After Kittie Calderon had done all she could to establish George’s fate at Gallipoli on 4 June 1915, and accepted that she would live by the faith that he was in a Turkish prisoner of war camp, she suffered a long breakdown. She wept incessantly and succumbed to one illness after another. There is exceptionally little evidence of what she did between October 1915 and July 1916. After leaving Foxwold on 10 June 1915, the day before she received her first telegram about George from the War Office, she could not be persuaded back, however much Violet and Evey Pym tried, until July 1917.
One may be sure, however, that she closely followed developments in the War and, at this time in 1916, the course of the Battle of the Somme. She had many friends and relations in the army, and above all her closest friend Nina Corbet fed her news that her sister-in-law Constance received from her son Dick Sutton, who as ADC to General Sir Henry Rawlinson was on the spot. Nina was Dick Sutton’s favourite aunt, he was in her own words ‘like a very dear son to me’ after her own son Jim Corbet was killed at Givenchy in 1915, and all three women had been extremely close since the 188os.
Three weeks after Sir Henry Rawlinson launched the Battle of the Somme (see my post of 1 July), Dick Sutton wrote to his mother:
Here the battle drags on, progress much slower than we would like, but I suppose as fast as one can expect. The Bosches seem to fight as well out of the trenches as they do in them, and their machine-guns, hidden in woods and standing corn, are very deadly, especially as our gunners can’t see where they are. The decision of the battle has still to come.
The peoples of the Allied countries were hoping for the definitive collapse of the German line as a result of this battle, especially as the Germans had just lost at Verdun. However, although after 1918 German generals said that the Battle of the Somme was the real turning-point of the War, because they lost so many men that they could never again raise a fully trained fighting force, as the months wore on Allied hopes were dashed. On 7 November 1916 Dick Sutton wrote in his diary:
Sir Henry has written a strong letter to GHQ, deprecating the continuation of the offensive here under present conditions, which are not likely to improve before it freezes. The efficiency of the Army next spring will be endangered if the present losses in officers and NCOs continue. I am certain from this that the great battle of the Somme is over. We have, I am afraid, gained only a local success, which cannot be called a victory.
Dick Sutton survived the War, to his mother’s great rejoicing, but died of influenza at a military hospital in Wimereux on 29 November 1918. All three women were devastated. Both the Corbet and Sutton families, who had come to Britain with the Norman Conquest, were left without male heirs.
For the archive of posts since 31 July 2015, please click here
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Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Captain of the 11
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
George Calderon c.1901
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Three women follow the Somme
After Kittie Calderon had done all she could to establish George’s fate at Gallipoli on 4 June 1915, and accepted that she would live by the faith that he was in a Turkish prisoner of war camp, she suffered a long breakdown. She wept incessantly and succumbed to one illness after another. There is exceptionally little evidence of what she did between October 1915 and July 1916. After leaving Foxwold on 10 June 1915, the day before she received her first telegram about George from the War Office, she could not be persuaded back, however much Violet and Evey Pym tried, until July 1917.
One may be sure, however, that she closely followed developments in the War and, at this time in 1916, the course of the Battle of the Somme. She had many friends and relations in the army, and above all her closest friend Nina Corbet fed her news that her sister-in-law Constance received from her son Dick Sutton, who as ADC to General Sir Henry Rawlinson was on the spot. Nina was Dick Sutton’s favourite aunt, he was in her own words ‘like a very dear son to me’ after her own son Jim Corbet was killed at Givenchy in 1915, and all three women had been extremely close since the 188os.
Three weeks after Sir Henry Rawlinson launched the Battle of the Somme (see my post of 1 July), Dick Sutton wrote to his mother:
The peoples of the Allied countries were hoping for the definitive collapse of the German line as a result of this battle, especially as the Germans had just lost at Verdun. However, although after 1918 German generals said that the Battle of the Somme was the real turning-point of the War, because they lost so many men that they could never again raise a fully trained fighting force, as the months wore on Allied hopes were dashed. On 7 November 1916 Dick Sutton wrote in his diary:
Dick Sutton survived the War, to his mother’s great rejoicing, but died of influenza at a military hospital in Wimereux on 29 November 1918. All three women were devastated. Both the Corbet and Sutton families, who had come to Britain with the Norman Conquest, were left without male heirs.
For the archive of posts since 31 July 2015, please click here
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