Dr. Nathalie Ritchey, at 43; French scholar at Wellesley

At times it seemed as if Nathalie Ritchey was two people, a duality she used to enrich relationships with those she met in the different parts of her life as mother and scholar, friend and colleague, wife and administrator.

"This is the only French person I've met who can speak English as an American," said her Wellesley College colleague Catherine Masson, who is also from France. "Many people have said to me, 'If I'd not known she was French, I would have never guessed.' There was, in a way, an American Nathalie and a French one."

Dr. Ritchey, a professor who had chaired the French department at Wellesley College, died Thursday in her house in Westwood. She was 43 and had been diagnosed in December with stomach cancer.

"She has an elegance of mind, elegance of style when she writes, elegance of self," Masson said. "And beautiful -- physically, she was a beautiful woman because she was radiant."

A leading scholar internationally in the field of 19th-century French literature, she had been at Wellesley since 1994 and was a tenured full professor. Dr. Ritchey was finishing her second book and taught courses such as "Desire, Power, and Language in the 19th Century Novel," "Women of Ill Repute: Prostitution in 19th Century France," and "Artistic and Political Revolutions from 1789 to 1951: The Rise and Fall of Romanticism."

Diana Chapman Walsh, Wellesley's president, said in a statement that the college "is deeply shaken by the loss of this brilliant colleague. Nathalie Buchet Ritchey was a meticulous and original scholar of French literary history. Her devotion to the life of the mind inspired and excited her students and earned her the profound respect of all her professional colleagues. She was a strong and gentle leader who brought intensity, intelligence, and elegance to everything she did. She will be sorely missed here, and she will be long remembered."

Born in Brest, France, Nathalie Buchet "was a huge overachiever academically, right from the beginning," said her husband, James.

Dr. Ritchey received a high school diploma with highest honors at 16 and studied at L'Ecole Normale Superieure de Fontenay aux Roses and La Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. At 20 she wrote a master's thesis on Virginia Woolf and the following year was appointed an English professor.

Moving to the United States, she received a master's and a doctorate, both in French studies at Brown University, where her thesis adviser was Naomi Schor, a renowned literary critic and theorist who died in 2001.

"Nathalie has it all," Schor wrote of Dr. Ritchey in 1992. "A native speaker of French, a superbly trained product of the fiercely competitive system of the 'grande ecoles,' a near-native speaker of English, Nathalie has the potential to become a leading scholar in the field of French."

"She was recognized worldwide," Masson said. "I've received messages from France, from Ireland. We knew she would be known even more."

Although Dr. Ritchey was an excellent diplomat who helped guide the French department at Wellesley, Masson said, "she was somebody who was always ready to celebrate. She took the best of life. She always tried to make the best of everything."

And while she brought an intellectual intensity to her studies of gender and genre in French novels, she had a wonderful sense of humor, Masson said. "She was excellent at analyzing literature, and also playing with the words to give her articles a sense of playfulness," she said.

Before learning of her diagnosis, Masson said, she was planning to create a new course at the college, "In the Name of the Father," which would study the relationships in literature between daughters and fathers.

Dr. Ritchey's first marriage ended in divorce, and she met James Ritchey through an online service.

"We were one of the magical couples of the electronic age -- we met through match.com," her husband said. "People used to ask, 'How does a technical engineering marketing manager meet a French literature professor?' "

She had three children, he had two -- all 16 or younger. Dr. Ritchey spent her days juggling the competing demands on her time.

"The evenings would typically start with her trying to fix a meal," her husband said. "In French tradition, she viewed -- and I adopted, too -- the meal as a very important element. Despite the fact that the kids were doing soccer, football, hockey -- when they were there, we sat down together. That was the place that blended our families. We were really focused on bringing these two elements of our lives together, and dinner was where we did it."

Masson said she and others plan to work with Dr. Ritchey's mentors to complete and publish her second book, which she was working on when she became ill. Finishing her friend's work, Masson said, is a gift for Dr. Ritchey's 44th birthday, which she would have celebrated Friday .

"She was so generous," Masson said. "What impressed me in the hospital was that you could be two, three hours with her, she was not thinking of herself. She was always asking, 'How is this person doing, how is that person doing?' She loved to have people happy and celebrating around her. In every type of community she had this ability to make people happy. In every place she needed to create a closeness, and the ability for everyone to appreciate the best in every situation."

In addition to her husband, Dr. Ritchey leaves two daughters, Camille Rogers and Genny Rogers; a son, Charles Rogers; two stepsons, Isaiah Ritchey and Wyatt Ritchey; her parents, Jean-Claude and Nelly (Jamin) Buchet of Ploemeur, France; a brother, Jean-Marc Buchet of La Rochelle, France; and a sister, Laurence Jeanneau of Rennes, France.

A funeral service will be held at 10 a.m. tomorrow in First Parish of Westwood United Church . Burial will be in New Westwood Cemetery.