Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George Calderon c.1901
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
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
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Captain of the 11
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913Recent 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: The Brave Little Tailor
How would I write it now?
Many authors never re-read their own books. One can understand why. Some must feel that it’s not necessary as it can’t change anything (unless the book is about to have an ‘improved’ edition). Others, like George Orwell apparently, simply don’t … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', Archie Ripley, Ashford, biographies, biography, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, Corbet family, Earlham, future biographer, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Gerge Orwell, Harvard University, Houghton Library, Kent, Kittie Calderon, Mrs Shapta, Nina Corbet, Percy Lubbock, Professor Rose, publishers, Sam&Sam, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I, Ypres
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Explanatory notes to ‘Thunderer’
I give here some of the facts from my and my team’s experience that lie behind statements I made in the preceding post, whilst preserving the anonymity of most of the offending institutions because I think to name them would … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Aleksandr Anikst, Anglo-Soviet Colloquium 'Chekhov on the British Stage', Anna Sica, Anton Chekhov, archival managers, archive donations, archive sales, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, British archives, Cambridge Modern and Medieval Languages Faculty Library, Cambridge Slavonic Library, Cambridge University Library, cataloguing, Chekhov Centenary Medal, collecting, comments, communication, conservation, customer care, Eleonora Duse, Elizabeth Hill, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Jane Austen, Lucjan Lewitter, Martin Shaw, Mikhail Gorbachev, Murray Edwards College, New Hall, Oleg Efremov, Ray Scrivens, Sotheby's, Special Collections, The Bodleian Library, The Brave Little Tailor, The British Library, The Great War, The Watsons, V. Pokrovskii, William Caine, World War I
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Future biographers of George Calderon…
Even at this late stage, ‘things keep coming up’. It took me, as predicted, two pretty full days to input to the text of my biography (167,000 words) the 1000+ corrections and revisions that emerged from my two complete readings … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, British Library, Christianity, comments, Dardanelles, EPMOS, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Grant Richards, Humanism, Kittie Calderon, Kropotkin, Laurence Binyon, Lydia Yavorskaya, Paul Boyer, Percy Lubbock, Petr Kropotkin, Spinoza, Tahiti, Taoism, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, theism, Third Battle of Krithia, William Caine, World War I
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Guest post: John Pym, ‘A bit of fun with Calderon’
On 7 May 2016 Patrick Miles wrote a post on George Calderon and William Caine’s pantomime The Brave Little Tailor in which he reproduced the cover of the published version (1923) and also Caine’s Preface – the first paragraph of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Andrew Lang, Anstey Guthrie, biographies, biography, Burglar Bill, Captain Charles Evelyn Pym, Charles Dickens, Cinderella: An Ibsen Pantomime, comments, Emmetts, F. Anstey, Foxwold, fun, George Calderon, Horace Pym, John Pym, Julian Pym, Kittie Calderon, The boy who fought for England, The Brave Little Tailor, Victorian humour, Violet Pym, William Caine
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Watch this Space
27/4/16. By the time you read this, I shall either be poring over George Calderon’s uncatalogued manuscript (typescript?) of The Brave Little Tailor and Kittie’s letters to Laurence Binyon at the British Library, or I shall have done so, in which … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged biography, British Library, comments, Dardanelles, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Hythe, Ian Hamilton, Kennington, King's Own Scottish Borderers, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Liddell Hart Military Archives, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Wolfram Onslow Ford, World War I
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Watch this Space
20/4/16. Several people have asked me about late photographs of Kittie. Here is the last one I know of. It was not easy to date. Triangulating from the probable year of Cairn terrier Bunty’s birth (1922), the dog’s known longevity, … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Ashford, Bernard Quaritch Ltd, biographies, biography, British Library, Bunty, comments, Edmund Gray, Eliza Stewart, George Calderon, Hythe, Ian Hamilton, Kennington, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Martin Shaw, Mrs Stewart of Torquay, Nina Corbet, Onslow Ford, Percy Lubbock, Robin Britcher, The Brave Little Tailor, Torquay, White Raven, William Caine
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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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‘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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An Appeal
If you have not read Clare Hopkins’s ‘Recent Comment’ of 9 January, please do. Clare is Archivist of Trinity College, Oxford, and the author of what has been described to me by the Senior Tutor of a different Oxford foundation … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Archie Ripley, Arthur Farquharson, biography, Cecil Sharp, Clare Hopkins, comments, Coote Hedley, George Calderon, Kittie Calderon, Martin Shaw, Reginald Tiddy, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, Trinity College Oxford, William Caine, World War I
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Writer’s self-block?
There is no evidence that Calderon wrote anything new in 1914 after signing up. Yet the previous seven months had been packed with literary-theatrical work: he had written or assembled most of his posthumous best-seller Tahiti, finished a pantomime The Brave Little … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Ballets Russes, Clara Calderon, comments, Diaghilev, George Calderon, Il'ia Tolstoi, Inns of Court Officer Training Corps, Inns of Court Regiment, Laurence Binyon, Lev Tolstoy, Martin Shaw, Michel Fokine, Tahiti, The Brave Little Tailor, The Great War, William Caine, World War I
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George Calderon: A complete new work surfaces
Garry Humphreys, author of a forthcoming book on Arthur Somervell (1863-1937), and I have now received from the archives of the Royal College of Music a link to the score of Somervell’s music for George’s ballet libretto The Blue Cloth (which … Continue reading →