Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
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?
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
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)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George Calderon c.1901
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Captain of the 11
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George Calderon, 1912Recent Comments
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Many, many thanks for reprising, Johnnie, for I know how busy you are. How serendipitous that you had just seen a 'live' performance of Murnau's b&w Sunrise! I gather from... (March 14, 2025 at 10:21 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ March 8, 2025: Last evening, I watched a digital transfer of a black-and-white movie, made by an expatriate German in California nearly a hundred years ago, in a packed town... (March 10, 2025 at 4:36 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Your response here is (obviously) deeply informed... Thank you very much indeed. In comparing the coach ride to Simferopol in Heifitz's film with the chariot race in Ben-Hur... (March 5, 2025 at 10:01 am)
- John Pym on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ Black-and-white camerawork was, I suspect, as natural to the director of The Lady with the Little Dog as breathing in and out or eating his breakfast. I doubt that he was... (February 28, 2025 at 11:01 pm)
- Patrick Miles on Guest Post by John Pym: A Soviet film of ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ We are deeply favoured and honoured to publish on Calderonia the eminent film critic John Pym's magnificent tribute to Heifitz's film The Lady with the Little Dog, perfectly... (February 24, 2025 at 10:56 am)
Category Archives: Heroism and Adventure
15 September 1914
On this day, Calderon was thrown from his horse at the riding school. He was quite a short man (five foot nine and a half), slightly built. The horse tossed him against a wall and his back was very badly … Continue reading
Kittie
It should be clear from my posts of 18 and 27 August that Kittie Calderon felt deeply frustrated by her husband’s ‘finality’, as she called it, about going to the Front when no-one was asking him to enlist at the … Continue reading
Confusion, or subtlety?
From a hundred years on, it is difficult to make sense of Calderon’s new situation. If he was taking Hedley’s advice that the quickest way of getting to the Front was as a military interpreter, why was he continuing his … Continue reading
25 August 1914
On this day the first accounts of the Battle of Mons started appearing in British newspapers. The Times headed its main report ‘Namur Lost, German Success in Belgium’ and led off: ‘The battle is joined and has so far gone … Continue reading
Determined
Calderon’s approach to issues of the day (Russia, suffragism, unionism) was to study them in depth, analyse them, then decide what was the right course of action for him and stick to it through thick and thin. This was why … Continue reading
A biographer dreads…
A very successful biographer asked me how George Calderon died. I replied that he disappeared in the smoke of battle. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s lucky for you: you’ve got a clean ending, not long years of decline, dementia etc.’ As … Continue reading
3 August 1914
Of course the Adjutant turned him down – saying he was far too old. It must have been a bitter blow to Calderon, yet it is very unlikely that he showed it. He may have tried to reason, perhaps he … Continue reading
2 August 1914
Suddenly (he had no time to let Kittie know he was coming), George Calderon returned to London. On 1 August Germany and France mobilised, and the party holidaying on the Isle of Wight soon heard the news. Evey (Captain Pym) … Continue reading
The Peter Pan Factor
If ‘Adventure’ was essential to Calderon, as Kittie said, what part did this play in his so desperately wanting to get to the Front? Probably quite a lot, as my last quotation in ‘Thirty Quotes from George Calderon’ on this … Continue reading →