Charles Evelyn Pym, c. 1901
As readers of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius will know (go on, try it!), George and Kittie were very close to the Pym family, whose home was Foxwold at Brasted Chart in Kent. Violet Pym was Kittie’s niece by her first marriage and, although there were eleven years between them, George shared sporting and other interests with Violet’s husband Charles Evelyn Pym (‘Evey’), who was a professional soldier.
Evey’s grandson, the film critic John Pym, made an inestimable contribution to my biography, digging up and transcribing dozens of letters of George and Kittie’s in his family archive, detailing their visits to Foxwold, and showing me photographs (including ‘Autumn tea at Emmetts, 1912’, used on the back cover of my book). He has now lent me this booklet, which his grandfather took with him to Gallipoli:
Front cover
The question arises, would George Calderon also have had a copy of it, as an officer? I am hoping that one of our distinguished Gallipoli historians might answer that and others for us. The little book seems to me a first-rate piece of military intelligence and I can’t help thinking that its circulation would have been restricted. Charles Evelyn Pym was either a Captain or a Major when he served on Gallipoli, whereas George was only a lieutenant.
The main section, ‘Notes on the Turkish Army’, contains detailed information on everything from its organisation to its rations and decorations. But how accurate is it? For instance, the table ‘Ordre de Bataille’ gives a total strength on the Gallipoli Peninsula of 40,000 Turkish troops. This may have been correct in 1914, but was it true even in the months preceding the (anticipated) Allied landings? Did the Turks really have only 24 machine guns on the Peninsula after the Germans joined them there?
It would surely be difficult, though, to produce anything more meticulous than the two pages below instructing British soldiers how to behave in a Muslim country. Personally, I am impressed. Who could have written them? Was it Aubrey Herbert, ‘M.P. turned soldier, eccentric, poet and a scholar who, far from hating the Turks, was captivated by them’ (Alan Moorehead)? At Gallipoli lieutenant-colonel Herbert was an intelligence officer on commander Sir Ian Hamilton’s own staff.
How to conduct yourself in a Muslim country (click on to enlarge)
Pym arrived on Gallipoli four months after George’s death there on 4 June 1915. But after the War the fact that Evey had been at Gallipoli brought Kittie and him even closer together. She wrote in a letter of 1930 that the strain put on his nerves as one of ‘those few officers who remained with that last 400 on the Suvla side of Gallipoli after the army had been evacuated — was of a nature that hardly any other men in the whole war had to go through’. After his wife Violet’s early death in 1927, Kittie became, in his son Jack’s words, a sort of mother to us all.
For his services in the Boer War, at Flanders, Gallipoli and Etaples, Charles Evelyn Pym was awarded an O.B.E. in 1919. He left the Army and held the offices of Vice-Chairman of Kent County Council 1936-49, Deputy Lieutenant of Kent in 1938, and Chairman of Kent County Council 1949-1952. He was knighted in 1959 and died in 1971, aged ninety-two.
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
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)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George Calderon c.1901
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
The War again
Charles Evelyn Pym, c. 1901
As readers of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius will know (go on, try it!), George and Kittie were very close to the Pym family, whose home was Foxwold at Brasted Chart in Kent. Violet Pym was Kittie’s niece by her first marriage and, although there were eleven years between them, George shared sporting and other interests with Violet’s husband Charles Evelyn Pym (‘Evey’), who was a professional soldier.
Evey’s grandson, the film critic John Pym, made an inestimable contribution to my biography, digging up and transcribing dozens of letters of George and Kittie’s in his family archive, detailing their visits to Foxwold, and showing me photographs (including ‘Autumn tea at Emmetts, 1912’, used on the back cover of my book). He has now lent me this booklet, which his grandfather took with him to Gallipoli:
Front cover
The question arises, would George Calderon also have had a copy of it, as an officer? I am hoping that one of our distinguished Gallipoli historians might answer that and others for us. The little book seems to me a first-rate piece of military intelligence and I can’t help thinking that its circulation would have been restricted. Charles Evelyn Pym was either a Captain or a Major when he served on Gallipoli, whereas George was only a lieutenant.
The main section, ‘Notes on the Turkish Army’, contains detailed information on everything from its organisation to its rations and decorations. But how accurate is it? For instance, the table ‘Ordre de Bataille’ gives a total strength on the Gallipoli Peninsula of 40,000 Turkish troops. This may have been correct in 1914, but was it true even in the months preceding the (anticipated) Allied landings? Did the Turks really have only 24 machine guns on the Peninsula after the Germans joined them there?
It would surely be difficult, though, to produce anything more meticulous than the two pages below instructing British soldiers how to behave in a Muslim country. Personally, I am impressed. Who could have written them? Was it Aubrey Herbert, ‘M.P. turned soldier, eccentric, poet and a scholar who, far from hating the Turks, was captivated by them’ (Alan Moorehead)? At Gallipoli lieutenant-colonel Herbert was an intelligence officer on commander Sir Ian Hamilton’s own staff.
How to conduct yourself in a Muslim country (click on to enlarge)
Pym arrived on Gallipoli four months after George’s death there on 4 June 1915. But after the War the fact that Evey had been at Gallipoli brought Kittie and him even closer together. She wrote in a letter of 1930 that the strain put on his nerves as one of ‘those few officers who remained with that last 400 on the Suvla side of Gallipoli after the army had been evacuated — was of a nature that hardly any other men in the whole war had to go through’. After his wife Violet’s early death in 1927, Kittie became, in his son Jack’s words, a sort of mother to us all.
For his services in the Boer War, at Flanders, Gallipoli and Etaples, Charles Evelyn Pym was awarded an O.B.E. in 1919. He left the Army and held the offices of Vice-Chairman of Kent County Council 1936-49, Deputy Lieutenant of Kent in 1938, and Chairman of Kent County Council 1949-1952. He was knighted in 1959 and died in 1971, aged ninety-two.
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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