Today George wrote to Kittie from Dunkirk. It was his first letter to her for six days. ‘Dearest Mrs P.,’ he began, ‘I haven’t written, because there was nothing very gay to say.’ (See my posts of 29 August, 1 September, 2 October on linguistic matters.)
The surprising thing is that he doesn’t mention what the ‘Hospital base’ has been able to do for him. Did its medical officers simply accept the Ypres nunnery doctor’s diagnosis, that the blood in his urine was caused by gout crystals? If so, did they treat the condition, and how? If not, what was the new diagnosis? What care did he get?
Having as a biographer lived with George Calderon for some time, I feel that he was also depressed. Here he was, after all the excitement of the past month and of actually reaching the Front, suddenly far removed from the fray, ‘beached’ as it were at Dunkirk, in limbo. The haematuria must have been worrying. I am reminded of the low point of his trek round Tahiti in 1906, when he seemed trapped in a force field on the isthmus of Taravao and grew ‘despondent’ and even ‘irresolute’. Working on his travel book Tahiti in the winter of 1913/14, he had written of this moment that ‘the sense of depression close[d] over me, and of the fear of death alone on the seashore, away from England’.
However, he told Kittie that there had been a ‘development’:
As chance would have it two men arrived from the [7th Cavalry] Brigade staff; the Brigade Major and the Brigade Interpreter. I am well enough to go back, but no [sic] to ride. The Brigade Major has therefore appointed me to the Brigade Interpreter’s place; and I go back in an hour, with the supplies.
I have had all the difficulties in the world to find out how to go back. It is nobody’s business. There is no one central place where you can go and find a thing out. You have to trudge down cobbled streets and along cobbled wharfs to and fro to find out for yourself. And even then I don’t know.
But, vaguely, if I go some time this evening somewhere up the line and happen to get into the right train, I shall arrive.
Goodbye. I have had to jettison much good luggage and buy many new things. I have cashed a cheque for ₤5.
P.P.P.
[Pore Peeky Peety]
Back at Ypres, the French today made a desperate attempt to recapture Passchendaele and the Germans concentrated on weakening the 7th Division at Zandvoorde as the prelude to a massive assault planned for close by on the 28th. Dick Sutton, also in the 7th Cavalry Brigade (1st Life Guards), wrote in his diary:
At about 7 a.m. we were sent to relieve the 10th Hussars in the Zandvoorde trenches, but the trenches were being so heavily shelled that it was found impossible to relieve them until dark. We were under shell fire for some time, and our Brigadier-General (Kavanagh) had a lucky escape, as a shell burst close to him, one bullet going through his coat.
Next entry: Another ‘Russian connection’
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George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon c.1901
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Captain of the 11
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
23 October 1914
Today George wrote to Kittie from Dunkirk. It was his first letter to her for six days. ‘Dearest Mrs P.,’ he began, ‘I haven’t written, because there was nothing very gay to say.’ (See my posts of 29 August, 1 September, 2 October on linguistic matters.)
The surprising thing is that he doesn’t mention what the ‘Hospital base’ has been able to do for him. Did its medical officers simply accept the Ypres nunnery doctor’s diagnosis, that the blood in his urine was caused by gout crystals? If so, did they treat the condition, and how? If not, what was the new diagnosis? What care did he get?
Having as a biographer lived with George Calderon for some time, I feel that he was also depressed. Here he was, after all the excitement of the past month and of actually reaching the Front, suddenly far removed from the fray, ‘beached’ as it were at Dunkirk, in limbo. The haematuria must have been worrying. I am reminded of the low point of his trek round Tahiti in 1906, when he seemed trapped in a force field on the isthmus of Taravao and grew ‘despondent’ and even ‘irresolute’. Working on his travel book Tahiti in the winter of 1913/14, he had written of this moment that ‘the sense of depression close[d] over me, and of the fear of death alone on the seashore, away from England’.
However, he told Kittie that there had been a ‘development’:
Back at Ypres, the French today made a desperate attempt to recapture Passchendaele and the Germans concentrated on weakening the 7th Division at Zandvoorde as the prelude to a massive assault planned for close by on the 28th. Dick Sutton, also in the 7th Cavalry Brigade (1st Life Guards), wrote in his diary:
Next entry: Another ‘Russian connection’
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