there is no travel diary in Lecomte du Noüy’s papers at UA. One book among these papers, a bound manuscript edition of his book, L’Homme Devant la Science (published posthumously in 1969), contains a handwritten page on stationery from the Bright Angel Lodge, Grand Canyon. The title page of this handwritten draft has a faded note, the legible portion reading: Commencée Paris 25 Dec 1937, with the words “Grand Canyon, Arizona” and “Juillet…. 1938.” The remaining text is too faint to decipher. This reference in the Le Comte du Noüy archives, plus a few blurry photo prints, are all that relate to his Southwestern travels.
The dates and places of Lecomte du Noüy’s travels recounted in Mary’s biography his wife wrote demonstrate that he would have had ample opportunity to purchase pieces of the jewelry in this collection well after the early 1920s, even into the mid-1940s.
Mary Lecomte du Noüy wrote (1955:136) that a bout of acute asthma prompted her to spend the winter of 1926-1927 convalescing in Arizona, presumably given the time of year in Southern Arizona. It is possible that she would have purchased some of the jewelry at this time. Yet she only referred to the collection as having been made by her husband.
Lecomte du Noüy could perhaps have purchased some of the jewelry specifically for his first wife Jeanne Lecomte du Noüy before their 1922 divorce, but one would imagine that she would have kept any jewelry from this marriage. Mary Lecomte du Noüy might have made the purchases herself alone or when she traveled with her husband, but simply failed to clarify this point upon donating it to ASM when she indicated that it was “mostly” collected by her husband in the 1920s (accession file 2022, ASM Registrar’s Office). There is no indication in any records or the biography that she was especially bitten by the Indian jewelry bug herself.
Researching the Collection
In an effort to corroborate the early 1920s date Mary Lecomte du Noüy provided for the jewelry items, Associate Curator of Ethnology Diane Dittemore examined the individual works, consulted published sources, perused the Lecomte du Noüy archives, and called upon colleagues in the field. Efforts to locate any Lecomte du Noüy descendants were not successful[ii]. Few photographs from his time in the West were among his papers, and none provided insight into the circumstances of the jewelry’s acquisition.[iii]
Clues to how Pierre Lecomte du Noüy might have acquired the jewelry were found in a biography, The Road to Human Destiny: A Life of Pierre Lecomte due Noüy, his wife Mary penned that was published in 1955.[iv] Her words at the dedication of the Lecomte du Noüy Room in the University of Arizona Physics Department on April 17, 1961, paint an intimate picture of what brought her husband to America, and clearly spawned his interest in Southwest Native arts, including jewelry:
He [Pierre] first came to the West when he was about nineteen years old (around 1903) and rode over what was then the open range, unhampered by fences, earning his way across the country by working as a cowhand in different ranches. The sight of this young Frenchman, attired in Western clothes, but with a monocle firmly screwed into his left eye must have aroused considerable astonishment and rough banter. But when the cowboys discovered that no bucking horse could dislodge either the ride or the monocle, they adopted him and nicknamed him “Glasseyed Pete.” I do not think he was ever happier in his life than during this trip and he always longed to come back, so I feel sure that he would have wanted to have his things here. (ASM accession file #2022)
[ii] Several family members visited the University of Arizona’s Special Collections in 2005, and using the addresses they provided, Dittemore attempted to contact them but did not receive replies. Most of the descendants live in France.
[iii] The majority of his personal archives that had been in Special Collections were returned to the family upon their request).
[iv] New York and London: Longmans, Green and Co., Inc.