2/11/15. I have a hunch that the word ‘unconscionable’ features regularly in biographers’ conversations with themselves…
It has taken me an ‘unconscionable’ four and a half years to reach the endgame of writing George Calderon’s biography, when I thought it would take three…
I spent an ‘unconscionable’ length of time piecing together the sequence of George’s frequently undated love letters to Kittie over a mere five months in 1898-99, and when I came to present that story it turned into an ‘unconscionably’ long chapter…
Suddenly you discover you have to inform yourself about the whole of Edwardian theatre before you can talk about George Calderon’s place in it, or research in ‘unconscionable’ detail events in the suffragist movement 1909-10, or spend ‘unconscionable’ whole months educating yourself about a battle on the Gallipoli Peninsula…
Now I have spent an ‘unconscionable’ three weeks reading and re-reading George’s Tahiti, digging into other books about Tahiti, reading and re-reading dozens of reviews of George’s book, taking notes from them, photocopying some of them, checking numerous Latin quotations he has embedded in his text (mainly from Horace and Virgil, but two he appears to have made up), and ‘unconscionably’ fiddling with ‘unconscionably’ many other aspects, too… And all to write 800 words on Tahiti in the penultimate chapter!
I must say, though, that my predicament is one of the most difficult I’ve had to face whilst writing the book. Tahiti is George’s masterpiece. I could, probably should, write a whole chapter on its literary brilliance and thematic complexity. But I have to discuss that side of it in my penultimate chapter, which concerns George’s ‘afterlife’, because Tahiti is a posthumous work. The storyline of this chapter is Kittie’s, since she is its surviving protagonist, and I cannot ‘go on’ too long… I therefore have to compress the essence of the essence of what I want to say about Tahiti into no more than 800 words, before getting back to this most traumatic time in Kittie’s life. Hence the very long — ‘unconscionably’ long — run-up to writing the few paragraphs. I have to be absolutely sure of what I want to say. Although I have written many pages on all of George’s major literary works (so much so that in those chapters I will be accused of writing literary criticism rather than biography), these few paragraphs have to be in a class of their own.
Biographically speaking, George’s four months on Tahiti in 1906 are described in a separate chapter in their appropriate chronological place. They took an ‘unconscionable’ effort (with research assistants in the UK, New Zealand and Tahiti) to break down into an almost day-by-day sequence…
I have several approaches to publishers in the air, but if you have any ideas about plausible ones yourself, for George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, please don’t hesitate to email them me through my Website http://patrickmiles.co.uk. Thank you for reading!
Related
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon, 1912
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon c.1901
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Captain of the 11
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Watch this Space
2/11/15. I have a hunch that the word ‘unconscionable’ features regularly in biographers’ conversations with themselves…
It has taken me an ‘unconscionable’ four and a half years to reach the endgame of writing George Calderon’s biography, when I thought it would take three…
I spent an ‘unconscionable’ length of time piecing together the sequence of George’s frequently undated love letters to Kittie over a mere five months in 1898-99, and when I came to present that story it turned into an ‘unconscionably’ long chapter…
Suddenly you discover you have to inform yourself about the whole of Edwardian theatre before you can talk about George Calderon’s place in it, or research in ‘unconscionable’ detail events in the suffragist movement 1909-10, or spend ‘unconscionable’ whole months educating yourself about a battle on the Gallipoli Peninsula…
Now I have spent an ‘unconscionable’ three weeks reading and re-reading George’s Tahiti, digging into other books about Tahiti, reading and re-reading dozens of reviews of George’s book, taking notes from them, photocopying some of them, checking numerous Latin quotations he has embedded in his text (mainly from Horace and Virgil, but two he appears to have made up), and ‘unconscionably’ fiddling with ‘unconscionably’ many other aspects, too… And all to write 800 words on Tahiti in the penultimate chapter!
I must say, though, that my predicament is one of the most difficult I’ve had to face whilst writing the book. Tahiti is George’s masterpiece. I could, probably should, write a whole chapter on its literary brilliance and thematic complexity. But I have to discuss that side of it in my penultimate chapter, which concerns George’s ‘afterlife’, because Tahiti is a posthumous work. The storyline of this chapter is Kittie’s, since she is its surviving protagonist, and I cannot ‘go on’ too long… I therefore have to compress the essence of the essence of what I want to say about Tahiti into no more than 800 words, before getting back to this most traumatic time in Kittie’s life. Hence the very long — ‘unconscionably’ long — run-up to writing the few paragraphs. I have to be absolutely sure of what I want to say. Although I have written many pages on all of George’s major literary works (so much so that in those chapters I will be accused of writing literary criticism rather than biography), these few paragraphs have to be in a class of their own.
Biographically speaking, George’s four months on Tahiti in 1906 are described in a separate chapter in their appropriate chronological place. They took an ‘unconscionable’ effort (with research assistants in the UK, New Zealand and Tahiti) to break down into an almost day-by-day sequence…
I have several approaches to publishers in the air, but if you have any ideas about plausible ones yourself, for George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, please don’t hesitate to email them me through my Website http://patrickmiles.co.uk. Thank you for reading!
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