My fortuitous review of Keith Dewhurst’s excellent novellas, combined with John Pym’s spontaneous submission of his post about Henry James’s story ‘The Death of the Lion’, has suddenly concentrated my mind on my current project and alerted me to things of which I had scarcely been aware. ‘Weirdnesses’, in fact.
Consider: the sheet below, which as usual you can click on to enlarge, dates from 1978 (that’s beyond any doubt). Staggering though I find this now, it appears to be a list of thirty short stories I might write. By that I don’t mean a list of ‘ideas’ for short stories, or even ‘titles’ of short stories, although the latter is certainly what they appear to be. These are reminders to me of the images — settings, events, people, experiences — lodged in my mind and notebooks that I thought might lead to a short story in each case.
But what to make of it now? I’m astonished to see that they were already in two categories: ‘C.T.’ on the left, standing I think for ‘Cambridge Tales’, a title I would never consider using for a collection, and seven headed ‘Other’ on the right. What do the various markings mean? Two of the dark ticks seem to refer to stories that were already published by 1978, the other four ticks to stories that were written by about 1982. But one story on the right, ‘Armageddon’, was incorporated in the ticked ‘White Bow’, and hence crossed out in the list, and another, ‘The Communion’, was also crossed out and never went anywhere, along with eight others — I can’t even remember what they were about. Then what do the red marks mean, or the circles round two stories? To cap it all, given its subject and the different handwriting the last ‘title’ on the left must have been added after 1987, although I don’t make a habit of ‘updating’ past notebooks and I don’t remember adding it.
It’s a time-muddle (chronotopia?) that I have no intention of trying to disentangle. Yet some things emerge from it that intrigue me — even fill me with a kind of wonder. For instance, 18 of these stories have now been written, but mostly with entirely different titles and the 12 that I have written in the past two years seem to have grown well away from their original conceptions. But, frankly, I can hardly believe that I have written those 12 at all, 44 years after the above list was jotted down, and that I’ve written them in ‘only’ two years… Moreover, in the image below you can see from the change in handwriting, spacing, and writing tools (from ink to pencil), that in 2021 I was able to pick up the page and a half of the story ‘Crox’ that I had written in about 1979 (why couldn’t I go any further then?), and carry on where I left off for another three pages to the end.
What has happened between 1978 and the 2020s to make this all possible? Well, as they say, it doesn’t bear thinking about… Perhaps even the contrasting slants of the above lines tell some story lost in my own life’s time. Now I just have to get on with the job of writing the remaining stories. But there is something mysterious, humbling, even miraculous about it all. I would never say with William Blake ‘tho I call them mine, I know that they are not mine’, but at least I know what he meant.
I am now going into writing the last two stories for the collection of 20, which will be called simply Ghoune/White Bow. These two stories will total about 15,000 words (unless things ‘mysteriously’ change), amounting to a quarter of the book, which should be about 120 pages long, and the aim is for Sam&Sam to publish it either just before Christmas or in the New Year. Keith Dewhurst and John Pym have focussed my mind no end (merci!) and I’ve decided to give Calderonia followers a preview of six more stories between now and Christmas, which means that you will have read 13 stories on the blog, but only a third of the book. The first story, to be in two parts and start on 5 June, will be the most recently written and I dedicate it to Mr Pym. It is not a ‘Cambridge Tale’, but an ‘Other’.
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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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Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon c.1901
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon, 1912
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Writing’s weird workings…
My fortuitous review of Keith Dewhurst’s excellent novellas, combined with John Pym’s spontaneous submission of his post about Henry James’s story ‘The Death of the Lion’, has suddenly concentrated my mind on my current project and alerted me to things of which I had scarcely been aware. ‘Weirdnesses’, in fact.
Consider: the sheet below, which as usual you can click on to enlarge, dates from 1978 (that’s beyond any doubt). Staggering though I find this now, it appears to be a list of thirty short stories I might write. By that I don’t mean a list of ‘ideas’ for short stories, or even ‘titles’ of short stories, although the latter is certainly what they appear to be. These are reminders to me of the images — settings, events, people, experiences — lodged in my mind and notebooks that I thought might lead to a short story in each case.
But what to make of it now? I’m astonished to see that they were already in two categories: ‘C.T.’ on the left, standing I think for ‘Cambridge Tales’, a title I would never consider using for a collection, and seven headed ‘Other’ on the right. What do the various markings mean? Two of the dark ticks seem to refer to stories that were already published by 1978, the other four ticks to stories that were written by about 1982. But one story on the right, ‘Armageddon’, was incorporated in the ticked ‘White Bow’, and hence crossed out in the list, and another, ‘The Communion’, was also crossed out and never went anywhere, along with eight others — I can’t even remember what they were about. Then what do the red marks mean, or the circles round two stories? To cap it all, given its subject and the different handwriting the last ‘title’ on the left must have been added after 1987, although I don’t make a habit of ‘updating’ past notebooks and I don’t remember adding it.
It’s a time-muddle (chronotopia?) that I have no intention of trying to disentangle. Yet some things emerge from it that intrigue me — even fill me with a kind of wonder. For instance, 18 of these stories have now been written, but mostly with entirely different titles and the 12 that I have written in the past two years seem to have grown well away from their original conceptions. But, frankly, I can hardly believe that I have written those 12 at all, 44 years after the above list was jotted down, and that I’ve written them in ‘only’ two years… Moreover, in the image below you can see from the change in handwriting, spacing, and writing tools (from ink to pencil), that in 2021 I was able to pick up the page and a half of the story ‘Crox’ that I had written in about 1979 (why couldn’t I go any further then?), and carry on where I left off for another three pages to the end.
What has happened between 1978 and the 2020s to make this all possible? Well, as they say, it doesn’t bear thinking about… Perhaps even the contrasting slants of the above lines tell some story lost in my own life’s time. Now I just have to get on with the job of writing the remaining stories. But there is something mysterious, humbling, even miraculous about it all. I would never say with William Blake ‘tho I call them mine, I know that they are not mine’, but at least I know what he meant.
I am now going into writing the last two stories for the collection of 20, which will be called simply Ghoune/White Bow. These two stories will total about 15,000 words (unless things ‘mysteriously’ change), amounting to a quarter of the book, which should be about 120 pages long, and the aim is for Sam&Sam to publish it either just before Christmas or in the New Year. Keith Dewhurst and John Pym have focussed my mind no end (merci!) and I’ve decided to give Calderonia followers a preview of six more stories between now and Christmas, which means that you will have read 13 stories on the blog, but only a third of the book. The first story, to be in two parts and start on 5 June, will be the most recently written and I dedicate it to Mr Pym. It is not a ‘Cambridge Tale’, but an ‘Other’.
ADVERTISEMENT
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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