21 July 1915

Posted on July 21, 2015 by Patrick Miles

On or about this day, Gertrude Bell, administrator of the Enquiry Department for Wounded and Missing at the London office of the Red Cross and Order of St John, received the witness statement that a volunteer in a hospital in Alexandria had taken from Sergeant-Major Allan of the 1st KOSB, who had been in B Company with George Calderon on 4 June. (See my post of 13 July.)

The VAD, Mrs Ludolf, may have sent a handwritten statement to London and the top-copy typescript that is in George’s War Office file could have been made for the WO in Bell’s office. One may assume, therefore, that Gertrude Bell had at least the manuscript and a carbon copy in her possession. But there is no sign of a copy among Kittie’s papers.

Did Bell perhaps speak to Kittie over the phone about it? Did she ask Kittie to call at the office in Arlington Street, and cautiously told her? Or did Bell decide it would be too stressful for Kittie to learn about it at this stage? It was, after all, the first reliable statement from someone who went over the top with George in the same Company, that he was probably ‘killed outright, and the body left on the open ground’, and not a prisoner as Hogan, a captain in the last Company over the top, seems to have told her.

Back in Alexandria, Percy Lubbock obviously knew now from Mrs Ludolf about the ‘real’ SM Allan’s statement and that it had been sent to Gertrude Bell. Percy actually ended his 1921 George Calderon: A Sketch from Memory with a paraphrase of it. But it is simply impossible to say at what point Kittie read it or was told its contents. As we shall see, Gertrude Bell’s letter in two days time makes no mention of it or of SM Allan.

Next entry: 22 July 1915

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Flashback — and tourbillions in Time (again)

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Patrick Miles

The Imperial War Museum invited me to contribute a post to their Research Blog, and I promptly accepted. I am not, of course, a military historian, and when I started researching the last ten months of George’s life I was expecting to have to travel to and fro to London for weeks to research the Third Battle of Krithia in the IWM’s archives. Not so! I found all the leads and materials I was looking for online, as the Museum’s holdings are superbly catalogued. There were pointers to the specialist literature, even a paper on the Third Battle of Krithia produced by the IWM itself, there were copious photographs (including the spectacular one I reproduced on 4 June), there were artefacts, and I was able to correspond with an in-house expert on Gallipoli. Taking all that together with my own reading of the classic works on Gallipoli, and the three eye-witness accounts of 4 June in Kittie’s possession, I thought I had everything I needed to describe what happened. I based my guest post, therefore, more or less on what I have just said in this paragraph.

But the Museum was concerned that I had not actually worked on any archival material in the building. How right, in the event, they were. I volunteered to go up there ten days ago to look at the papers of the 1st KOSB’s commanding officer at the battle; the war diary of Reeves, the man who shared a cabin with George on the Orsova and was also then attached to the 1st KOSB on the peninsula; a long letter from Jack Harley, a Trinity (Oxford) man ten years younger than George, to whom Clare Hopkins, Trinity’s Archivist, had kindly drawn my attention; and for good measure the war diary of the extraordinary survivor Sergeant-Major Daniel Joiner. I say ‘for good measure’, as Joiner’s diary is copiously quoted by Peter Hart in his Gallipoli (2013) and I couldn’t believe there would be anything in it about the Third Battle of Krithia that he hadn’t reproduced already, but the diary is so vivid and gripping that I couldn’t resist having a read of the original anyway.

I have been pondering the results of this visit to the IWM ever since.

The papers of Major G.B. Stoney, the 1st KOSB’s CO on 4 June 1915, refer to some events described by George in his letters to Kittie, but they do not refer to George by name. 2nd Lieutenant R.M.E. Reeves refers to George being sea-sick on the night of 12 May, like most of the officers, and to sharing a dugout with ‘Calderon’ on the night of 27 May. There is circumstantial evidence in Lieutenant Jack Harley’s letter to his father that he knew George, but no mention of him by name. On p. 243 of Gallipoli Peter Hart quotes Joiner’s account of attacking with C Company on 4 June and taking four trenches.

The really important thing, however, is that although Stoney did not describe the battle at all and Harley was killed in it at the same time as George, Reeves and Joiner did survive it and did describe the whole course of the KOSB’s experience of it on that day, 4 June 1915. Their descriptions diverge from the Official History, and even from Captain Pat(t)erson’s eye witness account presented to Kittie, and they diverge in significant ways.

2nd Lieutenant Reeves, a solicitor perhaps in his late twenties, commanded 14 Platoon of the 1st KOSB. This meant he was in D Company, which was led by Captain Hogan and technically in reserve. George Calderon commanded 8 Platoon in B Company, which was led by Captain Grogan. The Official History, Capt. Pat(t)erson, and books about Gallipoli, talk of two waves of attack, the first at 12.00 consisting of A and B Companies, the second timed for 12.15 consisting of C and D. Naturally, one makes the assumption that in each wave the two companies went over the top simultaneously. However, Reeves says ‘A and B Companies attacked and lost very heavily’ and makes it quite clear that C then went in on its own (presumably in ‘platoon rushes’ as Pat(t)erson puts it), and finally D on its own. Reeves, incidentally, as well as being injured was traumatised by what he saw in the battle and is the only source I (now) know for the precise figure of the 1st KOSB’s losses: ‘Our casualties since Friday [4 June] at 12 p.m. are 19 officers and 432 killed, wounded and missing’ (i.e. probably half the battalion).

Quartermaster Sergeant-Major Joiner was with C Company. He makes it quite clear that the companies went over the top separately — in fact he does not even use the word ‘waves’. ‘A Coy. mounted the ladders ready for the stroke of 12’, he writes, ‘but instead of going forward, either fell back again wounded or killed. The majority in fact hardly got their heads over the parapet.’ This was because ‘on the stroke of 12 [the Turkish machine guns] opened fire right along the top of our parapet.’ To Joiner this seemed such a coincidence that he concluded the enemy knew the plan of attack (Peter Hart advises me to ‘disregard this speculation’). Joiner continues: ‘B Coy. now jumped, they also suffered, and the fate of our individual attack hung in the balance for a few seconds.’ Admittedly Joiner must be wrong to state that ‘everything from the stroke of 12 until we (C Coy.) had joined in the attack was but a few seconds’, because Pat(t)erson as Adjutant directing half of the attack surely knew what he was talking about when he said Stoney waited half an hour before launching the second wave; but equally Joiner must be right to describe A and B Companies as going over the top separately. Moreover, here Joiner’s account squares with Sergeant-Major Allan’s account taken down in hospital in Alexandria by Mrs Ludolf (see my post of 13 July). On the basis of Reeves and Joiner’s war diaries, I conclude that when Allan spoke of ‘two lines’ of attack, and of George being in the second, he was referring to the fact that the two companies, A and B, went over the top consecutively and not as a single, simultaneous ‘first wave’.

So how does this change our picture of George Calderon going to his death?

Instead of the image of him leading his platoon forward with the customary shout in one long line of two companies constituting the ‘first wave’, we have the image of A Company being slaughtered and wounded on his right before his very eyes, in many cases before leaving the front trench, and then, with the rest of B Company, having to summon the courage to take their place… In a word, the situation when George had to go over the top was even worse than I imagined. According to these war diaries, by now the trenches (which were more like ‘sangars’ and only four foot six deep) were beginning to collapse and the scaling ladders could not be used. As it happens, B Company were luckier than A Company, but still there is no reliable evidence that any reached the first Turkish trench. When C Company attacked, Joiner writes, the ground was already ‘littered with dead’.

The end of my post of 4 June 2015 will have to be rewritten. The photograph that illustrates it must be of C or D Company going over the top, as there are no wounded or dead visible. The map is still accurate to the best of our information. Hogan is described by Reeves as wounded, together with Lieutenants Deighton and Thompson of D Company, and I am not at all surprised, after reading Reeves’s account, that Hogan should not know the fate of George forty minutes earlier. Also, one can well understand why, in the absence of evidence that George himself was wounded or reported killed, Hogan thought he might have been captured.

*                    *                    *

Where does all this leave us?

There is a clear discrepancy between the official and officers’ accounts AND the personal and privates’ accounts of the 1st KOSB’s action at noon on 4 June 1915. But this is not to say that the first set of accounts wilfully distort or sanitise the facts. Their ‘perspective’ is simply different. Given the length of the Official History of the Gallipoli campaign, it is understandable that the facts should be somewhat compressed. On the other hand, it was fixed in the tabulated order of battle (see my post of 4 June) that there would be two ‘waves’, one at 12.00 and the other at 12.15, and it is tempting to think that the official and officers’ accounts wanted to believe the orders had been rigidly followed. Thus although Captain Pat(t)erson was present as the 1st KOSB’s Adjutant directing half the forces, the way he thought about what he witnessed may have been pre-set by his orders.

However, we are also dealing here with two distinct chronotopes — ways of presenting time. The Official History is, by definition, an historical narrative: a tight nexus of events presented within a longish sweep of time (two years). For that purpose it is natural for certain details and complications to fall away. I would suggest there was a tendency among officers to see events more historically, too. Perhaps the higher up the military ladder you were at Gallipoli, the more you saw events with ‘helicopter vision’ (and the more unmoved you were by the casualty figures). It is, of course, implicit in the historical chronotope and mindset to see events as past (cf. the lady in my ‘Dialogue’ of 18 July).

By contrast, NCOs Joiner and Allan, and 2nd Lieutenant Reeves, present personal time, discrete from historical time; their accounts are limited to the small segments of time that they experienced. They actually waited for their turn to go over the top, they did go over the top, whereas Stoney and Pat(t)erson only observed and followed when it was safe. In terms, then, of the synchronic reality of the battle for the 1st KOSB — what it looked like and felt like to attack ‘in the present’ — Joiner’s, Allan’s and Reeves’s accounts are more authentic, or more emotional and, dare one say it, more empathetic. According to their accounts, it wasn’t a case of two ‘waves’ storming forwards on cue with hurrahs and officers waving revolvers and walking sticks, it was a horrific mess left on or in the trenches. Two companies, A and B, walked at an interval into walls of lead and the fate of the 1st KOSB’s attack hung in the balance until Stoney actually postponed it by twenty minutes and the progress made by the troops to left and right of them enabled C and D Companies to carry the day.

Yet again we are discussing Time. What I have called ‘tourbillions in Time’  — starting halfway in, flashbacks, flashes forward, ‘greater time, lesser time’, different ways of looking at time — sweep through my biography of George Calderon. There is no space here to discuss whether our brains are programmed to think of time in various ways, or whether these ways are simply cultural constructs (Stone Age, Greek, Aztec, Buddhist, historical, Einsteinian…). I will, though, conclude by touching on one form of time that has always been at the heart of this blog. Do we sometimes think of time circularly simply because of the cycle of the year? Why do we ‘re-experience’ events at their anniversaries? Why have I been able to claim right from the start of this blog that it tells George and Kittie’s life ‘in real time’, when in fact that merely means ‘as it happened exactly 100 years ago’?

*                    *                    *

Note. The phrase ‘tourbillions in Time’ is taken from Robert Graves’s lyric ‘On Portents’.

Next entry: 21 July 1915

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De-appled

Posted on July 19, 2015 by Patrick Miles

With less than a fortnight before the blog closes, I would like to tie up as many loose ends as possible. But, of course, people’s lives aren’t like that…

One end, however, that has suddenly been almost tied up is the case of Kittie’s ‘appling’ in George’s letter to her from the Orsova on 10 May 1915 (see my posts of 22 January and 15 May this year). For late followers to the blog, I am talking about five lines of George’s writing that Kittie had made as unreadable as possible by scribbling through.

Since 15 May I had been able to decipher only two more words. But these made the tantalising phrase ‘in love with’! So who was in love with whom?

By last week I had made no further progress — after many sessions poring over it with a large magnifying glass — and I cast around yet again for an expert who might be able to help me. I had tried museum staff, a pixel engineer and a high-ranking policeman, to very little effect, but why not go to a ‘graphologist’? Whatever one might think of the ‘personality-reading’ aspect of graphology, it suddenly struck me that a graphologist would very quickly identify the particular way George makes his letters, and be able to apply that to the fragments of letters visible beneath Kittie’s scribbling.

I soon found through the Web the hugely qualified and experienced Barbara Weaver, who lives locally and is in fact Principal of the Cambridge School of Graphology. Barbara has an array of microscopes, special lighting and computer programmes that she could bring to bear on George’s letter, but told me that in the end it was manipulation using the Gimp software that enabled her, over a number of hours, to decipher with confidence all but one word — a woman’s name.

[Emma?], poor girl, said she thought that

I was in love with Helen Peel. She’s a

dear kind pretty girl, but if she had been

an ugly one, it would have made no difference;

except for the pleasure of being there. She and Peel

The sentence and paragraph then legibly continue:

opened their little young happy circle to me —

and afforded every kind of refuge from the

hard and arid gaiety of the Anteroom. I am

deeply obliged to them. They gave me a colour

that, in the ordinary course of things, I never could

have got.

Obviously, the discovery that it was George who was supposedly in love with someone at Brockhurst, was sensational, even if he was making it pretty clear that he wasn’t in love with Helen Peel! But who was the mysterious [Emma?]? Was she a ‘poor girl’ because she was jealous, or because she was so deluded? And what actually does George mean by his explanation, the sentence beginning ‘She’s a dear kind pretty girl’? (He seems paradoxically to reveal that the prettiness of Helen Peel did increase his pleasure.)

In the words of Kittie’s memoirs, the Peels were ‘a young brother officer and his wife’. Syntactically, I don’t think there is much doubt that the person Helen Peel is Mrs Peel, the young officer’s wife. As followers will remember, George had the right as a married officer to live outside his barracks in Fort Brockhurst, but had resisted Kittie’s readiness to set up home with him there because, again in Kittie’s words, ‘he was firmly convinced that if he lived in rooms with me he would not learn one quarter as much of soldiering as by living in Barracks, and time at best was short’. Clearly, though, being able to get out of barracks and visit the home of an officer who had set up his family outside, was a considerable relief to George; as I suggested at the time, it probably prevented him from falling prey to depression at Brockhurst as he had at Ypres.

We have discovered that the ‘young brother officer and his wife’ were Robert Peel (1884-1935) and Helen Beatrice Mansell Peel, née Merry (1890-1990). In 1915 they had one child, a three-year-old son, who was presumably living at Brockhurst with them. When George met them, Peel, an Oxford graduate, was thirty and his wife twenty-four. George seems to be saying he wasn’t in love with Helen Peel, but young women are central characters in several of his plays (notably The Fountain), and we know that he had charming manners and wit. I simply wish I had known of Mrs Peel’s existence in 1985, when I first became interested in George Calderon and she was only ninety-five years old… Her husband, by the way, moved from the Ox & Bucks to the RAF in 1916.

Epilogue

Barbara Weaver’s specialisation is the analysis of character by the study of handwriting. She therefore volunteered some salient features of George Calderon’s state and character judging by his handwriting in this letter of 10 May 1915, without my telling her much about George beforehand.

The first conclusion Barbara had drawn from his writing was that he was tired — ‘was low on energy’, as she put it. This is exceedingly interesting, because it is exactly what Kittie says in her memoirs about George at this point (‘It frightened me’).

Further, Barbara said he was very intelligent, artistic, strong-willed but perhaps uncertain ‘who he was’, altruistic, and possibly had a homosexual side to his nature.

Intriguing.

Next entry: Flashback — and tourbillions in Time (again)

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Dialogue at a dinner

Posted on July 18, 2015 by Patrick Miles

SHE: Who is this man you are talking about?

ME: He’s Edwardian.

SHE: Is Edwardian? Surely you mean he was Edwardian?

ME: Well no, he is Edwardian.

SHE: No no, you can’t say that. He was Edwardian!

ME: Er…

Next entry: De-appled

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Katy’s hat trick

Posted on July 17, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Long-term followers of this blog know that Katy George burst onto it back in March, when she came across a perfectly preserved letter of Kittie’s in a charity shop in Deal, Googled on Kittie, found us, and offered the letter to the Calderon archive. As I said at the time, it was a sensational discovery that on its own justified the whole existence of the blog since July 2014. However, another marvellous thing was that Katy became really interested in George and Kittie, and has gone to great trouble to find any further items of Calderoniana on the Net that there might be. Thus in May she spotted that an antiquarian bookshop in Tasmania had a copy of George’s satirical novel Dwala not only inscribed by Kittie to the Polynesia expert Frederick O’Brien, but containing an extremely interesting letter to him! Naturally, we snapped it up.

Katy told me that she was determined to ‘make it a hat trick’ before the blog closed, and she has. She recently came across these two items in another antiquarian bookseller’s list:

Palace Scenes Signatures of Laurence Housman and George Calderon

The book was very nicely published by Jonathan Cape in 1937, and the slip of paper with Housman’s and George’s signatures was inside it. Laurence Housman (1865-1959) was a prolific writer whose 1934 play Victoria Regina could only be staged 100 years after the Queen’s accession, i.e. in 1937. It was a great West End success, with Helen Hayes in the lead, and even went to Broadway. There have also been several stage adaptations of it since. The book that Katy found comprises twelve scenes from the life of Queen Victoria which, Housman explains in his Preface, are not so much a sequel as a ‘supplement’ to Victoria Regina. They are quite hilarious, and very well written.

Since the book contains these two signatures, I thought there might be a connection between Housman, Victoria Regina, and George. After all, Housman and he were of the same generation, both active in the London theatre, and George had a genius for collaboration. Now I am very doubtful. As a popular novelist, poet, children’s writer and illustrator, Housman was at home in the commercial theatre, whereas George’s theatrical world was that of the New Drama, Stage Society and repertory movement. Moreover, their political views could not have been more different: Housman was a committed socialist, a pacifist, and co-founder of the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage (much mocked by George in his Woman and the State). It is very unlikely, then, that they were friends or collaborated in the theatre.

As you can see above, their signatures are mounted in printed rectangles and cut from a bluish page presumably ruled like this all over. On the back are two more, unidentifiable signatures, similarly mounted. My guess, then, is that this slip was cut from a two-columned collector’s album of specimen signatures and placed in the book because it featured not only Housman’s signature but another Edwardian playwright’s. One would imagine this was all done by a theatrephile who owned the book. If only this person had kept the rest of George’s letter…

But there is one known connection between George and Housman. Laurence Housman’s more famous brother was A.E. Housman, the Cambridge classicist and author of A Shropshire Lad (1896). George was a close friend of Will Rothenstein, who frequently drew portraits of the famous in his studio, and it seems that George called on him during a sitting by A.E. Housman. In his Men and Memories (1932) Rothenstein recalled:

Calderon sometimes annoyed people who didn’t understand his character, by waving, so to say, a red flag in their eyes; he annoyed Conrad; and he failed to rouse any response in A.E. Housman. I remember how Calderon, after meeting Housman at our house, remarked, as I accompanied him downstairs: ‘Well, William, so far from believing that man wrote A Shropshire Lad, I shouldn’t even have thought him capable of reading it!’

Next entry: Dialogue at a dinner

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The Press tries to help

Posted on July 16, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Now that George was officially ‘missing’, Kittie could draw on George’s and her contacts in the world of print to publicise the fact and appeal nationwide for any information about him. She was extremely energetic about this. She first wrote to The Times, as this was the newspaper George was most associated with:

Times notice of "missing" status

The same text was printed in yesterday’s Evening Standard — one of the newspapers for which George had written whilst in Russia as a young man. Today, Friday 16 July 1915, the Evening Standard produced its own new item (immediately below), and at least ten other national publications followed suit right through to August. The item in the Daily Mirror below is notable for describing George for the first time as ‘severely’ wounded, and the last item, from London Opinion, is evidently by someone who knew him. From this time until 1926 Kittie subscribed to two press cutting agencies. The images in this post are taken from her collection.

Evening Standard notice of "missing" status

Daily Mirror notice of "missing" status

London Opinion notice of "missing" status

Next entry: Katy’s hat trick

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15 July 1915

Posted on July 15, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Today Kittie received another letter from Gertrude Bell, who was managing the Enquiry Department for Wounded and Missing at 20 Arlington Street, London S.W. on behalf of the British Red Cross and Order of St John:

Dear Mrs Calderon,

Sir Louis Mallet has written a personal letter to the Red Crescent and sent to them Mr Calderon’s name. I do hope we may hear of him.

Believe me yours sincerely

Gertrude Bell

For the context of this letter, see my post of yesterday.

At about this time, Kittie also heard from Arthur Maxwell Labouchere, the Adjutant of the 9th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, to whom George had been close when he was training with this regiment at Fort Brockhurst:

Dear Mrs Calderon,

I cannot tell you how sorry I was to read Captain Hogan’s letter, as we had no idea that George was missing. Now we must hope that he is among the prisoners and that news will soon come through about him. There must be an Association for making all enquiries possible about prisoners and wounded in Turkey, as there is for France and the War Office should be able to put you at once in communication with it. Onslow Ford tells me that he knows Ian Hamilton and can write to him on the chances of his being able to make special enquiries out there. I will try to find someone who has some business connections with Turkey; for the moment I know of nobody, but will at once write to friends who might know. I feel sure that the best method will be to get in touch with the Association that must exist for this very purpose — they may be able to work through the American Embassy. I will ask the Chaplain to pray for him, and please God we shall soon hear the news we all hope for.

Yours very sincerely

Maxwell Labouchere

Hogan is Captain Hogan, who makes several positive appearances in George’s letters after leaving for Gallipoli, but about whom nothing more seems ascertainable, as we do not know his forenames and the name was very common in the British Army. His name does not appear in the official history of the K.O.S.B. (possibly because like George he was merely attached to them from the Ox and Bucks), nor amongst the named buried at Twelve Tree Copse cemetery, nor on the Helles Memorial for those whose graves are unknown. Let us hope he survived Gallipoli and even the War, as seems possible. His letter to Kittie is unfortunately lost. The letter of Labouchere’s above, however, would suggest that Hogan wrote to her directly, told her that George was ‘missing’, and held out the hope that he might be in Turkish captivity.

Onslow Ford was a fellow officer of George’s at Brockhurst; presumably a son of Edward Onslow Ford, the Victorian sculptor. Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at the Dardanelles, was probably a distant relation of Kittie’s through her father, John Hamilton of Brownhall and St Ernan’s, Donegal.

Obviously, Kittie and Gertrude Bell were already well ahead in doing what Labouchere sketches out here. In a letter from him to Kittie dated 2 October 1915 he is still encouraging the view that George is a prisoner: ‘I am sure that any Turkish lists must be incomplete and that many names have not yet been published.’

Next entry: The Press tries to help

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14 July 1915: Very great concern

Posted on July 14, 2015 by Patrick Miles

The War Office, working with the Red Cross, had established that George was not amongst the wounded or deceased at any point along their lines of medical communication between Gallipoli and Alexandria-Malta-Blighty, hence their telegram to Kittie of 12 July declaring him officially missing.

Kittie immediately wrote to a number of her and George’s closest friends informing them of this development, and one can also be sure that the news spread rapidly through Nina Corbet’s circle and literary networks. Previously, the idea that George was ‘wounded’, as he had been once before, was not that unsettling for them. But the new status of ‘missing’ was deeply worrying. They instantly communicated to Kittie their concern.

Today she received a long letter from William Rothenstein in Gloucestershire (I cannot quote it all as it is still in copyright). ‘My dear Mrs Calderon,’ it began, ‘it never entered my head that George was anything but lightly wounded or that there was any doubt about your ultimately hearing from him.’  He was ‘very much shaken’ by the news. ‘I love George as a brother and the thought of him lying untended and alone I cannot easily bear.’ Clearly, though, Kittie had expressed to him her hope that George had been taken prisoner. ‘Our dear, brave, witty and lovable George without you by him […] in that strange hostile place and none of us able to get near him’ undoubtedly refers to Turkey itself, as Rothenstein goes on to name friends who he knows once had contacts in Turkey. He is writing to them himself about ‘means of communicating’ with George in a Turkish hospital or prison camp.

Letters followed from Violet Pym and Constance Sutton (Astley). Somebody had told Violet ‘the other day that George could not be missing, or it would have been reported. That they always report that promptly. So I had been hoping that he might still be with his regiment fighting (they report the smallest scratch as ‘wounded’) and that they were too far forward perhaps to send letters. […] Darling Kittie, I just can’t say what I am feeling about you.’ ‘All my love is with you’, Constance Sutton wrote. ‘I simply ache for your awful time of heartrending anxiety — GOD bless and help you, my Dear One.’

Kittie also received a scribbled letter today from the indefatigable Gertrude Bell. She told Kittie she had heard that Sir Louis Mallet (Ambassador to Turkey 1913-14) was back from France, she planned to meet him tomorrow, and would ask him whether ‘as private people’ they could submit an inquiry about George in Constantinople. She ended her letter:

The American Ambassador has not as yet been able to do very much for us, though we do get lists of prisoners from their embassy here from time to time. Everything we can do shall be done for you.

Believe me yours sincerely

Gertrude Bell

Next entry: 15 July 1915

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13 July 1915: A witness is found

Posted on July 13, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Suddenly, at Alexandria Percy Lubbock heard of the arrival in one of the city’s hospitals of a Sergeant-Major Allen from the 1st King’s Own Scottish Borderers (KOSB), the battalion George had been attached to at the Third Battle of Krithia on 4 June. Percy found him and talked to him yesterday. Today, Tuesday 13 July, he typed up his interview and sent it off with the briefest of notes to Kittie: ‘Kitty dear I hope & hope & hope you may have had news. Mustn’t write — my eyes have given out. Your PL.’ As a family intimate, he could use the spelling ‘Kitty’. He was visually impaired and later in life completely blind. Shortly after sending Kittie his report, he left for Cairo on Red Cross business.

The Sergeant-Major whom Percy interviewed said he remembered George, but Percy was ‘not sure he really did’. This KOSB sergeant-major talked of 6 June being the day of the battle, he was not in the same Company as George, and because the KOSB were ‘consolidating gains’ that day, he could not see why ‘anybody should be missing on that day’. ‘I have not as yet been able to find any Officer of the 1st KOSB’, Percy concluded his report. ‘The difficulty with the men is that as G. had only so lately been attached to the Battalion they none of them knew him by name.’ Percy was absolutely right not to give credence to this sergeant-major’s testimony.

However, unbeknown to Percy, a VAD called Mrs Ludolf at another Alexandria Hospital met today a Sergeant-Major Allan of the 1st KOSB, realised his possible importance, and interviewed him. Like Percy, she typed up her interview. Then she sent it to Gertrude Bell, rather than Kittie. The top copy made its way into George’s War Office file. It reads:

Witness stated that in an advance made by the Regiment in two lines, Lt. Calderon was in the 2nd line, and was seen to fall. The Regt. took a trench as the result of this advance and never retreated. It is, therefore, impossible that Lt. Calderon should be a prisoner. It is probable that he was killed outright, and the body left on the open ground.

Before this action Lt. Calderon spoke to witness, and gave him a drink of brandy. He picked the leaf of a certain shrub, and told the men to do the same and chew the leaves, as these were said by the Turks to give vigour. All the men near picked leaves and chewed them.

Reference: St-Major Allan
1 K.O.S.B. (B. Coy)
15 Gen. Hosp. Alexandria

Mrs Ludolf
July 13, 1915

Now this Sergeant-Major Allan was a genuine witness. Not only was he in the same Company as George, and would therefore have known him as the lieutenant in charge of 8 Platoon, he also told Mrs Ludolf that ‘the officer he meant had been an Interpreter in Belgium, and was elderly for a lieutenant’, as Percy wrote to Kittie on 20 July.

Even so, there is some confusion or compression of the facts in the first paragraph. By ‘two lines’ Allan must have meant the first wave comprised of two companies, A and B, rather than two waves, as George was definitely in the first wave but B Company. As all official sources agree, this first wave was slaughtered and did not get anywhere near capturing the first Turkish trench H9a. Survivors taking cover, the dead, dying and wounded, were therefore stuck in no-man’s land until the second wave advanced half an hour later, did take the trench, and ‘never retreated’ (see my post for 4 June). Allan’s conclusion, therefore, that George was probably ‘killed outright, and the body left on the open ground’, is in my view indisputable.

It was a great stroke of luck that Mrs Ludolf questioned Allan and sent off her report. Before Percy had returned from Cairo three days later, Allan had left for home.

*                    *                    *

There were many possible reasons for these two 1st KOSB sergeant-majors being evacuated by hospital-ship to Alexandria. The most likely is that they had been wounded in the Action of Gully Ravine 28 June-5 July (see my post of 30 June), in which the 1st KOSB played a very distinguished part. The official history of the KOSB in World War I does not say how many casualties they sustained, but I would be surprised if they were half-strength by the time they were sent to Lemnos for rest around 8 July.

Meanwhile, yesterday and today the 1/4th and 1/5th Battalions of the KOSB, who were Territorials, suffered terrible losses in the Action of Achi-Baba Nullah, which was an attempt by the British and French to conform the centre of the Helles front with the advances made earlier on the flanks. The battle was the all too familiar combination of excessive staff cleverness and downright incompetence. As a result, hundreds of the 1/4th KOSB over-ran their objective and headed up the lower slopes of Achi Baba, where they were mown down. Of the approximately 700 men of the 1/4th KOSB who had been in the action, only seventy answered the first roll call on 15 July.

All three battalions of George’s ‘old’ regiment — the 1st KOSB, 1/4th KOSB and 1/5th KOSB, who had been the very backbone of the 29th and 52nd Divisions at Gallipoli — were now shredded. They never reached full strength on the peninsula again.

Next entry: 14 July 1915: Very great concern

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12 July 1915

Posted on July 12, 2015 by Patrick Miles

Sometime today, Monday 12 July 1915, Kittie received the following telegram:

O.H.M.S. I certify that this telegram is sent on the service of the WAR OFFICE [Signature]

In reply to special enquiry it is stated that Lt. G. Calderon Ox & Bucks LI previously reported wounded is now reported missing

FROM: Secretary, War Office

The letter she had recently (we assume) received from Captain Hogan of the 9th Ox & Bucks, who like George had at first been reported ‘wounded’ but had indeed survived, raised her hopes that George was either in the same condition or had been taken prisoner. Obviously, this latest telegram from the War Office could still mean that he had been taken prisoner, wounded or not; but everyone knew it often meant something else. The ‘special enquiry’ was presumably Coote Hedley’s internal War Office letter of 14 June to Casualties on Kittie’s behalf (see post of 13 June).

Next entry: 13 July 1915: A witness is found

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10 July 1915

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Patrick Miles

POST OFFICE TELEGRAPHS

Office Stamp: Hampstead 10 July 1915

Office of Origin and Service Instructions: Wickham Berks

Handed in at 8 a.m. Received here at 9.31 a.m.

TO: Calderon 42 Well Walk Hampstead

Still a fighting chance shall I come to you if no answer shall understand prefer be alone your welcome here always ready

Dina

The ‘Office of Origin’ of this telegram proves that it was sent by Nina Astley (Corbet) from her retreat at the Cottage at the Crossways, Hoe Benham, Newbury, where Kittie had stayed with her roughly 16-30 June (see my post of 19 June).

Next entry: 12 July 1915

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9 July 1915

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Patrick Miles

 

Ronald Ross Letter to Kittie

Letter to Kittie Calderon from Sir Ronald Ross, probably received 9 July 1915

Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932) was an expert in tropical medicine who had been awarded a Nobel Prize in 1902 for establishing the life cycle of the malarial parasite in mosquitoes, which led to the successful combating of the disease. ‘Next Thursday’ is 15 July 1915. Ross was being sent to Alexandria for four months to investigate the epidemic of dysenteric diarrhoea in the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force at the Dardanelles.

Ross had a reputation for egocentricity and acerbity, so the tone and sensitivity of his letter to Kittie come as something of a surprise. It is possible that he was related to George’s great friend from St Petersburg times, the naval engineer Archibald Ross (1867-1931), and that Kittie had approached him through that connection, having been tipped off about Ross’s mission to Alexandria by Gertrude Bell.

It would be interesting to know what the ‘Encl.’ was that came with Ross’s letter. Clearly, Kittie had written to him presuming that George was now ‘missing’ and possibly a prisoner. The only other communication from Ross in Kittie’s archive is a handwritten letter from Alexandria dated 22 August 1915. In this, Ross relates that at Alexandria he could discover only that George was ‘missing’, but wrote to the CO of the 1st KOSB, Major G.B. Stoney, who replied that, in Ross’s words, ‘there is very little hope of your husband being alive’. With his August letter to Kittie, Ross enclosed Stoney’s letter and one from Captain Hogan (see my post of 5 July), neither of which has survived.

Ross’s son Ronald Campbell, described by him as ‘missing since last August’, had in fact been killed at Le Cateau in the retreat from Mons on 26 August 1914.

Next entry: 10 July 1915

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8 July 1915

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Patrick Miles

British Red Cross
St Mark’s Buildings
Alexandria

June 30. 1915

Kitty dear — A line in the middle of a long day — not to say what I think & feel — which can’t be now.

I sent to the Military Record Office once more this morning, to ask if they knew anything more about George — thinking they might perhaps now know where he had been sent. (Of course I had long known he was not in Egypt.) The answer was that he was now reported missing June 4. The Record Office is always so behind hand (as far as I can make out) with its information, that I think it possible you may already know more than this — and I hope and hope and trust something better than this. But on this all our machinery has been set to work — and enquiries will at once be started in all the hospitals in Egypt (i.e. here, at Cairo, or in the towns of the Delta, where there are 6 or 7 provincial hospitals with British wounded). If from any of these sources I can hear of anyone who has knowledge of him or of the circumstances, I shall go and interview him — & of course I shall let you know at once of any result. If you yourself have any certain knowledge, will you get Miss Bell (or her successor, if she has left) at 20 Arlington St., to cable out to me. Meanwhile we are cabling to Malta, to make certain that full enquiries are started there.

Kitty dear, I am with you hourly. I never felt so far from England — & yet for the first time I am glad to be here. You will have started enquiries in England (through 20 Arlington St). A certain number of wounded seem now to go straight home, without pausing here or at Malta. (This is intended, at any rate — it may not actually be so yet.) Bless you. I would give anything to get you good news — who wouldn’t? I can’t help hoping and thinking you may know more there than we here.

Your always loving

Percy

Note that Percy Lubbock is not scouring all the hospitals in Egypt for George himself, but for any wounded who were at the Third Battle of Krithia on 4 June and may know what happened to George.

‘Miss Bell’ is the famous Arabist and public servant Gertrude Bell, who was still running the ‘Enquiry Department for Wounded and Missing’ at the British Red Cross and Order of St John in Arlington Street, London S.W. (see my posts of 13 and 14 June).

Next entry: 9 July 1915

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A friend’s published tribute

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Patrick Miles

As I explained in my post of 25 June, after George’s death was officially accepted in the spring of 1919 Kittie invited his friends to write their memoirs of him, which of course included tributes, but none of these was published in its entirety. Rather, they provided grist to Percy Lubbock’s mill in writing the book about George that Kittie commissioned from him, Percy quoted from them but as requested did not usually attribute them, and Kittie published an extract from G.F. Bradby’s memoir after her Preface to Tahiti (1921).

A close literary and card-playing friend of George’s who does not appear to have written a memoir of George for Kittie was the humorist and fishing-writer William Caine (1873-1925). It may be remembered (see my post of 25 February 2015) that George and Caine collaborated on the pantomine The Brave Little Tailor, with music by Martin Shaw, which was not staged in 1914 probably because its sources in a German fairy tale would have been commercial death. However, Caine did write a tribute to George in the spring of 1919. It was published in the Manchester Guardian on 12 May, and since it is little known I think it should be reproduced here:

Sir,

The recent notice in the ‘Times’ of George Calderon’s death in battle on Gallipoli tells his friends that they may hope no longer. To us the loss is inexpressible. That which the theatre has suffered cannot, of course, be estimated, but that it is a heavy one is certain. Calderon died before his work had won the recognition it deserves. Had he lived he must soon have been among the first of our playwrights. He died at the very moment when his powers were ripe for the fulfilment of their promise. The war has robbed the world of so much beauty that upon the loss of this one splendid brain, this one warm and gallant heart, this one delicious wit, I need not dwell. It is part of the price that his generation has had to pay for the madness of its forerunners; part of the price of a world’s salvation from a very dreadful danger; part of the price, let us hope, of a saner and more noble life for the men that are to come.

We remain behind to grieve; yet we may be sure that Calderon and his like know no regret, as they knew no hesitation when their call came. His patriotism was a very pure flame; it never blinded him to the merits of other countries. He had real sympathy for all men, of whatever nation they might be, was at home with all, and indeed spoke most of their languages, for his gift of tongues was prodigious. When he went out to war in 1914 it was not against Germany, but against that for which Germany then stood. This he loathed, and when it reared its head to threaten the liberty of the mankind he loved he had but one thought — to share to the utmost in the work of destroying this menace. Though he was long past the then military age, nothing could keep him out of the army. First as an interpreter in the Royal Horse Guards and then given a combatant commission in a line regiment, he went through the earliest of the Flanders fighting, until a wound brought him back to England. The moment he was healed he applied anew to be sent on foreign service, and very soon he was on his way to Gallipoli. 

It would have been very easy for him to stay in England. I am certain the thought never so much as occurred to him. This war, for him, was a crusade; in this cause no sacrifice — not the last — could be other than a joy. It is to this spirit in Calderon — and in how many others! — that England owes her life. He is content — and they. May England, realising what she has lost, use worthily this life that they have given her. — Yours, &c.,

WILLIAM CAINE.
Hampstead, May 10

The ‘recent notice’ in The Times is Percy Lubbock’s obituary of George, published on 5 May 1919. The reason Caine sent his tribute to the Manchester Guardian was probably that he knew George was well known and liked there. Annie Horniman’s Manchester Repertory Company had staged and toured George’s most popular plays, The Fountain and The Little Stone House, and premiered his Revolt in 1912. It is particularly interesting that Caine uses the trope ‘a crusade’. Many writers about George, including Lubbock and Kittie herself, described George subsequently as a (Spanish) Crusader, but there is no documentary evidence that George saw himself that way.

(It is not known where in Hampstead Caine lived; Kittie’s address book from this period has survived, but his name is not in it.)

Next entry: 8 July 1915

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The last blurt

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Patrick Miles

I thought I had got everything out about the completion of my biography of George Calderon in my post of 18 June, but no: there is something I forgot to say and have been meaning to put on record for days…

In that extended blurt, I placed the blame for not having written the last two, very short chapters, on ‘chronotopia’, the task (which I find very difficult) of juggling two different times in my brain — the ‘real time’ of this blog-biography of George’s war-year, and the ‘extended time’ of a full-length biography. Particularly absorbed by the blog-biography in May and June, I concluded that I should not start writing the last two chapters of the biography proper (for which all the research is done) until the blog finishes on 30 July 1915/2015, and I denied that I had ever suffered from writer’s block.

In fact, I see now, it is partly the need to decide the style of these last two chapters, which cover thirty-five years of Kittie’s life after George’s death, that is making me baulk at starting to write them. As I have mentioned before, everyone from publishers to reviewers (but possibly not readers) will tell me I was wrong to enclose George’s biography chronologically in Kittie’s, but I’m sure I am right…

However, there’s no doubt that to tell in about ten printed pages the last thirty-five years of her life after 4 June 1915 requires a different, and, er, highly engaging, style of writing, otherwise people will think I should have taken the advice of my successful biographer friend and finished the book with George ‘vanishing in the smoke of battle’. It requires a complete change of gear.

Just to recap, the reason the biography of George Calderon starts with Archie Ripley, George’s friendship with him, Kittie’s marriage to him, and her relationship with Nina Corbet, and ends with Kittie vanishing in the smoke of a crematorium (the location of her ashes is unknown), is that I believe George’s life makes sense best when he is seen in the ‘set’ of his and Kittie’s Edwardian friends.

I have to admit, then, that pondering for weeks how I am going to write these last two chapters, i.e. how to cast them and choose my words, probably is a form of writer’s block. This is my last blurt on the process of completing this book, however: to discover how it is going, please log on after 30 July to the permanent post entitled ‘Watch this Space’.

Next entry: A friend’s published tribute

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Letter from Alexandria

Posted on July 5, 2015 by Patrick Miles

 

Percy Lubbock sketch by Adrian Graham

Percy Lubbock, by Adrian Graham, 1923

BRITISH RED CROSS and ORDER OF ST. JOHN.

Alexandria
June 27.

Dear Kitty

Your letter of June 16 just reaches me. I scrawl one line to go to you at once.

I think it certain that you must know by this time where and how George is. He is not in Egypt. If he is at Malta you will have heard — if very slightly wounded he was probably kept at Lemnos. The only other alternative, so far as I know, would be sending him home.

Anyhow you must know now.

If he is very slightly wounded and may be going back soon, don’t think of coming here. It is only one of several chances that he would be sent here if wounded. If he were, I should instantly telegraph to you. If he were sent to Malta you might find yourself hung up here for days before you could get there — boats are so uncertain.

It is magnanimous of me to say don’t come here — it wd be so joyful to see you. But you command the whole field best from home.

Kitty dear I think of you daily and long to hear more. I wish I could write as I feel — life is a scramble here — this must go — Dear love to you and wishes

from PL

Assuming letters took on average eight days to get from Alexandria to an address in England, Kittie may have received this letter from Percy Lubbock today, 5 July 1915. There is circumstantial evidence that she had returned home to Well Walk, Hampstead, from staying with Nina Astley at Hoe Benham by 1 July, and this letter of Percy’s was not redirected from Well Walk.

Clearly, Percy has concentrated on finding George in the hospitals of Alexandria; presumably he has not yet met or heard of anyone from the 1st KOSB who was with George on 4 June 1915. Given that Percy has not found George, and still assumes he is ‘wounded’, the reasoning of the rest of his letter is surely impeccable.

However, Kittie did not know ‘where and how George is’. But by now she may have received a letter from Captain Hogan, who had been with George at Brockhurst and commanded D Company of the 1st KOSB on 4 June. This is a vital document that we know she received, but it is not in her archive. It proved that Hogan, who had been in the successful second wave on 4 June and was reported ‘wounded’ (see my post of 16 June), survived and had been evacuated from Gallipoli. It seems likely that Hogan’s letter encouraged Kittie to believe George had been taken prisoner.

Next entry: The last blurt

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