The reason I suspected it was Kittie who changed George’s words about the meaning of life at the end of his Chekhov Introduction when she edited his selected works, was that she could rarely resist expressing her own views on religious belief when George committed himself in writing on the subject. A prime example is her comment literally on a letter that George wrote to her on 21 October 1903 following the death of Vincent Corbet.
Vincent Stewart Corbet, c. 1895
Vincent Corbet was the extremely lovable elder son of Sir Walter and Lady Caroline Corbet, and the latter (‘Nina’) was Kittie’s soul-mate. Vincent had been a page boy at Kittie’s wedding to Archie Ripley in 1895. He died of appendicitis at Eton College on 17 October 1903, aged thirteen. Quite apart from the fact that Vincent was the heir to the baronetcy, he had always been loving and protective to his younger brother Jim, he was a popular boy at school, and adored by his parents. The effect of his death on the Corbets and their wide circle of friends can therefore be imagined.
A first service for Vincent was held at Eton on 19 October. Three days later, a full funeral and interment took place at the Corbets’ ancestral home of Moreton Corbet in Shropshire. Nina sent Kittie a red leather wallet containing the order of both services and embossed in gold ‘K.C. 1903’. There is no doubt that Kittie attended the funeral.
The reason George did not, is probably that he was nervously exhausted after completing Dwala and was anxiously waiting to hear from Smith, Elder & Co. that it had been accepted. His health at this time was unstable. On the other hand, although he knew Vincent well, he may have wanted not to intrude on Kittie’s special relationship with Nina.
But on 21 October he wrote Kittie a long letter from Heathland Lodge:
My dear Kee, You will get this just about the time of poor little Vincent’s funeral. That over they will all be able to settle down to a dull progression of getting used to it; a feeling of finality. The great thing to go on is certainties. One thing certain is that a sweet and definite little personality has existed, and is so much to the good; whatever is lost in the future, the past is not lost and is all pure gain — the loss of the future is a miscalculation of the unknowable; the past remains, unspoilt by any of the chances of maturer life.
This letter is a model of George’s technique when responding in writing to births, engagements, bereavements, strong feelings, sudden revelations, unforeseen developments etc. He usually begins with something so ‘in your face’ as to be almost offensive — as here — but it shakes the addressee out of any ingrained mood or conventional feelings that they may have adopted, which means that he has got their full attention and can then express himself more reasonably:
Any comfort that can be found more than that verges into uncertainties. Clerical comforts will not stand abrupt strains: it must be with survivors as it is with people dying; they suddenly doubt the clerical comfort — so a parson has told me, so far as concerns dying people — though certainly he put it in the form of a sudden onslaught of the Devil. Every man and woman must have onslaughts of Agnosticism when brought closely face to face with the hard fact.
This was the end of George’s paragraph and ‘all’ he had to say on the subject. But it was too much for Kittie. At some point (probably after she returned to Heathland Lodge, as she seems to have used George’s own pen!) she wrote in the space that followed, in an unwontedly neat and precise hand:
(Yes, but the Love of God asserts itself to the inner consciousness at such times — not our faith, but the power of God and his love. K.)
They had had long discussions about religious belief, established religion and Christianity before they became engaged in 1899, and they agreed to differ on the subject. Kittie even said in later life that George’s practical christianity (sic) sometimes made her feel like a pagan. Clearly, though, here she felt she must record her view in opposition to George’s, possibly for George himself to read, possibly just for posterity.
But in fact George had not said his last word. He had said all he wanted to in an ‘objective’, ratiocinative, dry and infuriating manner, but he continued:
Give Nina my very best love and sympathy. Vincent presents himself to me most vividly in his bedroom, just in bed, me visiting him — I think by invitation; perhaps not. Eagerly playing the host, entertaining me, keenly watching me, hoping he could please: showing me his Waverley Novels — pointing the way to them rather, from his bed — asking me how I liked the wallpaper, which he had chosen; sorry when I went; blinking in a quick way when the words were trying to get out.
My own feeling is that when Kittie, and perhaps Nina, read this, it slayed them. After the outrageously knowing male lecture on death, George had turned his deeper, artistic side on. He so often finished letters of this kind with a supreme act of empathy. Through its combination of tentativeness and eidetic recall, his description of Vincent enacted what he had written at the beginning of the letter, namely that ‘the past is not lost’: George’s own words had brought Vincent ‘alive’ again for his reader(s).
In 1905 George numbered off three hundred pages of a thick exercise book that was intended to be the first in a series examining chapter by chapter the ‘canonical books of the Christians, in chronological order; so far as one can easily arrive at it’. The project seems to have been his personal fundamental attempt to consider the evidence for Christianity, and especially the divinity of Christ. He abandoned it after fifteen pages. Kittie then turned the book upside down and used it from the new front for the homilies and lessons she gave her Sunday School children!
Related
George Calderon c.1901
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
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Captain of the 11
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
‘Yes, but — ‘
The reason I suspected it was Kittie who changed George’s words about the meaning of life at the end of his Chekhov Introduction when she edited his selected works, was that she could rarely resist expressing her own views on religious belief when George committed himself in writing on the subject. A prime example is her comment literally on a letter that George wrote to her on 21 October 1903 following the death of Vincent Corbet.
Vincent Stewart Corbet, c. 1895
Vincent Corbet was the extremely lovable elder son of Sir Walter and Lady Caroline Corbet, and the latter (‘Nina’) was Kittie’s soul-mate. Vincent had been a page boy at Kittie’s wedding to Archie Ripley in 1895. He died of appendicitis at Eton College on 17 October 1903, aged thirteen. Quite apart from the fact that Vincent was the heir to the baronetcy, he had always been loving and protective to his younger brother Jim, he was a popular boy at school, and adored by his parents. The effect of his death on the Corbets and their wide circle of friends can therefore be imagined.
A first service for Vincent was held at Eton on 19 October. Three days later, a full funeral and interment took place at the Corbets’ ancestral home of Moreton Corbet in Shropshire. Nina sent Kittie a red leather wallet containing the order of both services and embossed in gold ‘K.C. 1903’. There is no doubt that Kittie attended the funeral.
The reason George did not, is probably that he was nervously exhausted after completing Dwala and was anxiously waiting to hear from Smith, Elder & Co. that it had been accepted. His health at this time was unstable. On the other hand, although he knew Vincent well, he may have wanted not to intrude on Kittie’s special relationship with Nina.
But on 21 October he wrote Kittie a long letter from Heathland Lodge:
This letter is a model of George’s technique when responding in writing to births, engagements, bereavements, strong feelings, sudden revelations, unforeseen developments etc. He usually begins with something so ‘in your face’ as to be almost offensive — as here — but it shakes the addressee out of any ingrained mood or conventional feelings that they may have adopted, which means that he has got their full attention and can then express himself more reasonably:
This was the end of George’s paragraph and ‘all’ he had to say on the subject. But it was too much for Kittie. At some point (probably after she returned to Heathland Lodge, as she seems to have used George’s own pen!) she wrote in the space that followed, in an unwontedly neat and precise hand:
They had had long discussions about religious belief, established religion and Christianity before they became engaged in 1899, and they agreed to differ on the subject. Kittie even said in later life that George’s practical christianity (sic) sometimes made her feel like a pagan. Clearly, though, here she felt she must record her view in opposition to George’s, possibly for George himself to read, possibly just for posterity.
But in fact George had not said his last word. He had said all he wanted to in an ‘objective’, ratiocinative, dry and infuriating manner, but he continued:
My own feeling is that when Kittie, and perhaps Nina, read this, it slayed them. After the outrageously knowing male lecture on death, George had turned his deeper, artistic side on. He so often finished letters of this kind with a supreme act of empathy. Through its combination of tentativeness and eidetic recall, his description of Vincent enacted what he had written at the beginning of the letter, namely that ‘the past is not lost’: George’s own words had brought Vincent ‘alive’ again for his reader(s).
In 1905 George numbered off three hundred pages of a thick exercise book that was intended to be the first in a series examining chapter by chapter the ‘canonical books of the Christians, in chronological order; so far as one can easily arrive at it’. The project seems to have been his personal fundamental attempt to consider the evidence for Christianity, and especially the divinity of Christ. He abandoned it after fifteen pages. Kittie then turned the book upside down and used it from the new front for the homilies and lessons she gave her Sunday School children!
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