Category Archives: Edwardian marriage

The Peter Pan Factor

If ‘Adventure’ was essential to Calderon, as Kittie said, what part did this play in his so desperately wanting to get to the Front?  Probably quite a lot, as my last quotation in ‘Thirty Quotes from George Calderon’ on this … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kittie again

The other ‘st’ word of the Edwardian period is ‘stout’, as in ‘stout fellows’ (used by soldiers of their comrades).  It is described in dictionaries today as ‘arch.‘, and meant ‘dauntless’ — another word that today surely qualifies as ‘archaic’. … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Personal commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Kittie

It should be clear from my posts of 18 and 27 August that Kittie Calderon felt deeply frustrated by her husband’s ‘finality’, as she called it, about going to the Front when no-one was asking him to enlist at the … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian English, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Confusion, or subtlety?

From a hundred years on, it is difficult to make sense of Calderon’s new situation. If he was taking Hedley’s advice that the quickest way of getting to the Front was as a military interpreter, why was he continuing his … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Determined

Calderon’s approach to issues of the day (Russia, suffragism, unionism) was to study them in depth, analyse them, then decide what was the right course of action for him and stick to it through thick and thin.  This was why … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A biographer dreads…

A very successful biographer asked me how George Calderon died.  I replied that he disappeared in the smoke of battle.  ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘that’s lucky for you: you’ve got a clean ending, not long years of decline, dementia etc.’  As … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian marriage, Heroism and Adventure, Personal commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Training and War Games

Then we lived in an atmosphere of drill – I don’t only mean the drills etc and general training that he was going through, but at home: books on drill, books on everything, Morse codes, other codes, German military handbooks … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian character, Edwardian marriage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

1 August 1914

It gives me much pleasure, from a personal acquaintance of a good many years, to be able to speak with confidence and very favourably indeed of the capacity of Mrs Calderon to undertake almost any or all of the duties … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian marriage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

30 July 1914

I got a porter and was making for the boat at Portsmouth Harbour station when I met Evey on the platform, with a nice dry man Bland, Ipswich branch of Barclay’s bank: he had a motor launch and we came … Continue reading

Posted in Edwardian marriage | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment