K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
George Calderon, 1912
George Calderon c.1901
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Captain of the 11
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
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)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.Recent Comments
- Patrick Miles on Source? Dear Katy, it's lovely to hear from you again! I hope you are well down there in Kent. Would you believe it, I too typed in that first line, as I thought it was perhaps the... (May 12, 2025 at 11:45 am)
- Roger Pulvers on Source? Ah, it is simply a тайна ремесла. But, I assure you, I did not use AI. Please give the book to someone who has not read it and is in your neighbourhood. (May 12, 2025 at 9:57 am)
- Katy George on Source? Pipped to the post! I typed in the first line line of the 2nd paragraph and it came up straight away to the source on Faded Page. (May 12, 2025 at 9:56 am)
- Patrick Miles on Source? Roger, you're a genius! (As if I didn't know.) Did you simply recognise it from your reading, as it were, or did you use AI? We used the most sophisticated search engines... (May 12, 2025 at 9:46 am)
- Roger Pulvers on Source? Unpopular Opinions by Dorothy L Sayers, that's the source of the quote. (May 12, 2025 at 7:24 am)
Author Archives: Patrick Miles
20 April 1915
Brinsop Court. Hereford. (Statn Credenhill. Tels Burghill.) Tuesday Darling Dina, It’s absolutely unthinkable that you are not here, and I do know how you are feeling about it, but time and space are nothing, and your dear spirit just wraps me round … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian marriage
Tagged 'Phyllis', Colonel Geoffrey Feilding, Constance Astley, Constance Sutton, Dick Sutton, Edward Brooke, Eliza Stewart, Father Waggett, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Hubert Astley, Jim Corbet, Kittie Calderon, Nina Astley, Sir Richard Sutton, Sir Roland James Corbet, The Great War, World War I
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17 April 1915
This morning, at Brinsop Court in Herefordshire, Nina Astley (Lady Corbet by her first marriage) received a telegram from the War Office informing her that her son Sir Roland James Corbet (Jim) had been killed at Givenchy (see my post … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian character, Personal commentary
Tagged Acton Reynald, Brinsop Court, Constance Astley, Constance Sutton, Dick Sutton, Elizabeth Hayes, Fort Brockhurst, George Calderon, Givenchy, Jim Corbet, Kittie Calderon, Lesbia Corbet, Nina Astley, Shropshire, Sir Richard Sutton, Sir Roland James Corbet, telegrams, The Great War, World War I
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15 April 1915
April 15. 1915 [France] Dear Mrs Astley — it is with the greatest grief that I write to you to tell you of your son’s death which took place at 8 a.m. this morning. It was very foggy, and your … Continue reading
‘The Maharani’: A postscript
Read The Maharani of Arakan yourself to decide whether it is (just) ‘A Romantic Comedy’, as George playfully subtitled it, or a ‘Symbolist Mystery Play’ (allegory)! Having re-read it over the weekend, I increasingly feel it’s the latter. If it is … Continue reading
What is ‘The Lamp’ about? (2)
Presumably George was home again at 42 Well Walk, Hampstead, for the long weekend of 9-12 April 1915, so he may have done more work on leaving various literary projects in a publishable state in case he did not come … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, comments, Ernst Zermelo, Feofan Zatvornik, Geminae, Georg Cantor, George Calderon, La Sainte Courtisane, Lenin, mathematics, Oscar Wilde, Rugby Scool, Russell's Paradox, set theory, The Fountain, The Great War, The Lamp, The Little Stone House, The Two Talismans, World War I
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10 April 1915: A professional soldier
Today the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst near Portsmouth was converted from a Service Battalion to a Reserve Battalion. It comes as a shock: George Calderon’s training as a lieutenant was over, and he could volunteer or … Continue reading
The Arakan ‘mystery’
The other evening, I met a friend at a party who told me she had recently taken part in a reading of George’s ‘Romantic Comedy in One Act’, The Maharani of Arakan. I was amazed, as I had not heard of … Continue reading
Posted in Edwardian literature, Personal commentary
Tagged 'real time', biographies, biography, comments, Dardanelles, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, K.N. Das Gupta, Kittie Calderon, Margaret Mitchell, Rabindranath Tagore, Ronald Colman, The Albert Hall, The Coliseum, The Great War, The Maharani of Arakan, William Rothenstein, World War I
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Two separate biographies
As I have explained on several occasions, apart from his machine gun course on Hayling Island we know nothing specific about George’s training as a lieutenant with the 9th Battalion Ox and Bucks at Fort Brockhurst from the middle of … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Battle of Neuve Chapelle, biographies, biography, British Expeditionary Force, Fort Brockhurst, Gallipoli, George Calderon, Helles, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, The Great War, Third Battle of Krithia, Training, trench warfare, World War I, Ypres
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Biography and the limits of non-fiction
I keep dipping into Ruth Scurr’s John Aubrey: My Own Life. It’s very compulsive reading, but I don’t have time at the moment to let it run away with me as I would wish. Nevertheless, I’ve read enough both of the … Continue reading
Easter 1915
Today, 4 April 1915, was Easter Day. Kittie Calderon went to church, but we do not know if George did. At Steep, Hampshire, Edward Thomas wrote his poem ‘In Memoriam’: The flowers left thick at nightfall in the … Continue reading
What is ‘The Lamp’ about? (1)
In 1915, today was Easter Saturday. For reasons I will give this coming Monday, I think George Calderon was at home over Easter on long weekend leave. This means he may have worked on the possibly four literary works that … Continue reading
‘Phantom flies in amber’ (Concluded)
In my post of 5 January I described what I assume is a bugbear of all biographers: ‘facts’ that you have acquired from somewhere, that stick in your mind like flies in amber, but when you want to use them … Continue reading
Posted in Personal commentary
Tagged Anton Chekhov, Ashford, Aunt Lottie, beetles, biography, comments, George Calderon, Kennington, Kittie Calderon, memory, Russia, Uncle Tom
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‘Bifurcation’ and ‘chronotopia’ again
Those who have been on my journey since 30 July 1914/2014 will remember that six weeks into it (12 September) I wrote about the problem I was having of holding in my head the two activities of writing the blog … Continue reading
Weekend work: ‘The Lamp’
If, as I have suggested, George used his long weekend leave to put his literary manuscripts in order, then as well as working on a detailed synopsis of Tahiti (see my posts of 14 and 21 March) he must have done something … Continue reading
Time and the biographer
I have received a long and very interesting letter from John Dewey, author of the superb Mirror of the Soul: A Life of the Poet Fyodor Tyutchev (2010), commenting on my various posts over the last three months that touch on … Continue reading
‘The Lamp’ (Concluded)
Today, 18 April 1915, was a Sunday. Kittie doubtless went to church (we don’t yet know which one), with Nina, Jim Corbet and her god-daughter Lesbia very much on her mind. Perhaps George thought further about what he was going … Continue reading →