George Calderon c.1901
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)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
George Calderon, 1912
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
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?
Captain of the 11
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
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: Ypres
The Press tries to help
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 … Continue reading
Another Calderon signs up
At Edmonton, Alberta, on this day in 1915, George’s eldest brother, the architect Alfred Merigon Calderon (q.v.), applied to join the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force — as their youngest brother, Frederick Elwyn, had on 23 September 1914. It is not … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Alfred Merigon Calderon, Canada, Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force, census, Clara Calderon, Edmonton Regiment, Fred Calderon, Frederick Calderon, George Calderon, Middlesex Rifles, Philip Hermogenes Calderon, The Great War, World War I, Ypres, Zillebeke
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11 June 1915
Sometime today, which was a Friday, Kittie received the following telegram: O.H.M.S. I certify that this telegram is sent on the service of the WAR OFFICE [Signature] 2nd Lieut. Calderon Oxford Light Infantry attached K.O.S. Borderers was wounded June 4th. … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage
Tagged Belgium, Flanders, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Hampstead, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, KOSB, Nina Astley, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, telegrams, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, War Office, Well Walk, World War I, Ypres
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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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Gallipoli: The situation
To Hamilton’s request for ‘two fresh divisions organized as a corps’ (see my post of 6 May), Kitchener replied on 10 May that he could send him only one. This was the 52nd (Lowland) Division, which would take almost a … Continue reading
13 May 1915
If Kittie was still at Devonport, when she opened her curtains in the hotel this morning she would have seen that the Orsova had vanished. At midnight last night, in George’s words of three days later, the huge ship ‘suddenly went … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage
Tagged Belgium, Brockhurst, Constance Sutton, Dardanelles, Devonport, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, H.M.S. 'Goliath', Kittie Calderon, Morto Bay, R.M.S. 'Orsova', Second Battle of Ypres, Sir Richard Sutton, The Great War, The Mediterranean Sea, World War I, Ypres
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Kittie’s story
As I have said before, none of George and Kittie’s letters to each other written whilst he was at Fort Brockhurst has survived (there is an envelope addressed to her by George and postmarked Gosport 3 May, but no letter … Continue reading
St George’s Day 1915
This morning the weather in the Aegean was fine and clear. Admiral de Robeck therefore ordered the smaller craft in the harbour of Mudros to move to Tenedos — the first step towards assembling the fleet for landings at Gallipoli … Continue reading
The note darkens
I did not notice it when I got to this point in writing the chapter in my biography, but the day-by-day ‘real time’ of the blog has brought it home to me: the note has definitely darkened by this date … Continue reading
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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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
The Scott syndrome
Two days ago, I happened to hear on Radio 3 Sarah Walker’s introduction to her ‘Choice’ on Essential Classics, which was Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antartica (sic). As I recall it now, she said that the composer was commissioned to write the … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Battle of the Brickstacks, biographies, biography, comments, Constantinople, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Ian Hamilton, Kittie Calderon, Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, Robert Falcon Scott, Sinfonia Antartica, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Vaughan Williams, World War I, Ypres
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They all fall down
Suddenly, in early February 1915, the inmates of Fort Brockhurst were struck by influenza. Kittie says the ‘whole regiment’ went down, but presumably this is figurative. Certainly hundreds were affected, so perhaps the whole 9th (Service) Battalion was garrisoned in … Continue reading
(Commentary)
Staggered by flu, I did not have the energy to add any comments to my post of George’s New Year letter to William Rothenstein; but I will offer a few points now. William Rothenstein is an extremely interesting figure. He … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Augustus John, comments, George Calderon, Grant Richards, Harold Nicolson, Il'ia Tolstoi, Kittie Calderon, military interpreters, Percy Lubbock, Tahiti, The Great War, Vita Sackville-West, William Rothenstein, World War I, Ypres
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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
A friend’s published tribute
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 … Continue reading →