Tough Christmas chrysanths
Whether you are stalwart subscribers to Calderonia since 30 July 2014, or casual callers from across the globe to posts on, say, limericks, John Hamilton, paradoxes, the Third Battle of Krithia, dogs or Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I wish you a very happy new year.
Like a lot of people, I suppose, I remember many sermons throughout my life. But I remember each of them for one thing, not their detail: Michael Ramsay booming a long passage of Euripedes down the nave of the University church in Greek, for instance, or the local priest telling how as a curate in a women’s prison he found himself standing next to one of Britain’s most heinous killers, whose name I can’t even bring myself to write. The only sermon I recall in some detail was delivered hastily from some very small sheets of paper, standing on the sanctuary step, by Rowan Williams when he was but a curate at another local church. Its subject was ‘Freshness’.
He was glossing God’s words in Revelation 21:5 ‘Behold, I make all things new’. Of course, Williams related them to Christ’s transformative message and resurrection, but he concentrated on the sheer power of ‘newness’ and ‘freshness’ as concepts. I think the meaning of these words is really so mysterious that perhaps it can only be defined by reference to their opposites. It would take a Socrates to identify the Ideas behind ‘new’ and ‘fresh’. They are extremely potent ideas, though, and we surely recognise that in the commencement of a new year. Thank goodness, a year is a cycle, a circle, so there is always the opportunity of a new one — a new start, new events, fresh hope.
There will be at least two major new events in my life this year. First, my Anglo-Russian publisher Sam&Sam will at last have a stall at the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies international conference at Robinson College, Cambridge (5-7 April 2024). Our 2020 appearance with my Russian co-publisher, who had already bought his air tickets and visa, was cancelled along with the conference because of Covid; the 2022 conference was cancelled because of the invasion; last year’s was held in Glasgow. Our appearance this year is not without risks, because there are plenty of extreme Russophobes about and my co-publisher’s position in Russia itself is delicate. Obviously, he cannot himself attend, and I don’t want to field questions about him. But I simply have to go forward and confront these risks, as we need to sell books. I would like to sell at least thirty copies of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius at a discounted Conference price of £20 each and, say, fifty of our books in Russian: http://www.samandsam.co.uk.
Secondly — deep breath — I shall be blogging less frequently this year and closing Calderonia on 30 July 2024. To be precise, I shall cease blogging personally on that day, but the site will continue to be viewable and if there are any significant new discoveries about George’s life beyond that date I will post about them. In effect, Calderonia will turn into a text of over half a million words, a research tool, a kind of website, for interested future readers and biographers. I do hope this will not be a massive disappointment to any of you, who have been magnificently loyal followers for so long. There are many reasons for stopping now, but essentially (I hope you will agree) ten years is a pretty good run.
As King Lear (Act V, sc. 2, l. 11) puts it: ‘ripeness is all’. Or perhaps I should say ‘freshness is all’. Or as Mandel’shtam put it: ‘Flowers are immortal’. Newness is never old.
Fresh Freesias
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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.
Related
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Captain of the 11
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
George Calderon, 1912
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon c.1901
NEW YEAR
Tough Christmas chrysanths
Whether you are stalwart subscribers to Calderonia since 30 July 2014, or casual callers from across the globe to posts on, say, limericks, John Hamilton, paradoxes, the Third Battle of Krithia, dogs or Lady Chatterley’s Lover, I wish you a very happy new year.
Like a lot of people, I suppose, I remember many sermons throughout my life. But I remember each of them for one thing, not their detail: Michael Ramsay booming a long passage of Euripedes down the nave of the University church in Greek, for instance, or the local priest telling how as a curate in a women’s prison he found himself standing next to one of Britain’s most heinous killers, whose name I can’t even bring myself to write. The only sermon I recall in some detail was delivered hastily from some very small sheets of paper, standing on the sanctuary step, by Rowan Williams when he was but a curate at another local church. Its subject was ‘Freshness’.
He was glossing God’s words in Revelation 21:5 ‘Behold, I make all things new’. Of course, Williams related them to Christ’s transformative message and resurrection, but he concentrated on the sheer power of ‘newness’ and ‘freshness’ as concepts. I think the meaning of these words is really so mysterious that perhaps it can only be defined by reference to their opposites. It would take a Socrates to identify the Ideas behind ‘new’ and ‘fresh’. They are extremely potent ideas, though, and we surely recognise that in the commencement of a new year. Thank goodness, a year is a cycle, a circle, so there is always the opportunity of a new one — a new start, new events, fresh hope.
There will be at least two major new events in my life this year. First, my Anglo-Russian publisher Sam&Sam will at last have a stall at the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies international conference at Robinson College, Cambridge (5-7 April 2024). Our 2020 appearance with my Russian co-publisher, who had already bought his air tickets and visa, was cancelled along with the conference because of Covid; the 2022 conference was cancelled because of the invasion; last year’s was held in Glasgow. Our appearance this year is not without risks, because there are plenty of extreme Russophobes about and my co-publisher’s position in Russia itself is delicate. Obviously, he cannot himself attend, and I don’t want to field questions about him. But I simply have to go forward and confront these risks, as we need to sell books. I would like to sell at least thirty copies of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius at a discounted Conference price of £20 each and, say, fifty of our books in Russian: http://www.samandsam.co.uk.
Secondly — deep breath — I shall be blogging less frequently this year and closing Calderonia on 30 July 2024. To be precise, I shall cease blogging personally on that day, but the site will continue to be viewable and if there are any significant new discoveries about George’s life beyond that date I will post about them. In effect, Calderonia will turn into a text of over half a million words, a research tool, a kind of website, for interested future readers and biographers. I do hope this will not be a massive disappointment to any of you, who have been magnificently loyal followers for so long. There are many reasons for stopping now, but essentially (I hope you will agree) ten years is a pretty good run.
As King Lear (Act V, sc. 2, l. 11) puts it: ‘ripeness is all’. Or perhaps I should say ‘freshness is all’. Or as Mandel’shtam put it: ‘Flowers are immortal’. Newness is never old.
Fresh Freesias
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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