After enduring a long bout of illness and the first anniversary of George’s disappearance at Gallipoli, in the summer of 1916 Kittie decided she must channel her energies into a number of useful and therapeutic activities. One of these was writing to soldiers at the front and sending them whatever they needed. Thus she tracked down George’s last battalion, 1st KOSB, in France, began a correspondence with the officer commanding his old company, and sent them food and clothing. Probably at the sculptor Eric Gill’s suggestion, she also wrote to his twenty-four-year-old apprentice Joseph Cribb, who was at the Somme. She sent him a cake, sweets, and ‘lemonade tabloids’.
The longest series of soldiers’ letters in Kittie’s archive is from an ex-miner, Clement Quinn, who in 1916 was only twenty-one and stationed in Lucknow, which he found extremely trying. Kittie was asked to correspond with Quinn by Robert Holmes, a writer of popular spy-thrillers who happened also to be Sheffield’s first probation officer. Presumably Kittie had met Holmes in London literary circles. Holmes described Quinn’s deprived childhood in a letter of 1 November and asked Kittie to write Quinn ‘improving’ letters — perhaps implying that Quinn had once been in trouble with the police. Kittie said she was incapable of writing ‘improving letters’, but promptly wrote to Quinn and sent him a parcel of tobacco. Quinn replied thanking her on Christmas Day, 1916.
‘Mr Jones’ and Katharine Ripley, 1899
Kittie’s letters to Quinn have not yet been found, but seventeen from him to her have survived, spanning 1914-19. They are remarkable. He writes very clearly, slowly (one imagines), and probably just as he spoke. But he is an intelligent young man. The letters discuss the course of the war, the wartime conduct of the trade unions (he disapproves of the Coal Strike of 1912), barrack and social life (he is very critical of the way the British behave in India), and his plans to train as an engineer when he comes home to Sheffield. Kittie sent him many things, including a fountain pen and John Masefield’s book about Gallipoli. The impression is inescapable that she wrote him long and chatty letters.
On 11 July 1917 Quinn wrote to Kittie requesting a photograph of her ‘if it is your wish for me to have one, as I shall always remember you, for how good you have been to me whilst I have been out here’. Kittie was rather sensitive about portraits of her, most of which she seems not to have liked. In the autumn of 1917, however, she agreed to send Quinn an ‘old’ one. It was the photograph I show above, which was taken when she was still Mrs Ripley, eighteen years earlier. Despite her white dress, she is wearing mourning accessories following Archie Ripley’s death in October 1898. On the back of Kittie’s own copy, George had written ‘equally best’, presumably meaning equal to the one of Kittie that features on this blogsite under ‘Biographies of George and Kittie Calderon’.
Quinn answered from Lucknow on 26 January 1918, after his twenty-third birthday:
Well I do think it is a good Photo, and of Mr Jones. […] You say under your hat there is Gray Hair, but you look quite young yet, but [sic] Mr Jones does look a nice dog.
‘Mr Jones’ was the Aberdeen terrier that Archie Ripley and Kittie had acquired after their marriage. They were both very fond of Jones, as was George. The dog died probably in 1909. Quinn hung this photograph above his barrack bed. On 7 November 1918 he wrote to Kittie speculating about the end of the war. Then he added:
I hope and trust that you have the Honour of seeing your hubby now the Turks are mastered. […] Do you know what I’m thinking of now is when you were skating last winter and the zepps [Zeppelin bombers] came over.
He wanted to meet Kittie at Hampstead when he returned to Britain, but since this was in April 1919 when she was distraught at the confirmation of George’s death, and suffering from pernicious anaemia, it seems very unlikely that he did.
In his last surviving letter, Quinn wrote from Sheffield that he was ‘going down the pit again, as soon as my month leave is up’.
Related
George Calderon c.1901
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Captain of the 11
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon, 1912
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
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
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
‘…but Mr Jones does look a nice dog’
After enduring a long bout of illness and the first anniversary of George’s disappearance at Gallipoli, in the summer of 1916 Kittie decided she must channel her energies into a number of useful and therapeutic activities. One of these was writing to soldiers at the front and sending them whatever they needed. Thus she tracked down George’s last battalion, 1st KOSB, in France, began a correspondence with the officer commanding his old company, and sent them food and clothing. Probably at the sculptor Eric Gill’s suggestion, she also wrote to his twenty-four-year-old apprentice Joseph Cribb, who was at the Somme. She sent him a cake, sweets, and ‘lemonade tabloids’.
The longest series of soldiers’ letters in Kittie’s archive is from an ex-miner, Clement Quinn, who in 1916 was only twenty-one and stationed in Lucknow, which he found extremely trying. Kittie was asked to correspond with Quinn by Robert Holmes, a writer of popular spy-thrillers who happened also to be Sheffield’s first probation officer. Presumably Kittie had met Holmes in London literary circles. Holmes described Quinn’s deprived childhood in a letter of 1 November and asked Kittie to write Quinn ‘improving’ letters — perhaps implying that Quinn had once been in trouble with the police. Kittie said she was incapable of writing ‘improving letters’, but promptly wrote to Quinn and sent him a parcel of tobacco. Quinn replied thanking her on Christmas Day, 1916.
‘Mr Jones’ and Katharine Ripley, 1899
Kittie’s letters to Quinn have not yet been found, but seventeen from him to her have survived, spanning 1914-19. They are remarkable. He writes very clearly, slowly (one imagines), and probably just as he spoke. But he is an intelligent young man. The letters discuss the course of the war, the wartime conduct of the trade unions (he disapproves of the Coal Strike of 1912), barrack and social life (he is very critical of the way the British behave in India), and his plans to train as an engineer when he comes home to Sheffield. Kittie sent him many things, including a fountain pen and John Masefield’s book about Gallipoli. The impression is inescapable that she wrote him long and chatty letters.
On 11 July 1917 Quinn wrote to Kittie requesting a photograph of her ‘if it is your wish for me to have one, as I shall always remember you, for how good you have been to me whilst I have been out here’. Kittie was rather sensitive about portraits of her, most of which she seems not to have liked. In the autumn of 1917, however, she agreed to send Quinn an ‘old’ one. It was the photograph I show above, which was taken when she was still Mrs Ripley, eighteen years earlier. Despite her white dress, she is wearing mourning accessories following Archie Ripley’s death in October 1898. On the back of Kittie’s own copy, George had written ‘equally best’, presumably meaning equal to the one of Kittie that features on this blogsite under ‘Biographies of George and Kittie Calderon’.
Quinn answered from Lucknow on 26 January 1918, after his twenty-third birthday:
‘Mr Jones’ was the Aberdeen terrier that Archie Ripley and Kittie had acquired after their marriage. They were both very fond of Jones, as was George. The dog died probably in 1909. Quinn hung this photograph above his barrack bed. On 7 November 1918 he wrote to Kittie speculating about the end of the war. Then he added:
He wanted to meet Kittie at Hampstead when he returned to Britain, but since this was in April 1919 when she was distraught at the confirmation of George’s death, and suffering from pernicious anaemia, it seems very unlikely that he did.
In his last surviving letter, Quinn wrote from Sheffield that he was ‘going down the pit again, as soon as my month leave is up’.
Share this:
Related