Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon c.1901
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Captain of the 11
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906Recent Comments
- John Pym on Two anniversaries We are all, followers and occasional contributors, beholden to you, Patrick, for reminding us for ten years that the past is worth remembering and for keeping alive the... (August 17, 2024 at 1:06 pm)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Very many thanks for fleshing that point out -- and so entertainingly! (I love your reference to creative writing courses, which are a phobia of mine.) Although several... (August 2, 2024 at 11:03 am)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible When I say that the British Republic of Letters was dead by 1880, I don't mean to imply that thereafter there were no men and women outside universities, institutes and... (August 2, 2024 at 9:19 am)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Thank you for devoting valuable time to writing this fascinating Comment. If I may say so, it is awe-inspiring to see the author of a monumental work standing back from that... (July 31, 2024 at 5:32 pm)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible Male Professionals in Nineteenth Century Britain was a new departure for me. For most of my adult life I have worked on seventeenth and eighteenth century France. It is also... (July 24, 2024 at 11:31 am)
Category Archives: Heroism and Adventure
Two anniversaries
Commemoration of the tenth anniversary of this blog was elided. On 30 July 1914 George Calderon arrived on the Isle of Wight to spend a holiday with the Pym family and I began the blog on 30 July 2014 with … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Uncategorized
Tagged 'real time', anniversaries, biographies, biography, Brexit, British Expeditionary Force, Calderonia, candles, commemoration, comments, empathy, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Isle of Wight, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Pym family, The Great War, Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, World War I
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A second Family Bible
Laurence Brockliss, Emeritus Professor of History at Oxford University, is no stranger to Calderonia’s followers. For ten years he and his research team worked to create a relational database that crunched biographical information from online sites, archives, newspapers and other … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Andrew Tatham, Anthony Trollope, biographies, career mobility, Charles Dickens, Dennis Henry Wickham, digital history, Edwardianism, Edwardians, Family Bible, family histories, George Calderon, George Eliot, George Gissing, Harry Smith, Jane Austen, John Latham, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Brockliss, occupations, Oxbridge, professionals, professions, prosopographical studies, prosopography, public schools, relational databases, The Edwardian Era, The Great War, Thomas S. Boase, Victorians, women, World War I
4 Comments
‘Immaturity’ and ‘youth’ in poetry
I was amused (for reasons about to emerge) that the first hit I had for my last post, ‘Quetzalcoatl’, came from Mexico…but I was astonished that no-one wrote in to ask why on earth the poem was called ‘Quetzalcoatl’ and … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Aztecs, Communism, D.H. Lawrence, G.-J. Geitman, genocide, human sacrifice, immaturity, Imperial Lyceum, Joseph Stalin, Lyceum Poems, Mexico, Moscow, poetry, quetzal, Quetzalcoatl, rain, rainbows, Russia, Spanish Conquest, The Plumed Serpent, USSR, Wassily Kandinsky, youth
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From the diary of a writer-publisher: 29
5 April 2024 I have received from a cousin the above image of our grandfather’s regimental sword. This plate on its scabbard seems to supply some context to what I knew about his military career. He joined up in 1894 … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A Group Photograph, Alcaic metre, Andrew Tatham, anoraks, badges, British Expeditionary Force, brooches, Caitlin Pirie, Charles Miles, comments, Foreign Office, Friedrich Hölderlin, George Calderon, haikus, I Shall Not Be Away Long, Japan, Jim Miles, koi carp, military aid, NATO, Northamptonshire Regiment, paranoia, swords, The Clay Akita, The Great War, typos, Ukraine, verse translation, Vladimir Putin, World War I
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George Calderon: A complete new work surfaces
Garry Humphreys, author of a forthcoming book on Arthur Somervell (1863-1937), and I have now received from the archives of the Royal College of Music a link to the score of Somervell’s music for George’s ballet libretto The Blue Cloth (which … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Arthur Somervell, ballet, ballet libretti, Ballets Russes, Garry Humphreys, George Calderon, Heathland Lodge, Kittie Calderon, manuscripts, Martin Shaw, Michel Fokine, Moscow Art Theatre, Moscow Arts, musical score, Royal College of Music, stagecraft, The Blue Cloth, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, The Red Cloth, Well Walk, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
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Very Old Cambridge Tales 5: ‘Stone’s Story’
‘Will you be going to Russia again?’ I asked Stone as we arrived back at his rooms from the college dinner he had stood me. ‘Not if I can help it!’ he retorted, unlocking the door and walking straight across … Continue reading
Cambridge Tales 5: ‘East of the Rhine’ (Concluded)
One afternoon in the last week of November, there was a soft knock on the door of my room. Before me stood an elegantly thin woman in her late twenties, wearing an extremely expensive-looking bleu nuit cashmere coat with a … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged alcoholism, atrocities, Azita, Bosnia, Cambridge Tales, cemeteries, defiance, Eric Smith, genocide, Iran, massacres, militarism, NATO, Nazis, Persia, Rhine, Serbia, Srebrenica, Territorial Army, The British Army, ties, Vitez, war crimes, war graves, Winston Churchill, World War 2, Yugoslavia
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How would I write it now?
Many authors never re-read their own books. One can understand why. Some must feel that it’s not necessary as it can’t change anything (unless the book is about to have an ‘improved’ edition). Others, like George Orwell apparently, simply don’t … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Archie Ripley, Ashford, biographies, biography, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, Corbet family, Earlham, future biographer, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Gerge Orwell, Harvard University, Houghton Library, Kent, Kittie Calderon, Mrs Shapta, Nina Corbet, Percy Lubbock, Professor Rose, publishers, Sam&Sam, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
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No place like Home
Ukrainian literature is flourishing, even or especially as the war rages. Perhaps this will not surprise you, as whenever we see and hear Ukrainians on our televisions they are lively, articulate, cultured, witty, open to the world and dialogue, which … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged comments, Crimean Tatars, dystopias, Fedor Dostoevskii, folklore, Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, Maria Miniailo, Michael Pursglove, Natalia Pniushkova, novels, political allegory, realism, Russo-Afghan War, The Children of Grad, The Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukraine, Ukrainian literature, Utopias, Waterloo Fiction, William Golding
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Guest post by Damian Grant: ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ and ‘The Winter’s Tale’
This nineteenth-century engraving of Florizel and Perdita does indeed make them look — to use Lady Chatterley/Connie’s dismissive phrase about the Elizabethans — somewhat ‘upholstered’. In all the excitement — which has never quite subsided — about the sexual explicitness … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Snake', Algernon Swinburne, Byzantium, Charles Baudelaire, comments, Constance Reid, D.H. Lawrence, Florizel, Forest of Arden, George Eliot, High Park Wood, John James Audubon, John Keats, John Milton, Juno, Lady Chatterley, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Mary Russell Mitford, Michaelis, Mrs Bolton, Mrs Gaskell, Oliver Mellors, Perdita, Proserpina, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, sex, sexuality, Sir Clifford Chatterley, T.S. Eliot, The Elizabethans, The Great War, The Winter's Tale, W.B. Yeats, wild flowers, William Shakespeare, World War I, Wragby
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Some Calderonian footnotes to ‘Women in Love’
George Calderon was public-school, Oxford, backed by his wife’s unearned income, rather patriotic, perceived as conservative; D.H. Lawrence was a miner’s son, self-supporting and often penurious, rather oikophobic, perceived as revolutionary. What could they possibly have had in common? They … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Battle of the Somme, Breadalby, Catherine Brown, Centre Party, comments, Constance Garnett, D.H. Lawrence, Dwala, elopement, English Review, Ernest Weekley, Fanny Stepniak, Far End, Fathers and Sons, Ford Hueffer, Ford Madox Ford, Frieda Lawrence, Frieda Weekley, Garsington, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Hampstead, Ivan Turgenev, John Worthen, Kittie Calderon, polymathery, revolution, The Edwardians, The Great War, Thomas Sturge Moore, translation, Trinity College Oxford, Well Walk, William Rothenstein, Women in Love, World War I
9 Comments
50 years of ‘small publishing’: what has it taught me?
It has turned out that since Musk took over Twitter we cannot, after all, post our own Calderonia Tweets at the bottom of the Subscribe, Categories, Comments etc column on the right of the home page — though we can, … Continue reading →