From The Grove to Budleigh, via Picadilly Place

Today, it is time to hit the rewind button—I almost said "on the tape," even though that now sounds, in a DVD/DVR world, like saying that I donned "spats" and my "fob"—and travel back in time for a while. We'll leave behind the coastal croquet lawns of Budleigh, Parkstone, and The Saffrons and turn the compass northward as well. Our destination? London, much earlier in the 20th century, where we'll try to find young George Mills, the teenager!

This note arrived yesterday from Michael P. of the Eastbourne Local History Association:

"Having noticed that GM was educated at Harrow, I told Rita Boswell, the archivist there, of your website and asked whether she had more info on him. Below is her response:

I have checked our school paper and photograph collection for George Mills but both have drawn a blank so far. We are having the paper digitised at the moment which will enable a better search in due course. It is also possible that a photo will turn up in due course, so I will keep looking. Meanwhile, all I can tell you is what appears in the School Register. That is:

George Ramsay Acland Mills, son of the Rev. B. R. V. Mills (Old Harrovian) of 38 Onslow Gardens S W London. George entered Harrow in September 1910 and left in the summer of 1912; while here he resided in a small boarding house and another house called The Grove [pictured, right]. He served in the Great War from 1916-1919 as a Corporal in the Rifle Brigade but transferred to A.P.C. and then the R.A.S.C. He went up to Christ Church Oxford and became a Preparatory Schoolmaster. His address in 1951 is given as the Naval and Military Club at 94 Piccadilly, London W.1.

I hope this is of interest to you."

Yes, it is, Michael, and thank you so much!

First of all, it's quite exciting to think that there may be a story or two, and perhaps even a photograph, of a young George lurking in a school paper somewhere at Harrow. Mills arrived at Windlesham House School in 1925 after having attended Oxford as a schoolmaster and immediately became involved in that institution's stage productions. It isn't difficult to imagine that, as a boy, Mills had been involved in extracurricular endeavors at Harrow that included drama, and that Harrovian student productions were well covered by the school paper.

"The above makes even more sense when one reads the current description of The Grove on Harrow's website:

The Grove is situated on what is nearly the highest point of the Hill, next to St Mary's Church, and is home to about seventy boys.

The Grove occupies a central and prominent position near the highest point of the Hill, yet its quiet location is an attraction. Boys come from all over the United Kingdom and links with more distant prep schools are actively maintained. The Grove is strong in Art and Drama, and increasingly in Music, with a longer reputation for sporting prowess.

Variety in the intake of boys gives the House its strength, and its success depends on their talent."

Given the proclivity of George Mills to have been involved as a schoolmaster in the arts, particularly drama and music, as well as sports, The Grove must have been a perfect locale for his education!

I suppose it is even possible that we might gain a clue as to where George Mills went when he departed The Grove in the summer of his 15th year. Mills reappears in the historical record in the summer of 1916 when he is recruited to the Rifle Depot in July and sent off to war.

Still, one wonders what a sixteen-year-old in early 20th century England, from a well-to-do family and with an education at Harrow does with himself for four years.

I've speculated that the teenaged George may have tried to follow to some degree in the footsteps of his uncle, Major Dudley Mills of the Royal Engineers, eschewing the military for the time being and becoming an apprentice at the engineering firm Wallis & Steevens, Ltd.

However, that supposition rests on the tenuous evidence of a ship manifest from 1915 containing the name George Mills, who at the time was a 19-year-old British apprentice sailing from Buenos Aires to Liverpool with then-54-year-old Alfred Wallis of the famed engineering firm [right].

The point of Stanley Elkin's novel, George Mills, is that the world has always been populated by a plethora of run-of-the-mill, indistinguishable men by the name of George Mills. Hence, basing any supposition on a U.K. document containing the name 'George Mills' is, I realize, a longshot.

However, while freely admitting it may not actually be the case, I have no other peg upon which to hang my metaphorical hat regarding the missing years of George Mills, 1912-1916, especially since Mills signed his army recruitment papers with his occupation listed as "student"—a term which could loosely, I suppose, be applied to an apprentice, particularly one from a scholarly family such as George's.

One other interesting aspect of the above information is George's 1951 address: The Naval and Military Club, then at 94 Piccadilly, London W.1. [left].

We've seen George use this address before. In 1944, he wrote The Times about the Royal Army Pay Corps, having been an officer in it recently, and used that exact address. And, now, here we have Mills still using the same one some seven years later.

His father, Rev. Barton R. V. Mills, used The Athenæum, Pall, Mall, S.W.1 [below, right], as his professional address even when he lived nearby in Kensington. The Military and Naval Club is, coincidentally just blocks away from his George's father's haunts at The Athenæum in 1951, and less than a mile away from the family's past residences, west of Green Park and Buckingham Palace.

George's mother, Edith Mills, had passed away in 1945 while living with George's sisters in Kensington. By 1947, the spinsters Agnes and Violet Mills, had moved to Grey Friars in Budleigh Salterton, where George was certainly known to have resided, where he passed away in 1972, and where he may have been buried.

It's possible, I suppose, that Mills resided at the Military and Naval Club after the war, well into the 1950s. I understand that it's affordable for one to stay there now, compared to other lodging in central London. It may have been even more affordable at the time, especially given that it would have been undergoing construction to repair bombing damage in 1941 [pictured in Life magazine in 1941, right].

The question becomes: After relinquishing his commission in the RAPC due to ill-health in 1943, where did Mills go? Did he then live in Cadogan Gardens with his mother and sisters? And, after the Misses Mills departed for Budleigh in 1947, did he tag along, or stay? Or even relocate elsewhere—something quite possible given his lifelong inclination to Sussex?

Thank you, Michael, for the information above! It inches us closer to a more thorough knowledge of the author, George Mills. But, as always seems the case, with answers come new questions. And if you have any information that can help, please don't hesitate to contact me!

ARMY PAY: Hon. Lt. Geo. Mills vs. Maj. Gen. Alan Buchanan

Here at Who is George Mills? it's not often that we stumble upon something special, and by special I mean a bit of writing by George himself that isn't bound up in one of his four books! So, despite the less than riveting subject matter of the missives below, it's a gala day for me.

And, as Groucho Marx once intoned, "A gal a day is enough for me. I don't think I could handle any more."

The letter by Mills would be completely out of context without first reading a previous letter, published in the London Times on 25 April 1944. Apparently there had been a thread running about pay in the military and its most effective means of disbursement.

Our first letter, seen at the left [click to enlarge], was written by Major General Alan Buchanan (Retired) and basically seems to come down in favor of getting the disbursement of funds off of the back of commanding officers, putting the entire onus on the grunts in the Royal Army Pay Corps.

To me, it seems that Buchanan says that C.O.s have more important things to worry about every week than figuring out pay rates and having troops sign for their wages, especially with a war going on.

It's amusing to me, sitting here today, to see Buchanan using the words "struggles" and "radical." It's unclear if the struggles come from the difficulty of the task or not, but I'll assume he means it's simply a time-consuming and relatively menial burden for which it is difficult to whip up any enthusiasm. And I assume a Major General knows that any change from military routines or protocols, no matter how small, would be considered radical.

The letter from George Mills [right], however, doesn't seem so radical when we find out the R.A.F. had already been disbursing their payroll in exactly the method being discussed. What makes George's letter so interesting is that he states: "[T]he scheme, if adopted, would have meant the saving of pay and allowances of a large number of regimental paymasters, many of whom hold the rank of colonel; the running of huge pay offices, with their enormous staffs, would have been unnecessary."

So, if I'm understanding this correctly, the Royal Army Pay Corps calculated the amount of money going to any regiment and presumably delivered that amount in a timely manner. Then, the money went to a paymasters' office unrelated to the R.A.P.C. where staff members would help a colonel figure out who gets how much.

Perhaps the "struggle," then, is more than just the burden of having to carry out the task itself. As opposed to Buchanan's proposed scenario of one C.O., sitting alone in frustration, trying to disburse payroll while other undone and seemingly more important tasks weigh heavily upon him, Mills sees a plethora of leech-like "middle men" sucking their living from the taxpayers by taking payroll from the R.A.P.C., turning around, and bureaucratically doling it out to the men.

Mills adds: "And, not least of importance, time would not be wasted—as it frequently is now—by officers over-paying the men, thereby putting them into debt. This frequently happens in the artillery, where trade rates of pay are very complicated."

I really had no idea that the Army Pay Corps didn't actually pay the Army at the time. Mills seems adamant about the idea of streamlining payroll disbursement in the regular army, and my hunch is that he made his feelings clear in many a base and barracks before relinquishing his commission in November 1943, just a few short months before this exchange. It's also likely that, as he does here, he made it known that he was not impressed with the capabilities and accuracy of the officers who were currently doling out the payroll.

It may have been George's penchant to try to 'help improve' his employment situations as seen above that had him moving from job to job so frequently when he was a schoolmaster in the 1920s and '30s. If there is any place still more rigid, paradigmatic, and loath to change, it's the field of education, even today. It's easy for me to see that fresh, new ideas about the education of prep school boys might have seemed "radical" to employers steeped in tradition, stability, and rote such as Windlesham House School where George worked for just a year.

Of course, having some 'issues' with the Army seems to have run in George's family. In the Times obituary of his uncle, Colonel Dudley Mills, R.E., on 26 February 1938, it noted of Dudley: "An inclination to debate the rules and regulations and to argue the value of military customs in the true Gladstone manner made him an unconventional soldier."

And we know that George's brother, Capt. Arthur F. H. Mills, apparently resigned his commission in the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry just before the opening of worldwide hostilities in 1914, apparently in a dispute over promotion and/or pay. Arthur, by the way, did receive his promotion and back-dated seniority that same day.

One other thing we learn here about George Mills is that he isn't hurting for money in 1944. It's doubtful he had a full-time residence at the Naval and Military Club [pictured below, right] at 94 Piccadilly, W.1, and was simply using it as his address as his father, Rev. Barton R. V. Mills, used the Athenæum Club at Pall Mall as his address in public correspondence years before. It does add a certain gravitas to a letter!

Membership in the 21st century incarnation of the Naval and Military Club, which a humorist like Mills likely referred to as the "In and Out," stood at £895 per annum in 2009, with an additional fee payable when joining.

Let’s assume that George indeed had been assigned to a place like Ilfracombe soon after he returned to the service as a second lieutenant in 1940. Let's also assume he had not been a member under the auspices of his prior military service as a lance corporal in 1919, and that it was still restricted to officers at the time. If Mills was at a Royal Army Pay Corps base or center through his departure from the military due to ill-health on 3 November 1943, he probably hadn't the time or inclination to drop by the In-and-Out and become a member much before December 1943, his rank of Honorary Lieutenant clutched firmly in hand.

£895, exchanged today [23 July 2010], would be exactly $1,375.81. That would be quite a tidy lump-sum for me to pay for annual dues in a club right now. We also have to assume that George paid some sort of additional membership fee that first year, although I haven't been able to find out what that 1944 initial membership and the yearly dues would have been. Yes, George Mills, freshly-minted civilian in wartime London, circa 1944, certainly doesn't seem to have been too worried at all about making ends meet. It's safe to say that, financially, he must have been 'comfortable.'

And that shoots down my theory of Mills struggling to make ends meet during the Great Depression and cheerfully returning to the military as a way of at last regularly paying the bills. Had he been struggling, along with his wife Vera, to make ends meet just a handful of years before, it seems unlikely that George—in poor health—ran out and almost immediately joined an expensive and exclusive gentleman's club in London. No, George must not have had too many economic woes at the time at all!

Now, I know the club had been hit by a NAZI bomb in 1941 and much of its grandeur went into storage while repair work was done. There's even a poignant photo from LIFE magazine [left] in which a tuxedo-ed sommelier struggles to select just ther right bottle of port for a member [who may have to do without his preferred vintage] from the remaining stock in the club's diminishing wine cellar. Everyone at the time seemed to be suffering!

Still, while I head out, mower in hand, to do battle once again with continuing onslaught of the relentless force that is my lawn, when I need a break I'll think of George coolly sitting with his pipe, reading the Times at Cambridge House, taking umbrage with a letter to the editor, and writing a missive bent on to improving the state of payroll disbursement in the barracks, all within a city rife with shortages, rationing, blackouts, and rumors.

Meanwhile, if you have any thoughts or additional information, please let me know!

The Life of B. R. V. Mills, Part 2

In 1891, recent widower Barton Reginald Vaughan Mills, father of a young son, Arthur, was appointed vicar of Bude, on the coast of Cornwall, on a stipend of £170 a year, a sum considered less than his contemporaries, but still more than he'd recently earned at Poughill. Was money an issue? Perhaps, but it would seem, more importantly, that although he may have dreamed of a more metropolitan life, this living kept him close to kith and kin, especially to the patrons of Bude parish, the family of his grandfather, Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, who had helped raise Barton as a child in nearby Killerton, Devon.

We had no news for several years after Barton took up residence at the vicarage, but finally, on 10 January 1894, Barton R. V. Mills married Elizabeth Edith Ramsay, daughter of George Dalhousie Ramsay, C.B., in Kensington, London. In 1893 at the age of 64, Ramsay had just completed thirty years of service to his country as Director of Army Clothing. Various sources have Elizabeth Edith born in either 1865 or 1866, making her 28 or 29 years old at the time of the wedding. Barton himself was 36 on the day of his nuptials.

Soon after, in 1895, Barton's mother, Lady Agnes Lucy Dyke Acland, died on 23 May. But, on 11 June of that same year, Agnes Edith Mills was born in Stratton, Cornwall, to Barton and his new bride.

In 1896, the couple had their second child together and third overall, George Ramsay Acland Mills, born on 1 October 1896 in Bude. That same year, Fairbairn's Book of Crests of the Families of Great Britain and Ireland‎ lists George Dalhousie Ramsay as residing at "7. Manson Place, Queen's Gate, S.W." That seemingly irrelevant fact would soon loom larger in Barton's life, just as my recent discovery of it did in this story.

In 1898, Barton's father, Arthur Mills, died on 12 October, and his estate was probated at £42 035 to Reginald Brodie Dyke Acland, barrister, Theodore Dyke Acland, M.D., the Rev. Barton Reginald Vaughan Mills, and Dudley Acland Mills, a major in the Royal Engineers and Barton's younger brother.

Barton's son, Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills, then aged 13, entered Wellington College, Berkshire, in the Hardinge House, in 1900. His father is listed as "Rev. B. R. V. Mills", at the address: "The Vicarage [right], Bude Haven, N. Cornwall".

One might assume that an inheritance could very easily change the family's prospects, and that seems to have been the case here. In the new century, things are about to change quite a bit for the family of four-year-old George Mills.

The year of 1901 marked the passing of Queen Victoria on 22 January. Barton R. V. Mills preached his first sermon at the Chapel Royal on 2 February 1901 at the Festival of the Purification, Memorial Service on the day and at the hour of the Funeral at Windsor of Queen Victoria. Records show that the preachers on that day were "T E Franklyn, Assistant Chaplain, and Barton R V Mills, Vicar of Bude Haven, Cornwall."

1901, however, is a particularly interesting because of Barton's sudden change of employment. As we see above, Mills is still Vicar of Bude Haven on 22 January. Soon, though, he resigned his position as Vicar of Bude Haven, becoming an assistant chaplain of the Chapel Royal of the Savoy in London.

In the 1901 census taken on 31 March, the Mills family is listed as living in "District 14, Brompton, Kensington, London", but I'm uncertain exactly where, or if they are living in a dwelling by themselves because I haven't seen the entire page. George's half-brother, Arthur, is not listed among the family members in London, or among any of the entire list of "Arthur Mills" within that census. Still, they've departed Bude, Cornwall, and it seems for good.

A new holy cleric preached his first sermon at the Chapel Royal of the Savoy [left] as assistant chaplain on the 25th Sunday after Trinity, 24 November 1901—the preacher of record was "Barton R. V. Mills, Assistant Chaplain."

No lay person I've asked has seemed to think the fact that Barton Mills converted to Roman Catholicism in the late 1870s would have made much of a difference in his becoming an Anglican Vicar or gaining employment at the Savoy. However, in a recent e-mail, the current Chaplain of the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy expressed doubt: "I should be surprised if Mills was appointed assistant chaplain of the Savoy (it was known as the Chapel Royal, Savoy in those days) having 'renounced the Anglican Church.'"

I've sent the surprising results of my research to the Queen's Chapel and, hopefully we'll have an answer soon regarding why a Roman Catholic had been holding positions of such influence in the Anglican Church. It's true that Mills may simply have changed his mind back about his affiliation just as suddenly as he had in changed it the first place. Still, I know that in the United States, if it became known that the clergyman of a Protestant church had ever been a convert to Roman Catholicism, and then flip-flopped back, it would likely cause somewhat of a tempest.

Also in 1901, Barton R. V. Mills published a book of sermons, Marks of the Church [Skeffington & Son: London, 1901], putting some additional funds in the family coffers. That would not have been a bad thing at all, considering the number of mouths to feed in his family was about to increase.

Violet Eleanor Mills was born on 17 November 1902, and in the following year, Arthur F. H. Mills, aged 16, left Wellington College, Berkshire, at the end of three years. It's unclear where young Arthur might have gone, but the most likely possibility would seem to be a return to the home of his father in London.

The Mills family then makes no news, as far as I can discern, until 1906 when Arthur resumes his schooling, entering the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, on September 12. He's rated "Fair" in both his first and second terms, and "Good" in his third term.

At some point during that span of time, though, George Mills was attending Parkfield Preparatory School in Haywards Heath. I'm not having much luck at all finding information on that now-defunct institution, however.

Then, in 1907, Barton R. V. Mills published Fundamental Christianity: an essay on the essentials of the Christian Faith (Reprinted from "The Churchman") [Masters & Co.: London, 1907].

A year later, Arthur F. H. Mills was "gazetted" [as he described it] into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Actually, Sandhurst describes him as having been "commissioned" into the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry on 19 September 1908. It's likely the notion of Arthur saying he had been "gazetted" occurred when the Territorial Force was formed on April 1, 1908, as a result of the Territorial and Reserve Forces Act 1907. Mills then likely went directly into the 5th Battalion of the 214th Infantry Brigade.

Also in 1908, Rev. Barton R. V. Mills, speaking in his capacity as assistant chaplain of the Savoy, participated in that year's Pan-Anglican Congress and, in response to a discussion called The Drink Traffic, the minutes show he "suggested that there was an alternative solution to that of the Licensing Bill. It would be for the State to buy up all of the licensed houses at market value and convert the liquor trade into a Government monopoly. The profits of the trade would easily cover the cost of the purchase."

With prohibition also being discussed, it does seem odd—at least from today's perspective—having had a clergyman speaking on behalf of turning the liquor trade into a profitable government monopoly. Where Mills was then going with that line of thinking is unclear, though.

Perhaps coincidentally, but perhaps not, Barton Mills left the Savoy in that same year, 1908. He would have been about 52 years of age. Could this separation simply have been for the purposes of retirement?

In 1910, Barton sent George Mills, aged 14, following in his footsteps own to Harrow School in London. I'm uncertain of the family's exact address at the time, but in 1911, The Plantagenet Roll of Royal Blood is published, listing "Rev. Barton R. V. Mills" as living at "12 Cranley Gardens S.W."

There was a census in 1911 that showed Barton Mills, still listing his occupation as "Clergyman, Church of England," as the head of the household there at 12 Cranley Gardens, S.W., living with his wife, two daughters, seven servants and a governess in the 20+ room home.

Mills is listed in the 1911 edition of Kelly's Directory of Dorset: "The living [at the church of All Saints] is a rectory, net income £260, including 56 acres of glebe, with residence, in the gift of the Rev Barton R V Mills, M. A., of Cranleigh Gardens, London SW, and Major D. Mills [again, Barton's brother, Dudley]." The parish is Tarrant Keynston.

In 1912, George Mills left Harrow School, presumably to return home. There's quite a gap in the family history, then, until at last George's half-brother, Arthur, was mobilised after the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3 August 1914 and sent to France. Arthur was wounded in both legs during or just after the fighting at La Bassée, probably very late in 1914, and soon returned to England.

George, however, had later entered the First World War as a Private in the Rifle Brigade in 1916, where he also may have seen immediate combat in France.

The Rifle Brigade (Prince Consort's Own) was an infantry regiment created to provide sharpshooters, scouts, and skirmishers. They participated in the Battle of Flers-Courcelette on 15 September 1916. This was during the Somme Offensive, one of the first uses of tanks by the British in a large scale battle. The tanks in the end proved largely to be a psychological asset. They emboldened attackers and intimidating defenders whenever they advanced. Tactically, however, the tanks did not provide much advantage or support for the British regiments because so many of them broke down as they advanced. Depending on the date of Mills' active assignment to the brigade, he easily could have been a part of that battle.

Mills later transferred to the Royal Army Service Corps where he reached the rank of Lance Corporal before returning to civilian life. This transfer made sense as George's namesake grandfather, Sir George Dalhousie Ramsay, had been Director of Army Clothing through 1893 and the RASC was responsible for transportation of non-ammunition stores such as food, water, fuel, and general domestic stores [such as clothing]. In addition, his uncle, Major Dudley Mills, was an officer in the Royal Engineers.

Also in 1916, perhaps still recovering from his leg wounds, Arthur married Lady Dororthy Rachel Melissa Walpole, daughter of Robert Horace Walpole, the Earl of Orford, in London. The couple apparently had had little income and publishing newspaper and magazine stories had bolstered the household income until, in 1916, they each published the first of their many novels.

During the war, the Mills family as a whole doesn't generate much news at all, save the distant death of Lady Dorothy's maternal grandfather, D.C. Corbin of Spokane, Washington, in the United States on 29 June 1918. Although they couldn't have met more than a handful of times, the multimillionaire American railroad magnate left her an iron-clad trust fund that she could not access until the death of her father, the scandalous Earl of Orford, who had just remarried in 1917.

In 1919, George Mills left the military and matriculated to Christ Church College, Oxford. Barton Reginald Vaughan Mills, "a cleric in holy orders and a scholar, of 7 Mawson Place, Queens Gate," is listed as George's father on the admissions documents at Christ Church.

It is unclear if "Mawson" was transcribed incorrectly at the time, read incorrectly recently, or simply transcribed to me incorrectly, but such a thoroughfare, if it ever had been there, certainly does not now exist in Queen's Gate.

However, as I just discovered yesterday, The County Families of the United Kingdom; or, Royal Manual of the Titled and Untitled Aristocracy of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland [Ballantyne & Co., London: 1919] lists Rev. Barton Reginald Vaughan Mills among its entrants, and cites as his address "7. Manson Place, S.W."

What a difference a single letter makes!

That's particularly interesting because "7. Manson Place, S.W." is, at the time, also the exact address of Barton's father-in-law, Sir George Dalhouisie Ramsay. It appears the family had at some point moved from Cranley Gardens into the home of Sir George, then some 91 years of age.

In that same 1919 text, Barton's occupation is listed as "Acting Chaplain to the Forces and is Joint-Patron of 1 living." Presumably, that living is Tarrant Keynston.

"Acting Chaplain to the Forces" is a title that I'll need to investigate more. Wikipedia states: "The current form of military chaplain dates from the era of the First World War. A chaplain provides spiritual and pastoral support for service personnel, including the conduct of religious services at sea or in the field."

In 1919, Barton Mills would have been some 62 years old. While I'm certain that he was neither "at sea," nor "in the field," his interest in war was quite evident—even if somewhat academic.

Not many months after the Armistice had been signed on 11 November 1918, Mills had a letter published in the journal History: The Quarterly Journal of the Historical Association, vol. IV, April, 1919, reading:

CORRESPONDENCE:

The Athenæum,
Pall Mall, S.W.1.

SIR,
May I, as a new member of the Historical Association, suggest the consideration in an early number of HISTORY, of the following question?
What is the historical evidence of, or against, the theory of the "nation in arms," of which so much has been heard during the war? My own impression is that it is a retrograde movement, and that the tendency of modern civilisation has been to restrict warfare to professional armies instead of arming "the manhood of the nation."
The discussion of this question by an expert ought to be most interesting.

BARTON R. O. MILLS [sic]

It's not the most passionate response to a horrific war ever, but in that brief missive, we do discover that Barton Mills, having recently become a member of the Historical Association, had also become a member of the prestigious Athenæum Club. Members of the Athenæum at the time included Rudyard Kipling, sculptors Gilbert Bayes, Sir Thomas Brock, and Sir George Frampton, and painters John Collier and Sir Luke Fildes. It seems Mills has truly established himself in London.

Sir George Dalhousie Ramsay then passed away on 16 January 1920. Can we assume that the Mills family stayed in his home at 7 Manson Place, S.W.? Is it also reasonable to consider that there may also have been something of an inheritance received by the Mills family? In 1889, Ramsay himself had come into a sizable inheritance, and in 1909, Ramsay and Mills both had been named trustees in the will of one John Crawfurd, who had died in 1868. There had apparently been quite a bit of "capital accumulation" of properties in the will by 1910. It's unknown at this point if this had had any effect on their relationship, business or otherwise.

Also in the year of 1920, Lady Dorothy Mills, Barton's daughter-in-law, received a very favorable review of her latest novel The Laughter of Fools [Duckworth & Co.: London, 1920] in Punch. The novel had been first published in the month of April and had to be reprinted just one month later.

In 1921, George Mills [or perhaps Barton] paid for his admissions examinations on 21 May and entered the University of Oxford. As an Army veteran, he "was exempted from taking Responsions (preliminary examinations for entry) and the examinations of the First Public Examination, under a decree of 9 March 1920… on condition that he had obtained permission from the Vice Chancellor and the proctors; and that he had paid the fee for admission to the examinations the decree excused him from." It's unknown at this point what George then may have studied after his admission or even how long he remained there.

So, Barton and family had likely settled into 7 Manson Place after the passing of Sir George; young George began following in his father Barton's footsteps at Oxford; Arthur—a war hero—was busily writing popular novels; and Arthur's wife, Lady Dorothy, had been finding some success with the pen as well. Everyone had survived the Great War, and Barton Mills—now some 63 years of age—must have felt some contentment.

Still, he had yet to accomplish his own most memorable achievement. And, just as he had experienced in his own life, he would see many unexpected changes visit the lives of those he loved.

But more on those changes, and the remainder of the life of the Revd Barton R. V. Mills, M.A., next time in Part 3!

[Read Part 3, or go back to Part 1.]