Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Captain of the 11
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George Calderon c.1901
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon, 1912
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
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
Kittie’s story
As I have said before, none of George and Kittie’s letters to each other written whilst he was at Fort Brockhurst has survived (there is an envelope addressed to her by George and postmarked Gosport 3 May, but no letter … Continue reading
The biographer discombobulated
I am greatly entertained by Mistress Ruth Scurr’s new book John Aubrey: My Own Life. It contains 433 pages. My honoured friend Mr William Harvey warns me that I shall acquire an impostumation if I sit reading it much longer. I … Continue reading
George Calderon’s ‘magnum opus’
27 April 1915 was a Tuesday, so George was presumably back at Fort Brockhurst, having returned from weekend leave yesterday. The only other literary work that he may have tinkered with when he was home at weekends was a book … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged anthropology, comments, Demon Feasts, folklore, Fort Brockhurst, Fritz Epstein, George Calderon, Isabel Fry, James Frazer, Paul Boyer, Percy Lubbock, Simon Franklin, Tahiti, Ted Hughes, The Golden Bough, The Great War, William Blake, World War I
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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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The note darkens
I did not notice it when I got to this point in writing the chapter in my biography, but the day-by-day ‘real time’ of the blog has brought it home to me: the note has definitely darkened by this date … Continue reading
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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‘The Maharani’: A postscript
Read The Maharani of Arakan yourself to decide whether it is (just) ‘A Romantic Comedy’, as George playfully subtitled it, or a ‘Symbolist Mystery Play’ (allegory)! Having re-read it over the weekend, I increasingly feel it’s the latter. If it is … Continue reading
What is ‘The Lamp’ about? (2)
Presumably George was home again at 42 Well Walk, Hampstead, for the long weekend of 9-12 April 1915, so he may have done more work on leaving various literary projects in a publishable state in case he did not come … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, comments, Ernst Zermelo, Feofan Zatvornik, Geminae, Georg Cantor, George Calderon, La Sainte Courtisane, Lenin, mathematics, Oscar Wilde, Rugby Scool, Russell's Paradox, set theory, The Fountain, The Great War, The Lamp, The Little Stone House, The Two Talismans, World War I
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The Arakan ‘mystery’
The other evening, I met a friend at a party who told me she had recently taken part in a reading of George’s ‘Romantic Comedy in One Act’, The Maharani of Arakan. I was amazed, as I had not heard of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, K.N. Das Gupta, Kittie Calderon, Margaret Mitchell, Rabindranath Tagore, Ronald Colman, The Albert Hall, The Coliseum, The Great War, The Maharani of Arakan, William Rothenstein, World War I
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Two separate biographies
As I have explained on several occasions, apart from his machine gun course on Hayling Island we know nothing specific about George’s training as a lieutenant with the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst from the middle of … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Battle of Neuve Chapelle, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Helles, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Training, trench warfare, World War I, Ypres
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Biography and the limits of non-fiction
I keep dipping into Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey: My Own Life. It’s very compulsive reading, but I don’t have time at the moment to let it run away with me as I would wish. Nevertheless, I’ve read enough both of the … Continue reading
Easter 1915
Today, 4 April 1915, was Easter Day. Kittie Calderon went to church, but we do not know if George did. At Steep, Hampshire, Edward Thomas wrote his poem ‘In Memoriam’: The flowers left thick at nightfall in the … Continue reading
What is ‘The Lamp’ about? (1)
In 1915, today was Easter Saturday. For reasons I will give this coming Monday, I think George Calderon was at home over Easter on long weekend leave. This means he may have worked on the possibly four literary works that … Continue reading
‘Phantom flies in amber’ (Concluded)
In my post of 5 January I described what I assume is a bugbear of all biographers: ‘facts’ that you have acquired from somewhere, that stick in your mind like flies in amber, but when you want to use them … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Ashford, Aunt Lottie, beetles, biography, comments, George Calderon, Kennington, Kittie Calderon, memory, Russia, Uncle Tom
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Another eminent Calderon
I picked up The Second I Saw You: The True Love Story of Rupert Brooke and Phyllis Gardner at Waterstones recently and, as I always do with newly published Edwardiana, went straight to the index to see if ‘Calderon’ featured in … Continue reading →