Captain of the 11
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon c.1901
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
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?
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
George Calderon, 1912
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906Recent Comments
- Jim D G Miles on From the diary of a writer-publisher: 28 Excellent entry, Dad. I like the escape room picture, of course, but the story about the Russian and the hole-in-the-wall is exceptional! (28/03/2024 at 9:58 PM)
- Patrick Miles on Short story: ‘Crox’ Thank you, dear anonymous Theo...it is so refreshing to hear the reaction of a Man of the People! Keep a good grip on those cords! 'Part II'?! The rest is secreted in lines (18/12/2023 at 10:33 PM)
- Theo on Short story: ‘Crox’ Delicious! "Are you being Served?" meets "Keeping up Appearances" via Calderotica. But Patrick, you cannot leave us dangling like that just before Christmas! One thing - c (18/12/2023 at 1:35 PM)
- Patrick Miles on Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’ Thank you, Damian, for sharing your problem with us. It's difficult to know what to prescribe. Perhaps try examining the facts of the story (e.g. there are not 6 medics in the (20/11/2023 at 9:44 AM)
- Damian Grant on Cambridge Tales 8: ‘Black Tie’ Patrick: I read your story 'Black Tie' on Monday, and knew immediately that it didn't work for me. There was something forced, factitious; something that didn't let the elemen (17/11/2023 at 2:26 PM)
Tag Archives: Laurence Binyon
The magnificent Mary Ann
Long-term followers of Calderonia will recall that I had always had a theory that the person who taught George to speak Russian credibly before he set out for St Petersburg in 1895 was a ‘Mrs Shapter’, but in my biography … Continue reading
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Tagged Alexander I, Andrew Jones, Anton Chekhov, biographies, biography, Camille Silvy, Clara Calderon, Constance Garnett, Evan Hodgson, Exeter, Francke family, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Glasgow Repertory Theatre, Harry Leeke Gibbs, Harvey Pitcher, John Hodgson, John Shapter, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Manya Guseva, Mary Ann Shapter, Mary Gibbs Shapter, Michael Pursglove, Mrs Shapter, Museum of the Home, National Portrait Gallery, Nicholas I, Olga Novikoff, oracy, P.H. Calderon, Russia, Sally Jones, silver, sketchbooks, St John's Wood Clique, St Petersburg, The Seagull, The Smiths of Moscow, theatre, Thomas Shapter, toddy ladle, Whishaw family, Yeames family
2 Comments
A TLS review!!!
I was rendered soundless and motionless last Thursday when a stalwart subscriber emailed to tell me that a full-length review of George Calderon: Edwardian Genius had appeared that morning in The Times Literary Supplement. A Zen moment indeed. For consider: … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary
Tagged Anglo-Russian cultural relations, Anton Chekhov, Ballets Russes, biographies, biography, Calderonia, Charlotte Jones, comments, Constance Garnett, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Laurence Sterne, life-writing, modernism, Nina Corbet, Professor Rose of Leipzig, reviews, Russomania, Tahiti, The Seagull, Times Literary Supplement, TLS, Tristram Shandy, William John Rose
2 Comments
Thank you, Blackwell’s of Oxford!
One day, perhaps, I will describe how my whole post-7 September marketing strategy was upset and I had to re-focus immediately on my potential Russianist readership worldwide… Thank you to ALL Russianists everywhere who have responded magnificently! I know there … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, biographies, Blackwell's, Bookseller of the Year, Clare Hopkins, comments, George Calderon, Heffers, Laurence Binyon, marketing, Oxford, Sam&Sam, St Andrews, Toppings, translation, Trinity College Oxford
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DnA
Longer-term followers of Calderonia will be aware of my preoccupation with Edwardian ‘dilettantism’ and ‘amateurism’. Laurence Binyon, Martin Shaw and Percy Lubbock went out of their way to stress that George was not a dilettante, and the word ‘amateur’ was … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged amateurism, biographies, biography, comments, dilettantism, fringe theatre, George Calderon, George Calderon: Edwardian Genius, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Martin Shaw, Percy Lubbock, publishers, Sam&Sam, self-publishing, semantic, TLS
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Far End draws closer
On 26 January I blogged about the house Far End at Kingham in Oxfordshire, which I had heard about for the first time from Mrs Mary Lowe, whom we traced as the copyright holder for unpublished works of the American … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Balbec, Basil de Sélincourt, biographies, biography, D.H. Lawrence, Dardanelles, F.R. Leavis, Far End, Gallipoli, Garsington, George Calderon, Giotto, Ian Lowe, Julia Chapin Alsop, Kingham, Kittie Calderon, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Laurence Binyon, Marcel Proust, Mary Lowe, New College Oxford, Oxfordshire, Petersfield, Piccadilly, Sir Edward Grey, Swan & Edgar, Tante, The Encounter, The Good Life, The Great War, The Little French Girl, Third Battle of Krithia, vegetables, Virago Classics, Walt Whitman, William Blake, Women in Love, World War 2, World War I
5 Comments
Far End: a new Calderonian world
The greatest pleasure to have come out of the hair-tearing ordeal of obtaining permission to publish quotations from scores of letters to George and Kittie written a hundred years ago (see 17 April 2017) has been to correspond with Mrs … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged Acton Reynald, Anne Douglas Sedgwick, Anton Chekhov, Basil de Sélincourt, biography, Bruce Richmond, Chipping Norton, comments, Far End, Foxwold, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Goncourt Brothers, Hugh Walpole, Ivan Turgenev, Kingham, Kittie Calderon, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Laurence Binyon, Petersfield, Sir Edward Grey, The Encounter, The Great War, Victoria Cholmondeley, World War I, Ypres
1 Comment
An Edwardian Christmas
Happy Christmas to All Our Readers, and thank you for following Calderonia into its fourth year! At Heathland Lodge, George and Kittie’s home from 1901 to 1912 in the Vale of Health, they always staged a large family Christmas, despite … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Arts and Crafts, biography, British Museum, Briton Rivière, Buckingham Mansions, Catherine Lubbock, Christmas, Clara Calderon, Clara Sumner, comments, dogs, Ethel Armstead, Frank Calderon, Frederic Lubbock, George Calderon, Hampstead, Heathland Lodge, Helen Binyon, Joan Calderon, Johnny Jones, Jones, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Marguerite Calderon, Mary Hamilton, Philip Calderon, Tahiti, Vale of Health, vets, W.H. Gray
2 Comments
Dulc(e) et decor(um) est…
I have always been uncomfortable with what I take to be the popular interpretation of Wilfred Owen’s poem Dulce et Decorum est. My first experience of it was in about 1962 from the lips of our young English teacher, a … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged A.J.P. Taylor, Alan Clark, British Expeditionary Force, commemoration, comments, Dulce et Decorum, Edward Thomas, George Calderon, Henry Newbolt, Horace, Jessie Pope, Joan Littlewood, kitchen sink drama, Laurence Binyon, Rome, scansion, Seamus Heaney, The Great War, Wilfred Owen, Wilfred Owen Association (France), World War I
12 Comments
Empires end like this…
There are two reasons that obtaining Permissions has taken so long, in my case at least (see 17 April and 20 April). First, although I rapidly earmarked the sixteen ‘major’ sources of quoted unpublished material in my biography, e.g. William Rothenstein, … Continue reading
Posted in Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Annette Gough, Archie Ripley, biographies, biography, Charles Villiers Stanford, comments, copyright, Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988, Dr Albert Tebb, Dullness, Edwin Lankaster, EU, EU Directive on Term of Copyright, Franz Kafka, George Calderon, Grant Richards, Harold Dowdall, King Alfred, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Lord Denning, Mary Cholmondeley, Michael Welch, Nikolai Berdiaev, Nikolai Gogol, Rupert Brooke, superstates, totalitarianism, USSR, William English Harrison, William Rothenstein
2 Comments
Guest post: Clare Hopkins, ‘One Man and his College’
Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Morse or Lewis will know that Oxford Colleges are well supplied with portraits. Founders, archbishops, prime ministers, and Nobel Prize winners gaze grandly down from the panelled walls of Dining Halls. Smaller … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Archibald Ripley, Archie Ripley, Arnold Pienne, Arthur Lowry, athletics, biography, Clare Hopkins, commemoration, comments, Dardanelles, Downy V. Green, Eastcote, Frederick Hollyer, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Gryphon Club, Harold Dowdall, Henry Woods, Herbert Blakiston, Hugh Legge, Kittie Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Michael Furse, Miners Strike 1912, Percy Lubbock, Rugby, Smoking Concert, St Ives College, The Fountain, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Trinity College Oxford, Trinity College War Memorial, World War I
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‘He became his admirers…’
W.H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B. Yeats’ describes Yeats’s death in January 1939, culminating in: ‘The current of his feeling failed: he became his admirers.’ I often think the word should be ‘readers’ rather than ‘admirers’, for as Auden himself … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged British Expeditionary Force, commemoration, comments, For the Fallen, George Calderon, Laurence Binyon, Remembrance Day, Rupert Brooke, The Great War, The Soldier, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, war memorials, World War I
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‘…you may touch them not.’
Over the last two years, I have been asked why I chose Wilfred Owen’s line ‘Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not’ as the epigraph to Calderonia; why I am apparently fond of the poem; whether I … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary
Tagged agapē, camaraderie, comments, erotic love, Georg Trakl, George Calderon, Greater Love, Hölderlin, intimacy, Ivor Gurney, Jesus Christ, Laurence Binyon, Mary Magdalene, Platonic love, Santanu Das, The Great War, touch, war poetry, War Poets, Wilfred Owen, World War I
3 Comments
And the asp jumped over the chimney sweeper!
That time of year is approaching again…the time of public readings of verse four of Laurence Binyon’s ‘For the Fallen’. I shall be listening carefully for who says ‘grow-not old’, who ‘grow not-old’, and who indeed ‘not grow old’ (see … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian English, Edwardian literature, Heroism and Adventure, Modern parallels, Personal commentary
Tagged Andrew Marvell, aspen, chimney sweeper moth, comments, cows, Cymbeline, dandelions, Dulce et decor est, Experiment with a Hand Lens, For the Fallen, Henry Vaughan, Humpty Dumpty, John Donne, Joseph Brodsky, Laurence Binyon, Leningrad, Looking Back, metrical stress, Michael Alexander, nursery tales, R.F. Langley, Stratford-upon-Avon, syntax, The Apparition, To His Coy Mistress, Wilfred Owen, William Shakespeare
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Grow old they shall not
It is the time of year again when I tussle with the question of how George’s friend Laurence Binyon’s half-line ‘They shall grow not old’ should be spoken (or mutely read), what it means depending on how you speak it, … Continue reading →