I refer new followers to my post of 1 June 2016. The reason it was important to find out more about the life of Mrs Eliza Stewart, even so late in the project, is that after the sudden death in 1921 of her daughter, Kittie Calderon’s lifelong friend Nina, Kittie became a ‘second daughter’ to Mrs Stewart and often visited her in Torquay. Kittie was a trained nurse and attended Mrs Stewart in her long last illness. She was almost certainly present when Eliza Stewart died at home on 24 November 1925. Since my biography of George Calderon is ‘also’ a biography of Kittie, right up to her death in 1950 thirty-five years after George, it was important to clarify aspects of Mrs Stewart’s life, particularly as that could throw light on the vexed question of when Nina and Kittie became firm friends.
Extremely diligent researchers under the direction of Local & Family History Librarian John Tucker at Torquay Library, teamed with my indefatigable genealogist and Web-searcher Mike Welch, and myself, have been beavering away at the subject since the beginning of June and come up with what we think are well-substantiated answers to a ganglion of questions about Mrs Stewart. Unfortunately, these answers differ somewhat from many of the versions presented in my post of 1 June!
First, when and where did Mrs Stewart live in Torquay? She was known in the Stewart family of Fife as ‘Mrs Stewart of Torquay’ because, family lore had it, she was relegated to Torquay after returning to Britain with her infant daughter following the sudden death of her husband, James Affleck Stewart, in Canada in 1867. Their return to Britain was placed in 1870. But neither she nor Nina appears in the U.K. census for 1871. The first hard fact we could find about her residence in this country at all was in the 1878 edition of White’s Directory for Devonshire, which has her living at a house called ‘The Nest’, Kent’s Road, Torquay. She was presumably out of the country for the 1881 census, but the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses show her in London and elsewhere with her Stewart/Corbet family. She must have left Torquay long before.
According to John Tucker’s team, and Mike Welch’s researches in Kelly’s Directory, Mrs Stewart moved back to Torquay in 1912, when she bought a house called Congham Lodge, which she renamed The Croft and lived at until her death. Although the history of this property is complicated, I can now confirm, from period maps supplied by John Tucker and from satellite images, that it is the one illustrated in my post of 1 June. Mrs Stewart lived there for the rest of her life, and here is a grand photograph of her taken there:
Kittie Calderon’s caption: ‘Mrs Stewart in her Drawing-room at The Croft Torquay’ (c. 1914)
There is some doubt still about when Mrs Stewart was born. According to family tradition she was ‘Canadian’, but the extant censuses give London as her birthplace and one says ‘London, Westminster’; public records would therefore suggest she is the Eliza Sarah Vale born there in 1844, but her census returns and death registration imply anything from 1840 to 1844. An 1888 newspaper report discovered by Mike Welch does, however, appear to explode the version that she had never met her in-laws before she came over from Canada with Nina following her husband’s death: she visited the Stewart estate in Fife in 1862 ‘with her late husband and they were a very handsome couple’. So was she married at the age of eighteen?
Another obscure newspaper report nailed by Mike Welch narrows down the time when Nina and Kittie became close (they had possibly first met when they were young children visiting their respective grandparents in Fife).
In the 1881 U.K. census Kittie was living in St Andrews with her parents and brother, and Nina in Kent with her nurse/governess. The following year, however, ‘Miss Katharine Hamilton and Miss Nina Stewart’, both aged fifteen, were teamed together in the ‘autumn competition of the St Andrews Ladies’ Golf Club’. It seems possible, then, that by 1882 Nina had moved to Fife since inheriting the estate following her grandmother’s death in 1880, and both she and Kittie were receiving their education in St Andrews.
Given popular beliefs about the Victorian era, it may seem amazing that in 1882 St Andrews had a ladies’ golf club at all, but by the beginning of the Edwardian era there were even! women’s London clubs (Kittie and George’s sister Marge belonged to one).
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Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon c.1901
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Captain of the 11
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George Calderon, 1912
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Mrs Stewart of Torquay recalibrated
I refer new followers to my post of 1 June 2016. The reason it was important to find out more about the life of Mrs Eliza Stewart, even so late in the project, is that after the sudden death in 1921 of her daughter, Kittie Calderon’s lifelong friend Nina, Kittie became a ‘second daughter’ to Mrs Stewart and often visited her in Torquay. Kittie was a trained nurse and attended Mrs Stewart in her long last illness. She was almost certainly present when Eliza Stewart died at home on 24 November 1925. Since my biography of George Calderon is ‘also’ a biography of Kittie, right up to her death in 1950 thirty-five years after George, it was important to clarify aspects of Mrs Stewart’s life, particularly as that could throw light on the vexed question of when Nina and Kittie became firm friends.
Extremely diligent researchers under the direction of Local & Family History Librarian John Tucker at Torquay Library, teamed with my indefatigable genealogist and Web-searcher Mike Welch, and myself, have been beavering away at the subject since the beginning of June and come up with what we think are well-substantiated answers to a ganglion of questions about Mrs Stewart. Unfortunately, these answers differ somewhat from many of the versions presented in my post of 1 June!
First, when and where did Mrs Stewart live in Torquay? She was known in the Stewart family of Fife as ‘Mrs Stewart of Torquay’ because, family lore had it, she was relegated to Torquay after returning to Britain with her infant daughter following the sudden death of her husband, James Affleck Stewart, in Canada in 1867. Their return to Britain was placed in 1870. But neither she nor Nina appears in the U.K. census for 1871. The first hard fact we could find about her residence in this country at all was in the 1878 edition of White’s Directory for Devonshire, which has her living at a house called ‘The Nest’, Kent’s Road, Torquay. She was presumably out of the country for the 1881 census, but the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses show her in London and elsewhere with her Stewart/Corbet family. She must have left Torquay long before.
According to John Tucker’s team, and Mike Welch’s researches in Kelly’s Directory, Mrs Stewart moved back to Torquay in 1912, when she bought a house called Congham Lodge, which she renamed The Croft and lived at until her death. Although the history of this property is complicated, I can now confirm, from period maps supplied by John Tucker and from satellite images, that it is the one illustrated in my post of 1 June. Mrs Stewart lived there for the rest of her life, and here is a grand photograph of her taken there:
Kittie Calderon’s caption: ‘Mrs Stewart in her Drawing-room at The Croft Torquay’ (c. 1914)
There is some doubt still about when Mrs Stewart was born. According to family tradition she was ‘Canadian’, but the extant censuses give London as her birthplace and one says ‘London, Westminster’; public records would therefore suggest she is the Eliza Sarah Vale born there in 1844, but her census returns and death registration imply anything from 1840 to 1844. An 1888 newspaper report discovered by Mike Welch does, however, appear to explode the version that she had never met her in-laws before she came over from Canada with Nina following her husband’s death: she visited the Stewart estate in Fife in 1862 ‘with her late husband and they were a very handsome couple’. So was she married at the age of eighteen?
Another obscure newspaper report nailed by Mike Welch narrows down the time when Nina and Kittie became close (they had possibly first met when they were young children visiting their respective grandparents in Fife).
In the 1881 U.K. census Kittie was living in St Andrews with her parents and brother, and Nina in Kent with her nurse/governess. The following year, however, ‘Miss Katharine Hamilton and Miss Nina Stewart’, both aged fifteen, were teamed together in the ‘autumn competition of the St Andrews Ladies’ Golf Club’. It seems possible, then, that by 1882 Nina had moved to Fife since inheriting the estate following her grandmother’s death in 1880, and both she and Kittie were receiving their education in St Andrews.
Given popular beliefs about the Victorian era, it may seem amazing that in 1882 St Andrews had a ladies’ golf club at all, but by the beginning of the Edwardian era there were even! women’s London clubs (Kittie and George’s sister Marge belonged to one).
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