# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Calderon, George

​CALDERON, GEORGE (1868-1915), dramatist, was born in London 2 December 1868, the fifth son of the painter Philip H. Calderon, R.A. [q.v.]. He was educated at Rugby and Trinity College, Oxford. He was called to the bar in 1894, but turned to literature and journalism for support. He spent the years 1895-1897 at St. Petersburg, whence he returned with a profound knowledge of Russian and a lasting bent towards Slavonic studies. In 1900 he married Katharine, widow of his college friend, Archibald Ripley, and daughter of John Hamilton, of Brown-hall, county Donegal. He lived thenceforward at Hampstead. They had no children. From 1900 to 1903 he held a post on the library staff of the British Museum. His literary work, at first mainly critical, included two stories in a vein of ironic extravaganza, Downy V. Green (1902) and Dwala (1904). His first play, The Fountain, was produced by the Stage Society in 1909; it was followed by The Little Stone House (1911), Revolt (1912), and a few shorter pieces. In 1906 he spent some months in the South Seas, the result of which was a long-pondered volume of impressions, Tahiti. This, with two volumes of his collected plays, was published (1921-1922) after his death. Among these plays, in strong contrast with the rest, is a tragedy in blank verse, Cromwell: Mall o’ Monks.
Calderon’s gift as a dramatist, though he did not live to develop it fully, was made up of much fertility in ideas, a quick eye for modern character, and a remarkable command of vivid and expressive dialogue—to which should be added a sense of romantic beauty which was occasionally allowed to appear with penetrating effect. His plays were carefully designed for the conditions of the stage, and it was perhaps an accident that none of them had a popular success. But his work was always to some extent hampered by his great versatility. He was primarily a man of letters; but he might equally have been, he largely was, a scholar, a publicist, an adventurer. He gave much time and labour to a study of Slavonic dialects and folk-lore, and to the light so thrown upon primitive religion; but the work which he planned on this subject was still fragmentary when he died. He was an exceptional linguist, often occupied by researches in many languages, and in the science of language itself. He also took an active and enterprising part in various public affairs, notably during the coal strike of 1912. Moreover, he possessed unusual talents as a musician, a draughtsman, and an actor, had he cared to cultivate them seriously. His keen delight in travel and his impressionability are admirably shown in his Tahiti. But his published work imperfectly represents a many-sided man, and one whose character was as rare and deep as his gifts were conspicuous.
On the outbreak of war in 1914 Calderon was determined, in spite of his age, to reach the fighting-line. He went to France as an interpreter, was wounded in the first battle of Ypres, and in May 1915 was sent, with a commission in the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, to the Dardanelles, where he was attached to the King’s Own Scottish Borderers. He was reported wounded and missing in the action of 4 June 1915, and in the absence of any further news was afterwards presumed killed on that date.
[Percy Lubbock, George Calderon: a Sketch from Memory, 1921; personal knowledge.]
P. L.
Note: the initials P. L.. are ambiguous. They refer to one of:
* Author:Perceval Lucas in DNB Second Supplement
* Author:Percy Lubbock in DNB Third Supplement
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