George Calderon, 1912
George Calderon c.1901
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
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?
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)Recent 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: Personal commentary
Dialogue at a dinner
SHE: Who is this man you are talking about? ME: He’s Edwardian. SHE: Is Edwardian? Surely you mean he was Edwardian? ME: Well no, he is Edwardian. SHE: No no, you can’t say that. He was Edwardian! ME: Er… Next entry: De-appled
Katy’s hat trick
Long-term followers of this blog know that Katy George burst onto it back in March, when she came across a perfectly preserved letter of Kittie’s in a charity shop in Deal, Googled on Kittie, found us, and offered the letter … Continue reading
A friend’s published tribute
As I explained in my post of 25 June, after George’s death was officially accepted in the spring of 1919 Kittie invited his friends to write their memoirs of him, which of course included tributes, but none of these was … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Annie Horniman, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Manchester, Manchester Repertory Company, Percy Lubbock, The Great War, The Manchester Guardian, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
Leave a comment
The last blurt
I thought I had got everything out about the completion of my biography of George Calderon in my post of 18 June, but no: there is something I forgot to say and have been meaning to put on record for … Continue reading
Commemoration (concluded)
Since this blog started in July last year, I have taken part in many conversations, both viva voce and online, about followers’ responses to George Calderon’s war experience, to the War as it has been unfolding, and to what I … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aeschylus, arachnophobia, Battle of Waterloo, catharsis, Clare Hopkins, closure, commemoration, comments, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Dardanelles, Diana Princess of Wales, empathy, Foxwold, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jim Corbet, John Hussey, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lesbia Corbet, Mikhail Bakhtin, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Santanu Das, Søren Kierkegaard, The Great War, The Lusitania, Third Battle of Krithia, tragedy, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare, World War I
1 Comment
Commemoration (to be concluded)
Mr Pym, who is the grandson of Violet and Evey Pym, of Foxwold, two of the Calderons’ closest friends, sent me this poem a fortnight before the anniversary of George Calderon’s death. He was not able to take part in … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Archie Ripley, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Catherine Lubbock, comments, Dardanelles, Devonport, Earlham, Emmetts, Foxwold, Frederic Lubbock, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Hampstead, Horatius, John Pym, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Laura Ripley, Percy Lubbock, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Violet Pym, Well Walk, World War I
Leave a comment
Gallipoli: planning a disaster
The Third Battle of Krithia, in which George Calderon was killed on 4 June, may have been the bloodiest single battle fought by the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at Gallipoli, i.e. in terms of its own losses. Enemy losses, both in … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Anzac Cove, comments, Dardanelles, Fir Tree Spur, Gallipoli, General Kitchener, General William Birdwood, George Calderon, Gully Ravine, Gully Spur, Haricot Redoubt, Helles, Ian Hamilton, Kereves Spur, King's Own Scottish Borderers, KOSB, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Royal Scots, Scottish Rifles, Suvla, The Great War, The Quadrilateral, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I
Leave a comment
…then three come along at once
When I started my deeper research for this biography in 2010, one of the things I did was trawl the Web for manuscripts of George’s that were up for sale. I found only one item, which we bought for the … Continue reading
‘Tributes’
A Russianist who has read Percy Lubbock’s George Calderon: A Sketch from Memory (1921) asks me why I have not posted more tributes to George than my own. The reason is simply that tributes were not published until his death became … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A.B. Lowry, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, For the Fallen, G.F. Bradby, Gallipoli, George Calderon, H.C. Bradby, Harold Dowdall, John Masefield, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lawrence Le Breton Hammond, Leonora Bagg, Manolo Ordoño de Rosales, Percy Lubbock, Sir Coote Hedley, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Thomas Sturge Moore, tributes, Trinity College Oxford, World War I
Leave a comment
Commemoration (to be continued 2)
Plan A for a commemoration of George’s death (see yesterday’s post) was really dictated by long accepted British forms of commemorative ritual. These have loosened up in recent years, of course, to a point where you have extended, all-singing-and-dancing customer-devised … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, Evey Pym, Foxwold, Francois Rabelais, Gallipoli, George Calderon, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Peter Hart, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Violet Pym, World War I
Leave a comment
Commemoration (to be continued 1)
The organisation of a public commemoration of George Calderon’s sacrifice on 4 June 1915, and the experience of the form it eventually took, have raised a huge number of questions in my and other Calderonians’ minds. Very long emails were … Continue reading
‘Things fall apart’
Since George Calderon’s death at noon in the Third Battle of Krithia on 4 June 1915 the timeline of this blog has frayed almost to nothingness. I understand the disorientation and even irritation of some followers who have emailed me. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', 1/5th King's Own Scottish Borderers, Alexandria, biography, Captain James Grogan, comments, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Gertrude Bell, Hoe Benham, Imbros, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, KOSB, Lemnos, Percy Lubbock, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, World War I
Leave a comment
The biographer blurts
Ah dear, it’s time to come clean. The ‘disaster’ has happened: this blog is now a fortnight ahead of the writing of my biography itself. I finished Chapter 14 of the biography with George going over the top on 4 … Continue reading
Action
Both Constance Sutton (Astley) and Nina Corbet (Astley) knew only too well the nervous and physical effects that anxiety tended to have on Kittie. But Kittie had her own well-developed pattern of techniques for coping with it. She clung to … Continue reading
Flashback — and tourbillions in Time (again)
The Imperial War Museum invited me to contribute a post to their Research Blog, and I promptly accepted. I am not, of course, a military historian, and when I started researching the last ten months of George’s life I was … Continue reading →