THIS week is one in which to remember a modest but brilliant Scotsman: a cartographer who welcomed the greatest explorers to Scotland from all corners of the Earth; and who, quite literally, mapped the world.
There was a time when the name Bartholomew was synonymous with excellence in map-making. Every proud motor-car owner had a Bartholomew’s map tucked into his glove compartment, and posters displaying scenes of idyllic summer road trips assured the motoring public that “Bartholomew’s will keep you right”.
In 1860, when John George Bartholomew was born at 10 Comely Green Place, Edinburgh, his family’s maps had been guiding travellers for two generations; and by the age of 28, when he took over the management of the company, he already had the enthusiasm and far-sightedness that would yield great rewards in the years to come.
With an instinct for crowd-sourcing that was astonishingly ahead of its time, Bartholomew hit on a brilliant way of keeping his road maps updated. Recognising the huge popularity of cycling as a leisure pursuit, he simply invited members of the Cyclists’ Touring Club of Great Britain to submit their detailed findings to him, in return for a generous discount on the price of his maps. Eyewitness accounts of the condition of Britain’s roads started to pour into Bartholomew’s offices, giving their road maps the vital advantage of newness and accuracy: John Bartholomew and Son might not have had satellite imagery, but they had the next best thing!
The late Victorian era was a golden age of exploration, with many travellers returning from previously uncharted regions to tell astonishing stories of adventure and discovery. John George Bartholomew saw the potential for Scotland’s own geographical society, and in 1884, while walking on the beach at North Berwick, he suggested the idea to Agnes Livingstone Bruce, the daughter of David Livingstone. Bartholomew’s idea was met with the warmest approval: a prospectus was drafted that very day, and a significant number of Scottish peers, scientists and businessmen eagerly lent the fledgling society their support.
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In this way, John George Bartholomew was both a spark and a guiding light in the early days of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS). Far from wishing to steal the glory for himself, he was gentle and self-effacing, and was said to possess “a genius for friendship”. As honorary secretary of the RSGS, Bartholomew welcomed a succession of guest lecturers in the form of eminent explorers and scientists. He worked tirelessly with a team of influential council members and office-bearers to ensure that Scotland’s new geographical society grew in scope and stature.
Many of those explorers were returning from the polar regions, and it therefore seems particularly fitting that Bartholomew was responsible for establishing the name of Antarctica on maps. The term “Antarctic”, meaning “opposite to the Arctic”, has been used by writers since the first century AD to describe the uncharted regions around the South Pole. The name “Antarctica” first appeared in 1886, when Bartholomew prepared a map to accompany a report to the RSGS by the oceanographer Sir John Murray. The following year, Antarctica was clearly labelled on Bartholomew’s Handy Reference Atlas.
Bartholomew enjoyed close acquaintance with leading academics and travellers of the time, including Sir Ernest Shackleton, Dr William Bruce, HM Stanley and Cecil Rhodes, and he worked with many of them to represent their discoveries in map form. He collaborated with Sir John Murray to produce the maps from the HMS Challenger expedition, and in the early 1900s he worked with Murray again, in the publication of his Bathymetrical Survey Of The Fresh-water Lochs of Scotland.
To reflect the academic aspect of his work, Bartholomew named his Duncan Street map-making premises The Edinburgh Geographical Institute. This title proudly adorned the building’s Palladian frontage, an architectural feature which came from the Bartholomew family’s former home at Falcon Hall in Morningside.
Bartholomew’s living descendants include a number of geographers and cartographers. John Eric Bartholomew, himself a cartographer and geographer, says of what he thinks is his great-grandfather’s most important legacy: “Beyond a doubt, I have to say his perfection of coloured layer shading on maps, a technique for showing heights now adopted the world over by mapmakers.”
These maps were beautiful works of art, with soft greens and browns indicating low-lying areas, darker browns for high ground, and white for mountain summits; water depth was illustrated by carefully graduating tints of blue. This system was an innovation that Bartholomew had worked passionately to establish, and from 1880 onwards it became a much-loved feature of his maps.
ANOTHER lasting legacy of Bartholomew is the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. Its chief executive Mike Robinson says: “Back in 1884, aged only 24, John George Bartholomew was the driving force behind the founding of the RSGS, determined as he was to ensure Scotland benefited from having its own geographical charity. He saw it as an essential plank of education and critical in cementing Scotland’s place in international relations, trade and education. His greatest legacy surely is that 136 years later this small charity continues to deliver for Scotland, producing publications, journals, magazines and 100 public talks a year, and with a continuing network of some of the greatest minds and most adventurous spirits of our age.”
Bartholomew’s extraordinary achievements were recognised in 1910, when he was invited to become geographer and cartographer to the king for Scotland. He died 10 years later, in Sintra, Portugal, and yesterday marked the centenary of his death. A three-day gathering had been planned in Edinburgh for more than 130 of John George Bartholomew’s direct descendants and cousins to celebrate the occasion. This reunion has been postponed to April 2021, due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Jo Woolf is RSGS Writer-in-Residence and author of The Great Horizon – 50 Tales of Exploration, published by Sandstone Press
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