Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Captain of the 11
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon c.1901
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George Calderon, 1912
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Category Archives: Edwardian character
18 May 1915
May 18th. R.M.S. “ORSOVA” We’re nearing Malta. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure
Tagged ANZAC, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Captain Hogan, Catherine Lubbock, Dardanelles, Foxwold, Gallipoli, General William Birdwood, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Malta, Sibelius, The Great War, Violet Pym, World War I
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8 May 1915
Today Kittie accompanied George to Brockhurst, where they stayed two days, probably at a B&B called Warwick House run by a Mrs Seymour. On the train journey, it is highly probable that George bought The Times and read a sensational letter … Continue reading
7 May 1915: Farewell to friends
A telegram arrived at tea-time on the Friday [7 May 1915] saying he would be home that evening for one night’s leave only to return next day to Fort Brockhurst to await immediate orders to go on active service. His Mother, sister, … Continue reading
4 May 1915
On this day (a Tuesday) at Fort Brockhurst George received the following letter from Kittie’s lifelong friend Nina Astley, née Stewart, Nina Corbet by her first marriage: The Cottage at the Crossways Hoe Benham Newbury … Continue reading
26 April 1915
By one o’clock this morning all the remaining first-wave troops had been safely landed at V Beach, Helles. They began to dig themselves in and cut their way through the heavy barbed wire up the beach. The navy battered the … Continue reading
25 April 1915: The bloodbath begins
At 4.30 this morning the first ANZAC troops began landing at Z Beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula. They were not strongly opposed, as von Sanders’s strategy was to keep a light screen around the coast until it was clear where … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Achi Baba, ANZAC, Dardanelles, Dublin Fusiliers, Gallipoli, General William Birdwood, George Calderon, Ian Hamilton, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Lancashire Fusiliers, Liman von Sanders, Mal Tepe, Nigel Steel, Peter Hart, River Clyde, Royal Fusiliers, The Great War, World War I
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24 April 1915
The 23rd and 24th April were days of matchless beauty, and the glistening splendour of the sea and sky was a picture such as can only be found in the Aegean, and there only in days of early spring. To … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English
Tagged Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Ian Hamilton, Mudros, The Great War, World War I
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17 April 1915
This morning, at Brinsop Court in Herefordshire, Nina Astley (Lady Corbet by her first marriage) received a telegram from the War Office informing her that her son Sir Roland James Corbet (Jim) had been killed at Givenchy (see my post … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Acton Reynald, Brinsop Court, Constance Astley, Constance Sutton, Dick Sutton, Elizabeth Hayes, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Givenchy, Jim Corbet, Kittie Calderon, Lesbia Corbet, Nina Astley, Shropshire, Sir Richard Sutton, Sir Roland James Corbet, telegrams, The Great War, World War I
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10 April 1915: A professional soldier
Today the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst near Portsmouth was converted from a Service Battalion to a Reserve Battalion. It comes as a shock: George Calderon’s training as a lieutenant was over, and he could volunteer or … Continue reading
Life with the 9th Ox and Bucks
It is not quite clear from the wording of Kittie’s memoirs whether George had been coming home every weekend from Friday to Monday before starting a ‘machine gunnery course on Hayling Island’, or whether he was able to take such long weekends … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage
Tagged Arthur Maxwell Labouchere, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Hayling Island, Henry Newbolt, Kittie Calderon, Major Benson, Manolo Ordoño de Rosales, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Peel family, The Great War, William Rothenstein, World War I
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15 March 1915: The strain tells
After the naval bombardment at the Dardanelles was suspended on 8 March, the weather worsened but the highly energetic Commodore Roger Keyes was able to make some progress with the minesweeping by replacing trawlermen with Navy volunteers. On 11 March … Continue reading
Who was George Calderon (again)?
I first posted on this subject last year, 13 September. The reason I am touching on it again now is that a follower has very kindly sent me a cutting from the International New York Times of 23 January which is … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Albert Murray, Anton Chekhov, Ayana Mathis, biographies, biography, Charles Dickens, Donald Rayfield, Edward Thomas, Ernest J. Simmons, George Calderon, Jane Austen, John Aubrey, Patrick Miles, Ronald Hingley, Rupert Brooke, Ruth Scurr, Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas Mallon, Tom Wolfe, Vita Sackville-West, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare
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‘Black Pot’ and black holes
For the first two years that I was writing George Calderon’s biography, its working title was Black Pot: The Mysterious Life of George Calderon. The reason for this was not just that several people before me had failed to find significantly … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, Brothers Grimm, Charles Frohman, comments, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Kum Kale, Mabel Dearmer, Martin Shaw, Percy Lubbock, Peter Pan, Sedd el Bahr, Tahiti, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, The Lamp, William Caine, World War I
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Writers’ illnesses
Presumably George Calderon had recovered from the influenza that confined him to Fort Brockhurst for a fortnight; but if so, why did he come home on sick leave ‘still very ill and with a high temperature’, as Kittie described it? … Continue reading
The Scott syndrome
Two days ago, I happened to hear on Radio 3 Sarah Walker’s introduction to her ‘Choice’ on Essential Classics, which was Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antartica (sic). As I recall it now, she said that the composer was commissioned to write the … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Battle of the Brickstacks, biographies, biography, comments, Constantinople, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Ian Hamilton, Kittie Calderon, Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Robert Falcon Scott, Sinfonia Antartica, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Vaughan Williams, World War I, Ypres
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Hypothesis, or conspiracy theory?
Whilst writing Crime and Punishment Dostoevsky reminded himself in his notebook that he must ‘establish why Raskol’nikov killed the old woman’; although he had already suggested several reasons in the novel. The question ‘why George Calderon insisted on signing up at the … Continue reading →