Guest post: Alison Miles, ‘Living with George and Kittie since the mid-1980s’

When I first heard about George Calderon it was the mid-1980s and my time was mainly taken up with small children. However I realised that something big was starting when Patrick went to Scotland to visit an attic full of lumber, in mid winter. There was snow on the ground even in Cambridge and it was so thick in Scotland that his train got stuck in a drift. When he returned I heard about the invigoratingly cold attic where he found letters, papers and other items relating to George and Kittie. This was ‘the archive’ which, 30 years later, has moved temporarily to Cambridge.

There were many other visits to Scotland to catalogue the archive, and marathons of train and taxi travel to places that were of huge importance to Kittie Calderon, including one to Foxwold and her home at Kennington, White Raven. It was after this visit, also in the 1980s, that I heard about the three elderly Pyms whom Patrick met at Foxwold, one of whom, Jack Pym, had designed White Raven. It was then I discovered ‘White Raven’ was also Kittie’s nickname while that of her best friend, Nina Corbet, was ‘Black Raven’.

So by the start of the 1990s I was aware of several key players in Kittie Calderon’s life. But I did not know much about George – he was an enigma and continues to be so even though I know far more about him now.

Kittie is a real person. Is this because much of what she did is familiar territory or is it that the archive of letters and papers is her collection? Her style of living was similar to the views and behaviour of my grandparents, and her photos mirror those of our family from the early 20th century. Kittie’s hand is on literally everything from her suitcase (see Calderonia 15 January 2016) to her ordering and labelling of papers.

Through Kittie I have met both her contemporaries and her (and her friends’) descendants. Communicating with and meeting people ‘keeps the world going round’ so it has been wonderful to be on the fringes of Kittie’s huge network. I feel as though I have met them all, past and present.

What about George and his family and friends? I know about him, his parents and his siblings, but I do not feel I have met them. None of their descendants lives in Britain. My understanding of George (if that is possible of someone I’ve described on several occasions as a maverick) is mainly through Kittie. But his wonderful Christmas card (see Calderonia 27 June 2015) did give me a real insight into his talent for comedy and fun.

It may seem odd to have ‘met’ people from the past, but the work that Patrick has been doing on George and Kittie’s lives has created a sense that we are living 100 years ago. There was a particularly freaky time during the 1914-15 blog, written continuously exactly 100 years later in 2014 -15, when it was all too easy to feel we were living 100 years in the past. In 2015 I often caught myself referring to the present as 1915.

Part of my parallel life in ‘George-and-Kittie-land’ has been to get to grips with family trees. Many of them are complex because there were second marriages following death or divorce, in some cases no male children to inherit and of course family tragedies. The 1914-18 war took its toll as did illness. A lasting memory, from our visit several years ago to Moreton Corbet churchyard, is the ‘missing statue’ (of Mercury) above Vincent Corbet’s grave (see Calderonia 2 September 2016). The statue has since been recovered but seeing the statue-less plinth created such a powerful sense of loss, unhappily familiar to so many people at the time.

Moreton Corbet, November 2009 (the poppy commemorates Jim Corbet, killed in action at Givenchy 15 April 1915)

This leads me on to places. It has been a great privilege and delight in more recent years to visit a range of places that were important to both George and Kittie. The trip to Tahiti following in George’s footsteps has yet to happen but it has been discussed – I am not optimistic!

Kittie’s first husband, Archie Ripley, was brought up at Earlham Hall in Norwich. Our visits there have spanned a long enough period of time to see it steadily change from a fairly run-down version of the house his family rented (Archie’s mother’s first husband was one of the Gurneys) to a wonderfully restored building in splendid grounds. As well as the house itself, the lawns and paths match the 19th century idyllic garden described by Percy Lubbock, a nephew of Archie’s, who visited regularly as a child. The descriptions bring the place to life and it is lovely to be able to visit what was a childhood paradise.

Eastcote, near Pinner, is where George lived when he was ‘courting’ Kittie. That word does not match George and he was certainly not ‘going out’ with her. His approach was more of a sensitive campaign. He walked or cycled from the house where he lodged and, thanks to local historian Karen Spink, we were able to follow his route on paths that still exist. In 1904 George and Kittie visited Cap Gris Nez, staying at La Sirène which is now a restaurant – we ate there looking westwards in the evening sun across the beach and the rocks (hence the name) that Kittie and George sat on to be photographed. They painted the landscape, so we were able to match the old pictures with the present views.

Cap Gris Nez, 2013 (the large white building on the left is on the site of the original hotel that George and Kittie stayed in, September 1904)

After George’s death Kittie had two ‘new’ homes of her own, near Petersfield and at Kennington, both of which we have seen – and to me they came alive both from her accounts and photos and through today’s local historians. She had strong associations with Foxwold over a relatively long time. It provided her with a stable base where close friends lived (and their descendants still do, near by) and to whom she provided support from time to time. At White Raven she was only forty miles or so from Foxwold.

White Raven, 1986

It is easier to associate George with words and ideas than places. He visited Cambridge when it was very different from now despite the core of old buildings. It was an eventful and unpopular visit because he tried to drum up support from undergraduates to work in the mines during the 1912 strike, one of many examples of taking action in aid of his strong belief in a cause. This is one side of this multi-faceted man. Another is his amazing ability to relate to children from being on holiday with the Pym children in 1914, the very ones 70 years later that Patrick met when he visited Foxwold, to entertaining small children who stayed with them (‘Let’s play Queen Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh and the cloak, and I’ll be the mud’).

Living with George and Kittie is going to carry on for many years – what an opportunity!