Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George Calderon, 1912
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Captain of the 11
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon c.1901
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
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
‘Connected with the Hamiltons’
A hundred years ago today George V, Queen Mary, the Prime Minister, and their entourages, visited Windmill Hill Camp. The Third Cavalry Division had now been officially formed and was being reviewed by the monarch. George Calderon described it as … Continue reading
Status
There are no letters from George to Kittie on 23 or 24 September 1914. At first this seems odd, since he had been writing to her every day. They were a Wednesday and a Thursday, and you would expect him … Continue reading
The thickness of events…
When writing a biography, you can go for months in its subject’s life without hearing a word from them, as it were: no letters from them to anyone have survived, they are not recorded as having said anything to anyone … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Ballets Russes, Battle of the Aisne, Battle of the Marne, biographies, biography, comments, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lev Tolstoy, Michel Fokine, Nina Astley, Polovtsian Dances, Prince Igor, The Blues, The Great War, The Times, Windmill Hill Camp, World War I
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A possible penny drops
Yesterday Calderon sent his wife three large closely written pages of letter, today he sends her four. He describes tents, ‘messing’, people, clothes, furniture, military equipment, horses, exercises, soldiers, officers, all in vivid detail and thick with names. His back … Continue reading
‘Who is George Calderon?’
Obviously, this is a question I am often asked. Sometimes it is even delivered with a kind of reproach, as to say: ‘Why are you writing this biography of somebody no-one knows, rather than of someone we all know, (a … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Charles Dickens, comments, Emily Dickinson, Franz Kafka, George Calderon, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gregor Mendel, Katie Price, The Cherry Orchard, The Great War, Viktor Shklovsky, World War I
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A biographer bifurcates
The object of this blog has always been to present the why and how of George Calderon’s self-sacrifice in World War I; but to show these things by posting events and documents in a species of ‘real time’, exactly one hundred … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, blogs, chronotopes, comments, George Calderon, haikus, horizontality, The Great War, verticality, World War I
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Things
There is no documentation of what Calderon did between now and 15 September. Presumably, however, he had to set about equipping himself for active service. Officers had to buy some of their equipment, clothes, and food themselves; they even had … Continue reading
A correction?
It was perhaps a bit glib to say in the blog for 30 August that the B.E.F. ‘simply had to regroup’ etc. However, Arthur Moore in The Times was certainly wrong to describe the B.E.F. as a ‘broken army’, and Sir John … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Arthur Moore, British Expeditionary Force, comments, Seine, Sir John French, The Times
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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
Kittie again
The other ‘st’ word of the Edwardian period is ‘stout’, as in ‘stout fellows’ (used by soldiers of their comrades). It is described in dictionaries today as ‘arch.‘, and meant ‘dauntless’ — another word that today surely qualifies as ‘archaic’. … 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
Writer’s self-block?
There is no evidence that Calderon wrote anything new in 1914 after signing up. Yet the previous seven months had been packed with literary-theatrical work: he had written or assembled most of his posthumous best-seller Tahiti, finished a pantomime The Brave Little … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Ballets Russes, Clara Calderon, comments, Diaghilev, George Calderon, Il'ia Tolstoi, Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, Inns of Court Regiment, Laurence Binyon, Lev Tolstoy, Martin Shaw, Michel Fokine, Tahiti, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, William Caine, World War I
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A biographer worries…
A big challenge for the biographer when his subject died in the trenches is, frankly, stylistic: should he/she go with the deepening muffled drums, the lugubrious blanket that descends on your prose as the end draws closer? No, in my … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', 4 August 1914, biographies, biography, comments, death, endings, George Calderon, style, The Great War, World War I
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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
A biographer writes…
The main object of ‘Calderonia’ is to post events and documents in a kind of ‘real time’ ; exactly a hundred years after they happened. And judging by the emails I have received, that’s what people appreciate. This timeline approach … Continue reading
29 September 1914
It is clear from something Calderon wrote to his wife at the end of October that he did suffer from bouts of depression whilst he was an interpreter with the Blues. On this day, Tuesday 29 September, he wrote … Continue reading →