The magnificent Mary Ann

Long-term followers of Calderonia will recall that I had always had a theory that the person who taught George to speak Russian credibly before he set out for St Petersburg in 1895 was a ‘Mrs Shapter’, but in my biography she remained ‘the mysterious Mrs Shapter’, as I could find no Russian link in the Shapters I came up with on the Web. It was entirely thanks to Russianist Michael Pursglove, my indefatigable genealogical researcher Mike Welch, and the living descendants of Mrs Shapter, especially Andrew Jones (great-great-grandson) and his wife Sally, that we traced ‘Mrs Shapter’ to Mary Ann Gibbs, a lady who lived the first nineteen years of her life (1816-35) in Russia and in 1839 married John Shapter QC, the brother of the author of the famous account of a cholera outbreak in Exeter, Thomas Shapter MD.  Mary Ann’s father Harry Leeke Gibbs had had a distinguished medical career in Russia, both in the navy and as a personal physician of the Tsar, before returning to Britain for good in 1835. For the full details, see here.

But until now, we never knew what Mary Ann looked like. I am delighted — nay, overwhelmed — to say that Andrew and Sally Jones have tracked down a series of photographs of the lady at the National Portrait Gallery, of which I think this is the best:

Mary Ann Shapter, photographed 31 January 1861 by Camille Silvy, no. 1989, Ax51379 © National Portrait Gallery, reproduced by Creative Commons Licence

As with most women photographed in this phase of Victorian fashion, the bell tent dress makes Mary Ann look formidable beyond her years (she was only forty-three), but I think I read alertness, intelligence, self-possession, perhaps some irony in her face, and a definite grace in her hands, her posture, the way she wears her dentelle. Just the person, one imagines, to engage at over seventy with the bouncy twenty-something George Calderon.

But that is not all. We had known that Mary Ann’s elder daughter Mary Gibbs Shapter was an artist (which is why she corresponded with P.H. Calderon), but Andrew and Sally Jones have now discovered a really remarkable sketchbook of hers at the Museum of the Home in London that is a coloured and annotated inventory of personal possessions in the family home. By very kind permission of Andrew and Sally, I reproduce below two pages from this sketchbook that have a direct bearing upon George’s relationship with Mary Ann.

If you click on the first, immediately below, you will see in the bottom left hand corner two pictures by P.H. Calderon RA that were given to Mary Gibbs Shapter by P.H.’s mother, i.e. George’s grandmother. On the right, in the middle, you will see a ‘view in Holland’ by John Evan Hodgson RA, a member of P.H.’s ‘St John’s Wood Clique‘ of painters. George played golf as a young man with Hodgson’s son Evan, and Andrew Jones has most pertinently pointed out to me that John Hodgson’s father was a member of a distinguished Newcastle family who did business in Russia. J.E. Hodgson himself had lived in St Petersburg as a child.

The second image brings us even closer to George and Kittie. If you click on it, you will see that the object at the top is captioned ‘Toddy ladle 15 inches long. Gave it to George Calderon Nov[embe]r 1900’. All the captions are by Mary Gibbs Shapter. The reason her drawings on this page are in grey (except for handles) is that the objects are silver — and the diagram above George’s ladle with ‘Lion passant’ specifically identifies it as solid silver.

Although I have seen numerous pieces of silver that belonged to George and Kittie, the whereabouts of the ‘toddy ladle’ are currently unknown (if anyone spots it, please let me know!). It would certainly have appealed to George, as he was partial to whisky. But the most important point is the date written under it. It was given to George as a wedding present. George and Kittie were married on 10 November 1900, which is why I say it belonged to both of them. The following year, aged eighty-four, Mrs Shapter died.

Both images © Sally and Andrew Jones, 2023. Acc. No. 19/2013, Museum of the Home, London

I think you will agree, these discoveries by Mary Ann’s assiduous and meticulous descendants throw fascinating light on some aspects of George’s life and career.

First, if Mary Gibbs Shapter knew both George’s father and grandmother, the family connection was of far longer standing than we had imagined. It was not just a case — as I thought when I wrote my biography — of P.H. and his wife Clara happening to know someone English who spoke fluent Russian and could help their son George bring his systematic knowledge of the Russian language alive in preparation for his immersion in a ‘language bath situation’. It seems possible that George knew ‘Mrs Shapter’ long before he made the fateful 1891 decision, described by Laurence Binyon, to specialise in Russia.

Second, it transpires that the Calderon family’s circle included even more people with Russian connections than we thought before: we can now add the Hodgsons and Shapters to the Yeameses, Whishaws and Franckes. We really have to ingest the fact that in Victorian times it was normal to know people whose families had occupations and businesses in Russia that had flourished for generations. The reason it always comes as a revelation is simply that that part of the ‘cycle’ of Anglo-Russian relations, as Harvey Pitcher recently called it, has not really come round again since 1917. Harvey’s own The Smiths of Moscow is an eloquent testimony to the historical facts.

Third, George used code words in his letters to his parents from Russia for subjects that were politically sensitive, to fool the censor, so was it for similar reasons that he refused to name his spoken-Russian teacher when asked by Russian officials, and referred to Mary Ann only as ‘a Russian lady’? It seems to me possible. Mary Ann’s father, who was obviously a protégé of Alexander I, may well have been out of favour in the reign of his successor, Nicholas I, which has been described as ‘proto-totalitarian’; or he may have decided to get out of Russia whilst the going was good. With relations between Britain and Russia tense in the 1890s, and the high profile Tsarist agent Olga Novikoff muddying the waters in London, it may have been better for George never to mention the Shapter link.

Finally, the new information about ‘Mrs Shapter’ makes one reflect on how much George and the British theatre owe her. Without her and another woman, the young Manya Guseva in St Petersburg, George might never have acquired the contemporary Russian ‘oracy’ that enabled him to translate the dialogue of Chekhov’s plays with such authentic colloquialism compared with Constance Garnett’s woodenness. And clearly ‘Mrs Shapter’ remained George’s friend for the rest of her life. Without Mary Ann we might not have had The Seagull at the Glasgow Repertory Theatre in 1909. Her indirect contribution to Russian Studies and the theatre was magnificent.

I extend my profoundest thanks to all the descendants of Mary Ann and John Shapter who have contacted me and made this post possible. Alison and I greatly look forward to visiting the Museum of the Home soon.

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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.