Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
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 Calderon c.1901
Captain of the 11
George Calderon, 1912
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Category Archives: Edwardian English
‘…but Mr Jones does look a nice dog’
After enduring a long bout of illness and the first anniversary of George’s disappearance at Gallipoli, in the summer of 1916 Kittie decided she must channel her energies into a number of useful and therapeutic activities. One of these was … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Archie Ripley, Battle of the Somme, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Clement Quinn, coal mining, comments, Dardanelles, Eric Gill, Gallipoli, George Calderon, India, John Masefield, Jones, Joseph Cribb, Katharine Ripley, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Lucknow, Mr Jones, photographs, Robert Holmes, Sheffield, soldiers' letters, The Great War, The Raj, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I, Ypres, Zeppelins
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Guest post: Clare Hopkins, ‘One Man and his College’
Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Morse or Lewis will know that Oxford Colleges are well supplied with portraits. Founders, archbishops, prime ministers, and Nobel Prize winners gaze grandly down from the panelled walls of Dining Halls. Smaller … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Archibald Ripley, Archie Ripley, Arnold Pienne, Arthur Lowry, athletics, biography, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, Downy V. Green, Eastcote, Frederick Hollyer, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Gryphon Club, Harold Dowdall, Henry Woods, Herbert Blakiston, Hugh Legge, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Michael Furse, Miners Strike 1912, Percy Lubbock, Rugby, Smoking Concert, St Ives College, The Fountain, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Trinity College Oxford, Trinity College War Memorial, World War I
6 Comments
George’s alma maters
I little thought, when I visited the archives of Trinity College, Oxford, on 4 August 2011 to research aspects of George Calderon’s undergraduate years there, that five years later I would still be in invaluable contact with the Archivist, Clare … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged alma mater, biographies, biography, Calderonia, Clare Hopkins, comments, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, L.W.B. Brockliss, One Man and his College, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, University of Oxford, World War I
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‘He became his admirers…’
W.H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ describes Yeats’s death in January 1939, culminating in: ‘The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers.’ I often think the word should be ‘readers’ rather than ‘admirers’, for as Auden himself … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged British Expeditionary Force, commemoration, comments, For the Fallen, George Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Remembrance Day, Rupert Brooke, The Great War, The Soldier, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, war memorials, World War I
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A letter to the ‘Manchester Guardian’, 12 May 1919
Sir, — The recent notice in the “Times” of George Calderon’s death in battle on Gallipoli tells his friends that they may hope no longer. To us the loss is inexpressible. That which the theatre has suffered cannot, of course, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Annie Horniman, comments, Dardanelles, Gaiety Theatre Manchester, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Manchester Guardian, Manchester Repertory Company, military interpreters, obituaries, Percy Lubbock, Royal Horse Guards, The Blues, The Great War, The Times, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
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‘…you may touch them not.’
Over the last two years, I have been asked why I chose Wilfred Owen’s line ‘Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not’ as the epigraph to Calderonia; why I am apparently fond of the poem; whether I … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged agapē, camaraderie, comments, erotic love, Georg Trakl, George Calderon, Greater Love, Hölderlin, intimacy, Ivor Gurney, Jesus Christ, Laurence Binyon, Mary Magdalene, Platonic love, Santanu Das, The Great War, touch, war poetry, War Poets, Wilfred Owen, World War I
3 Comments
And the asp jumped over the chimney sweeper!
That time of year is approaching again…the time of public readings of verse four of Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’. I shall be listening carefully for who says ‘grow-not old’, who ‘grow not-old’, and who indeed ‘not grow old’ (see … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Andrew Marvell, aspen, chimney sweeper moth, comments, cows, Cymbeline, dandelions, Dulce et decor est, Experiment with a Hand Lens, For the Fallen, Henry Vaughan, Humpty Dumpty, John Donne, Joseph Brodsky, Laurence Binyon, Leningrad, Looking Back, metrical stress, Michael Alexander, nursery tales, R.F. Langley, Stratford-upon-Avon, syntax, The Apparition, To His Coy Mistress, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare
4 Comments
Guest post: Harvey Pitcher, ‘Calderon on Chekhov’
Some years have passed since I last took down my copy of Two Plays of Tchekhof: Translated, with an Introduction and Notes by George Calderon (1912). I remembered the book with affection, especially the introduction, but going back to old … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, appreciation, comments, communication, George Calderon, golf, Harvey Pitcher, literary criticism, meditation, soliloquy, The Cherry Orchard, The Seagull, Three Sisters, Tom Stoppard, translation, Two Plays of Tchekhof, Uncle Vanya
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Percy Lubbock: ‘Esoteric and intimate portraiture’
One of Ruth Scurr’s aims in John Aubrey: My Own Life was to ‘produce a portrait’ of Aubrey, but naturally she did not write it in the biographical genre known as ‘literary portrait’. This genre seems to have grown out … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Archie Ripley, biographies, biography, character, comments, Earlham, empathy, George Calderon, Golden Square, Henry James, John Aubrey, John Masefield, Katy George, Kittie Calderon, literary portraits, Lytton Strachey, Marcel Proust, Mary Cholmondeley, Percy Lubbock, Piers Brendon, Ruth Scurr, William Caine
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Future biographers of George Calderon…
Even at this late stage, ‘things keep coming up’. It took me, as predicted, two pretty full days to input to the text of my biography (167,000 words) the 1000+ corrections and revisions that emerged from my two complete readings … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, British Library, Christianity, comments, Dardanelles, EPMOS, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Grant Richards, Humanism, Kittie Calderon, Kropotkin, Laurence Binyon, Lydia Yavorskaya, Paul Boyer, Percy Lubbock, Petr Kropotkin, Spinoza, Tahiti, Taoism, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, theism, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I
2 Comments
From the diary of a countrywoman
In December 1922 Kittie moved from Hampstead with her housekeeper Elizabeth Ellis to ‘Kay’s Crib’, a Victorian three-bedroomed house with a fair amount of ground to it at Sheet, near Petersfield, in Hampshire. She told a friend of Percy Lubbock’s: … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Personal commentary
Tagged 'Kay's Crib', Alan Lubbock, biographies, biography, Brasted, Bunty, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Captain Gilbert Piggott, Charles Letts's Diary, Clara Calderon, comments, Dardanelles, diary, Eliza Stewart, Elizabeth Ellis, Foxwold, Gallipoli, gardening, George Calderon, Gertrude Corbet, Hampshire, Hampstead, Helen Lubbock, Kittie Calderon, Mrs Stewart of Torquay, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Percy Lubbock, Petersfield, Sheet, The Croft, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Torquay, Violet Pym, World War I
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Guest post: John Pym, ‘A bit of fun with Calderon’
On 7 May 2016 Patrick Miles wrote a post on George Calderon and William Caine’s pantomime The Brave Little Tailor in which he reproduced the cover of the published version (1923) and also Caine’s Preface – the first paragraph of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Andrew Lang, Anstey Guthrie, biographies, biography, Burglar Bill, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Charles Dickens, Cinderella: An Ibsen Pantomime, comments, Emmetts, F. Anstey, Foxwold, fun, George Calderon, Horace Pym, John Pym, Julian Pym, Kittie Calderon, The boy who fought for England, The Brave Little Tailor, Victorian humour, Violet Pym, William Caine
5 Comments
‘Literally for this…’
This is the most original, enjoyable, moving and impressive book about the First World War that I have read since the centenary began. It is not a ‘history’ book like Max Hastings’s Catastrophe, say, Peter Hart’s Gallipoli, or David Reynolds’s The Long … Continue reading →