I conclude, by a process of the usual ‘triangulation’, that the newly commissioned Lieutenant Calderon travelled down by train to report to the Portsmouth base of the 9th Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry today, Friday 15 January 1915:
1. Kittie in her memoirs says he was there ‘by the middle of January’.
2. The very last comment written by a military man on George’s ‘Commission’ (see my post of 9 January 2o15) is ‘Done. 15/1/15’, and this presumably refers to his joining the regiment, since ‘order to join’ were the last words of his Commission dated 9/1/15.
3. George’s letter to the Sturge Moore family (see my next post but one) was written on a ‘Sunday’ presumably close to his receiving their letter. Since the Sturge Moores’ lost letter seems to have been about his not having said goodbye to them, it is presumably closer to his departure from 42 Well Walk than it is to the next Sunday, 24 January 1915. [This reasoning is admittedly shaky, but even if the Sturge Moores had sent it on Saturday 16 January and George travelled down that day he would probably have received it next day.]
Since leaving hospital, then, Calderon had been at home or at Foxwold with Kittie for almost eight weeks.
Next entry: Kittie’s ‘apology’
