Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Captain of the 11
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
George Calderon c.1901Recent 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
Tahiti: The book’s reception (1921)
Katy George’s discovery of Kittie’s letter to Gladys Raikes of 31 March 1923 (see Comments and my post this coming Monday), in which Kittie talks about Percy Lubbock’s ‘Life’ of George, has reminded me that Percy also played a vital … Continue reading
Life with the 9th Ox and Bucks
It is not quite clear from the wording of Kittie’s memoirs whether George had been coming home every weekend from Friday to Monday before starting a ‘machine gunnery course on Hayling Island’, or whether he was able to take such long weekends … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage
Tagged Arthur Maxwell Labouchere, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Hayling Island, Henry Newbolt, Kittie Calderon, Major Benson, Manolo Ordoño de Rosales, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, Peel family, The Great War, William Rothenstein, World War I
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18 March 1915
Just after dawn today, the first ten battleships of de Robeck’s Anglo-French fleet moved off from Tenedos for what it was hoped would be the decisive attack on the Dardanelles, leading to forcing the Narrows on the 19th. De Robeck … Continue reading
‘Calderonia’: an update
New followers of the blog deserve an explanation, I feel, of why the last four posts have been purely military and what stage ‘Calderonia’ is at. The main object of the blog is to follow the last year of writer … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, comments, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, The Great War, World War I
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10 March 1915
Today, Wednesday 10 March, a War Council meeting was held at which Kitchener announced that he would now send his last Regular Army division, the 29th, comprising about 15,000 men, to the Mediterranean to join the forces being despatched from … Continue reading
9 March 1915
Today, the Commander of the East Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sackville Carden, suddenly telegraphed the Admiralty that he could do no more to knock out the Intermediate Defences of the Dardanelles until he had received more planes for aerial reconnaissance inland. … Continue reading
8 March 1915
On this day the East Mediterranean Fleet’s bombardment of the shore batteries at the Dardenelles that had begun on 25 February was suspended. It had not gone well. The shelling of the outer forts, from a very safe distance, appeared … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Dardanelles, Gallipoli, Geehl, George Calderon, Kum Kale, Nusrat, Sedd el Bahr, The Great War, World War I
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Who was George Calderon (again)?
I first posted on this subject last year, 13 September. The reason I am touching on it again now is that a follower has very kindly sent me a cutting from the International New York Times of 23 January which is … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Albert Murray, Anton Chekhov, Ayana Mathis, biographies, biography, Charles Dickens, Donald Rayfield, Edward Thomas, Ernest J. Simmons, George Calderon, Jane Austen, John Aubrey, Patrick Miles, Ronald Hingley, Rupert Brooke, Ruth Scurr, Siegfried Sassoon, Thomas Mallon, Tom Wolfe, Vita Sackville-West, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare
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A biographer in-spires
I have just read a long article by Ruth Scurr, ‘Lives, some briefer than others’, in last Saturday’s Guardian Review (28 February), which I thoroughly recommend to followers if they can get it, along with a piece by Stuart Kelly, ‘Enter … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Daniel Defoe, Donald Rayfield, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Helen MacDonald, John Aubrey, Kittie Calderon, Michael Holroyd, Park Honan, Percy Lubbock, Robert Graves, Ruth Scurr, Stuart Kelly, T.S. Eliot, Tahiti, The Brave Little Tailor, TLS, TLS blog
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The biographer perspires
For a few days, I am almost entirely taken up with two smallish but extended projects that have nothing to do with my biography of George Calderon. This is highly frustrating. I tied up chapter 14, which ends with George … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Ashford, biographies, biography, Brighton, comments, Donegal, Elizabeth Ellis, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, The Great War, World War I
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Back to Brockhurst
About today, 3 March 1915, George Calderon returned to barracks at Fort Brockhurst near Gosport in Hampshire. He had lost about a month through illness. Now his training probably began in earnest. The aim was to make him, at the … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Fort Brockhurst, General Kitchener, George Calderon, Gosport, New Army, The Great War, World War I
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‘Le Bain de Loti’
Both George and the Russian Byzantinist Alexander Vasilieff (who accompanied him at the beginning of his Tahitian visit) greatly admired Le Mariage de Loti, the autobiographical novel by Julien Viaud published in 1880. One of the most atmospheric passages in the … Continue reading
The return to Tahiti
Calderon arrived in London from Tahiti on 30 October 1906 and started writing his book about the island in November 1907. However, he soon gave it up to concentrate on his plays The Fountain and Cromwell: Mall o’Monks. Meanwhile, as Kittie put … Continue reading
‘Black Pot’ and black holes
For the first two years that I was writing George Calderon’s biography, its working title was Black Pot: The Mysterious Life of George Calderon. The reason for this was not just that several people before me had failed to find significantly … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged biographies, biography, Brothers Grimm, Charles Frohman, comments, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Kum Kale, Mabel Dearmer, Martin Shaw, Percy Lubbock, Peter Pan, Sedd el Bahr, Tahiti, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, The Lamp, William Caine, World War I
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Tahiti: an imagined world?
It must have taken great self-control for George to concentrate on making a full synopsis of his book Tahiti when he was home on weekend leave, rather than simply keep writing it. But it was certainly the most rational approach. … Continue reading →