42 WELL WALK,
HAMPSTEAD.
Dec. 17. 1914.
To the Adjutant General.
Sir,
Not having yet seen my name in the Casualty lists, I have the honour to inform you that I was wounded near Ypres on October 29th, and sent back into hospital at Sussex Lodge, Regent’s Park.
Having been wounded while in action as a combatant officer, by appointment of the Battalion Commander, with the 2nd Batt. of the Royal Warwickshire Regt., I reported myself in hospital as a 2nd Lieut. in that Battalion. But I am informed that my real status is that of Interpreter. I went out on October 6th as Interpreter with the Royal Horse Guards, and was transferred as Interpreter to the 2nd Batt. of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment on Oct. 29.
I have the honour to remain,
Sir,
Your obedient servant
George Calderon
2nd Lieut. (Interpreter)
This is a masterpiece of bureaucratic massage. George had clearly decided to sidestep the recruitment authorities he had been dealing with hitherto, and go to the top. He had probably consulted with his ‘Godfather in War’, Sir Coote Hedley. There is nothing in this letter that is factually untrue, but the last line sends a clear message: he is a military man, a ‘2nd Lieutenant’, rather than an ‘Interpreter’…
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Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
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.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George Calderon c.1901
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon, 1912
Captain of the 11
17 December 1914
HAMPSTEAD.
This is a masterpiece of bureaucratic massage. George had clearly decided to sidestep the recruitment authorities he had been dealing with hitherto, and go to the top. He had probably consulted with his ‘Godfather in War’, Sir Coote Hedley. There is nothing in this letter that is factually untrue, but the last line sends a clear message: he is a military man, a ‘2nd Lieutenant’, rather than an ‘Interpreter’…
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