Francis Bernard
Bourdillon
(1883-1970)
Francis Bernard Bourdillon is known as Bernard
Childhood
He was born in Sussex and educated at Charterhouse.
By the age of 14 summer holidays were spent climbing: initially the Dents du
Midi and later in Grindelwald and Engelberg. As he had learnt some French, in
1900 his father sent him to Cassel to learn German. He shared an apartment with
an enthusiastic cyclist – in 18 months they had cycled 4000 km. In 1902 at
Balliol College, Oxford, he started reading Classics, but a year later changed
to Modern Languages. During the holidays in 1904 he spent 2 months at Grenoble
studying French.
Professional career
His first post was as Lecturer in German at University College, Reading, from 1908-1914. On taking the wartime medical examination in 1914 he was told he had had TB and could not join the army. Between 1913 and 1915 he was a Lecturer in Modern Languages at Balliol.
One morning in 1915 standing on Reading Station he
was talking to his colleague, the Professor of Geography at Reading, and learnt
he was also Director of a Government Department formed to study the problems of
a future peace treaty. The colleague offered Bernard a job then and there as
help was needed in relation to Poland. Bernard joined the same day and continued
working on the subject till after the Paris Peace Conference. He also worked on
it during the Silesian Plebiscite operation and again in the 1939-45 war. As
well as spending a lot of time in Poland, he learnt to read Russian as well as
Polish.
The Royal Institution for International Affairs was founded in Paris at Quai
d’Orsay, and Bernard was one of the founders. One day at a tea interval Maréchal
Foch appeared. Bernard was introduced to him by Général Le Rond. Bernard then
spent several months in Silesia while the League of Nations’ committee was
deciding on the frontier in Silesia. When he returned to England the Foreign
Office asked him to write a history of the Upper Silesian Commission.
In 1923 he was created a Commander of the British Empire. In 1924 he was
appointed Secretary of the Irish Boundary Commission. Despite a lot of work and
the submission of a report, political events dictated that the Government should
not officially accept it. In 1927, speaking Esperanto, he succeeded in being
understood on a trip round Poland, Romania and Hungary.
In the 1939-45 war he went back into International Affairs research, at first housed at Balliol College and later in the Foreign Office.
He was living just
outside Oxford and met there someone who had been at University College and who
had seen Bernard’s brother, Robert Benedict Bourdillon (1889-1971), who was
Junior Dean of the College at the time, show his colleagues how to climb in over
the roof of the College chapel – a demonstration made necessary when they
refused to believe it possible for undergraduates to get in by those means after
midnight.
Genealogy
Bernard spent a lot of time researching the family history, including writing a
Note on the Bourdillon Family in 1939.
He also exchanged many letters on the subject with Jules Stalla-Bourdillon
(1886-1963) between 1951 and 1955.
The most characteristic letter is that of
Jules Stalla-Bourdillon received in May 1951.
His other major interests included supporting the Anglican, Roman Catholic and
Orthodox Shrines at Walsingham in Norfolk and stamp collecting.