St Petersburg,
27 December 1895 (N.S.)English Christmas Evening I spent at the Wildings: of the guests were Mr and Mrs Alfred Whishaw, Dick Whishaw (18) and Miss blank Whishaw (say 19); James Whishaw (V.C., not the cross but Vice Consul) & wife; also eldest girl (say 15/16); two young Wylies, the elder a don at Brazenose (I like him & see him sometimes; very juvenile; knows Charlie Fletcher and the Trinity dons). Turkey and plum pudding with methylated spirits, crackers, caps (mine was labelled costume Tartare but was unseasonable and not true to nature), charades and Anglo-American relations over our cigarettes; also ‘Clumps’ and a wild game where you all sit in a circle and make insane gestures in chorus. It was very hot. This evening Mrs James Whishaw asks me to the Russian Xmas; but of course I can’t. Today we have 15 degrees of frost Réaumur [-19 deg. Celsius]. There are one or two fires down our street where the cabbies and passing boys warm themselves. Logs of firewood lie at the side for who will to put on. Looked in at the skating ground at 10 p.m. and found it empty save for two who are practising for the race next month; one of them clad in white, flannels & sweater; they were tearing round the islands on skates about 18″ long. […] I am going to disport myself on the icehills with Dick Whishaw on Sunday [29 December] afternoon.
This is from a letter from George to his father two days after the English Christmas and ten days before the Russian Christmas according to the Julian Calendar. If anyone can throw light on the ‘methylated spirits’, please Comment! George could not accept Mrs Whishaw’s invitation as he was already committed to celebrating Russian Christmas with the Francke family on a country estate. My image is of St Petersburg’s Old Stock Exchange and Rostral Columns (beacons), about a mile and a half from where George lived.
A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL OUR SUBSCRIBERS AND VIEWERS, AND THANK YOU FOR FOLLOWING CALDERONIA INTO ITS SIXTH YEAR!
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.
Patrick, a quick Google threw up the following – one from Antarctica and the other from Bedfordshire. You may draw your own conclusions.
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/2018/on-the-christmas-menu-in-antarctica
http://www.stotfoldmethodists.org.uk/pdfs/Shepherds_Return.pdf
And thanks to this timely reminder, I realise that yet another trip to the off-licence is required!
A very “merry” Christmas to you all and thank you for your most entertaining Calderonia this year.
Jules
Dear Jules,
Very many thanks for these pointers and your appreciation.
A near-Edwardian polar expedition and a parish magazine editorial — what could be more authoritative than those?
I’ve also received a number of emails on the subject. The consensus is indeed that the meths were/was used as a brandy substitute. I had always assumed this would leave a nasty taste in the pudding and char it, but I am reliably informed otherwise: it’s the meths that’s burning, not the pudding.
One of Calderonia’s great ‘reticence of professors’ sums up snappily: ‘I would read this as a 100%-ish grain alcohol. Good for inflaming puddings as a brandy substitute but lethal otherwise!’ Another suggests that these Victorians were ‘meths drinkers’. Two commenters suggest that it was not really methylated spirits, but samogonka, i.e. Russian moonshine, straight alcohol, but that George hadn’t been in Russia long enough to know the stuff. Whichever, I think I will stay with the brandy.
You mention off-licence, I mention professors, and I am reminded of a Cambridge one of my acquaintance who did not go to the off-licence at Christmas, what he termed ‘the dray’ came to him.
A very ‘merry’ one, indeed, to you and yours!
Patrick
James Whishaw was my great-grandfather. His youngest daughter, Audrey, was my grandmother. She was [born] on the 9th of September, 1901, in Saint Petersburg. I think James left his family in England after the 1905 revolution while he went back to Russia. He like many others in the English community lost everything when the Bolsheviks took over. In the family we have a story that he was about to be arrested by the Red Guards. He managed to escape. He did return to Russia in Archangel in 1918, helping to give financial support to the White Armies. He wrote a book about the Whishaw family, a copy of which is in the Brotherton Library at Leeds University along with other archives from the English community in Czarist Saint Petersburg.
Dear Mr Drayton, thank you for your Comment. You will find many references to the Whishaw family in my biography George Calderon: Edwardian Genius. They appear to have had, and still have, theatrical genes, which appealed to George’s own bent. Naturally, I know the book your refer to. All best wishes, Patrick Miles