Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George Calderon c.1901
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon, 1912
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
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
Visitors and ‘victory’
The fact that Calderon wrote to Daniel and Henriette Sturge Moore on Sunday 22 November 1914, but not, as far as we know, to their parents, implies that their parents actually visited George in hospital. This is in any case … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature
Tagged Belgium, Daniel Sturge Moore, Dr Albert Tebb, George Calderon, Henriette Sturge Moore, Inns of Court Regiment, Kittie Calderon, Louise Rosales, Manolo Ordoño de Rosales, Max Hastings, Nina Astley, Reginald Astley, Royal Horse Guards, Sir Roland James Corbet, The Blues, The Great War, Thomas Sturge Moore, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
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‘Alle Strassen münden in schwarze Verwesung’
Apparently it was in November 1914 that Edward Thomas, with the encouragement of Robert Frost, began to write modern poems. I have known the ‘anthology poems’ of Thomas since I was a teenager, but now I am reading all his … Continue reading
Nuts and bolts
By and large, I believe readers don’t want to hear about the nuts and bolts of writing biography (the ‘difficulties’), they want to read the biography. However, readers of this blog may be interested in a typical example… I know … Continue reading
Zillebeke Churchyard Cemetery
This week I have received and read Jerry Murland’s 2010 book Aristocrats Go to War: Uncovering the Zillebeke Churchyard Cemetery. Nothing, I think, could evoke so strongly the character and ethos of the men George Calderon was with at Ypres in … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Alexis de Gunzburg, Belgium, Colonel Gordon Wilson, George Calderon, Jerry Murland, military interpreters, Royal Horse Guards, Siege of Mafeking, The Blues, The Grand National, The Great War, Windmill Hill Camp, Winston Churchill, World War I, Ypres, Zillebeke
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14 November 1914
Kittie must have brought newspapers and new books into hospital for George, because today at ‘Far End’, Kingham, Chipping Norton, the novelist Anne Douglas Sedgwick was writing him a long letter thanking him for one from him that congratulated her … Continue reading
Kittie’s therapy
‘So as to help him pass the day in hospital’, Kittie taught George to knit. He ‘at once grasped the possibilities offered by plain and pearl’ and started to knit a muffler, which became ‘a network of intricate patterns that … Continue reading
‘He downright cried’
One of the many symptoms of acute stress disorder is ‘hyperarousal’, e.g. irritability and outbursts of anger. About now, whilst Kittie was with him, Calderon learned that Colonel Wilson had been killed on 6 November: George was in hospital when … Continue reading
Remembrance
I wrote a piece for the parish magazine of my home town, Sandwich in Kent, about Laurence Binyon’s visit there in 1921 (see www.stclementschurchsandwich.org.uk and follow links to ‘The Signal’), and I’ve just received my copy. The issue, for November, … Continue reading
Posted in Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged George Calderon, The Great War, World War I
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The ‘Godfather in War’ visits
As Kittie put it, Calderon’s ‘great wish on getting back was to see Colonel Hedley and triumph over him’. (For Coote Hedley, see my post of 26 August.) The reason for this was that, in Kittie’s words, ‘on some occasion … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Alexis de Gunzburg, Alexis Gunzberg, Belgium, Brigadier-General Charles Kavanagh, Colonel Gordon Wilson, Coote Hedley, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, military interpreters, Royal Horse Guards, The Blues, The Great War, World War I, Ypres, Zillebeke, Zwarteleen
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5 November 1914
Today a long advertisement appeared in the Times Literary Supplement for Chapman & Hall’s ‘Latest List’. Top of the column was ‘The Final Word on Tolstoy, the Man: REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY. By His Son, Count Ilya Tolstoy’. The book had been … Continue reading
Nurse Katharine
Several people have asked me why ‘Kittie’ is not spelt with a ‘-y’. The answer is that the spelling ‘Kitty’ is reserved for private, more intimate use, for example between Kittie and George, Kittie and Nina (‘Dinah’) Corbet, Kittie and … Continue reading
1 November 1914
Since Kittie recalled receiving a telegram ‘one Sunday morning’ saying ‘Home wounded, shot through ankle’, it probably was on 1 November 1914 that George arrived at Sussex Lodge Hospital, 27 Sussex Place, Regent’s Park, which is now the home of … Continue reading
Complex, yes
Today, Saturday 31 October 1914, George Calderon was presumably travelling in a hospital train to one of the Channel ports. The day is a black hole in his biography, but as Kittie remembered it he arrived in London on 1 … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Battle of Gheluvelt, Belgium, biography, comments, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Michael Caines, military interpreters, Royal Horse Guards, Siegfried Sassoon, The Blues, The Great War, TLS blog, World War I, Ypres
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30 October 1914
Percy Lubbock says that Calderon was writing today from ‘a casualty clearing station’, but George himself calls it ‘the hospital’. Whichever it was, it presumably had X-ray facilities, because in the X-ray below the damage looks sufficiently fresh for the … Continue reading
29 October 1914: ‘toothache in the ankle’
The German bombardment began at 5.30 a.m. and was concentrated on the Gheluvelt crossroads on the Menin Road (see map below). Falkenhayn’s plan was that having pushed the salient further in here, on 30th a general attack would be unleashed … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Army Group Fabeck, Belgium, Erich von Falkenhayn, General Fabeck, George Calderon, Gheluvelt Crossroads, Hollebeke, Ian F.W. Beckett, Kittie Calderon, Klein Zillebeke, Major-General Thompson Capper, map, Menin Road, Messines, military interpreters, Percy Lubbock, Royal Horse Guards, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, The Blues, The Great War, World War I, Ypres, Zandvoorde
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Polymaths, or dilettantes?
It is intriguing that in his memoir Sturge Moore should refer to George only as a ‘scholar’ (see yesterday’s post). They had both written plays, George rather more successfully than Moore, and they had both been active in 1910 in … Continue reading →