Sir, — The recent notice in the “Times” of George Calderon’s death in battle on Gallipoli tells his friends that they may hope no longer. To us the loss is inexpressible. That which the theatre has suffered cannot, of course, be estimated, but that it is a heavy one is certain. Calderon died before his work had won the recognition it deserves. Had he lived he must soon have been among the first of our playwrights. He died at the very moment when his powers were ripe for the fulfilment of their promise. The war has robbed the world of so much beauty that upon the loss of this one splendid brain, this one warm and gallant heart, this one delicious wit I need not dwell. It is part of the price that his generation has had to pay for the madness of its forerunners; part of the price of a world’s salvation from a very dreadful danger; part of the price, let us hope, of a saner and more noble life for the men that are to come.
We remain behind to grieve; yet we may be sure that Calderon and his like know no regret, as they knew no hesitation when their call came. His patriotism was a very pure flame; it never blinded him to the merits of other countries. He had real sympathy for all men, of whatever nation they might be, was at home with all, and indeed spoke most of their languages, for his gift of tongues was prodigious. When he went out to war in 1914 it was not against Germany, but against that for which Germany then stood. This he loathed, and when it reared its head to threaten the liberty of the mankind he loved he had but one thought — to share to the utmost in the work of destroying this menace. Though he was long past the then military age, nothing could keep him out of the army. First as an interpreter in the Royal Horse Guards and then given a combatant commission in a line regiment, he went through the earliest of the Flanders fighting, until a wound brought him back to England. The moment he was healed he applied anew to be sent on foreign service, and very soon he was on his way to Gallipoli.
It would have been very easy for him to stay in England. I am certain that the thought never so much as occurred to him. This war, for him, was a crusade; in this cause no sacrifice — not the last — could be other than a joy. It is to this spirit in Calderon — and in how many others! — that England owes her life. He is content — and they. May England, realising what she has lost, use worthily this life that they have given her. — Yours, &c.,
Hampstead, May 10. WILLIAM CAINE
When Kittie accepted in April 1919 that George had been killed at Gallipoli on 4 June 1915, she commissioned Percy Lubbock to write his obituary, as a way of announcing that George’s death was now official. Percy’s very fine piece, which Kittie had of course supervised, was published in The Times on 5 May 1919 and reprinted in numerous places, including the United States. As far as I know, however, the above letter by William Caine was the only other commemoration of George published at the time. This was probably because so many other people had written to her already and she knew that their memories and others’ would go into Percy’s book about George, work on which had already started.
In 1914 George was a long way into two artistic collaborations: one with Fokine on libretti and the other with Caine on a pantomime entitled The Brave Little Tailor. The latter had to be abandoned after 4 August because of its German sources (a Grimms fairytale), and after the London season of Ballets Russes Fokine returned to winter in St Petersburg as he usually did, but was trapped there for the next three years. Caine, then, was the last person to work sustainedly with George in the theatre before his death. He probably asked Kittie if he could write the above tribute for the ‘other’ English newspaper. The Manchester Guardian was particularly appropriate because George had worked closely with Miss Horniman’s Manchester Repertory Company, who staged three of his plays.
William Caine (1873-1925) was a writer of spoofish light fiction; as such, his work suffers from the boyish vapidity of much Edwardian humorous literature. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction even suggests that the version of The Brave Little Tailor published in 1923 ‘gains some narrative sinew from its collaborator’, i.e. George. However, Caine also wrote about fishing, which he really did know about, and his An Angler at Large (1911) is an acknowledged masterpiece in print to this day.
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Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
George Calderon c.1901
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Captain of the 11
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon, 1912
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)
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
A letter to the ‘Manchester Guardian’, 12 May 1919
When Kittie accepted in April 1919 that George had been killed at Gallipoli on 4 June 1915, she commissioned Percy Lubbock to write his obituary, as a way of announcing that George’s death was now official. Percy’s very fine piece, which Kittie had of course supervised, was published in The Times on 5 May 1919 and reprinted in numerous places, including the United States. As far as I know, however, the above letter by William Caine was the only other commemoration of George published at the time. This was probably because so many other people had written to her already and she knew that their memories and others’ would go into Percy’s book about George, work on which had already started.
In 1914 George was a long way into two artistic collaborations: one with Fokine on libretti and the other with Caine on a pantomime entitled The Brave Little Tailor. The latter had to be abandoned after 4 August because of its German sources (a Grimms fairytale), and after the London season of Ballets Russes Fokine returned to winter in St Petersburg as he usually did, but was trapped there for the next three years. Caine, then, was the last person to work sustainedly with George in the theatre before his death. He probably asked Kittie if he could write the above tribute for the ‘other’ English newspaper. The Manchester Guardian was particularly appropriate because George had worked closely with Miss Horniman’s Manchester Repertory Company, who staged three of his plays.
William Caine (1873-1925) was a writer of spoofish light fiction; as such, his work suffers from the boyish vapidity of much Edwardian humorous literature. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction even suggests that the version of The Brave Little Tailor published in 1923 ‘gains some narrative sinew from its collaborator’, i.e. George. However, Caine also wrote about fishing, which he really did know about, and his An Angler at Large (1911) is an acknowledged masterpiece in print to this day.
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