Tag Archives: Lev Tolstoy

Inestimable Russianist 1: Michael Pursglove

(This series is timed to coincide with the 2019 Annual Conference of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies held 12-14 April at Robinson College, Cambridge, where Sam&Sam will be promoting George Calderon: Edwardian Genius.) When Michael Pursglove … Continue reading

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Intemperance and ‘Heroism’

On 30 August 1920, Kittie received through the post the first draft of Laurence Binyon’s ode to George’s memory, see https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/57345 . She was at Constance Sutton’s Tudor home in Herefordshire, Brinsop Court, and wrote to Binyon next day that she had … Continue reading

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10 June 1915

Today Kittie returned to Well Walk, Hampstead, from staying with the Pyms and Lubbocks in Kent. The Belgian refugee Jean Ryckaert, who had been living at the Calderons’ since October 1914, had recently left, whether for a job in central … Continue reading

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George Calderon: a tribute

As I have written before, the question everyone asks me is: ‘Who is George Calderon?’ Perhaps unconsciously, some people seem to intonate this as a rhetorical question implying: ‘Why are you spending years of your life writing about a person … Continue reading

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30 May 1915

1st bn KOSB 87th Brigade 29th Division M.E.F. May 30th Dearest Mrs P, I’m hard up for paper. Please send some. We’re still on the same spot, in broiling sun, dry and beautiful; sea to either side. […] Daily programme … Continue reading

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22 May 1915

Today Kittie moved from Foxwold, the Pyms’ home in the Weald of Kent, to Emmetts, about a mile away. We know this from the fact that the Visitors Book at Foxwold was maintained meticulously. Emmetts was the home of Violet … Continue reading

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16 May 1915

May 16th.                                                                  R.M.S. “ORSOVA” […] when I woke … Continue reading

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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

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A review

George’s commission was dated 9 January 1915, which was a Saturday, and on the same day the literary magazine The Athenaeum came out with an unsigned review of his translation of Il’ia Tolstoi’s Reminiscences of Tolstoy. However, it is likely that George … Continue reading

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5 November 1914

Today a long advertisement appeared in the Times Literary Supplement for Chapman & Hall’s ‘Latest List’. Top of the column was ‘The Final Word on Tolstoy, the Man: REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY. By His Son, Count Ilya Tolstoy’. The book had been … Continue reading

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The thickness of events…

When writing a biography, you can go for months in its subject’s life without hearing a word from them, as it were: no letters from them to anyone have survived, they are not recorded as having said anything to anyone … Continue reading

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Writer’s self-block?

There is no evidence that Calderon wrote anything new in 1914 after signing up.  Yet the previous seven months had been packed with literary-theatrical work: he had written or assembled most of his posthumous best-seller Tahiti, finished a pantomime The Brave Little … Continue reading

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