A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George Calderon, 1912
George Calderon c.1901
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
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Captain of the 11Recent 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: George Calderon
15 April 1915
April 15. 1915 [France] Dear Mrs Astley — it is with the greatest grief that I write to you to tell you of your son’s death which took place at 8 a.m. this morning. It was very foggy, and your … Continue reading
‘The Maharani’: A postscript
Read The Maharani of Arakan yourself to decide whether it is (just) ‘A Romantic Comedy’, as George playfully subtitled it, or a ‘Symbolist Mystery Play’ (allegory)! Having re-read it over the weekend, I increasingly feel it’s the latter. If it is … Continue reading
What is ‘The Lamp’ about? (2)
Presumably George was home again at 42 Well Walk, Hampstead, for the long weekend of 9-12 April 1915, so he may have done more work on leaving various literary projects in a publishable state in case he did not come … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, comments, Ernst Zermelo, Feofan Zatvornik, Geminae, Georg Cantor, George Calderon, La Sainte Courtisane, Lenin, mathematics, Oscar Wilde, Rugby Scool, Russell's Paradox, set theory, The Fountain, The Great War, The Lamp, The Little Stone House, The Two Talismans, World War I
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10 April 1915: A professional soldier
Today the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst near Portsmouth was converted from a Service Battalion to a Reserve Battalion. It comes as a shock: George Calderon’s training as a lieutenant was over, and he could volunteer or … Continue reading
The Arakan ‘mystery’
The other evening, I met a friend at a party who told me she had recently taken part in a reading of George’s ‘Romantic Comedy in One Act’, The Maharani of Arakan. I was amazed, as I had not heard of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, K.N. Das Gupta, Kittie Calderon, Margaret Mitchell, Rabindranath Tagore, Ronald Colman, The Albert Hall, The Coliseum, The Great War, The Maharani of Arakan, William Rothenstein, World War I
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Two separate biographies
As I have explained on several occasions, apart from his machine gun course on Hayling Island we know nothing specific about George’s training as a lieutenant with the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst from the middle of … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Battle of Neuve Chapelle, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Helles, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Training, trench warfare, World War I, Ypres
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Biography and the limits of non-fiction
I keep dipping into Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey: My Own Life. It’s very compulsive reading, but I don’t have time at the moment to let it run away with me as I would wish. Nevertheless, I’ve read enough both of the … Continue reading
Easter 1915
Today, 4 April 1915, was Easter Day. Kittie Calderon went to church, but we do not know if George did. At Steep, Hampshire, Edward Thomas wrote his poem ‘In Memoriam’: The flowers left thick at nightfall in the … Continue reading
What is ‘The Lamp’ about? (1)
In 1915, today was Easter Saturday. For reasons I will give this coming Monday, I think George Calderon was at home over Easter on long weekend leave. This means he may have worked on the possibly four literary works that … Continue reading
‘Phantom flies in amber’ (Concluded)
In my post of 5 January I described what I assume is a bugbear of all biographers: ‘facts’ that you have acquired from somewhere, that stick in your mind like flies in amber, but when you want to use them … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Ashford, Aunt Lottie, beetles, biography, comments, George Calderon, Kennington, Kittie Calderon, memory, Russia, Uncle Tom
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‘Bifurcation’ and ‘chronotopia’ again
Those who have been on my journey since 30 July 1914/2014 will remember that six weeks into it (12 September) I wrote about the problem I was having of holding in my head the two activities of writing the blog … Continue reading
Weekend work: ‘The Lamp’
If, as I have suggested, George used his long weekend leave to put his literary manuscripts in order, then as well as working on a detailed synopsis of Tahiti (see my posts of 14 and 21 March) he must have done something … Continue reading
Time and the biographer
I have received a long and very interesting letter from John Dewey, author of the superb Mirror of the Soul: A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev (2010), commenting on my various posts over the last three months that touch on … Continue reading
Gallipoli: the beginning of the end
Today, 25 March 1915, Field Marshal Otto Liman von Sanders left Constantinople for Gallipoli to take command of the Turkish forces at the Dardanelles. He was not a brilliant Prussian general, but many consider him first-rate. Upon arriving, he said … Continue reading
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
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17 April 1915
This morning, at Brinsop Court in Herefordshire, Nina Astley (Lady Corbet by her first marriage) received a telegram from the War Office informing her that her son Sir Roland James Corbet (Jim) had been killed at Givenchy (see my post … Continue reading →