Last Thursday here in Cambridge I went to see a new production of Patrick Marber’s version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, set in Britain 1945. I would be surprised if there is a tougher, less sentimental play touring England at this moment (it now goes to Brighton, Richmond and Milton Keynes, and is well worth seeing). Tension and dread screwed down the audience…until a Jack Russell was carried in UL, brought downstage, borne off DR, and released a universal ‘Aaaaaah’. I am rather more of a cat person myself, but evidently dogs are a force to be reckoned with.
I was delighted to read two Comments on the blog about them in one day — Jenny Hands’s lovely piece mentioning her own Jack Russell and appreciating ‘Bunt’, as Kittie called her Cairn terrier in her diary, and John Pym’s incredibly powerful evocation of Foxwold through the dogs and smells of his childhood. Thank you both, and don’t hesitate to Comment again concerning dogs, as they were a major theme in the Calderons’ lives and those of their friends. Indeed, Kittie’s closest friends of her own generation, Nina Corbet and Constance Sutton, always kept dogs and discussed them at some length in their letters to her. I feel a post coming towards me from afar on this intriguing Edwardian topic… But must point out that Kittie and George had three cats as well.
For me it was also terrific that Jenny Hands foregrounded Kittie as ‘someone who in general can be liked and admired’. I have just described her in my draft Introduction as ‘every bit as impressive as George’, but I sometimes worry that I am hopelessly predisposed. Every independent observation about Kittie is therefore valuable to me.
Finally, my extreme thanks to Professor Ricketts for his extended Comment on mourning and the ‘Lead. Lead’ crux in Robert Nichols’s poem ‘The Assault’. He is only the second of about twelve professors, both in office and emeriti, who has actually posted a Comment that all can read, rather than sending me a private email whose content is certainly worthy of Comment status but is not intended for general consumption. I think Professor Ricketts’s collocation of the ‘Lead. Lead’ line with the earlier one in which ‘lead’ signifies the heavy metal, and has no diacritic, is pretty suggestive, but I shall refrain from further comment, because I feel Comments should be principally by followers!
Professor Ricketts is a specialist in the World War 1 poets and I very much hope I can tempt him to do a guest post at some future date. And I remain deeply grateful to Clare Hopkins, Archivist of Trinity College, Oxford, for initiating the debate with her moving Comment of 5 June.
For the archive of posts since 31 July 2015, please click here.
Related
George Calderon c.1901
George Calderon, 1912
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Thank you; and Bunty!
Last Thursday here in Cambridge I went to see a new production of Patrick Marber’s version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, set in Britain 1945. I would be surprised if there is a tougher, less sentimental play touring England at this moment (it now goes to Brighton, Richmond and Milton Keynes, and is well worth seeing). Tension and dread screwed down the audience…until a Jack Russell was carried in UL, brought downstage, borne off DR, and released a universal ‘Aaaaaah’. I am rather more of a cat person myself, but evidently dogs are a force to be reckoned with.
I was delighted to read two Comments on the blog about them in one day — Jenny Hands’s lovely piece mentioning her own Jack Russell and appreciating ‘Bunt’, as Kittie called her Cairn terrier in her diary, and John Pym’s incredibly powerful evocation of Foxwold through the dogs and smells of his childhood. Thank you both, and don’t hesitate to Comment again concerning dogs, as they were a major theme in the Calderons’ lives and those of their friends. Indeed, Kittie’s closest friends of her own generation, Nina Corbet and Constance Sutton, always kept dogs and discussed them at some length in their letters to her. I feel a post coming towards me from afar on this intriguing Edwardian topic… But must point out that Kittie and George had three cats as well.
For me it was also terrific that Jenny Hands foregrounded Kittie as ‘someone who in general can be liked and admired’. I have just described her in my draft Introduction as ‘every bit as impressive as George’, but I sometimes worry that I am hopelessly predisposed. Every independent observation about Kittie is therefore valuable to me.
Finally, my extreme thanks to Professor Ricketts for his extended Comment on mourning and the ‘Lead. Lead’ crux in Robert Nichols’s poem ‘The Assault’. He is only the second of about twelve professors, both in office and emeriti, who has actually posted a Comment that all can read, rather than sending me a private email whose content is certainly worthy of Comment status but is not intended for general consumption. I think Professor Ricketts’s collocation of the ‘Lead. Lead’ line with the earlier one in which ‘lead’ signifies the heavy metal, and has no diacritic, is pretty suggestive, but I shall refrain from further comment, because I feel Comments should be principally by followers!
Professor Ricketts is a specialist in the World War 1 poets and I very much hope I can tempt him to do a guest post at some future date. And I remain deeply grateful to Clare Hopkins, Archivist of Trinity College, Oxford, for initiating the debate with her moving Comment of 5 June.
For the archive of posts since 31 July 2015, please click here.
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