Messages from George Mills: His Prefaces and Dedications

Let’s take a moment today to reflect a few messages George Mills sent out into the world without knowing who might read them. His books were primarily for children, but the same can't be said for the dedications and prefaces of his texts: They were meant for persons other than schoolboys.

Taking a look at these brief but meaningful messages within the books—but not part of the stories themselves—may tell us something.

Or they may simply let us know how much more we may want to know.


The 1930s:


• First let's look at the preface of 1933's first edition of Meredith & Co.:

PREFACE

ALTHOUGH all the incidents in this book, with the exception of the 'bait charts,' are imaginary, the book gives an accurate impression of life in a Boys' Preparatory School.

I wish to acknowledge, with much gratitude, the help and encouragement received from many friends; particularly from Mr. A. Bishop, the Head Master of Magdalen College School, Brackley, and from my old friend, Mr. H. E. Howell, who have read the book in manuscript form. I am also much indebted to Mr. E. M. Henshaw for his devastating, but most useful, criticisms, and especially to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material.

----------------------------------------------------------- G.M.


We've examined fairly recently the life and career of Mr. A. Bishop—Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop [right]—and have seen some references to Mr. H. E. Howell, although we have no real idea who he was.

The annoyingly critical Mr. E. M. Henshaw—whose mention was deleted from subsequent editions of Meredith—has so far been difficult to identify. Henshaw must have been an unliked and unwanted obligation, one that in later years no longer needed to appear.

Once again, if you have any notion of Henshaw's identity, or have some clever skills in a database like ancestry.com or The Times, please don't hesitate to let me know!


• Next, we'll examine the dedication to the 1933 edition of Meredith & Co.:

To MR. J. GOODLAND, sometime Head Master
of Warren Hill, Eastbourne; to the STAFF AND
BOYS OF THE SAME SCHOOL, and to those of
WINDLESHAM HOUSE, BRIGHTON, THE CRAIG,
WINDERMERE, and the ENGLISH PREPARATORY
SCHOOL, GLION, among whom I spent many
happy years, this book is affectionately
dedicated.


We've had far more luck tracing our way through this dedication. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Over time, we've been enlightened by Dr. Tom Houston at Windlesham and tracked down a smattering of information about The Craig and the English Preparatory School at Glion.

The amount of information we've unearthed about both Joshua Goodland, a mentor of George Mills, and Warren Hill School in Eastbourne [left], seems comparatively to be a wealth of knowledge!


• Mills's next published book was 1938's King Willow. Let's look at its preface:

PREFACE

READERS of Meredith & Co. will recognize here some old friends ; nevertheless King Willow can be read as an entirely independent story. The characters have no connexion with any people, alive of dead, but the book is typical of life in any big Preparatory School.

Once More I wish to record my thanks to my friend, Mr H. E. Howell, who has read the manuscript and offered helpful criticism ; and also to a host of schoolboy readers who have encouraged me to continue.

------------------------------------------------------------- G.M.

June, 1938


Again, by June, 1938, the mysterious Mr. H. E. Howell remains a dear friend of George Mills, schoolmaster and author.


• Let's look at the 1938 dedication to King Willow:

TO
THE HEADMASTERS, STAFF, AND BOYS
OF
EATON GATE PREPARATORY SCHOOL,
LONDON, S.W. 1.


That's a rather all-encompassing dedication. We have discussed the fact that no school by that name has been found (although I would be delighted to be corrected), and the current school at that location has no real interest in exploring its own past or in assisting in educational research.

It's interesting that Mills misnames the school, yet is precise enough to include the location "S.W.1." It's also noteworthy in that, while it must be the most recent school at which he'd worked, Mills singles out no Headmaster or Principal by name. Might that indicate he had already severed ties with the institution, and under less than joyful circumstances?

These inconsistencies make this is by far the strangest of Mills's prefaces or dedications.


• Now we'll examine the 1939 preface of Minor and Major:


PREFACE


THIS book deals with life in a big preparatory school, and tells about the boys and masters, their goings-out and their comings-in. All the characters are imaginary, and no allusion is meant to any living person.

The boys, who first appeared in Meredith & Co. and King Willow, once again present themselves for a short time during a cricket match.

I wish to record my thanks to my old friend, Mr H. E. Howell, for so kindly reading the manuscript and proofs. I also recognize the kindly aid of a schoolboy, Terence Hadow, whose criticisms have been invaluable, as also has the encouragement given to me by my friend, Mr Egerton Clarke, who has read the book in manuscript form. My thanks are also due to Mr A. L. Mackie, who has kindly helped to read the proofs.

------------------------------------------------------------- G.M.


Mills for a third time pays tribute to "old friend" Howell, but this time extends thanks to a few more individuals.

Schoolboy critic Terence Hadow died in 1942 serving as a chindit[some are pictured in Burma, right] under Major-General Orde Wingate. His remains were interred in Burma.

Egerton Clarke, as we recently learned, was a friend of George's in the Army Pay Corps, and at Oxford before leading George to the publishing house that would print Mills's final new book in 1939. Egerton passed away in 1944.

Finally, we simply do not know the identity of the kindly Mr. A. L. Mackie. Once again, if you have any idea, please let me know!


• Moving along, we arrive at 1939's dedication to Minor and Major:


To the Headmasters, Staff, and Boys of
Parkfield, Haywards Heath, where I received
my early education, this book is affectionately
dedicated


For the first time, Mills takes a nostalgic bent in creating a dedication, hearkening back to the first decade of the 20th century in dedicating Minor and Major to his own masters, as well as the boys with whom he attended Parkfield.

Parkfield is a school we've located and learned about to some degree after hearing from alumni.


The 1950s:

The prep school books of George Mills all were reprinted, Meredith and Co. twice.


• The edition we'll look at here is from 1950, published by Oxford University Press.

In addition to the preface and dedication found in the first edition, Mills, as we know, added this verse by Rudyard Kipling [left]:

Give me a willow wand, and I
With hide and cork and twine,
From century to century,
Will gambol round thy shrine

------------- —Kipling


There is also a subtle change in the preface. The last sentence of the 1933 original reads:

I am also much indebted to Mr. E. M. Henshaw for his devastating, but most useful, criticisms, and especially to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material.

The 1950 version simply reads:

I am also much indebted to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material.


Oxford University Press kept no records from that era, so we have no way of knowing if Henshaw was associated with the company in 1933, but had passed away or moved his career to another locale by 1950. Hence, the expression of gratitude to person for whom it's likely Mills cared very little was no longer necessary


• Jumping ahead to the late 1950s and the undated edition of King Willow, we find this revised dedication:


To
BERYL and IAN

Two young people who have just set
out on a long voyage in the good ship
Matrimony. May they have smooth
seas and following winds: may they
from time to time take aboard some
young passengers who will become
the light of their lives until they sail
into the last harbor.


Here George looks back on his life in the context of looking ahead to the lives of this young couple. He reflects on growing old together—something George was himself unable to do with his own wife, Vera, who died 30 years before he did. George and Vera passed away childless, and there is more than a little melancholy in Mills's best wishes for for the couple to be blessed with children.

Despite help from Michael Downes in Budleigh Salterton via his blog, we still have been unable to determine the identity of the newlyweds, Beryl & Ian, who probably would have been born between 1930 and 1940, and would be 70 or 80 years of age by now.

If you know Beryl & Ian, or if you actually are Beryl & Ian, please let me know!


• The 1950s edition of King Willow of also contains an expanded preface:


READERS of Meredith & Co. will recognize here some old friends ; nevertheless King Willow can be read as an entirely independent story. The characters have no connexion with any people, alive of dead, but the book is typical of life in any big Preparatory School.

Once More I wish to record my thanks to my friend, Mr H. E. Howell, who has read the manuscript and offered helpful criticism ; and also to a host of schoolboy readers who have encouraged me to continue.

I also wish to record my thanks to Benedict Thomas, a schoolboy who has suggested many practical alterations for this new edition.

---------------------------------------------------- G.M.


Here we meet a youthful Benedict Thomas, a lad who was helping an approximately 60 year old George Mills with his latest reprint of King Willow.

The only person of that name born in the U. K. between 1940 and 1960 was a "Benedict J. G. Thomas," who was born in late 1953. If Willow was published in 1960, Benedict would have been about 8 years of age when he offered his practical advice to Mills.

The only record at ancestry.com involving a Benedict J. G. Thomas involves his birth—nothing else. There is a location—Northeastern Surrey—and one other interesting bit of information: Benedict's mother's maiden name was Bishop.

That could make young Benedict the grandson of Arthur H. B. Bishop, mentioned in the first preface of George's first book. It would indicate that Mill's friendship with Bishop was long-lasting, but it could also indicate that the aging Mills may have been teaching or living in or near Surrey.


• The 1950s-ish edition of Minor and Major has the same dedication as the original in 1939, but has omitted the original preface seen above.

But there is this, in italic font:


All the characters in this book
are imaginary, and no allusion
is meant to any living person.


Did the publisher, London's Spring Books, include that as matter of course in all fiction books printed in that year? If so, that would provide evidence that the reprinting of Minor and Major was, indeed, the last of the late 1950s – early 1960s reprints. If not, could it be that a schoolboy, schoolmaster, or even headmaster from back in George's past had an issue with a character, thinking it Mils had taken a slap at him?

We'll never know if the latter was the case, but it seems that as the world approached our seemingly increasingly litigious times, that disclaimer may have been inserted across the proverbial board.


The Missing Text:


There is only one bit of information I have been unable to uncover: What might we find in the dedication and/or preface to Mills's final book, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, published in 1939 by Burns, Oates and Washbourne, the Catholic publishing house in London.

A glimpse of what is there could be most informative. One wonders if—given it was Mills's 'swan song' as an author—there might have been some clue in a dedication or preface that would provide insight as to why he never penned another book. Although I frequently check booksellers around the world, a copy of this title simpy hasn't arisen, and the closest library copy to here is about 600 miles away! It may be some time before we get the very last of the messages of George Mills...


As we wind our way down to the last few topics regarding George Mills that I have left to write, many thanks once again to everyone who has contributed in an effort to help me answer the question: Who Is George Mills?

A Few Headmasters and Ronald Searle

It's a sunny day here in the rolling hills of horse country of Ocala, Florida, during what constitutes our rainy season. The forecast is remarkably similar every day, as you can see, especially in the afternoons and early evenings. The only thing that can prevent rain from falling during this time is if one absolutely counts on it. Failure to water outside plants, for example, can somehow steer clouds right around the entire area, which is how I'm sure the Sahara was created—soon-to-be Bedouins continually procrastinating about watering their foxgloves!

While we wait to see what our skies will become, I've been looking over the last couple of entries here and considering headmasters. Here's an amusing snippet on the subject [click to enlarge] sent recently by the indefatigable Barry McAleenan:



As always, thanks very much, Barry!

One wonders which of these stereotypes might resemble the headmasters we've met along the way here: Charles Scott Malden and Mr. H. D. L. Patterson of Windlesham House School; A. Max Wilkinson, F. R. Ebden, Joshua Goodland, and Bertram de Glanville of Warren Hill, William Snow of The Craig; Capt. William E. Mocatta of the English Preparatory School in Glion; E. A. F. "Tony" Roper of Ladycross School in Seaford; A. H. B. Bishop of Magdalen College School and Warwick; H. F. and David Chittenden of Newlands School in Seaford; and the fictional Dr. Howell "Peter" Stone of Leadham House School, the creation of author George Mills.

By the way, I love the work of Ronald Searle, and know I'll see it at least once a year, during the credits of the film version of the musical, Scrooge.

Searle's vision [below] of the classic tale, the characters and the setting, is what makes the art direction and cinematography so stunning. It's a must-see in my home every Christmas, even if I am usually the only one who actually must see it!

Fr. John Basil Lee Jellicoe, Part 2

When I was a boy, my parents used to drag my brother and me on family holidays to camp in a caravan at various scenic locales in the eastern portion of the United States. Almost invariably, my father would strike up a conversation with some fellow around a campfire and inform him we were from Pennsylvania.

That chap, no matter where he himself was from, would typically say something to my father along the lines of, "Oh! Pennsylvania! Do you know our friends, the Smiths?"

After politely assuring him that the Smiths (or whomever) that we knew were very unlikely the same Smiths that he knew, Dad would still grumble later about the fact that a couple of million people lived in The Keystone State, and about people's stupidity in general.



* * * * *

Sometimes I wonder if my father wouldn't have a good long rant about me and what I'm doing here, in essence asking the entire U.K., "Say, do you happen to know a bloke named Mills?"

I mean, sure, George Mills was an officer's reserve military paymaster (in WWII) and went to Oxford (Christ Church) and was concerned about the Anglican Church and Roman Catholicism. And Father J. B. L. Jelliocoe was an officer's reserve paymaster in the military (in WWI; perhaps this is where Mills got the "reserve officer" idea) and went to Oxford (Magdalen College) and was concerned about the church as well. And A. B. H. Bishop went to Oxford (Jesus College) at the same time as those two, and was Head of Magdalen College School at Brackley during the same period Jellicoe was head of the Magdalen College Mission in Camden. Oh, and Bishop was raised in Cornwall, where George Mills was born, but raised quite near George's Acland family ancestral home at Killerton in Devon.

And it likely is just a coincidence that Mills and Bishop left Oxford and each became involved in independent preparatory schools. And that Mills was writing books about those preparatory schools at the same time that Bishop was advancing his career in the schools. And it's likely just a coincidence that George's father was a social reformer in London, based in Kensington, during the 1920s and early 1930s, while Jellicoe was a London social reformer in nearby St Pancras during that same era.

Small world, isn't it?

So it's probably just a colossal coincidence that, when the young but worn-out Jellicoe passed away in 1935, his memorial service was attended by a gentleman named "Mr. H. E. Howell," a chap bearing the same moniker as a gentleman who, as an old friend of the author, had helped George Mills by reading the manuscript for his first novel, Meredith and Co.: The Story of a Modern Preparatory School, in 1933.

This Howell attended the service as the representative of All Saints Margaret Street, a Victorian Anglo-Catholic High Church that rests almost midway between the Kensington address of the Mills and the St. Pancras parish to the northeast, where Jellicoe had worked so diligently on behalf of the poor.



* * * * *

So much of what we've discussed above may all simply be coincidental. Let's look at some hard-copy evidence.

Here's is how the London Times documented Jellicoe's death on 26 August 1935:


THE REV. J. B. L. JELLICOE

SLUM CLEARANCE IN ST. PANCRAS

The Rev. John Basil Lee Jellicoe died on Saturday in a nursing home of pneumonia in his thirty-seventh year. He will be remembered for his remarkable work as the chairman and organizer of the St. Pancras House Improvement Society, Limited, which has demonstrated that the improvement of slum areas by private enterprise is a sound financial proposition. The elder son of the Rev. T. H. L. Jellicoe, of Sullington Warren, Pulborough, Jellicoe took his degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, and after preparation at St. Stephen's House was appointed in 1922 head of the Magdalen College Mission and curate of St. Mary's, Somers Town. He resolved that he would not rest till his people had homes fit to live in, and the rehousing schemes started by his society have already provided many excellent flats with gardens, trees, ponds, swings for the children, and other amenities. Although the rents charged are not more than what the tenants paid for the old slums, the loan stock receives 2 per cent. and the ordinary shares 3 per cent. In 1929 Messrs. Whitbread entrusted the control of the rebuilt public house in Stibbington Street to Father Jellicoe. It was licensed to sell beer but not spirits, and was provided with a roof garden, a restaurant, and various games. When it was proposed to form a college for publicans, to be conducted by Church of England clergymen, Father Jellicoe said it was hoped "to attract young men of the best type who would regard the office of publican as a great and honourable profession. They should regard it also as a magnificent opportunity of social service by providing decent and happy recreation for their fellow-men." The progress of the society was steady, with the support of the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Minister of Health (Sir Hilton Young, now Lord Kennet), and others, and more blocks of flats were opened. But, as a letter in The Times last June showed, the society still needs at least £150,000 in loan stock and Ordinary shares to rebuild three verminous and overcrowded sites in Somers Town already in its possession. Last year Father Jellicoe moved to St. Martin-in-the-Fields as curate.


In that obituary we find that by 1935 Jellicoe had moved his career locale even closer to Kensington (and George Mills, who was probably teaching at Eaton Gate in Belgravia), taking over as the incumbent at St. Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square. By the way, 1922 was the year that Mills ended his pursuit of an Oxon degree.

Details of Jellicoe's funeral were published in the Times on 29th August 1935 [my emphases]:



THE REV. J. B. L. JELLICOE

The funeral of the Rev. Basil Jellicoe took place at Chailey Parish Church {right]yesterday. The service was conducted by the Bishop of Dover, assisted by the Rev. H. J. Boyd and the Rev. H. H. Matravers. The choir boys of St. Mary's of the Angels Song School, under the Rev. Desmond Morse-Boycott, took part in the service. The principal mourners included:–
Mrs. Jellicoe (mother), Lieutenant-Commander C. J. L. Jellicoe (brother), Mrs. I. L. Murray (aunt), the Rev. John and Mrs. Murray, Mr. Felix St. H. Jellicoe, Mr. St. Alban Jellicoe, Miss Jellicoe, Mrs. Jellicoe and the Rev. Arthur H. Boyd and the Rev. Halbert J. Boyd (uncles).

Among others present were:-
Mrs. Madge Waller (representing the Under 40 Club), Mr. Eric Beetham and Mr. R. D. Just (representing the Fellowship of St. Christopher). the Rev. N. Scott, Miss E. Terry, Mr. R. L. Atkinson, Mr. L. Day and Mr. Ian B. Hamilton (representing St. Pancras House Improvement Society), the Rev. J. C. Nankivell (representing the Isle of Dogs Housing Society), the Rev. N. G. Powell (representing Canon Carr, St. Michael's Housing Society, Penzance), Mr. Donald G. Pelly (Strichard Housing Society).

The Rev. C. P. Shaw (representing the Church Union Housing Association), the Rev. Percy Maryon-Wilson and the Rev. Lorimer Reece (representing the Magdalene College Mission), the Rev. H. W. Grepe, the Rev. W. T. Norburn, the Rev. Hampden Thompson, Canon H. L. Pass (representing the Dean and Chapter of Chichester Cathedral), the Rev. C. W. Handford, the Rev. A. R. H. Faithfull, the Rev. C. E. B. Neate, the Rev. F. G. Fincham, the Rev. Montague Cox, the Rev. Donald V. Beckingham, the Rev. W. A. C. Ullathorne, the Rev. B. Thackeray, the Rev. E. I. Frost, the Rev. C. P. Orr, the Rev. C. G. Earmaker, Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Blencowe, Mr. and Mrs. I. Blencowe, Miss Blencowe, Mrs. Morse-Boycott.

Mrs. Maryon-Wilson, Miss Bartlett Blake, Elsie Lady Shiffner, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Boyd, Lieutenant-Commander and Mrs. E. B. Martino, Mr. Alan L. Todd, M.P., Miss Margerson, Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Maryan-Wilson, Mrs. Hampden Thompson, Mr. and Mrs. Basil Henriques, Lady Kenderdine, and Mrs. Reginald M. Mason.

A memorial service was held at St. Mary the Virgin, Somers Town [left], yesterday for the Rev. John Basil Lee Jellicoe. The Rev. Percy Maryon-Wilson officiated, assisted by the Rev. H. L. O. Rees and the Rev. T. M. Parker.

Among those present were:-
Mrs. D. G. Morris, Mr. Halliday McCartney, Miss Critchley, Mr. S. Rundle, Mr. and Mrs. John Gillard, Mr. W. H. Sheppard, the Rev. Langtry Williams (New York). the Rev. Eric Bailey (All Saints', Margaret Street). The Rev. T. A. S. Marsden, Mr. P. Henniker Heaton, Mr. A. J. Stewart, Miss Hunt, Mrs. Kightley, Mrs. M. White, Mr. John F. Dell, Mr. L. Myers, Mr. and Mrs. Toop, Miss E. Miller, Miss S. G. Saunders, Mr. Charles Low, Miss E. M. Evans, Miss Oaker.

Miss F. A. Day, Mrs. M. P. Leonard, Mr. W. L. Cooke, Miss Packer, the Rev. L. Jones, the Rev. J. W. E. Hooton, Mrs. A. Clark (St. Mary's Schools). Mrs. Ayrton, Mrs. Davidge, the Rev. Adam Fox (representing Magdalen College).

Miss Collet, Sister E. Armstrong, Miss De Rougemont, the Rev. Nigel Scott (representing St. Pancras House Improvement Society), Councillor F. Howson (former Mayor of St. Pancras), Mr. E. Ormnan, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. W, Bell, Miss Crowe, Miss Gedge, Miss E. Ayr, Miss E. Perry, the Rev. Norman Haigh, Mrs Henley Chater.
The Rev. J. A. Gorton, Brother Kenneth (B.S.F.A.), Mr. H. E. Howell (All Saints', Margaret Street), Sister Gent, the Rev. M. Le Marrino, Father Biggart (representing the Community of the Resurrection), Mrs. W. Sharp, Father Ferguson, the Rev. C. D. Horsley, the Rev. A. Swift, Mrs. E. A. Taylor, Miss Horsley.

Miss Edith Neville (chairman of the St. Pancras House Improvement Society) was unable to be present owing to absence abroad, and Lady Warren was unable to be present owing to serious illness.


I did not transcribe the above myself (my thanks to Chailey 1914-1918), so I do not know how accurate any of it is. For example, there's a fair chance that "Miss Margerson" may be "Miss Margesson," daughter of Mr. M. and Lady Isabel Margesson, a couple that attended the wedding of George Mills and Vera Louise Beauclerk in 1925. In addition, not only did they attend the wedding of George's brother, Captain Arthur F. H. Mills, to Lady Dorothy Walpole, but Mr. Margerson gave the bride away (as she was not on speaking terms with her family because of the couple's union that day).

As a frequent transcriber of the predominant font of that era's London Times (and with the crow's-footed bifocal squint to prove it), an "ss" as in Margesson can appear to resemble a "rs" as you can see in the name "margesson" in the fine print of this item [right] from the Times regarding the Mills-Walpole nuptials.

Nonetheless, there's no reason to think that the Mr. H. E. Howell mentioned there is part of any transcription error.



* * * * *

Anyway, again dispensing with what may be simple coincidence and looking more at facts, the contemporary "Jellicoe Community" of today still allows students from Oxford to volunteer and work in the community to meet the needs of the local people, just as it did back in the days of Camden's Magdalen College Mission.

Even before the days of Jellicoe's stewardship, students volunteered. From the 1916 text In Slums and Society: Reminiscences of Old Friends by James Granville Adderley, we read an instructive description of the Magdalen College Mission: "I shall never forget my initiation to that 'open house,' where burglars and undergraduates fed and played and slept under one roof."

That was written during a time just before Jellicoe, Bishop, and Mills all attended various constituent colleges at the University of Oxford, from which the mission drew those compassionate undergraduates.

Moving forward in time, into the 1920s and 1930s when Fr. Jellicoe became established at the Mission, we read this from a website entitled The Jellicoe Blog describing the sometimes theatrical nature of the legendary reformer: "Jellicoe had been born into privilege and used his many connections to assemble a powerful alliance for change - enlisting the support of the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Housing Minister in his St Pancras House Improvement Society. He understood the importance of dramatic flourish – erecting vast papier-mâché effigies of the rats and bugs that infested the slums, and ceremonially torching them as the first slums were demolished. And he used the ‘new media’ of his age: making an early film of the conditions in which his parishioners lived, and making a mobile cinema in a trailer, so that those who lived in prosperity up and down the land could see what life in the slums was really like. After each showing he told them: 'Now you know what life is like. You have no excuse for inaction.'"

Back to (almost) unbridled speculation…

We know George Mills attended Harrow School at The Grove, the school's house strong in drama and the arts, and that Mills worked in with children at Windlesham House School in Portslade in performances, dramatic productions, and even musicals. Again, would it be a stretch to consider that perhaps working with the ever-present and attention-starved (as well as quite often actually starved) children of the slums that followed Jellicoe around could have been what helped nudge Mills along towards becoming a schoolmaster after departing Oxford?

Still, London and its environs comprised populous and bustling metropolis that was the crossroads of England and the rest of the U.K., if not the entire Empire, upon which the sun never set.

What were the actual chances that all of these men knew each other well? What were the chances that all of these circumstantial occurrences were anything other than sheer coincidence?
We've no evidence these men ever met while attending Oxford, or that any save Jellicoe ever worked at the Mission. There's no evidence that the Howell at the 1935 funeral service is the Howell thanked in the 1933 preface of Meredith and Co. And, although their names rest alongside each other's for eternity in that preface, we have no proof that Howell and Bishop ever met, even though they both knew George Mills. And, finally, George's father, Revd Barton R. V. Mills was a much older man than Basil Jellicoe, and although they both crusaded for social reform, each man in his own way, they may have run in completely different circles and may never have so much as met.

There also is no solid reason to think that it's noteworthy that Jellicoe, born in 1899 and son of a cleric, was raised in Chailey, Sussex, just 15 miles or so north of—of course!—Seaford, East Sussex, a coastal town that simply won't stop cropping up coincidentally in the story of George Mills. But if you do think 15 miles is simply too far away from Seaford to connect it with Mills, let's discuss the fact that Chailey sits just four miles or so east of the location of Parkfield School in Haywards Heath, where George, born in 1896 and son of a cleric, attended classes.

What we do know is that, in some way—even loosely—these men somehow are linked to George Mills, circa 1933, perhaps if only in a way similar to the logic behind Six [or, depending on whether or not the teller understands the concept, Seven] Degrees to Kevin Bacon [right]. Exactly how they were linked is the mystery, one we may never solve.



* * * * *

It has been over a year since my first messages to All Saints Margaret Street, Magdalen College School, and the Old Brackleians were sent. No replies with research assistance have been forthcoming so far, and may not ever be.

We may never know more than we now do about these men who seem so tantalizingly close to each other—personally, historically, and even spiritually. Perhaps this is all a series of overblown coincidences, neatly if not randomly arranged on an undreamed-of internet some 80 to 90 years later, and even if it is true these men did know each other, that in itself doesn't make any one man's behavior at the time in any way causal in regard to any aspect of another's life.

But I find it hard to believe that such strong-willed, talented, and outgoing men wouldn't have influenced each other in many ways, directly and indirectly.

In a way, all of this seems suspiciously as if a nearby camper asked my father if he knew the "Smiths" from Pennsylvania, and the more the fellow described them, the more it became apparent that they—out of millions—actually had been our neighbours…


* * * * *

Fr. Jellicoe inspired a stage musical [left] that recently played at the Shaw Theatre on Euston Road in London, and his memory is held fast by the communities he helped, as well as a more figurative, charitable community that still works in his memory.

I'll close with these words from Fr. Rob Wickham, rector of Hackney:

Jellicoe was angry. He saw 5 children to a bed, he saw children with breathing difficulties, and he saw the effect that mass unemployment can have in a community. He saw loan sharks at work, and he saw people every night affected by fleas, bed bugs, rats and cockroaches. “How can I preach Jesus when people live in such filth? The devil is the Lord of Somers Town," came his cry.

This vision of a new Jerusalem led him to use a local workforce to charge the same rents after the rebuilding as before, and to keep a community strong through its nurseries, rent clubs, furniture clubs and even a pub – a place where clergy and churchwardens might go after evensong!

This vision holds dear today. It is a vision which undergirds the principles of the Jellicoe Communities and Community organizing. Local people doing something – galvanizing their efforts to make a difference in the communities in which they live and where they service.



* * * * *

For more information about the Jellicoe Community today, see http://www.theology-centre.org/jellicoe-community.

Fr. John Basil Lee Jellicoe, Part 1

Today, we'll take a look at a short thread we've been following, trying to get some closure on the preface to the 1933 book Meredith and Co. by George Mills. There are a few other loose ends to pursue besides this, and I think my work here at Who Is George Mills? will be just about complete.

As we know, the preface referred to two men, as having been helpful and encouraging during his production of the manuscript for the text: Mr A. Bishop, the "Head Master of Magdalen College School, Brackley," and Mr. H.E. Howell, an "old friend."

H. E. Howell remains unidentified, a mysterious man of some influence on George Mills, but unknown to us today.

Last time we found out that Bishop was Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop, not only once Head Master of Magdalen in Brackley, but longtime, successful Head at Warwick School. Many thanks to Mr. G. N. Frykman, archivist at Warwick for his wealth of information on Bishop and the school of his era (1936-1962), as well as for his effort to get someone at Magdalen College School to contact me.

Magdalen College School, or should I say schools, has an interesting history. There are apparently three: Oxford, Brackley, and Lincolnshire, although it appears the name of the last is the Skegness Grammar School. That name, interestingly, was taken in 1933 upon its relocation from Wainfleet.

The Oxford school, originally located in Magdalen College, since has moved across the Magdalen Bridge and expanded.

The institution of our interest here, though, is Brackley, and according to Wikipedia, the college still owns the site in South Horthamptonshire, and has a presence on the governing board.

This historical presence ties the school to the famed Magdalen College, Oxford, and it is there that our investigation leads us. First let's look at an historical figure with close ties to Magdalen College as well.

During the 1920s, a fiery reformer named Fr. Basil Jellicoe [right] took the stage. Born on 5 February 1899 in Chailey, Sussex. Jellicoe is noted in a 1917 Chailey parish magazine as having been "Univ OTC, Oxford." Subsequent issues note that Jellicoe served with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during 1918 and is described as an 'assistant paymaster,' a designation that ended in July 1919, when Jellicoe was presumably disembarked from his service after the end of hostilities in the First World War.

The 2004 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says this about Jellicoe:

Jellicoe, (John) Basil Lee (1899-1935), housing reformer and Church of England clergyman, was born on 5 February 1899 at Chailey, Sussex, the elder son of Thomas Harry Lee Jellicoe, rector of Chailey, and his wife, Bethia Theodora, youngest daughter of Sir John Boyd, of Maxpoffle, Roxburgh, lord provost of Edinburgh from 1888 to 1891. His father was a cousin of J. R. Jellicoe, first Earl Jellicoe.

A few months before the end of the First World War he left Oxford to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and served for a short time in the Mediterranean.


On the website Chailey 1914-1918, Paul Nixon gives his opinion regarding that entry:

This rather spare and stuffy review does not appear to do justice to the man. In the 1920s he campaigned successfully to replace the Somers Town slums in Camden, north London with decent housing and was a colossus in the neighbourhood as well as a firm favourite with the residents. He founded what later became the St Pancras Housing and Humanist Association and helped set up similar groups throughout England. He worked tirelessly for the benefit of poorer communities and must have been sorely missed when he died at the young age of 36.


Father Luke Miller, President of the Haileybury Society, wrote this of Jellicoe:

Just after the First World War Jellicoe had come down from Magdalene Oxford, been ordained and appointed as the Magdalene College Missioner, responsible for a Christian Mission to the area round S. Pancras station in London supported and funded by members of his college. It was an area of slums: dark alleys, stinking tenements, jumbles of dwellings with no sanitation, no light and providing hardly any shelter.

Seeing the terrible housing conditions Father Jellicoe insisted that the spiritual duty of the church for the souls of her children must extend to a physical duty to their wellbeing and specifically to their housing.

Jellicoe cajoled the owners; raised the funds; demanded support; lobbied politicians; worked to change opinion, employed the press – Gaumont films made a news reel that was sent round the country and the world – and generally made himself a nuisance to anyone and everyone to get things done. It was fabulously successful. Things were done and the whole area was transformed.

His work spread beyond to confines of his own parish. He was called on to develop his new concept of Housing Associations in the Isle of Dogs in London and in other cities in the nation. His idea spread round the world, and he is the father of social housing.

Father Jellicoe was not a social reformer. He was a Gospel preacher. Once he described the beginning of the work with the housing. “We wanted money for these building schemes” he said, “So whom do you suppose we went to? Well we went first to a poor paralyzed woman who hadn’t a penny, who couldn’t use anything but her lips, but who knew how to pray. That was the beginning of everything.”

It was costly what he did. It was costly to others who had to give up their preconceptions and their prejudices and be carried along by him in his enthusiasm for the gospel. But it was also costly for him. Twice he had breakdowns under the pressure of the work. He drew strength from his daily offering of the Body and Blood of Jesus at the altar in his church; he organized a prayer guild to sustain the mission in prayer, and he drew on the power of the scriptures in his spiritual warfare. But it cost him nonetheless.

Someone who knew him well wrote of him, “I can see him now, pacing round and round the room, a soul on fire within a rather faded cassock, his eyes ablaze with what I can only call a fury of faith for the fighting of ancient wrongs, his heart aglow with affection for all sorts and conditions of men and with visions for their greater good. I wondered how long it would take for so keen a flame to burn out.”

Basil Jellicoe died, burnt out and exhausted, aged just 36.


At a Service of Thanksgiving celebrating the renewal of St. Martin-in-the-Fields 0n 28 April 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned Jellicoe: "In the days when St Martin's was gloriously beginning to reinvent itself in the second and third decades of the last century, a very great Anglo-Catholic priest, Father Basil Jellicoe, at that time the incumbent at St Paul's Convent Garden, was challenged by some of his more narrow-minded High Church friends about why he would come to celebrate and preach in a parish church like this where the blessed sacrament was not reserved. Father Jellicoe said he had no problem at all in coming to preach in a church part of which was reserved for the service of Christ in the form of his poor."


I will not pretend to have any real knowledge of the High Church, Low Church, Anglo-Catholicism, or of the relationship between the Anglican Church and Roman Catholicism.

Although we have not established fully a relationship between Jellicoe and George Mills, regular readers will find a few items already begin jump out from the above. More coincidences involving George Mills? His life seems at times to have been not much more than a series of interesting coincidences!

While it is no more a coincidence that Mills and Jellicoe served in WWI than it would be for any of the other countless men and women who served, it is interesting to note that both Mills and Jellicoe served in the pay corps during the conflict.

Interestingly, despite being a pay corps wash-out as a fatigue man in the Great War, Mills righted the ship of his military career by later himself becoming a member of the reserve of officers [how, exactly, is unknown] and serving as a lieutenant paymaster during the Second World War.

After the First World War, we know Mills attended Oxford, the location of Magdalen College, where Jellicoe received undeniable financial help via the "Magdalen College Mission," as we can see from the image at right.

In addition, Revd Barton R. V. Mills, an Anglican cleric converted to Roman Catholicism and the father of George Mills, is noted for having "founded the Association for Improving the Status of the Unbeneficed Clergy, and was [honourable] secretary of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children" during his life, as described in his obituary in the Times of London. These charitable works occupied the time of the senior Mills from the 1920s through his passing in 1932.

In fact, as early as 1884, when Barton Mills was beginning his career as a cleric, he was found "sitting on the Battersea Committee as an active member, according to a 15 December [1884] report by The Council of the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity," and during the First World War, he had served as an "Acting Chaplain to the Forces."

The Rev. Mills had spent his life doing good works, and in a time when the young Jellicoe—a man with so much passion and vision—couldn't have helped but capture the notice and perhaps fancy of the elder cleric, George's father.


Lastly, we also know that much of George's life was concerned with religion. His father obviously had strong but ambivalent feelings about the exact nature of his own spirituality, converting to Roman Catholicism during the period in his life in which he also began serving as a vicar in the Anglican Church, and Barton later an assistant chaplain in the Chapel Royal at the Savoy.

The tribute paid by the Archbishop of Canterbury above to Fr. Jellicoe seems to apply to the Rev. Mills as well: "[He would have] had no problem at all in coming to preach in [any] church part of which was reserved for the service of Christ in the form of his poor."

Despite current skepticism by the Savoy itself, it's clear that the Rev. Mills had converted to Roman Catholicism (as did many of the men he saw as role models of his youth, like Rev. R. S. Hawker, who converted on his deathbed). By 1956, we find George Mills teaching at Ladycross School [left], a Catholic preparatory school in Seaford, Sussex, and having his own memorial service held at Catholic Church of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles in Budleigh Salterton in 1972.


Jellicoe saw a blurred line between an exact daily practice of Christianity and its more important function of providing a necessary service to humankind. He was a charitable reformer in the same city at the same time George's own father was. Both Mills and Jellicoe had ties to Oxford in the 1920s. And just before that time, Jellicoe, like Mills, recently had served under the Colours in the pay corps, of all things!

These still could be coincidences, but we'll try to tie them together even a bit more tightly (and weave in Bishop and Howell) next time—stay tuned!

Discovering Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop at Warwick School

The other day we took a look at one of the first pages of writing that author George Mills published: The preface to his first novel, Meredith and Co., in 1933. There we examined just who "Mr. H. E. Howell" might have been.

Today, we'll take a look at the other name in that preface, "Mr. A. Bishop."

First of all, I don't even want to discuss how many times the characters "a bishop" or "bishop a" appear on the internet. Google will provide "about 126,000,000 results" in about "0.21 seconds." Can you say, "Needle in a haystack?"

I immediately wrote to Magdalen College School, Brackley, and the Old Brackleians for help, but never received replies. Those institutions being my best, and possibly only, resources, the lack of response was truly a sticky wicket.

I trolled telephone directories, sought alumni lists, and grazed travel manifests, birth notices, marriages, and deaths for a year, all to relatively no avail. True, I had some names that seemed more likely than others, but nothing solid.

So, why on Sunday afternoon between mowing our front and back lawns, did I hit upon it? I can't say. It seemed I'd used the same search terms over and over and over (and over, for that matter), but this time received a slightly different result.

I found not an "A. Bishop" who'd been Headmaster at Magdalen College School, but an "A. H. B. Bishop." That was breakthrough, but I also was immediately inundated with "hits" from what appeared to be another A. H. B. Bishop, co-author (with a G. H. Locket) of a pair of science text books.

It didn't take long to unearth a link that referred to Bishop as "former" headmaster at Magdalen School, then currently (in that text) headmaster at Warwick School [right]! It also didn't take me very long to leap to the conclusion that we may have found a school where George Mills might have taught during the post-War years (1945 – 1956), during which we know so little about him!

You can't imagine how swiftly and excitedly I fired off an e-mail to G. N. Frykman, Warwick School Archivist. Then…

Well, let me let Mr. Frykman pick it up from there:

Dear Sam – I have searched the staff registers of Warwick School, and I cannot find the name of G. R. A. Mills, so he didn’t work here. It is strange, therefore, that you claim that A. H. B. Bishop (headmaster 1936 – 62) encouraged him in his publications. I wonder where you heard that? Bishop was himself, of course, a very successful published writer of chemistry text books. I enclose some paragraphs from Warwick School: A History by G. N. Frykman and E. J. Hadley (2004).


I will admit to some disappointment in failing to find a long-term post-War employer for George Mills, but I feel excited that we can learn about Mr. Bishop. It is both fascinating and instructive for our purposes here: He must have had not only an influence on George as an author, having proofed his manuscripts for Meredith, but had an impact on him as a teacher as well.

Here are some of the "paragraphs" mentioned above by Mr. Frykman:

Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop grew up in Cornwall and attended Callington Grammar School. He then served in the army in France, Egypt and Palestine from 1917 to 1920, before going up to Jesus College, Oxford, where he took First Class Honours in Natural Science in 1924. He was a very able chemist, and his two published text-
books (Introduction to Chemistry and An Elementary Chemistry, both written with GH Locket) were widely used throughout the country. His teaching career started at Westminster College, Oxford, but he was soon appointed to the post of Senior Chemistry Master at Radley, and thence to the headmastership of Magdalen College School, Brackley [Bishop's 1933 phone listing there is seen, left].


In 2003, Bill Grimes (Warwick School 1930 to 1938) remembered Bishop’s first assembly in Big School in 1936, when he said: “All my life I’ve wanted to be Headmaster of Warwick School, and now I’ve got here, I’m going to stay here!” This remark made more sense when it was discovered that Bishop had applied for the headmastership when it fell vacant in 1933, but had lost out when Percival Smith was appointed. He was certainly not expecting the chance of applying again quite so soon. Like his two predecessors, Riding and Percival Smith, AHB Bishop was offered a salary of £800 (a sum worth about £41,000 in 2003), together with whatever profits he could make from the boarding house. Almost his first action was to use the Junior House, which had been closed in 1935, as additional classrooms and cloak-rooms. Also in his first term, he gathered the whole school together to listen to the funeral of George V on the wireless in Big School. Within two years, he had arranged for the front of the school to be flood-lit – a short-lived improvement in view of the proximity of the Second World War.


Two things immediately strike me regarding Bishop. First, Mills and Bishop had spent time in Cornwall as youths. Mills was born there in 1896, although his family moved to London in 1901. Bishop had been born in 1898 around Woolwich/Plumstead in London, and taken as a boy to Cornwall.

However, Bishop's address in Callington, Cornwall, was actually closer to Devon, where George's kin owned a great deal of land and George had spent much time as a lad, as well.

With an affinity for Cornwall and Devon, and perhaps some common acquaintances, Mills—at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1919 to about 1922—was thinking about a future as a schoolmaster and probably met Bishop [right] while the latter was attending Jesus College at Oxford.

A second thing that jumps out at me is that, around 1933, Bishop was not appointed to the vacant headmaster position at Warwick School. This is the same time that Mills was set to publish his first book, which, according to advertising in the London Times, was in the stores for Christmas.

Unless things have changed a great deal in education, Bishop would have been considering at length and in depth his philosophies of education, of discipline, of teaching, of management, of selecting personnel, and of business in preparation for his 1933 interviews at Warwick. Helping Mills with his manuscript—especially as the book's fist edition from Oxford University Press was subtitled "The Story of a Modern Preparatory School"—probably helped structure the thinking of both men!

Mr. Frykman continues:

In the 1942 Prospectus, the tuition fees for Warwick boys are given as £5 per term (a 2003 equivalent of £145), and the separate boarding fee as £23 5s per term (£675). Boys from Leamington and beyond had to pay £6 per term. By 1950, as will be discussed shortly, the basic day-boy tuition fee had risen to £18 and the boarding fee to £30 per term, which, with post-war inflation taken into account, were equivalent to £350 and £600 per term in 2003. The tuition fee in 1950 was, in real terms, less than 20% of its value 50 years later. The most likely explanation for this lies in the low salaries paid to teachers at the time and in the fact that the boarders were still subsidising the day-boys.


Although during the Second World War, and beyond the scope of Bishop's editorial relationship with Mr. Mills, the paragraph above about Warwick School [pictured below, left, with Bishop addressing the boys] does much to give us insight regarding our investigations and awareness of preparatory schools such as Warren Hill School, Windlesham House, and elsewhere.

In addition, we have a better idea of the post-War situation for men like Mills, fellows who had been pre-War schoolmasters:

The school that greeted the end of hostilities retained only nine of its 1939 staff, though a further six eventually returned from the Forces. Inevitably, the staff body had been drastically affected by the war, and stability was desperately needed. In fact, for many, especially the younger men, the post-war period offered great opportunities, and it became increasingly the case that teachers did not stay a long time in their posts before moving on, either to promotions elsewhere or to other professions. There were, in short, to be fewer Mr Chips.


Now, we know from Dr. Tom Houston at Windlesham House School, that instability in the teaching ranks was characteristic of the 1920s as well. It would be interesting to know if the situation stabilized in the 1930s, but my hunch would be that it did not much: Schools in England failed during the Great Depression, and masters would have been scurrying for new positions as the rumour mill turned. In fact, of the schools at which George Mills taught, only Windlesham would survive until today.

George Mills, we know, had had a short "career" as an officer and paymaster in the Royal Army Pay Corps during WWII, and had had at least a modicum of training as an office clerk in the First World War. Couple all of that with the fact that it was difficult for schools to retain staff members after the war, and that they apparently often lost them to "other professions," and we… are still left with little direction as to what Mills did after the war. Did he teach? Work in an office? All of these options seemto have been very open to him.


In October 1959, twenty-three years after his appointment as Headmaster, Arthur Bishop was able to report to the governors:

The school is in good heart. For the first time there are well over 700 on the roll. The Junior School and Lower School are overflowing, and the Sixth Form is larger than ever. Both boarding houses are more than full.

At Advanced Level we gained 87.5% passes. At Ordinary Level subject passes improved from 54% in 1957 and 60% in 1958 to 69%. Mr Beeching deserves special mention for the outstanding science results.

The music of the school – orchestral and choral – is improving rapidly. The CCF maintains its high standards. Discipline is good, and the reputation of the school is good. The experiment of admitting boys on Common Entrance from preparatory schools at 13 is going well; the list is already full for next year and a reserve list is being built up.

Much of the credit for this flourishing state of affairs must go to the Second Master, Mr Dugdale and the staff who are most loyal and co-operative. Theirs is a 6 day week as against a 5 day week in the state schools and they willingly give up time to other activities in the dinner hour and after school. I trust the governors will continue their wise policy of recognising this extra work by the staff in their salary allowances.

When the school became independent it had to improve or fall back on state aid. Our scholarship must, at least, compare favourably with neighbouring state schools and in games, society and tone we must excel. That is why we must have a good staff and pay them well to expect so much of them.


George Mills was probably very much retired at the age 63 when this report was presented in 1959. Again, though, it provides substantial insight into the workings of British schools in the mid-20th century. The staff seems to have stabilized, and teachers were at least beginning to be paid commensurate with their worth.

Here's one last paragraph from Mr. Frykman:

It is fair to say that, of AHB Bishop’s 26 years as Headmaster, the early ones were supremely demanding, given wartime conditions. Contemporaries recall that, though not a logical and consistent thinker, Bishop usually got the right answer, and he certainly saw the school through to calmer waters whilst presiding over a huge increase in pupil and staff numbers, numerous building crises and educational changes. It is, indeed, probably fair to say that he saved the school in 1946… After a brief second marriage to Irene Titcomb in 1965, he died in 1969, at Bladon in Oxfordshire, after a short illness.


When I first read of Bishop's scientific background, and the chemistry texts he first published in 1936 (An Elementary Chemistry by O.U.P., like Mills) and 1939 (Introduction to Chemistry by Clarendon Press), I wondered how he got on with George Mills, an artsy fellow, far more in tune with literature, the stage, music, and the Times Crossword than valences, elements, compounds, and the Periodic Table.

Seeing the description above that Bishop was, quite unscientifically, not always "a logical and consistent thinker" certainly caused a friendship with Mills make far more sense.

[By the way, a coincidence: The books Bishop authored in the 1930s were reprinted in 1956 and 1960, just as the books of George Mills also were reissued during the very same time.]


Former Warwick student R. F. Wilmut has a website called Warwick School in 1961 [click here to visit], and he provides some insight into Bishop [seen, right, during the Queen Mother's visit in 1958] as both a headmaster and as an instructor:

A.H.B. Bishop, Headmaster... was born in 1898, and certainly exemplified the old-fashioned approach to being a Head - not necessarily a bad thing: though formal and perhaps a bit rigid in his attitudes he was approachable and certainly very fair-minded. I did once see him go into a near fury over a slightly persistent question (in one of his regular Q & A sessions at the end of his Religious Knowledge classes) over being allowed to wear duffel-coats instead of the regulation navy raincoats: he actually referred to schools who allowed this as 'going to rack and ruin'.

Many of the things I disliked about Warwick - the emphasis on games, a certain academic rigidity, and an inflexibility in dealing with boys (not only me) who didn't quite fit the expected mould - must I suppose be laid at his door, as he did exert a close control over the running of the school: to balance this he was always respected for his fairness and his manners, and indeed for firm leadership even if one did not always agree with him.


It must be remembered here that George Mills came from a different generation of schoolboys: A "modern" schoolmaster must have been a rare breed, indeed, in George's experience at the dawning of the 20th century. A man who, instead, stood for children, who was "approachable" and "fair-minded" while being an educational "leader" was something Mills emphasized in his own stories of prep schools. Unfortunately, what he had viewed as "modern" and much improved in 1933, children in 1961 saw as "old fashioned." Time marches on, eh?

For one thing, "games" were clearly a huge focus of the schools written about by Mills. In addition, formality and some degree of rigidity are apparent in most of George's schoolmasters at fictional Leadham House School, and his headmaster in Meredith and Co., Howell "Peter" Stone, likely was a fusion of the attributes of three leaders, Charles Scott Malden at Windlesham, Joshua Goodland at Warren Hill, and Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop, all of whom Mills found most admirable.

More on Bishop and Mr. H. E. Howell soon, but here in the States this is Father's Day weekend, and I've a daughter coming in!

Who Was Mr. H. E. Howell?

Here in the States, we just love numbers that end in fives, but we love zeroes even more. And a number just isn't anything unless it ends in double or triple zeroes. A baseball player with 99 career home runs is just a guy, as they say. A fellow with 100 home runs in his career—now he's something special!

There was a news bit the other evening that the St. Louis baseball manager, Tony LaRussa, was the first since the legendary Cornelius McGillicuddy in 1950 to reach 5,000 managerial wins for his career. Of course, LaRussa was also the first one since then to reach 4,998 and 4,999, but they just weren't quite the same accomplishments, now, were they?

I say this because the temperature here in north central Florida is predicted to reach 99°F today, and despite the discomfort it will cause, there are those who will be disappointed if it doesn't touch the century mark!

This all has nothing to do, however, with the topic of today's back burner item, although the word "burner" is clearly apropos.

It now has been over a year since I received a copy of the first book written by George Mills, 1933's Meredith and Co. At the time, I posted the contents of the book's preface. In part, it reads [emphasis mine]:

I wish to acknowledge, with much gratitude, the help and encouragement received from many friends; particularly from Mr. A. Bishop, the Head Master of Magdalen College School, Brackley, and from my old friend, Mr. H. E. Howell, who have read the book in manuscript form. I am also very much indebted to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material.

First of all, wouldn't it be something were that original manuscript copy to turn up?

Secondly, while I've closed the gap on the identity of Mr. A Bishop (and hope to write about that soon), Mr. H. E. Howell remains a mystery.

The first matter of business in chasing down any such name is to try to tease a Christian name out of those initials. In this case, I'm afraid there is not even a very solid guess that I'd go to war with.

Mills, I've felt, must have been writing Meredith in London, although that may not be accurate. Labouring, however, under that assumption, I scoped the London telephone directories of the era for a Howell with the first initial "H."

One name did jump out immediately: Hinds Howell, a physician who lived and/or practiced at 145 Harley Street, W.1. He certainly would have been well-schooled enough not to simply offer Mills a pat on the back about his book and to diagnose certain inadequacies.

Also, that name "Hinds Howell" traces back into the late 19th century when a "Canon Hinds Howell, MA," resided at the Drayton Rectory—where Watkin Williams, friend and colleague of George's father, the Revd Barton R. V. Mills—once was located.

However, the physician, Hinds Howell, turns out to be Conrad Meredith Hinds Howell (1877 – 1960), and clearly not an H. E. Howell.

Now, I'm sure, the term "old friend" doesn't necessarily imply Howell's chronological age, but the fact that he and Mills had enjoyed a friendship that lasted many years. Where might they have met? Parkfield School? Harrow? In the neighbourhood at Kensington? Under the Colours? At Oxford?

There was also a Hamilton Howell, who resided at 14 Norfolk Terrace in Brighton. Mills might have met him while teaching at Windlesham House and living in Portslade in 1925–26. Would that time frame characterize an "old friend" by 1933?

In 1937, there are also a "Harry E." and a "Herbert E." among the Howells of London, along with our discredited "Hinds."

But who are they? Our answer here clearly doesn't lie in the telephone book.

One might assume Howell was a learned man, a man whom Mills would have trusted for advice of a literary nature. I'm sure Georges wife and perhaps his sisters also read his manuscript, followed by a hearty, "That's simply wonderful, George!" The men mentioned in the preface above, though, are likely men of letters who would have provided more of a practical critique.

Let's look elsewhere.

We find an H. E. Howell mentioned in the 1913 edition of The Devonian Year Book of the London Devonian Association. On page 25, there is a description of a re-enactment of the game of bowls being played when the "Armada" was sighted, and a speech was given in the Great Empress hall by Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty (who, in his remarks, announced he "sprang from a good old Devonian family" ), to the London Devonian Club, the Exeter Club, the Three Towns Association, the Barumites of London, the Ottregians, the Tivertonians, representatives of the Devonian Clubs of Southend, Southampton, Swansea, Newport, Portsmouth, etc., as well as "the men and women of Devon."

Among the specifically named members of the company, on page 26, we find a "Mr. H. E. Howell."

Besides honeymooning in and retiring to Devon later in life, George Ramsay Acland Mills had family in Devonshire that once owned vast amounts of the land: The Aclands. In 1913, those holdings had not been converted to the National Trust or sold, and Mills most likely was able still to avail himself of Acland hospitality during holidays away from both Cornwall as a youngster, and London as an older boy and young man.

Devon is as likely a place for the "old" Howell – Mills connection as any. Perhaps they met there as children.

[An aside perhaps of interest only to Keith's mum: It was during a London Devonian Association dinner in honor of his neighbour, Clive Morison-Bell, held on 17 March 1914, that Ernest Shackleford sketched on the back of his menu card his planned route for the Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition, including calculations that could be used to "fix" the South Pole. The expedition, however, ended up with his ship, the Endurance, crushed in pack ice in the Weddell Sea and the crew temporarily marooned on Elephant Island. Incidentally, the menu that evening was "turbot dieppoise, tomato with tapioca, Kirsch sorbet and glace plombiere."]

Another reference teased out of the blizzard of information provided by the internet is this nugget [right], gleaned from The Liberal Magazine, volume 19, in 1911. It contains an item attributed to a "Mr. H. E. Howell" of "Brierley" on "April 19th, 1911" that reads: "Though Lord Beaconsfield had not the privilege of English blood himself, he was the greatest of English statesmen since the days of Pitt. In these days there was a curious renaissance of the Celt in politics. . . . There was a boiling-up of Celtic fervour, something like that last great effort in the early colonising days before King Alfred, which broke itself in useless fury against Saxon steadfastness on the despairing field of Brunnan- burgh."

That "snippet" is all I can read on-line, but these words indicate the sort of learned man that George Mills might have relied on for advice, as well as friendship. It also isn't clear if the Brierley cited is in Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, or Herefordshire. Is there one in each?

However, the dates here are instructive. Mills was born in 1896, and would have been 15 years old when the item above was written, and 17 when Churchill made his speech.

If this is our "Mr. H. E. Howell," he is then quite probably at least a few years older than George Mills. And a location in Brierley—situated some 182 miles north of London—makes sharing a manuscript difficult in the days of no faxes, PDFs, or e-mail attachments. Perhaps the geography had changed a great deal by 1933.

A 1911 U.K. census summary [above, left] shows no H. E. Howell in London or in Brierley—but one living in a cottage on Bath Road in the civil parish of Wells in Somerset with a female and another male. There is no other "H. E. Howell" in the census.

Two men—Harry Howell and Herbert Howell—show up in "Brierley" (or at least in "Hemsworth/Yorkshire West Riding" in the 1911 census.

Harry was born in 1883, some 13 years before Mills, in Plymouth, England. That would make him a Devonian!

There is also evidence of soldiers named H. E. Howell having served. One was killed in action.

Records from World War I show [right] there was, however, a "Harry E. Howell" in the Army Service Corps—a A.S.C. private, just like George Mills—during the First World War. There is no other indication that this Howell is our man, however.

Another—very clearly listed as "H. E. Howell," with "Herbert E." added later—had been a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery corps from February 1915 until July 1917. He earned a couple of medals in France, but there are no remarks about wounds, death, or a forwarding address; simply: "Dis. 20. 7. 17." "Dis." would presumably mean "discharged"?

Having been assigned to France, it is unlikely he's our man, Mills having served, but stayed in England.

Let's get back to the Herbert Howell from the 1911 census. He was born in 1891, but I can't find a place of birth.

There's only one other Herbert E. Howell among the WWI records [left], and he served as a private, at first in the 2nd London Regiment, but then transferred to—you guessed it!—the Army Service Corps.

Again, though, short of his initials and assignment, there's no real evidence that this is our man. After all, I suspect that the whole of the A.S.C. was comprised of more than, say, a couple of dozen chaps who all knew each other very well.


So, where are we in all of this?

According to the internet, the temperature here has reached a steamy 99, but the heat radiating from our sun-drenched back patio is causing the thermometer out there to read a even more sultry 106° F.

I know the heat isn't really on to discover the identity of this Mr. H. E. Howell, a man so obviously important to George Mills, personally and as an author, professionally. But I do want to.

Right now, there's one more link to Mr. H. E. Howell that we haven't touched on, and it involves All Saints Margaret Street Church, Father Basil Jellicoe, Magdalen College, and the identity of the Mr. A. Bishop mentioned in the preface.

We'll take a look at that last link next time. Stay tuned…