Calderonia

George’s thought for the day

Posted on March 5, 2019 by Patrick Miles

Some time ago a reader asked me whether I thought George Calderon subscribed to Thomas Carlyle’s theory of the ‘great man’ in history. This theory was certainly popular with the Victorians and, as the reader pointed out, George’s extreme individualism could have been underpinned by belief in the ‘great man’ as the driving force of events. For instance, when George decided to travel all over the country at his own expense during the Coal Strike of 1912 addressing thousands of people, it was suggested that he wanted to thrust himself forward as leader of the strike-busting movement (an ambition he denied). Was he driven by a secret desire to be a hero or ‘great man’ himself?

I was startled by this reader’s suggestion, as I had not even mentioned Carlyle in my biography. Yet George owned nine of Carlyle’s books, including the key text Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, and it occurred to me that when he wrote to Grant Richards on 17 September 1911 that Chekhov was ‘a great man’, but did not explain what made him great, he was simply using the phrase in the Carlylian sense and Richards would have known how he meant it.

When I catalogued George and Kittie’s library over ten years ago, I flipped through each book and recorded whether it was annotated. Except when reading a book for review, George was a sparing annotator, but when he did intervene his comments were exceedingly fine and significant. I suddenly had a worry that I might have overlooked something in his copies of Carlyle. I therefore arranged to revisit his library in store and go through every copy of his Carlyle again, page by page. There was no evidence that he had even read the copy of Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History. As I had recorded before, only his copies of two books bore a few annotations, viz. The French Revolution (3 vols, 1889) and Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (3 vols, 1903).

However… When going through George and Kittie’s library I had come across photographs, greeting cards, visiting cards, and even letters, that had been used as bookmarks. Sometimes these were biographically significant. They were all removed from the books and filed in the appropriate part of the archive. But plain pieces of paper used as bookmarks were left where they were. There was an octavo sheet of laid white paper stuck in a volume of The French Revolution, but it had nothing on the front except a deep brown stain of time across the top where it protruded from the book; so I left it where it was and kept turning the pages. But this time as I turned the bookmark I noticed that it had three lines of writing on the back in very faint pencil. They were in George’s hand, but his own ‘cipher’, as Kittie called it. Having no camera, I attempted a facsimile:

Transcript of note in George’s hand on back of bookmark

Most of this was easily decipherable using George’s key, but the remaining words have taken me eight weeks to crack! I am confident now that the note means:

Jesus cannot have been without sin else he would not have been baptised. For the baptism of John was for the remission of sins and was accompanied by confession.

The handwriting in my opinion is late, around 1912. So why did George jot this thought down at least five years after he had abandoned his fundamental examination of ‘the canonical books of the Christians, in chronological order’ (see p. 200 of the biography)? Was he still as doubtful about the ‘divinity of Jesus’ as he had told Kittie in a letter on 11 February 1899 (see p. 39) and had suddenly been struck by a piece of evidence?

It’s an argument of characteristic Calderonian ingenuity. I have had a look at the accounts of Christ’s baptism in the gospels. They certainly agree that John baptised people only after they had confessed their sins and repented, but John refuses at first to baptise Jesus because he is ‘the Lamb of God’ — presumably without sin. Jesus however insists, ‘for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness’ (Matthew 3, verse 15), and John does baptise him. Why? What does ‘to fulfill all righteousness’ mean?

I asked scientist-theologian John Polkinghorne whether Jesus could have been baptised if he had no sins to confess. Yes, was his answer, because the purpose of his baptism was to express his complete solidarity with human beings, to demonstrate that he was ‘with’ John and all those John was baptising. Thus whereas George concluded the baptism of Christ disproved Christ’s divinity, for a modern theologian it proves Christ’s humanity!

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged baptism, biography, bookmark, comments, cypher, George Calderon, great man, humanity, Jesus Christ, John Polkinghorne, John the Baptist, Kittie Calderon, library, manuscripts, original sin, religion, shorthand, sin, theology, Thomas Carlyle | Leave a comment

Heffers surrenders after 7-month siege

Posted on March 1, 2019 by Patrick Miles

As well as online and by personal communication with me, my biography of George Calderon can now be bought at the following bookshops: Blackwell’s of Oxford, Daunts of Hampstead, Foyles of Charing Cross Road, Jarrolds of Norwich, the National Archives bookshop at Kew, and…Heffers of Cambridge.

Where Heffers (owned by Blackwell’s) is concerned, thereby hangs a tale. They took delivery of ten copies only yesterday:

The books are delivered.

Since it is Cambridge’s most famous bookshop after antiquarian David’s, I wrote to Heffers well before publication date (which was 7 September). In fact, I made out a strong case to them for staging my launch there, surrounded by their stock of Russian literary classics in translation (particularly Chekhov) and linked in with the University’s Slavonic Department. No response. A fortnight later, I wrote to the manager again, pointing out that Heffers’s parent company, Blackwell’s of Oxford, had not only bought ten copies outright but were going to mount a ‘promotional around Calderon, Russian Literature and Chekhov during University term’. No response.

Well, having after a visit rejected Toppings of Ely as a venue for the launch, we settled for Cambridge’s Polish Club, Polonia, where the vodka and food were ripping (forgive the Edwardianese) and we had a pretty uproarious time.

Once Blackwell’s had got their promotional underway, I emailed the only address I could find for Heffers, implying heavily that if Blackwell’s of Oxford could do this, why couldn’t Blackwell’s of Cambridge? No response. One has to accept that there are people who, extraordinary though it sounds, don’t buy books online but go to physical bookshops to browse and buy. Around this time, it was becoming increasingly embarrassing as about ten people I know in Cambridge asked me whether they could buy it at Heffers, or told me with a tone of affront: ‘I haven’t seen it in Heffers!’ It annoyed me too, because some of my friends or acquaintances are actually embarrassed to come to me to buy my book, and when they do I feel a similar pressure of embarrassment to give them a copy free…

I seriously considered how I could outwit the CCTV cameras in Heffers and plonk half a dozen copies in the middle of their front display desk. But then I wouldn’t have made anything from them. So there I let it lie. Until the other day I found myself on the website ‘Visit Cambridge’ and there was a different email address for Heffers. I saw red and thundered out, more to get it off my chest than anything:

I have had an email from Professor X of Y College this week complaining that he went into Heffers (Blackwell’s Cambridge) to buy a copy of my book GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS (see sam&sam.co.uk) and was told you don’t stock it. I have written and emailed you three times about this matter with no response whatsoever. If Blackwell’s Oxford, Daunts Hampstead, Foyles London, the National Archives bookshop and Jarrolds Norwich can take 6-10 copies on sale or return, why cannot my local bookshop Heffers that I have been patronising for 52 years?

Naturally I wasn’t expecting a response, but there must be something about the Visit Cambridge website that I don’t know, because I promptly received an apologetic response from the very manager of Heffers to whom I had written by Royal Mail twice in July. To cut the tale short, he agreed to take ten copies and display them as though the book had just been published — on their front display desk, I trust.

Naturally I do not recount all this out of demented Meldrewism, but simply to demonstrate that selling books as an independent publisher is not a doddle. However, there is another moral, I’m afraid: Never write emails whilst seeing red. I carelessly said ‘6-10 copies on sale or return’, when I should have said ‘outright like your Oxford shop’. The manager of Heffers has taken ten copies, but held me to sale or return.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian English, Personal commentary | Tagged biographies, Blackwell's, Cambridge, comments, Daunts, Foyles, George Calderon, Heffers, independent publishing, Jarrolds, marketing, National Archives, Oxford, Polonia, publishers, sale or return, Sam&Sam, selling books, Victor Meldrew | Leave a comment

A gremlinfest?

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Patrick Miles

Dear Subscribers, if you have received today’s post with its layout all over the place, please go to the website, calderonia.org, for the correct presentation in a form that you should be able to print out. (You may have to copy and paste it into Word, then do some minor editing.) There are still many bugs-glitches-gremlins loose in WordPress, it seems, or maybe I was trying to be too clever. Thank you for your patience! Patrick Miles

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged addenda, biographies, bugs, comments, corrections, corrigenda, editing, errata, glitches, gremlins, Wordpress | Leave a comment

The Errata, Corrigenda and Addenda

Posted on February 20, 2019 by Patrick Miles

George Calderon: Edwardian Genius has now been out for just over five months. I started ‘proofreading’ the book the moment I received it from Clays on 4 June 2018; it’s been ‘hoovered’ many times since. Now seems the right moment to present the typos and mistakes that have been spotted, as well as the small additions that I would make if there were a second edition (which would almost certainly be an Amazon paperback).

Just to remind readers: this is a limited fine hardback edition (we have already shifted 40% of the stock) and I sincerely hope each copy will accrue in value as the decades pass! To round off your unique copy, then, I would suggest printing out the lists below and pasting them inside the back cover.

There are lessons of typography, formatting and design that we have learned since 4 June, and these will be incorporated in a future edition, not enumerated here. The Errata below deal with errors of fact, the Corrigenda with typos, the Addenda with new input. Not altogether surprisingly, because it was read by so many people in typescript, the text itself contains few Errs and Corrs. Most Errs, Corrs and Adds occur in the Bibliography and Index, which were compiled and checked only by the weary author himself…

Errata

p. 60, l. 8, for Com. [?] read Com[mons]. p. 170, last line, for Romanovs read Romanoffs p. 174, l. 11, for Puccini’s La Vie Bohème read a version of Puccini’s opera called La Vie Bohème p. 177, l. 6 from bottom, for sueña read sueño p. 177, l. 5 from bottom, for The Outcast read An Outcast p. 184, l. 15, for Lilico read Lillico p. 188, l. 8 from bottom, for Hueffer read Ford Madox Ford p. 237, l. 5 from bottom, for 2010 read 1910 p. 311, l. 3 from bottom, for Fortnightly read Quarterly p. 352, l. 7, for sueña read sueño p. 479, l. 8, for Mr Cuthbert Bede read Mr Verdant Green p. 485, l. 17, for Bell read Hall p. 500, col. 2, l. 9, for Romanovs read Romanoffs p. 505, col. 1, l.10, for Marguerite read Margaret p. 506, col. 2, l. 8 from bottom, for Lantères read Lantérès p. 507, col. 1, l. 1, for sueña read sueño p. 513, col. 2, l. 9, for The Outcast read An Outcast and reposition on p. 497

Corrigenda

p. 67, l. 1, for car read cart p. 105, l. 12 from bottom, for -Schnurman read -Schnurmann p. 118, l. 15, for preoccuppied read preoccupied p. 135, l. 15 from bottom, for Millenium read Millennium p. 143, l. 6 from bottom, ditto p. 169, l. 4, for Principle read Principal p. 189, l. 5, for mariage read Mariage p. 206, l. 2 from bottom, sailing should be in roman and underlined (not available on this blog) p. 221, l. 9, for Tahiti iti read Tahiti iti p. 237, l. 10, for Landmarks in Russian Literature read Landmarks in Russian Literature p. 237, ll. 23-24, for The Russian People read The Russian People p. 262, l. 1, for July1935 read July 1935 p. 337, l. 5, perfect should be in roman and underlined (not available on this blog) p. 342, l. 8 from bottom, for matinées read matinees p. 344, l. 4, for step mother read stepmother p. 349, l. 1, for matinée read matinee p. 349, l. 3, for The Classical Review read the Classical Review p. 357, l. 5, for The New Age read the New Age p. 357, l. 8 from bottom, ditto p. 357, l. 4 from bottom, ditto p. 374, l. 3 from bottom, the should be in roman and underlined (not available on this blog) p. 374, last line, eleven should be in roman and underlined (not available on this blog) p. 378, last line, for 1st read First p. 379, l. 11, for -year old read -year-old p. 383, last line, loved should be in roman and underlined (not available on this blog) p. 388, l. 7 from bottom, in The Lamp’s romanise ‘s p. 391, l. 5 from bottom, close should be in roman and underlined (not available on this blog) p. 392, l. 18 from bottom, for 2nd read Second p. 447, l. 7, for before.To read before. To p. 451, l. 6, for Faith’, read Faith, p. 453, l. 10, for ennumerated read enumerated p. 455, l. 1, for bagage read baggage p. 472, l. 4, for pp.459- read pp. 459- p. 482, l. 11, for Ellman read Ellmann p. 486, l. 13, for Sitkovetskaia, M.M. read M.M. Sitkovetskaia p. 488, l. 4 from bottom, for 15, p. read 15, pp. p. 489, l. 11, for As read as p. 494, l. 6, for edn, (Lanham read edn (Lanham p. 494, l. 14, ditto p. 499, l. 8 from bottom: indent p. 500, col. 1, l. 16 from bottom: indent p. 500, col. 2, l. 7, for Talismans. read Talismans p. 502, col. 2, l. 19 from bottom, for Leo read Léo p. 503, col. 2, l. 15 from bottom, take out 113 p. 503, col. 2, l. 10 from bottom, for Bergères read Bergère p. 505, col. 2, l. 13, for Hodgett read Hodgetts p. 505, col. 2, reverse order of Hunter-Weston, Aylmer, and Hunt, Violet p. 507, col. 1, move Lloyd George, David to between LLoyd, Nesta and Lodge, Oliver p. 508, col. 2, l. 14, for MkhT read MKhT p. 511, col. 2, l. 11, for Sargeant read Sargent p. 512, col. 1, l. 22 from bottom, for 328 read 329 p. 513, col. 1, l. 5 from bottom, for de read De

Addenda

Relevant articles in the following book are given in the Bibliography, but the book itself is not cited as a separate entry. Therefore:

p. 479, after l. 2 add Beasley, Rebecca, and Philip Ross Bullock, eds, Russia in Britain, 1880-1940: From Melodrama to Modernism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Add the following page numbers after the following Index entries:

p. 498, col. 1, Beerbohm, Max 269 p. 499, col. 2, Works, Cromwell: Mall o’ Monks 228-29 p. 500, col. 1, l. 3, ‘Mademoiselle de Maupin’ 364 p. 501, col. 2, Chamberlain, Austen 250 p. 505, col. 1, Hamilton, Mary 167 p. 509, col. 1, Nicobar Islands 146 p. 510, col. 1, Playfair, Nigel 302 p. 510, col. 1, Polish language 67 p. 510, col. 2, Reuters 83 p. 511, col. 2, Sedgwick, Ann Douglas 429 p. 511, col. 2, Sélincourt, Basil de 429 p. 515, col. 2, Yavorskaya, Lydia 304 p. 515, col. 2, Yeats, W.B. 158

I am exceedingly grateful to Mr John Pym and other followers for their contribution to this whole exercise. If you discover errors that do not feature above, please write to me about them at mail@patrickmiles.co.uk . Thank you.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged addenda, bibliography, biographies, biography, comments, corrections, corrigenda, editing, errata, formatting, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Index, indie publishing, John Pym, mistakes, proofreading, publishing, Sam&Sam, typography, typos | Leave a comment

Is all biography also autobiography?

Posted on January 28, 2019 by Patrick Miles

The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn - Roger Pulvers

Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.

As long-term followers will know, the above question worries me (in the canine sense). The reason my Introduction went through so many versions was that half of my test-readers thought there was too much of me in it and not enough of George, but the other half thought the opposite. The inspiration of John Aubrey: My Own Life, as its author Ruth Scurr tells us in her Introduction, was her love of Aubrey’s prose, his mind and her native Wiltshire. These are autobiographical facts. Her book, then, although ostensibly by Aubrey, is an autobiographical artefact, the product of her personal dialogue with John Aubrey. As well as supposedly being Aubrey’s autobiography, it is a fragment of Scurr’s own (for this ability to be two voices at once, see the second entry in my spoof post of 29 April 2015). And I certainly would accept that one reason I chose to write George Calderon’s biography was that, like him, I am a Russianist and intermittent theatre bloke. In my book I work out some of my own values/beliefs, e.g. about acculturation, in dialogue with George’s own values/beliefs expressed in his life as I have researched it.

Now it so happens that I have just read a book which exemplifies the complexity of this subject better than any other, and its complexity is even deepened by the presence of a large amount of fiction. This book is The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn, by the extraordinary creative polymath Roger Pulvers. First published in Japan in 2011, it has just been brought out in London by Balestier Press.

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), despite his improbable name and the improbable events of his life, was a real person. But I don’t have to summarise Hearn’s life, because Pulvers has written his own ‘Life of Lafcadio Hearn’ as his 23-page introduction. This is an exemplary non-fictional Brief Life written with limpid scholarly objectivity. So the book entitled The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn and sub-titled ‘A Novel’, contains biography sensu stricto…

But the Graeco-Irish Lafcadio Hearn ‘became’ Japanese. He took on Japanese citizenship and ‘became’ Yakumo Koizumi. Actually, I would say, the man Hearn became a fictitious person with a great future ahead of him. To quote from Pulvers’s ‘Life’:

He created an illusion and lived his days and nights within its confines. That illusion was his Japan. He found in Japan the ideal coupling of the cerebral and the sensual, the one constantly recharging the other and catalyzing in him the inspiration to write.

[…]

Following his death in Tokyo, the Japanese crowned him with their ultimate laurel: He became their ‘Gaijin Laureate’, the single greatest non-native interpreter, in their eyes, of their inmost cultural secrets. Even today, Hearn is considered in Japan the foreigner who understood the Japanese in the most profound way.

Make no mistake, Hearn was a very serious anthropologist: the energy, curiosity and aesthetic appreciation with which he collected and wrote about Japanese folklore, customs, ghost stories, etiquette, traditional art and ritual are reminiscent of George’s engagement with Russia and Tahiti. But Hearn’s exquisitely mannered Japan was the Japan of the past. Pulvers’s thesis, as it were, is that the Meiji Japanese did not want this past, they were rushing headlong into occidentalism, nationalism, militarism and imperial aggrandizement. According to Pulvers, Hearn utterly disapproved.

So that is the non-fictional biography of Lafcadio Hearn (pp. 9-31) — always remembering that as Yakumo Koizumi the man Hearn fictionalised himself… Now (pp. 35-217) comes the novel entitled The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn.

The first thing to note here is that it’s a first-person novel and the narrator is Hearn/Koizumi himself. I.e. it is an ‘autobiographical’ novel. The second thing to say is, it’s a fantastically enjoyable and skilfully written short novel.

It is an undivided narrative told in episodes of varying length, but these flow seamlessly into each other and themes are subtly reprised (e.g. suicide). The keynote, though, is unpredictability. Either this is a result of the stunning otherness of Japanese life as experienced by Hearn, or it is a function of Hearn’s own self-dramatising and histrionic temperament. Whichever, what used to be called ‘the absurd’, but which might now be called life’s quantum contingency, is never far away, and to hilarious effect.

Pulvers’s Hearn has a usually imperturbable cat called Edgar [Poe]. In the course of one of Hearn’s many arguments with Japanese about the country’s nature and future, Lafcadio raises his voice and the cat bolts indoors:

‘You see? I even frighten my own cat.’

‘No, it was not you. You do not frighten anybody, professor. It was that.’

Akira pointed to the narrow pebbled path at the foot of the verandah. A frog sat on it with his belly glowing from the inside.

‘He swallow too many fireflies,’ said Akira.

I jumped off my rock unable to contain my laughter. I found myself leaping up and down, first beside the rock, then by the frog, which remained in place all the while. Akira, like the frog, stayed where he was, smiling along with me.

Although Hearn is always referring to the impassivity of Japanese faces, he is also constantly discovering their own ability to laugh:

I stopped under a large tree by a paddy field. The farmers were working among their rice plants […] the tree resounded with a veritable string section of cicadas. I approached the trunk and looked up. I started to shinny up the trunk, but the cicadas still did not stop their trilling. I was some six feet off the ground, with my head entirely inside the tree. I could see hundreds of them, a black mass. Resting my knee in the fork formed by two branches I removed my hat — it was even hotter in the tree than outside it — and waved it above my head, screaming to the players at the top of my lungs […] This not only satisfied me enormously, but it also shut up the cicadas. When I slid down the trunk and covered my head again, however, they resumed their music. The farmers, crouched in their paddies, stared at me with bulging faces, as if I were a Basque ghost. I doffed my hat to them, and a cicada flew out of it. They laughed raucously at this, and so did I. We had, indeed, found common ground in unsuspected juxtaposition. Who could now say that I was not, finally, on my own home ground?

Amongst other things, Pulvers has been a distinguished actor and playwright. His impersonation of Hearn’s voice (which we already know from samples of his prose) is impeccable and the dramatic pace of his prose unstoppable.

In Pulvers’s version, Hearn is a kind of Cyclops, always struggling with the difficulties of his gammy eye. Some might say that The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn is a picaresque novel (it contains, for example, a cartoon American of part-Russian origins with the name Pectopah, which is simply how tourists pronounce the Cyrillic of the Russian for ‘restaurant’). But there is also great beauty in the autobiography of Lafcadio Hearn, for instance in a scene where he accompanies Japanese to a sea-washed cave with a statue of Jizo (‘He protects dead children when they cross the river Sanzu and enter the other world’), surrounded by votive plaques left by parents and piles of round stones supposedly ‘left by the dead children themselves in the middle of the night’. Equally, no cultural holds are barred. One of the supreme scenes in the novel is when Hearn makes ‘a fatal mistake, succumbing to admiration’ and attends a soirée given by an American missionary at ‘a palace in Shirogane such as only the wealthiest and most long-established Japanese families could aspire to own’. Whilst grace is being said, Hearn/Koizumi fantasises that he is in the missionary’s study showing him a book of Japanese prints that become increasingly pornographic. The missionary is hypnotised by their ‘realism’ and one of them is described in explicit lurid detail. At that point, ‘the kerosene lamp exploded’!

Hearn is utterly counter-suggestible. ‘The Japanese have the phrase kanzen muketsu, which means “absolute perfection”. But I had thought up kanzen yuketsu, “absolute imperfection”. This had been my ideal.’ In a skilled pair of hands like Pulvers’s, caprice is always refreshing, exciting, mesmerising, comic or farcical. But by the end of the novel, Hearn says, ‘even this ideal made no sense to me at all’. The end is dark. The pupils of Sensei Hearn literally march away from him into the holocaustic future:

A parade was in progress on the campus. I stood, breathing with some difficulty, and walked to the window. There, passing below the tall cherry tree, were students and teachers of the university formed into two straight lines. Some were grasping flags in their fists. One student, with head shaven clean like a monk’s, held an effigy of a Russian soldier, a short sword, sticking out of its belly, flapping up and down as he brandished his effigy high in the air.

I would never dream of defining or over-analysing such an exuberant, Protean creation as this novel. But clearly it manages to be a number of things at once. If the novel part is a novel (which it self-evidently is), then it is a fictive autobiography. But if it is fictive can it have any claim to biographical value?

I would say it can. Even though many of the characters must be fictitious, and I assume all the dialogues are made up, the bare bones of documented (‘historical’) events do run through The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn. But above all the novel embodies the most important biographical facts: Hearn’s psychological insecurity, his cultural self-assimilation, and the nature of contemporaneous Japan. It reads as a novel, but is also truthful biography. It is, if you like, what Doestoevsky called ‘realism in the higher sense’.

Finally, it is a fair guess that The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn is autobiographical not just because its narrator is Hearn himself. Roger Pulvers, with several decades of intimate experience of Japanese life, is surely in a dialogue here with Hearn (and, of course, Japan). Thrust as a nineteen-year-old orphan on America’s shores, Hearn eventually developed intense Americanophobia and moved to Japan. Pulvers himself gave up his American citizenship in 1976. His own autobiography, to be published on 15 March 2019, is entitled The Unmaking of an American: A Memoir of Life in the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia. It will surely be as fascinating as his novel.

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged America, anthropology, autobiography, biographies, biography, cicadas, comments, Cyclops, expansionism, Fedor Dostoevskii, George Calderon, imperialism, Japan, Jizo, John Aubrey, Lafcadio Hearn, Meiji, militarism, nationalism, novels, pornography, Roger Pulvers, Ruth Scurr, The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn, The Unmaking of an American, Yakumo Koizumi | 1 Comment

A slim classic

Posted on January 21, 2019 by Patrick Miles

Wilfred Owen, A Biography by Jon Stallworthy

Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.

In a very stimulating review of my book in the annual Report of George’s old college, Trinity Oxford, Michael Alexander writes: ‘Should a biographer tell all that has been found, or select to streamline the story? It depends.’

He is right. I put everything I knew about George into my biography because there was no biography before and this might be his only chance for another century. I suspect that Falcetta did the same with his biography of Rendel Harris. ‘Long’ certainly does not equal ‘definitive’, but it may imply it and explain why there is a commercial publishing trend towards long biographies that don’t, actually, contain much new. On the other hand, a biography like Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith’s Van Gogh: The Life (2011) contains so much new material that it thoroughly justifies its length (893 pages).

Biographies may be also be short for a variety of reasons. A vast number of facts may have been available for centuries, but the biographer wants to streamline them to clarify a narrative. Similarly, he/she may have studied a person’s life for decades but want to distil his/her interpretation of it into, say, 30,000 words. Another cause of brevity, of course, may be that there is not a vast amount of known facts in the first place. Or simply that the life of the biography’s subject was not long.

When Jon Stallworthy’s classic biography of Wilfred Owen came out in 1974, I imagine people assumed it was short (less than three hundred pages) because Owen’s life was short. Indeed, Stallworthy stresses the preciousness of time in Owen’s life by marking each spread of pages with his age top left and the year top right — something I’ve not seen in any other biography.

However, it could be that in 1974 Stallworthy simply did not have any more facts at his disposal. Equally, it might be that he purposely ‘streamlined’ the biography. There is certainly a strong sense of shape to the work. Perhaps he felt that less was more.

Despite my visceral love of Owen’s work, I had never read Stallworthy’s biography of him until this week. If I had, some of the many references to Owen in this blog since 2014 might have been better informed! My usual rider applies: I have chosen particular books for these posts on biography because they illustrate issues with modern biography that I want to discuss, not because I am reviewing them. And the issue in question here is length.

Nevertheless, the experience of reading Wilfred Owen: A Biography has been so extraordinary that I must say something about that (which still relates to its extent). Stallworthy was a friend of Wilfred Owen’s younger brother Harold, whose memory of Wilfred seems to have been vivid and encyclopaedic. Harold was also able to supply the biographer with a very large amount of written family material. Wilfred’s childhood, his relations with his mother (in particular), and his adolescence, which take up nearly half of the book, are therefore related in great, and sometimes tedious, detail. Moreover, Stallworthy very rarely intervenes in this part of the book with what I called in my previous post ‘speculating and interpreting’. The effect is almost fatally detached. It was a masterstroke to quote so many of Owen’s poems in autograph images (Owen’s handwriting is very legible), but Stallworthy cannot conceal their adolescent flaws, indeed he tersely identifies them; so that does not exactly enhance one’s reading, either.

Then a miracle occurs, or rather two. In June 1917 Owen was posted to Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh, to be treated for PTSD. Siegfried Sassoon, a published poet and celebrity, arrived there shortly afterwards for his own reasons. Eventually, Owen plucks up courage and knocks gently on Sassoon’s door. In Stallworthy’s words:

A voice answered, the door opened, and Owen advanced into blazing sunlight and the most important meeting of his life.

The sensitivity and sheer goodness with which Sassoon recognises Owen’s poetic gift, befriends, encourages, teaches, nurtures and admires him, is incredibly moving. My breath was taken away as Owen now produced one masterpiece after another: ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ (five drafts reproduced), ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’, ‘The Send-Off’, ‘Greater Love’… One is witnessing the miraculous birth of great poetry. But, astonishingly, the miracle is transferred to the biography. Stallworthy himself rises to the occasion:

It is now possible to see that his gifts were not only gifts of genius, but other gifts that only the gods bestow. He came to the War with his imagination in large measure conditioned and prepared to receive and record the experience of the trenches. Botany and Broxton, Uriconium, and Keats, his adolescent hypochondria, his religious upbringing and later doubts, all shaped him for his subject, as no other. He wrote more eloquently than other poets of the tragedy of boys killed in battle, because he felt that tragedy more acutely, and his later elegies spring from his early preoccupations as flowers from their stem [an image adapted from one of Keats’s quoted earlier].

The whole book now advances into blazing light and Stallworthy is never in danger of losing his reader again. Both the story of Owen’s last year and Stallworthy’s telling of it are riveting. The total effect is cathartic. I understand now why Graham Greene called it ‘surely one of the finest biographies of our time’.

So: should this slim classic be longer now that far more (I assume) is known about Owen’s life, for instance about what I take to be his bisexuality? Should it be superseded by a longer biography and indeed has been? The answer, in my view, is that it can always be superseded as a biography, but never as a book. As a unique biographical creation — the poet Jon Stallworthy’s creation — nothing can replace it. But for the rest, I believe there is no such thing as a definitive biography. Like translations, and waves making to the pebbled shore, biographies ‘in sequent toil all forwards do contend’ (Sonnet 60).

The reason I have not appended page numbers to my inset quotations above is that it would be unhelpful given the variety of different editions now available. The book was first published by OUP and Chatto in 1974 and the above image is from a copy of the Oxford Paperback edition (1977) kindly lent to me by a subscriber to Calderonia.

SOME RESPONSES TO THE BIOGRAPHY RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary | Tagged Alessandro Falcetta, Armistice, biographies, biography, brevity, comments, Craiglockhart, George Calderon, Graham Greene, Harold Owen, James Rendel Harris, Jon Stallworthy, length, Michael Alexander, Ors, PTSD, publishers, Sambre and Oise Canal, Siegfried Sassoon, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, Vincent van Gogh, Wilfred Owen, World War I | Leave a comment

A real biography

Posted on January 14, 2019 by Patrick Miles

Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.

I don’t think I have read a new biography — or any biography — since Helen Smith’s The Uncommon Reader: A Life of Edward Garnett, which I wrote about on 1 June 2018. Given that I was constantly reading biographies as they came out whilst I was writing my own between 2011 and 2017, and must have discussed about a dozen on Calderonia, this grinding halt may strike followers as odd. There are at least two reasons for it.

First, I was mainly reading these new biographies in order to keep up with what was going on in the ‘genre’. I was myself attempting to be innovative and there were plenty of original developments at the time that I found inspiring. After my biography of George came out, that need fell away. Second, the last six months seem to have produced mainly biographies of already very famous people, of whom I have read at least one biography before, and I had great difficulty in believing they had much new to say. (Of course, this is not the only reason for writing a biography, as I’ll discuss in a couple of weeks time, but for me at least it’s a major one for reading it.)

Meanwhile, the fertility of modern biography/autobiography, and what exactly it does and amounts to, continues to exercise theoretical minds like Ruth Scurr’s all over the world, as the pages of the TLS testify. So the subject of biography and biographies is what I want to broach again on Calderonia. As I have said before, my posts about specific biographies are not meant as critical reviews of them, rather I am taking them as examples, even perhaps exemplars, of the genre.

Alessandro Falcetta’s 676-page biography of Rendel Harris, published at the same time as mine of George Calderon, has come into my hands quite by chance. My wife is a great-great-niece of Rendel Harris, Falcetta had to approach her for copyright permission, and in return he sent her a copy of the book, which she has read and lent to me before it sets off round the family. In Waterstones I would probably not have been tempted to buy the biography of a ‘Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter’, but I am extremely glad that I have now read it.

Falcetta’s biography is what I call a ‘real’ biography, by which I mean it’s prototypical in the best possible sense: it superlatively does what most people, I think, want and expect from a biography. Let me explain.

Unlike George Calderon, Rendel Harris is not unknown. Yet he is not so well known that anyone will have read a biography of him before (there wasn’t one). Therefore Falcetta’s biography is new; it is not one of those biographies I have referred to above, of Churchill or Mary Queen of Scots, say, that are recycling well known material. And it is long, promising comprehensiveness, which readers also want. Where this is concerned, the biography comes with a guarantee: Falcetta spent twenty-three years researching it!

His book is also a cradle-to-grave account, i.e. it starts with Rendel Harris’s Nonconformist commercial family background in Plymouth and moves from his birth to his death. This too, I think, is what most readers want — not an ‘innovative’ shuffling of the time cards, which they may find difficult to follow. But this chronological approach is not drily factual either: already on page 11 Falcetta is speculating and interpreting, which the prototypical biography must also do:

Rendel grew up a slender and tall young man. Piercing blue eyes left no doubts about his earnestness and the radical views he could express in matters of life. At the same time they were merciless assistants to his irresistible drive to make jokes in all situations, a drive that not all his acquaintances appreciated.

Most important of all for the prototypical biography, Rendel Harris’s life was packed with change, travel and action. He scored a top First in maths at Cambridge, was awarded a fellowship at Clare College and taught the subject, but soon became more interested in palaeography, which in his case meant scriptural and early Christian texts. The textual veracity of the New Testament was, of course, a subject of enormous popular interest and religious importance in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Harris organised and led three arduous expeditions to the monks at St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, with whom he got on extremely well unlike most European scholars. He photographed and handcopied Greek and Syriac texts he found there, discovering ‘one of the first and most beautiful specimens of ancient Christian poetry’, The Odes of Solomon (p. 1) and becoming ‘the first Western scholar to read the Apology of Aristides in its entirety’ (p. 92), this being a highly important second-century defence of Christianity that Harris pieced together at St Catherine’s. The hundreds of fragments and codices that he turned up in the Middle East included lines of Homer, Sappho, Plato, Herodotus, and fifty previously unknown verses from Euripedes’s Medea. He was then chosen to direct Woodbrooke, the first Quaker college in Europe, which he ‘tried to make a Free Church rather than a Quaker institution’ (p. 234). He and his wife helped raise about three million pounds at today’s prices for the relief of victims of the Armenian genocides and themselves travelled to the areas of the massacres, managing and personally distributing aid three times between 1895 and 1915. During the First World War he was twice torpedoed crossing the Mediterranean, on the second occasion only just escaping with his life as the lifeboat drifted towards Corsica and people died around him…

Then there is the intense psychological interest that a prototypical biography must arouse. In the words of William Littleboy, the warden of Woodbrooke, Rendel Harris was ‘the most curious psychological puzzle I have come across. The man who had actually preached the “highest” lecture of any one I know, is the only man I ever met who inspires me with something akin to real fear’. Harris was capable of utterly childlike humility and simplicity, yet in Littleboy’s view his directorship was ‘a dictatorship in the most absolute form’ (p. 233). The reason Littleboy ‘feared’ him, though, was simply that he never knew what Rendel was going to say or do next. Rendel could wear tennis shoes to chair an august meeting and answer ‘Brer Rabbit’ when asked ‘Who is there?’ on the phone. According to close friends, the reason he was never given a chair at Cambridge was not his Nonconformism but that he was ‘prone to putting people’s backs up and to making rather harsh comments about them’; he was ‘not an easy man to understand and get along with: he had a rather whimsical sense of humour and liked to say things to shock people’, as well as ‘enjoying praise and being a centre of admiration’ (p. 140). Well, it is quite clear from this book how stultified British academic, Nonconformist and social life was then, and I think Rendel just wanted to shake it up. He was a wonderful mover and shaker, with the energy of ten of us today. He rocked the boat because he thought the best way to test and improve boats is by rocking them. His disarming humour was in the first instance a ploy to break down po-facedness in the pursuit of truth (the only thing he was interested in), but it is clear throughout this biography that he also used laughter as a means to empathy:

One day, he was travelling with Wood on a train from London to Birmingham across fields where cows were pastured. The only other passenger in the compartment was a lady sitting opposite, looking preoccupied and sad. Suddenly, Rendel leaned towards her and opened the conversation by asking: ‘Don’t you sometimes wish you were a cow?’ This unexpected and discourteous question led to a talk in which he was able to comfort this new acquaintance suffering from some personal trouble. (p. 243)

Finally, a ‘real’ biography always makes you think. It puts you in touch with someone from the past who leaps time and says something relevant to you in the present. Falcetta convinces me that Rendel Harris was a very modern Christian in his lifetime — and still is! Of course, he was a mathematician and scientist, as well as a Darwinist:

For him, every theory had to be tested in an experimental fashion. This principle he applies to Jesus. His faith did not centre on intellectual and unverifiable tenets, as the [Quakerian] inner light might have been, but on an event, the sending of Christ, that is, on a person who had actually lived, about whom historical records exist, and whose influence in one’s own life could be practically felt in a sense of increased power, of joy and fulfilment. (p. 308)

He left behind the guilt-ridden Congregationalism of his upbringing through having an epiphanic experience of being freed of sin by God, then experiencing ‘holiness’ and a union with the personality of Christ. He became a Quaker, but the humour, conversation and singing that he introduced to Meeting did not go down well with some. Another difference was his ‘mysticism’. ‘This was an important feature of his devotional books and many of his contemporaries agreed in considering him a mystic’, writes Carole Spencer:

Rendel’s mysticism placed him in continuity with historical Quakerism but against liberal Quakerism, which was turning into a reasonable, non-mystical faith, precisely the kind of Quakerism that was championed by Littleboy, the author of The Appeal of Quakerism to the Non-Mystic. […] Rendel’s mysticism, Spencer observes, was a warm-hearted relationship with Christ, something that modern, rationalist Quakers discarded as pure sentimentality. (p. 259)

Thus, although Rendel Harris was himself a rationalist and empiricist, Falcetta stresses that the ‘absoluteness of the religion of Jesus’ rested for him ‘on spiritual grounds and is proved experientially’ (p. 37). Personally, I would go further and say that Rendel was a modern existential Christian in the way that post-Kierkegaard, post-totalitarian, post-Holocaust, post-WW2 Christians have been all over Europe and Russia. His faith led him always to confront the ethical demands of the present: to challenge the official prejudice against Nonconformists in British universities, to protest against gratuitous vivisection, to preach and practise gender equality, to organise and deliver humanitarian aid irrespective of creed, to be alive to political deceit everwhere.

Of course, there are many more aspects to Alessandro Falcetta’s book than I have discussed here as ingredients of a ‘real’ biography. For instance, within the thirty-four chapters the text is divided into about three hundred manageable, titled sections that greatly facilitate reading, and within those Falcetta does, in fact, ‘mix it’ with chronological time. Further, he has to devote considerable space to informing the reader of the facts surrounding palaeographical, theological and religious controversies.

The latter, I confess, I found rather heavy-going, but it does not matter. This is a massive, pluralistic masterpiece that deserves to be read rather like a Bible: buy a copy, put it on a home lectern, and read twenty pages a day! You won’t regret it.

P.S. Rendel Harris and George Calderon could well have met at the Third International Congress for the History of Religions at Oxford in 1908, which they both attended. They shared a deep interest in early religions and folklore. Obviously, Rendel was Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian; he was born sixteen years before George and outlived him by twenty-six. Both were polymaths and…maverick geniuses?

SOME RESPONSES TO THE BIOGRAPHY RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged Alessandro Falcetta, Armenia, biographies, biography, Brer Rabbit, Carole Spencer, comments, Congregationalism, Congress for the History of Religions, Corsica, cows, Darwinism, Edward Garnett, existentialism, George Calderon, Helen Smith, Jesus Christ, literary theory, mysticism, Nonconformism, Plymouth, Quakerism, Rendel Harris, Ruth Scurr, Søren Kierkegaard, Times Literary Supplement, William Littleboy, Woodbrooke | Leave a comment

‘Normal’ blogging will resume

Posted on January 6, 2019 by Patrick Miles

A very happy and healthy New Year to all Calderonia readers old and new! (And if you are entirely new, please consider subscribing [immediate right], which does not mean paying anything, it just means that you will automatically receive each new post via email.)

Since George Calderon: Edwardian Genius was published on 7 September 2018 I have had to concentrate on selling copies through this blog, rather than on writing my usual variety of posts. Sales have not gone badly — we have made triple figures and have less of a hill to shift — but I have also learned some new and unwelcome truths about ‘indie’ publishing since that date; truths that I shall draw together in a future post. We fight on through the twenty or so more months that I reckon it will take to sell the limited edition out and then produce a (revised) Amazon paperback edition.

Meanwhile, surprising though it may sound, the first printed reviews are just appearing. If you click here, you will be able to read Michael Pursglove’s long and very gratifying review in the New Year issue of East-West Review (click to enlarge). This is quite a steamy issue, as it also reviews Bryon MacWilliams’s book about the traditional Russian bath:

An exotic cover (‘Russian Venus’ by Boris Kustodiev, 1926)

Where sales are concerned, may I just add that we are selling a limited number of copies through Amazon, Blackwell’s in Oxford, the National Archives bookshop at Kew, and Daunt’s Edwardian bookshop in Hampstead, but of course the main line for buyers of all descriptions is through the Sam&Sam website. Polite people keep asking me: ‘I assume I can buy your book at Waterstones?’, but I really think that is a euphemism for: ‘I don’t want to shell out £30 and if I imply I only buy from Waterstones you won’t know whether I’ve bought one or not’! Actually it will not appear at Waterstones, because such an arrangement would leave me with only about a 30% return on each copy.

I will always feature the book and reviews on future posts, but I assure you that I shall now be gradually returning to ‘normal’ blogging, probably just weekly. Obviously, there will be far less about WW1. I will start by reprising a favourite subject: new and old biographies…

SOME RESPONSES TO THE BIOGRAPHY RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged Amazon, biographies, biography, Blackwell's, blogging, Boris Kustodiev, Bryon MacWilliams, commemoration, comments, Daunt Books, East-West Review, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Michael Pursglove, National Archives, publicity, publishing, Russian baths, Russian Venus, Sam&Sam, steam baths, The Great War, Waterstones, World War I | Leave a comment

Sam&Sam elves’ Christmas Offer!

Posted on December 13, 2018 by Patrick Miles

A happy reading Christmas from Elf2!

Minute subcutaneous examination by Elf1 of the economic condition of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius suggests that we can offer a SPECIAL CHRISTMAS DEAL to Calderonia followers and visitors who might like to buy TWO COPIES AT A 27% DISCOUNT. To be precise, if you buy one copy at the fixed price of £32.95 including second class postage, you can get a second copy for £15.00 including postage, making a TOTAL COST OF £47.95! Please email Elf1 at mail@patrickmiles.co.uk to place your order, including your postal address.

The offer will last until Tw-elf Night, which in this case is reckoned to be 5 January 2019 inclusive.

My deep and heartfelt thanks to all Calderonia’s loyal followers in its fourth year who sustained me with your unflagging interest and encouragement through the vicissitudes of self-publication, who continue to Comment so stimulatingly, and who since publication day have supported the project so generously from your purses…

A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!

SOME RESPONSES TO THE BIOGRAPHY RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘You have, I believe, architected and written a monumental and original biography.’ John Pym, film critic

‘This is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Personal commentary | Tagged biographies, Christmas, comments, discounts, elves, followers, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, prices, publishers, reviews, Sam&Sam, special offers, Twelfth Night, visitors | 1 Comment

The 150th anniversary of a very remarkable man

Posted on December 2, 2018 by Patrick Miles

One hundred and fifty years ago today, early in the morning, Clara Calderon (aged thirty-two) gave birth to George Leslie Calderon at 9 Marlborough Place, St John’s Wood. If not present at the actual birth, his father the Victorian painter Philip Hermogenes Calderon (aged thirty-five) could not have been far away, as he was able to draw the newborn George’s head and send the sketch to his mother-in-law that same morning. In Russian terms, the auspices of George’s birth were very good indeed: he seems to have been born wearing a ‘shirt’, i.e. part of his caul.

Long and detailed research suggests that 9 Marlborough Place no longer exists. The road has been renumbered at least twice since 1868 and it seems likely that George’s birthplace is where number 45 is today — a block of flats named Arabella Court:

The probable site of George Calderon’s birthplace today

However, our research threw up the very interesting fact that before George’s birth the Calderon family had been living at 16 Marlborough Place, i.e. the other side of the road. George’s brothers Frank and John had been born at number 16 in 1865 and 1867 respectively. All the old houses on that side still exist and many are listed. The best we can say is that the Victorian number 16 Marlborough Place may be number 50 today:

Possibly where the Calderon family lived up to 1868

After the one hundredth anniversary of George Calderon’s death at Gallipoli, I wrote a long tribute to his originality and achievement. All I can add now is that it is a rare privilege and honour to have been chosen, as it were, to write the first full-length biography of him, coinciding with the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth. Every response I have had from readers expresses delight at discovering George’s rich life and personality. For many, the book has also been an initiation into the energy and complexity of Edwardian life.

This handsomely produced 544-page hardback limited edition was published on 7 September and is selling steadily. The first printed reviews are due soon and will be quoted below as they are published. Full details of how to obtain the book are here:

The biography is available online at the Sam&Sam site priced £30 plus postage. Alternatively, if you prefer to buy it by cheque, or wish to discuss discounts for multiple purchases, please contact the author at mail@patrickmiles.co.uk .

SOME RESPONSES RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘You have, I believe, architected and written a monumental and original biography.’ John Pym, film critic

‘This is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged Amelia Storey, anniversaries, Arabella Court, biographies, birthplace, Clara Calderon, Dardanelles, Frank Calderon, Gallipoli, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, John Calderon, Marlborough Place, Philip Hermogenes Calderon, readers, Sam&Sam | Leave a comment

First biography of Gallipoli war hero

Posted on November 17, 2018 by Patrick Miles

Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not. Wilfred Owen

Although at 45 well over-age, George Calderon was determined in 1914 to get to the Front. He signed up on 4 August 1914 and went with the Blues as an interpreter to Ypres, where he was wounded on 29 October. By a ruse, he then joined the Ox & Bucks regiment as a lieutenant and in May 1915 volunteered for an overseas posting which turned out to be Gallipoli. There he was transferred to the 1st Battalion King’s Own Scottish Borderers, who were crack troops at the spearhead of the advance on 4 June 1915, the fateful Third Battle of Krithia. Using Calderon’s vibrant war letters, this book reconstructs in detail his army career and the military history of the battles he took part in. It concludes that he is buried in an unnamed grave at Twelve Tree Copse Cemetery on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It also tells the moving story of how his wife Kittie tried to trace him after he was reported missing, fought to hold her life together after his death was confirmed, and dedicated herself to preserving his literary legacy.

This is the first full-length biography of George Calderon. It proves that he was a man of action and a significant Edwardian literary, theatrical and political figure. He lived in Russia 1895-97, was an expert on Russian folklore and literature, wrote two novels, visited Tahiti, premiered Chekhov in Britain, and wrote successful plays himself.

The 544-page book is available online at the Sam&Sam site priced £30 plus postage. Alternatively, if you prefer to buy it by cheque, or wish to discuss discounts for multiple purchases, please contact the author at mail@patrickmiles.co.uk .

SOME RESPONSES RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘You have, I believe, architected and written a monumental and original biography.’ John Pym, film critic

‘This is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to this entry.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears here on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged Achi Baba, Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, comments, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, KOSB, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Royal Horse Guards, Tahiti, The Blues, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Twelve Tree Copse, World War I, Ypres | Leave a comment

The War Is Over

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Patrick Miles

Remembrance Sunday at Sandwich, Kent, 1964

I went to attend the Armistice commemoration on Sunday in my home town of Sandwich, whence my grandfather set out for Gallipoli in 1915 and whither he fortunately returned from Ypres in 1918. This was the programme:

As you can see, the hearth of events was St Clement’s Church, starting with Holy Communion and finishing with the church’s bells ringing out. I wonder how usual such a religious setting was in the country as a whole. Moreover, the Rector of Sandwich said key prayers at the War Memorial in the language of the Book of Common Prayer and I was staggered that many of the 200 people present recited the Lord’s Prayer in that version, too. Remarkable and most moving.

When I was sixteen, I took the above black and white photograph of the ceremony at Sandwich’s War Memorial. On Sunday I took this one from the same spot:

2018 Sandwich Remembrance Day on Market Street

Remembrance Sunday at Sandwich, Kent, 2018

For me it is fascinating to compare the two photographs and events. My 1964 snap looks almost as though it needs Peter Jackson’s treatment from They Shall Not Grow Old! It portrays another age. At Sunday’s commemoration, of course, there were no veterans of the Great War, and extremely few from the Second World War. There was no live military music (except the two bugle posts, played by a civilian) and no marching. The whole occasion, I fear, would have struck people of fifty years ago as bewilderingly lacking in formality. Yet there was no mistaking the sincerity of everyone involved. Perhaps what we see here is the difference between deference and respect. Another massive difference was the role of women in Sunday’s event. At least half of the C.C.F. contingent from the local grammar school were girls.

Before the wreath-laying, I had placed this cross amongst others in the earth at the side of the war memorial:

The War is over, and personally I find it too early to say what conclusions I draw from the often eviscerating experience of following it (and George Calderon’s war in particular) since 4 August 2014. But the keynote of the service at the war memorial, of a long family message left amongst the wreaths, and of the Mayor of Sandwich’s address at the lighting of the closing beacon, was that to be worthy of our ancestors’ self-sacrifice we must deeply learn the lessons of the Great War and apply them in today’s increasingly unstable world. People are clearly worried by the parallels with a century ago.

For myself, I suppose I have become more certain than ever that truthful remembering is the backbone of a nation’s life. The vital act is the individual’s recall of the dead and all that they meant and mean to us. One may be uncertain about the physical expression of remembrance — gigantic monuments, wreaths, the National Memorial Arboretum, modern art installations — but for once I wanted to mark my mental remembering with an object, a simple wooden cross pressed into England’s earth.

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears here.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears here on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged Armistice, Book of Common Prayer, comments, Gallipoli, George Calderon, memorialisation, memory, National Memorial Arboretum, Peter Jackson, Remembrance Sunday, Sandwich, St Clement's Church, The Great War, They Shall Not Grown Old, World War I, Ypres | 2 Comments

‘Bugles calling for them…’

Posted on November 4, 2018 by Patrick Miles

It is a source of sorrow to me that for unforeseeable reasons I have not been able to honour my acceptance two years ago of an extremely kind invitation from the Wilfred Owen Association (France) to attend the commemoration today at Ors (located on the Sambre–Oise Canal) of the poet’s death in action on 4 November 1918. A search of Calderonia on Owen’s name will show what a presence he has been here over the past four years.

As followers will know, I deplore those British historians who believe that our war poetry (which means above all Owen’s) has somehow replaced rigorous historical teaching of World War I in our schools and that we need to ‘come out of Poets Corner’ to see the War in a proper perspective. I know from my own experience that war poetry is often presented simplistically at school, but that does not mean ‘the First World War is taught more as tragic poetry than as history’ (Adrian Gregory). Our war poetry has too often been taught as mere ‘protest poetry’, i.e. verse that protests war is wrong, we were wrong to fight this War, soldiers shouldn’t have been fighting it, they were victims.

If this were all that Sassoon’s, Owen’s or Gurney’s war poetry was, then it would not be poetry. But it is poetry, because it is verbally and morally complex, subtle, ambivalent, multivalent, polyphonic, alive. I’ve written before about how poems of Owen’s have been misunderstood as a result of simplistic reading, e.g. ‘Dulce et Decorum’.

One of the prime reasons that Owen is a great poet is that even as you read a line of his it reveals a range of possible meanings to you and a complexity of thought; it writhes in your brain, as it were, so the poem literally appears to live… Examples that I particularly admire are the last line of ‘Greater Love’ — ‘Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not’ — and the line ‘bugles calling for them from sad shires’ in the sonnet ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. ‘You may weep’ is ambiguous enough, but ‘touch them not’ is searingly so: you cannot touch them literally, physically, because they are dead, but you cannot touch them (their greater love) metaphorically either, in the sense of attain to or equal them (it). Similarly, ‘bugles calling for them’ could mean just ‘in commemoration of them’, or, unbearably, it could mean ‘calling them home but they cannot come’.

Owen cannot come back to the ‘sad shires’ who mourn their dead of the Great War. After hardly any of his poems were published in his lifetime, it was his words that answered the bugles’ calls to return to the land that ‘bore’ and ‘shaped’ them (Rupert Brooke), and it is unthinkable that they will ever be devalued as long as the English language exists.

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears here.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears here on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged Anthem for Doomed Youth, British Expeditionary Force, bugles, commemoration, comments, Dulce et Decorum, English language, George Calderon, Greater Love, historians, Ivor Gurney, Ors, Poets Corner, Rupert Brooke, Sambre-Oise Canal, Siegfried Sassoon, The Great War, war poetry, War Poets, Wilfred Owen, Wilfred Owen Association, World War I | 2 Comments

Who are ‘war heroes’?

Posted on October 27, 2018 by Patrick Miles

Subscribers to Calderonia are probably unaware that the wording of the sales post below, which has been up since publication day on 7 September, has actually changed several times as we were obliged to re-target our marketing by theme and readership (see the first sentence of my previous post). With Armistice Day approaching, the question arises as to whether we should now shift to George’s participation in the War. Should the book be temporarily rebranded as the first biography of a ‘Gallipoli war hero’?

This begs the question of what, in 2018, a ‘war hero’ is. A growing number of people may believe that there can be no such thing as a ‘war hero’; that the term suggests glorification of war; that there are only victims, on both sides of a war.

I think the nuances of ‘war hero’ are complicated. The very word ‘hero’ implies, somehow, a person too superhuman to be human, a kind of one-dimensional being. Calderon and St John Hankin mocked the Edwardian hero-man in their play Thompson. I remember once when I was interpreting for theatre director Toby Robertson at the Moscow Arts during a tour to Russia by his Prospect Theatre Company, he said to his Russian counterparts: ‘We like our heroes with flaws, but I get the impression you like…your heroes.’ Soviet statues of their heroes certainly tended to be strongly featured, monolithic and intimidating.

If we recall the heroes of the Trojan War, do we think of them as superhuman mainly for their ability to kill the enemy and survive horrendous wounds? Richard Westmancott’s 1832 statue of Achilles in the Wellington Memorial at Hyde Park (above left) seems to portray him as a killing machine, and I suspect for a long time in Western culture that is what a ‘war hero’ (for instance of the Crusades) was.

Yet what seems to have fascinated the Greeks themselves about Achilles was his beauty, his friendship with Patroclus, his brilliance as a military leader, his emotional vulnerability, his feminine side, and the fact that despite having been endowed with magical invincibility he still had, well, an Achilles Heel. Many classical statues of Achilles focus on that, depicting him lying on the ground, wounded, dying, with the arrow in his tendon. He was a hero with a flaw, and since it killed him, it was a tragic flaw. There seems to be an area where the war hero and the tragic hero may merge.

In the above portrait of Nelson, by Lemuel Francis Abbot 1800, we know immediately that Nelson is a ‘hero’ because he has a stiff, monument-like torso draped with the insignia of naval achievement. Yet his face, although wearing a determined expression, looks rather soft and sensitive. He was never personally a killer like the Greek heroes, though he was a brilliant strategist of killers. As a commander, he won the crucial Battle of Trafalgar, which made him a super-hero, but he was killed winning it. Indeed, at school in 1957 our teacher, who had lost both of his legs in the First World War, told us that Nelson was shot by a sharpshooter because he insisted on going out on deck in all his regalia, which made him conspicuous. Nelson, the teacher insinuated, had a fatal flaw (‘hamartia’ in Aristotle’s theory of tragedy) and he died through hubris…

Few people, surely, would deny that Winston Churchill is a war hero, yet he never personally killed anyone, as far as I know, even when he was a professional soldier in WW1; and although he had his warts, I don’t think he had a fatal flaw. Nor was he killed in the course of leading the war effort, although he did not spare himself in that effort. What the ‘iconic’ 1941 portrait of Churchill by Karsh conveys is genial resolution, defiance, determination to win the war. Which — vital, of course, to being a war hero — he did.

Whether a war hero is a successful killer, a successful commander, has a fatal flaw, or is ‘tragically’ killed in the course of the fight, it seems that there has to be in him/her a readiness to give their all, possibly but not necessarily making the ultimate sacrifice. In this sense, Edith Cavell is undoubtedly a war hero, despite what she said about patriotism being ‘not enough’. Selfless courage, to the point of self-sacrifice, seems to be the defining feature. So, for his determination physically to defend his country from occupation and for his self-sacrifice on 4 June 1915, George Calderon certainly deserves to be called a war hero. (He could also be said to have had a tragic flaw: unflinching impetuosity.)

As we know, the vast majority of those who came back from WW1 were not thought of as war heroes. But in my view they are that because they either willingly or unwillingly exposed themselves to the ultimate sacrifice in a just cause for the rest of us. More commonly, since the 1960s at least, the ‘average Tommy’ has been regarded as a victim of war — although Peter Jackson, in his Q&A after the premiere of They Shall Not Grow Old, specifically commented that the testimonies and footage he had used disprove that.

And what of the civilian casualties of WW1? Were they just collateral ‘victims’ of war, or do they too deserve to be called ‘heroes’ because they gave their lives in the greater cause of our freedom? Or were all the ‘war heroes’ on both sides essentially ‘victims’ of war? But does ‘essentially’ just mean ‘from a certain point of view’, i.e. subjectively, and if so, what is that worth? How can someone who willingly sacrifices their life for their country be called a ‘victim’? Isn’t that patronising? Wouldn’t they be mortally offended?

I leave these questions with you…

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears here.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears here on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged Achilles, Aristotle, comments, Crusades, Dardanelles, Edith Cavell, Gallipoli, George Calderon, hamartia, heroes, Horatio Nelson, hubris, Iliad, Karsh, Lemuel Francis Abbott, Moscow Arts, patri-passionism, patriotism, Patroclus, Peter Jackson, Prospect Theatre Company, Richard Westmancott, self-sacrifice, St John Hankin, The Great War, They Shall Not Grow Old, Third Battle of Krithia, Toby Robertson, war heroes, war victims, Wellington Memorial, Winston Churchill, World War I | Leave a comment

Thank you, Blackwell’s of Oxford!

Posted on October 24, 2018 by Patrick Miles

Chekhov and Calderon display at Blackwells

The promotional stand at Blackwell’s earlier in the month

One day, perhaps, I will describe how my whole post-7 September marketing strategy was upset and I had to re-focus immediately on my potential Russianist readership worldwide… Thank you to ALL Russianists everywhere who have responded magnificently! I know there are many more of you out there and I am confident that you too will answer the call of Edwardian Pioneer Russianist George Calderon, the Man Who Brought Chekhov to Britain, in due course.

Meanwhile, everlasting gratitude to Blackwell’s of Oxford, who enthusiastically took up my invitation to mount a promotional display of my book and current translations of Chekhov and other classics of Russian literature (see above). There is appropriateness here, of course, as I calculate that Blackwell’s must be situated about 200 yards from George’s old rooms in Trinity College and Oxford University has a first-class Russian Department with, I’m sure, scores of keen freshers streaming in this term.

I understand now why Blackwell’s are consistently Bookseller of the Year, and I wish Heffers of Cambridge and Toppings of St Andrews would follow their example!

SOME RESPONSES RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘You have, I believe, architected and written a monumental and original biography.’ John Pym, film critic

‘This is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to this entry.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears here on Amazon UK.

Posted in Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary | Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, Blackwell's, Bookseller of the Year, Clare Hopkins, comments, George Calderon, Heffers, Laurence Binyon, marketing, Oxford, Sam&Sam, St Andrews, Toppings, translation, Trinity College Oxford | Leave a comment

FIRST BIOGRAPHY OF THE MAN WHO BROUGHT CHEKHOV TO BRITAIN!

Posted on September 7, 2018 by Patrick Miles

This book, the first full-length biography of the significant Edwardian literary and political figure George Calderon, who lived in Russia 1895-97, was an expert on Russian folklore and literature, premiered Chekhov in Britain, wrote the best seller Tahiti, and was killed at Gallipoli, has just been published by Sam&Sam, Cambridge, in a fine limited edition printed by Clays of Bungay.

It is available online at the Sam&Sam site priced £30 plus postage. Alternatively, if you prefer to buy it by cheque, or wish to discuss discounts for multiple purchases, please contact the author at mail@patrickmiles.co.uk .

SOME RESPONSES RECEIVED SO FAR

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘You have, I believe, architected and written a monumental and original biography.’ John Pym, film critic

‘This is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to this entry.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears here on Amazon UK.