I little thought, when I visited the archives of Trinity College, Oxford, on 4 August 2011 to research aspects of George Calderon’s undergraduate years there, that five years later I would still be in invaluable contact with the Archivist, Clare Hopkins, that Clare would become the staunchest of supporters of Calderonia, find time to write a stream of long and intensely thought-provoking Comments on Calderonia, attend George’s commemoration with the Calderonia team at Hampstead on 4 June 2015, and now present a really major piece of Calderonian research for us as a guest post this Friday, 9 December.
But I should have foreseen it, as Clare devoted the whole of her day to me back then in 2011, I bought a copy of her history of Trinity College (Trinity: 450 Years of an Oxford College Community, OUP, 2005) on the spot, and became completely engrossed in it during the four-hour bus journey back to Cambridge… It has since been described to me authoritatively as the best history of an Oxford college, and I can believe it. Of course, it is a mind-boggling documentary achievement, but it is also a slice of British history, and a very humane and at times hilarious narrative.
I am therefore hugely honoured and grateful that Clare Hopkins has undertaken all the extended work of composing her detailed and profusely illustrated guest post One Man and his College for this Friday, 9 December. It is a unique piece of research that massively enhances the biographical value of the blogsite. DON’T MISS IT!
As Clare writes, in One Man and his College she attempts to ‘deconstruct George’s relationship with Trinity, tracing his footprints in the college archives’ from 1886 until the arrival of his posthumous portrait, donated by Kittie in 1930. This means that, although of course there is some factual overlap with the pages in my biography covering George’s university career, there is no conflict or duplication of view whatsoever, as Clare tells the story from within the college archives and I tell it from the letters that George wrote home. In fact, I shall direct readers of my biography to Clare’s post for further factual treatment and a different perspective.
I suppose, strictly speaking, George had three ‘alma maters’ — Rugby School, Trinity College, and Oxford University. As it happens, this year has seen the publication of a history of the University of Oxford by another follower of this blog, Dr L.W.B. Brockliss (The University of Oxford, OUP, 2016). Of course, this is even more a ‘history of Britain’, if one thinks of the part played by the whole university and its members in public life. If Clare’s history of Trinity College reminds me of Turgenev’s Fathers and Children, Brockliss’s resembles War and Peace! It too is replete with comedy and, of course, eccentricity. For the seriously solid reader of top-quality non-fiction with inexorable plots, I recommend both as a Christmas present.
Clare’s forthcoming post One Man and his College will remain up for eleven days. But that turn of phrase is misleading, because it will, of course, ‘always be there’ and is very thoroughly keyworded for visitors.
I cannot thank Clare enough for all her interest and dedication over the last five years.
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Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon c.1901
Captain of the 11
George Calderon, 1912
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George’s alma maters
I little thought, when I visited the archives of Trinity College, Oxford, on 4 August 2011 to research aspects of George Calderon’s undergraduate years there, that five years later I would still be in invaluable contact with the Archivist, Clare Hopkins, that Clare would become the staunchest of supporters of Calderonia, find time to write a stream of long and intensely thought-provoking Comments on Calderonia, attend George’s commemoration with the Calderonia team at Hampstead on 4 June 2015, and now present a really major piece of Calderonian research for us as a guest post this Friday, 9 December.
But I should have foreseen it, as Clare devoted the whole of her day to me back then in 2011, I bought a copy of her history of Trinity College (Trinity: 450 Years of an Oxford College Community, OUP, 2005) on the spot, and became completely engrossed in it during the four-hour bus journey back to Cambridge… It has since been described to me authoritatively as the best history of an Oxford college, and I can believe it. Of course, it is a mind-boggling documentary achievement, but it is also a slice of British history, and a very humane and at times hilarious narrative.
I am therefore hugely honoured and grateful that Clare Hopkins has undertaken all the extended work of composing her detailed and profusely illustrated guest post One Man and his College for this Friday, 9 December. It is a unique piece of research that massively enhances the biographical value of the blogsite. DON’T MISS IT!
As Clare writes, in One Man and his College she attempts to ‘deconstruct George’s relationship with Trinity, tracing his footprints in the college archives’ from 1886 until the arrival of his posthumous portrait, donated by Kittie in 1930. This means that, although of course there is some factual overlap with the pages in my biography covering George’s university career, there is no conflict or duplication of view whatsoever, as Clare tells the story from within the college archives and I tell it from the letters that George wrote home. In fact, I shall direct readers of my biography to Clare’s post for further factual treatment and a different perspective.
I suppose, strictly speaking, George had three ‘alma maters’ — Rugby School, Trinity College, and Oxford University. As it happens, this year has seen the publication of a history of the University of Oxford by another follower of this blog, Dr L.W.B. Brockliss (The University of Oxford, OUP, 2016). Of course, this is even more a ‘history of Britain’, if one thinks of the part played by the whole university and its members in public life. If Clare’s history of Trinity College reminds me of Turgenev’s Fathers and Children, Brockliss’s resembles War and Peace! It too is replete with comedy and, of course, eccentricity. For the seriously solid reader of top-quality non-fiction with inexorable plots, I recommend both as a Christmas present.
Clare’s forthcoming post One Man and his College will remain up for eleven days. But that turn of phrase is misleading, because it will, of course, ‘always be there’ and is very thoroughly keyworded for visitors.
I cannot thank Clare enough for all her interest and dedication over the last five years.
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