The Calderon Family Papers, Cambridge, February 2019
I have decided I must go public about the nine years of frustration that the owner of the Calderon Papers and I endured as we tried to find a permanent home for them in a British archival institution. It was one of the worst experiences of my professional life. I need to get it off my chest, but my account of it might also be useful to Calderonia’s readers and I shall of course welcome Comments on it from all quarters.
As followers will be well aware, the experience of researching and writing my biography of George was one of sheer pleasure, marked by a blessed serendipity at every stage and a host of wonderful new acquaintances who helped me in every possible way. My experience of dealing with British archives on behalf of a vendor has been merely the black lining to that silver cloud. I must hereby issue a health warning, however, that my anger about how we were treated is intense and, I believe, justified. My words in the next four posts will doubtless seem to some readers very hard; possibly unbelievably so. But I stand by them.
I hasten to emphasise that my criticisms are not directed at how I was treated as a user by the thirty-seven archives I had dealings with in the course of researching my book. On the contrary: whether working in their space, buying copies from them, or corresponding with their staff about specific questions, the service I received from over 90% of them was highly civilised, informed and efficient. The trouble, for both me and my team, concerned issues of safe keeping, cataloguing and communication that arose from our donations to archives or attempts to sell to them.
I have written a 450-word piece for the ‘Thunderer’ column of The Times that will be reproduced in my next post whether the newspaper publishes it or not (I fear they will not regard archives as a subject to set the world on fire!). That will be followed by a third post in which I flesh out the points I make as a Thunderer. Last week I wrote a 1500-word article for The Spectator, and that will be reproduced in my fourth post whether published or not. In a final, short post, I shall attempt a summing up, for example naming the kind of British archives that I think perform best. Personally, I never want to donate or sell anything to a British archive in my life again.
The Calderon Family Papers arrive at Harvard University, 9 April 2019
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
George Calderon c.1901
Captain of the 11
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?
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
George Calderon, 1912
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Health Warning
The Calderon Family Papers, Cambridge, February 2019
I have decided I must go public about the nine years of frustration that the owner of the Calderon Papers and I endured as we tried to find a permanent home for them in a British archival institution. It was one of the worst experiences of my professional life. I need to get it off my chest, but my account of it might also be useful to Calderonia’s readers and I shall of course welcome Comments on it from all quarters.
As followers will be well aware, the experience of researching and writing my biography of George was one of sheer pleasure, marked by a blessed serendipity at every stage and a host of wonderful new acquaintances who helped me in every possible way. My experience of dealing with British archives on behalf of a vendor has been merely the black lining to that silver cloud. I must hereby issue a health warning, however, that my anger about how we were treated is intense and, I believe, justified. My words in the next four posts will doubtless seem to some readers very hard; possibly unbelievably so. But I stand by them.
I hasten to emphasise that my criticisms are not directed at how I was treated as a user by the thirty-seven archives I had dealings with in the course of researching my book. On the contrary: whether working in their space, buying copies from them, or corresponding with their staff about specific questions, the service I received from over 90% of them was highly civilised, informed and efficient. The trouble, for both me and my team, concerned issues of safe keeping, cataloguing and communication that arose from our donations to archives or attempts to sell to them.
I have written a 450-word piece for the ‘Thunderer’ column of The Times that will be reproduced in my next post whether the newspaper publishes it or not (I fear they will not regard archives as a subject to set the world on fire!). That will be followed by a third post in which I flesh out the points I make as a Thunderer. Last week I wrote a 1500-word article for The Spectator, and that will be reproduced in my fourth post whether published or not. In a final, short post, I shall attempt a summing up, for example naming the kind of British archives that I think perform best. Personally, I never want to donate or sell anything to a British archive in my life again.
The Calderon Family Papers arrive at Harvard University, 9 April 2019
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement
‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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