In December 1922 Kittie moved from Hampstead with her housekeeper Elizabeth Ellis to ‘Kay’s Crib’, a Victorian three-bedroomed house with a fair amount of ground to it at Sheet, near Petersfield, in Hampshire. She told a friend of Percy Lubbock’s: ‘Bad times have descended on my head with a wump and I have cast myself out of London.’ In a memoir from the 1940s she even wrote of the move: ‘My beloved London I had left forever, but for two whole years I had loathed living there.’
Why?
After accepting in May 1919 that George had been killed at the Dardanelles on 4 June 1915, she threw herself into producing a memorial volume, Percy Lubbock’s George Calderon: A Sketch from Memory (1921), editing Tahiti for its first publication (1921), and bringing out two volumes of George’s plays (1922). These were all overwhelmingly positively reviewed and Tahiti became a bestseller. Constance Sutton wrote to Kittie that she could now ‘feel that George’s personality and genius are safe to be recognised for all time’. But on 5 August 1921 the other love of her life, Nina Corbet, died suddenly of peritonitis at Lugano. Nina had always kept a pied-à-terre in London from where she could visit Kittie. George’s London-based widowed mother had also died in 1921, the Sturge Moores, the Masefields and other neighbours of Kittie’s in Hampstead had now left, and her own house in Well Walk was, of course, a constant reminder of her life with George. By the end of 1921 she must have felt miserable.
However, she found it difficult to settle in her new home. She spent the summer of 1923 visiting friends in various parts of the country, came back to Sheet in the autumn, then left again on 8 December and returned only three times in the next two years. Much of that period was spent with Nina’s mother, ‘Mrs Stewart of Torquay’. In 1925 Kittie took up permanent residence at The Croft, Torquay, and nursed Mrs Stewart through her final illness. Mrs Stewart died on 24 November 1925. Completely drained, Kittie retired to Foxwold, at Brasted Chart in Kent, to spend Christmas with the Pyms. Alan and Helen Lubbock, who themselves lived near Sheet, also spent Christmas at Brasted, and brought Kittie back to Sheet by car on New Year’s Day, 1926.
It is possible that Kittie kept a pocket diary every year, but I incline to the view that, like George, she kept one only when she was trying to give structure to her life — when she had a programme of action that she was determined to see through. 1926 was one of those years, and I thought it might be interesting ninety years later to post occasional extracts from her Charles Letts’s Diary for that year.
11 February
Planting seedlings from The Croft all day. Weeds in Garden even worse than feared. Sent S.O.S. to Gertrude Corbet asking her to come and help me clear it.
19 February
Gertrude Corbet came, nobly to help me cope with awful condition in garden.
[The two women worked in the garden for a fortnight, then the diary records that Kittie ‘gardened hard’ on her own for another three weeks; note the month!]
11 May
End of [Coal] Strike. One hardly dares to believe it…but one thanks God and prays the Country may remain steady.
19 May
Bunty completely off her food — eaten nothing all day. Elizabeth says Bunty is like that each time she gets over her period.
[Elizabeth Ellis presumably looked after Bunty on many of the occasions when Kittie was away.]
20 May
Tried to write a letter that would prevent idiot kink in village socialities — but could not condense it. Will sleep on it.
[One of Kittie’s numerous retiree neighbours at Sheet, a Captain Gilbert Piggott, did or said something that she took great exception to.]
21 May
Have decided not to write at all — and just if ever chance comes get over the man’s idiotcy [sic]. Syringed all roses.
22 May
Got a certain amount of annuals in. Worked on till dark, breaking off for dinner. After all wrote to Mrs Piggott, seemed more right.
(To be continued)
Related
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon, 1912
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George Calderon c.1901
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Captain of the 11
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
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
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
From the diary of a countrywoman
In December 1922 Kittie moved from Hampstead with her housekeeper Elizabeth Ellis to ‘Kay’s Crib’, a Victorian three-bedroomed house with a fair amount of ground to it at Sheet, near Petersfield, in Hampshire. She told a friend of Percy Lubbock’s: ‘Bad times have descended on my head with a wump and I have cast myself out of London.’ In a memoir from the 1940s she even wrote of the move: ‘My beloved London I had left forever, but for two whole years I had loathed living there.’
Why?
After accepting in May 1919 that George had been killed at the Dardanelles on 4 June 1915, she threw herself into producing a memorial volume, Percy Lubbock’s George Calderon: A Sketch from Memory (1921), editing Tahiti for its first publication (1921), and bringing out two volumes of George’s plays (1922). These were all overwhelmingly positively reviewed and Tahiti became a bestseller. Constance Sutton wrote to Kittie that she could now ‘feel that George’s personality and genius are safe to be recognised for all time’. But on 5 August 1921 the other love of her life, Nina Corbet, died suddenly of peritonitis at Lugano. Nina had always kept a pied-à-terre in London from where she could visit Kittie. George’s London-based widowed mother had also died in 1921, the Sturge Moores, the Masefields and other neighbours of Kittie’s in Hampstead had now left, and her own house in Well Walk was, of course, a constant reminder of her life with George. By the end of 1921 she must have felt miserable.
However, she found it difficult to settle in her new home. She spent the summer of 1923 visiting friends in various parts of the country, came back to Sheet in the autumn, then left again on 8 December and returned only three times in the next two years. Much of that period was spent with Nina’s mother, ‘Mrs Stewart of Torquay’. In 1925 Kittie took up permanent residence at The Croft, Torquay, and nursed Mrs Stewart through her final illness. Mrs Stewart died on 24 November 1925. Completely drained, Kittie retired to Foxwold, at Brasted Chart in Kent, to spend Christmas with the Pyms. Alan and Helen Lubbock, who themselves lived near Sheet, also spent Christmas at Brasted, and brought Kittie back to Sheet by car on New Year’s Day, 1926.
It is possible that Kittie kept a pocket diary every year, but I incline to the view that, like George, she kept one only when she was trying to give structure to her life — when she had a programme of action that she was determined to see through. 1926 was one of those years, and I thought it might be interesting ninety years later to post occasional extracts from her Charles Letts’s Diary for that year.
(To be continued)
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