Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Captain of the 11
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George Calderon c.1901
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920Recent Comments
- John Pym on Two anniversaries We are all, followers and occasional contributors, beholden to you, Patrick, for reminding us for ten years that the past is worth remembering and for keeping alive the... (August 17, 2024 at 1:06 pm)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Very many thanks for fleshing that point out -- and so entertainingly! (I love your reference to creative writing courses, which are a phobia of mine.) Although several... (August 2, 2024 at 11:03 am)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible When I say that the British Republic of Letters was dead by 1880, I don't mean to imply that thereafter there were no men and women outside universities, institutes and... (August 2, 2024 at 9:19 am)
- Patrick Miles on A second Family Bible Thank you for devoting valuable time to writing this fascinating Comment. If I may say so, it is awe-inspiring to see the author of a monumental work standing back from that... (July 31, 2024 at 5:32 pm)
- Laurence Brockliss on A second Family Bible Male Professionals in Nineteenth Century Britain was a new departure for me. For most of my adult life I have worked on seventeenth and eighteenth century France. It is also... (July 24, 2024 at 11:31 am)
Tag Archives: Foxwold
Watch this Space
Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore … Continue reading
Watch this Space
Calderonia is an experiment in biography through a blog. It tells the story of George and Kittie Calderon’s lives from 30 July 1914 to 30 July 1915 from day to day as it happened, but exactly 100 years afterwards. It therefore … Continue reading
Commemoration (concluded)
Since this blog started in July last year, I have taken part in many conversations, both viva voce and online, about followers’ responses to George Calderon’s war experience, to the War as it has been unfolding, and to what I … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Aeschylus, arachnophobia, Battle of Waterloo, catharsis, Clare Hopkins, closure, commemoration, comments, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Dardanelles, Diana Princess of Wales, empathy, Foxwold, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jim Corbet, John Hussey, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lesbia Corbet, Mikhail Bakhtin, Nadezhda Mandel'shtam, Santanu Das, Søren Kierkegaard, The Great War, The Lusitania, Third Battle of Krithia, tragedy, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare, World War I
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Commemoration (to be concluded)
Mr Pym, who is the grandson of Violet and Evey Pym, of Foxwold, two of the Calderons’ closest friends, sent me this poem a fortnight before the anniversary of George Calderon’s death. He was not able to take part in … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Archie Ripley, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Catherine Lubbock, comments, Dardanelles, Devonport, Earlham, Emmetts, Foxwold, Frederic Lubbock, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Hampstead, Horatius, John Pym, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Laura Ripley, Percy Lubbock, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Violet Pym, Well Walk, World War I
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Commemoration (to be continued 2)
Plan A for a commemoration of George’s death (see yesterday’s post) was really dictated by long accepted British forms of commemorative ritual. These have loosened up in recent years, of course, to a point where you have extended, all-singing-and-dancing customer-devised … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, Evey Pym, Foxwold, Francois Rabelais, Gallipoli, George Calderon, John Pym, Kittie Calderon, Nina Astley, Nina Corbet, Peter Hart, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Violet Pym, World War I
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Kittie
George Calderon had now been dead four days, but no-one in Britain knew that. At Brasted Chart, near Sevenoaks in Kent, Kittie continued to support the Calderons’ friend Violet Pym, amusing Violet’s three children Jack (aged seven), Roly (aged five), … Continue reading
Commemoration
In two days time the following ‘In Memoriam’ will appear in The Times: CALDERON George Leslie, Russianist, journalist, dramatist, anthropologist, adventurer, killed at Gallipoli 4 June 1915. ‘What he believed, he did’ (Laurence Binyon). Since George wrote more for The Times than any … Continue reading
22 May 1915
Today Kittie moved from Foxwold, the Pyms’ home in the Weald of Kent, to Emmetts, about a mile away. We know this from the fact that the Visitors Book at Foxwold was maintained meticulously. Emmetts was the home of Violet … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Alexandria, Berlin, Bulgaria, Catherine Lubbock, Constantinople, Dardanelles, Emmetts, Foxwold, Fred Calderon, Frederic Lubbock, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Lev Tolstoy, Malta, R.M.S. 'Orsova', Serbia, The Great War, Violet Pym, World War I, Ypres
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18 May 1915
May 18th. R.M.S. “ORSOVA” We’re nearing Malta. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure
Tagged ANZAC, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Captain Hogan, Catherine Lubbock, Dardanelles, Foxwold, Gallipoli, General William Birdwood, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Malta, Sibelius, The Great War, Violet Pym, World War I
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A terrific find
Please read Katy George’s and my Comments for the background to this letter, which Katy discovered recently amongst some papers of Mrs Raikes in a charity shop in Deal, Kent. New letters of Kittie Calderon’s are as rare as new … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Alexander Pushkin, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Downton Abbey, Evey Pym, Evgenii Onegin, Foxwold, George Calderon, Gladys Raikes, Highclere, Johnnie Pym, Katy George, Kittie Calderon, Oxford, Percy Lubbock, St Hilda's Hall, St Petersburg, Tom Raikes, Trinity College Oxford, Violet Pym, William Rothenstein
1 Comment
15 January 1915: The move to barracks
I conclude, by a process of the usual ‘triangulation’, that the newly commissioned Lieutenant Calderon travelled down by train to report to the Portsmouth base of the 9th Battalion Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry today, Friday 15 January 1915: 1. … Continue reading
23-31 December 1914: Christmas at Foxwold
Christmas Day 1914 was a Friday. Two days before, George and Kittie Calderon, together with their Belgian refugees Jean Ryckaert and Raymond Dereume, made their way by train to Sevenoaks, where they changed for Brasted. At Brasted station they were … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage
Tagged Alan Lubbock, Archie Ripley, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Catherine Lubbock, Cecil Lubbock, Charles Dickens, comments, Foxwold, Foxwold Chase, Frederic Lubbock, George Calderon, Georgina Hogarth, Guy Lubbock, Horace Pym, Jean Ryckaert, Kittie Calderon, Percy Lubbock, Raymond Dereume, Roy Lubbock, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, Samuel Lubbock, The Great War, toy theatre, Violet Pym, World War I
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The next week
There is no documentary evidence for what George did between 17 and 23 December 1914, when he and Kittie left for what she described as ‘a delightful Christmas at Foxwold [Brasted, Kent] with the Pyms’. But we can be pretty … Continue reading
29 November 1914
Today, a Sunday, George Calderon presented in person the white and pale blue blanket that he had knitted for his god-daughter Elizabeth Pym. Her christening took place at Brasted in Kent and the other godparents were Cecil Dawnay and Hannah … Continue reading
Kittie
Most unusually, Kittie Calderon appears not to have gone to stay with friends at all since George embarked for Belgium on 6 October. We know this because the envelopes of George’s letters show that her housekeeper, Elizabeth Ellis, did not … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage
Tagged Acton Reynald, Antwerp, Belgium, Brinsop Court, British Expeditionary Force, Constance Sutton, Coote Hedley, Dixmude, Foxwold, John Masefield, Kittie Calderon, Mons, Nieuport, Nina Astley, Royal Horse Guards, Sturge Moore, The Blues, The Great War, VAD, World War I, Ypres, Yser
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‘A sort of mother to us all’
Others’ observations about Kittie Calderon are rare (except for George’s in letters, of course). It was with great pleasure, therefore, that I heard recently from the film critic John Pym that he had come across several mentions of Kittie in … Continue reading →