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!

Thinking aloud once again about George Mills

Thinking aloud: I've made quite a bit of George Mills securing a teaching position [likely a junior appointment] at Windlesham House School, then in Portslade, just after having left Oxford, quickly marrying, and buying a house on Benfield Way in Portslade, all within the course of just over a calendar year. I've wondered in print quite often about why he didn't end up staying right there for some time thereafter.

Let's review some things: Mills did not possess the Oxon Bachelor of Arts degree that, through this very year, Windlesham believed he had earned.

Despite being heavily involved in extra-curricular activities around campus, by the end of the summer of 1926, Mills apparently was simply no longer there—and there is no record as to why. In fact, it is apparently only speculation that Mills had been hired to teach "English or 'English subjects'" at the school. The only thing that seemed to be eminently clear is that he "made people laugh, a lot."

By the time he published Meredith and Co. in 1933, Mills listed his subsequent teaching assignments as Warren Hill in Eastbourne, The Craig in Windermere, and the English Preparatory School in Glion, Switzerland. This is somewhat corroborated by a "Mrs. Charles" [possibly Mrs. Charles Scott Malden, principal at Windlesham] in 1935 when George drops by her house in Springwells, Steyning, West Sussex, for a visit, telling her he'd written a book "largely about Windlesham" and had been at "2 or 3 schools since, but is very faithful to Windlesham."

In 1938, however, Mills published his second novel, King Willow, then revealing he was at the time, or had been recently, associated with the Eaton Gate Preparatory School in London, S.W.1.

In 1939, Mills published two more books, Minor and Major and Saint Thomas of Canterbury. My original hunch was that his career as an author was really taking off, and I couldn't help but wonder what seemed to have nipped it in the proverbial bud.

I now have to admit, the dedication to Minor and Major that we peeked at last time suddenly has me rethinking some things.

George Mills married Vera Louise Beauclerk in 1925 and they settle into a nice house near his work. Over the next 13 years or so, Mills teaches in at least four more schools, even one in Europe. We have no way of knowing how many of those 13 years he actually spent working at the schools he'd mentioned. I've been assuming all along that he was employed at one place or another during the entire span.

His 1939 "shout out" to Parkfield makes me wonder about that now, though. There are no acknowledgements in it, no thanks to any individual or two or a current employer, just a hearkening back to the early years of his boyhood, circa 1905-1910, in Haywards Heath. Were times that hard? And was Mills yearning for a simpler, happier time?

Were things truly going badly for Mr. and Mrs. Mills? Had Meredith and Co. been written, not as an amusing diversion in 1933, but as a way to bring some money into the household. George's brother, Arthur, and Arthur's wife, Lady Dorothy, had written articles, stories, and novels as a means of support from 1916 well into the 1920s when, at last, their careers seemed to take off. With the world paralyzed by a dire economic depression by 1933, did an unemployed George decide to do the same?

Despite a respite—likely some sort of employment at 'Eaton Gate'—was George soon out of work again, and for an extended time in 1939? Was his relatively prodigious output of books that year not a creative outpouring, but simply a way to put bread on the table for Vera and himself? Was he grateful for the chance to publish, but even more eager to secure a steady job that would make him less susceptible to the vagaries of the publishing houses, the economy, and the fickle reading tastes of the general public?

We know that by the onset of the war in late 1939, Mills had returned to the military, becoming a 44-year-old lieutenant in the Royal Army Pay Corps. After settling back into a uniform for the first time since the close of World War I when he left for the university, he would never write and publish a brand-new book again.

Vera died in London in 1942. Mills subsequently relinquished that commission in 1943 due to ill health. Almost thirty years later, he died in Devonshire, childless and apparently having never remarried.

During the intervening time, we know Mills worked for a summer in Seaford at Ladycross School in 1956, just before new impressions of his three prep school novels were printed in Czechoslovakia and re-released in the U. K.

Thirty years before those reprints, Mills had written a prologue and songs for a staff concert at Windlesham during the Michaelmas term in 1925. He had written articles for the school magazine. He was involved in productions by Windlesham's Amateur Acting Association. He later became a novelist of at least some renown, dedicating much of his success to Windlesham—as well as the mysterious and unkown trio of J. Goodland, A. Bishop, and H. E. Howell.

This seemingly-creative, humorous, talented, outgoing, and decidedly people-oriented fellow disappears in to the military in 1939, and then into the woodwork for the rest of his life.

Why?

I have to think back to an e-mail I received from Heather at Peakirk Books, Wednesday, 10 March 2010, at 8:26 AM. Here's what she had written, but that I'd never recorded here:

Hello

Keep hunting - and I would be interested to know anything you discover [about George Mills]. Likewise I will let you know any information I discover. I will try contacting the author of the boys school stories book I consulted to see if he knows any more.

[In answer to a question about why Mills might not have continued to publish,] It is possible he just got fed up with writing!

Kind regards
Heather

Heather & Jeff Lawrence
Peakirk Books
Cherry Tree Lodge
Guist Bottom Road
Stibbard
Nr. Fakenham
Norfolk
NR21 0AQ

"It's possible he just got fed up with writing." Heather is probably correct. I just couldn't see that then. Since March, however, I'm beginning to see how the chips may have fallen in such a way that George Mills may have, indeed, simply become "fed up with writing."

I'd love to have a look at Vera's obituary, if one exists. Perhaps there might be a clue or two in there…

Tracing the Career Arc of One Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills

What a prolific family! The Mills family that I find myself investigating may not have achieved immortality in the minds of men, but their knack for having their written words published [or editing or translating the works of others] makes one happy that there was no worldwide shortage of printer's ink in the last century and a half. They certainly went through their share, especially Capt. Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills [left, after a trip to China]!

Just arrived here in sun-drenched Ocala, Florida, via first class mail is The Apache Girl by Arthur Mills [W. Collins Sons & Co., Ltd.: London], half-brother of George Mills and 9 years George's senior, born on 12 July, 1887. He was the husband of Lady Dorothy Mills, yet another author. This edition is the Fifth Impression, dated June, 1932. The First Impression had been published in April, 1930.

And what a difference a genre makes! A novel of "love and adventure," The Apache Girl's 'tale of the tape' has it stepping in at 12 x 18.5 cm, and 2.5 cm thick. By comparison, yesterday's arrival, The Road to Timbuktu, is 15 x 22 cm, and 3.5 cm thick. Of course, The Road to Timbuktu is replete with photographic illustrations printed on far more lustrous paper, and Lady Dorothy Mills's 1924 volume a non-fiction book, almost a reference text in a way, despite its first person narrative.

Also, perhaps the worldwide Great Depression factored in. The Apache Girl has no endpapers—there's printing from cover to cover, including two pages of advertisements for other "Detective Novels" at the end. The paper has been calendared to be thinner, and the typeface [Remember when "fonts" were "typefaces"?] is quite a bit smaller. All of these modifications would have helped the company during stressful economic times.

The Apache Girl is from a series called "Collins' New 1/˗ Fiction Library." The series included works by Agatha Christie, Philip MacDonald, Edgar Wallace, and Dorothy Sayers [listed in this edition without the "L."], so it appears that Mills was still in good company in 1932. All of the writers with whom he is associated here are credited with writing "Detective Novels" for Collins, not merely inexpensive stories.

Interestingly, 1930 was the year that Collins Sons & Co., Ltd., began their "Collins Crime Club" imprint, which ran through 1994. Wikipedia lists approximately 250 writers in a "complete" list of Collins Crime Club authors who published first editions of their mysteries and thrillers with that house. That's a great many writers, and our Arthur Mills, unfortunately, is nowhere to be found among them.

For Mills to be associated with detective novelists MacDonald, Sayers, Wallace, and Christie in the "New 1/˗ Fiction Library," and in the same year [1932] to have found himself snubbed from gaining membership in the new "Collins Crime Club," may be telling. It would seem that later books by Mills could have been "Crime Club" material simply by scanning their titles: Paris Agent [1935], Brighton Alibi [1936], Jewel Thief [1939], and Don't Touch the Body [1947]. Perhaps Mills was their 251st best crime writer, and one has to draw the line somewhere!

Was this simply Collins Sons & Co.'s way of separating their wheat from the chaff? Mills, no longer a rising star, was almost 45 years old when this edition was printed. There is another clue to his reputation at that time. Across from The Apache Girl's title page, a blurb cites a recent, and presumably positive, review of the book: "BYSTANDER SAYS: 'Mr. Mills knows how to make the most of his materials. A good yarn.'"

A good yarn? Random House Dictionary defines yarn in this context as "a tale, esp. a long story of adventure or incredible happenings: He spun a yarn that outdid any I had ever heard." That's really damning Mills with faint praise, especially when one considers what is implied by "makes the most of his materials." That was one of the two best reviews around? Quite a fall for an author who was quite favorably reviewed just 5 to 10 years before.

A quick check of internet images of Collins books by Arthur Mills shows the ones seen haven't been anointed with any designation as being from the "Collins Crime Club". Looking at a couple of editions of 1932's One Man's Secret, another mystery by Mills, it's easy to see, on what appears to be an earlier edition complete with provovative dust jacket, that this book is still a part of Collins' 'one-schilling' library. Interestingly, Mills does have his very own catchphrase: "Mills for Thrills!"

A second edition of that book I've found is a paperback, part of the Collins "White Circle Books" imprint, a series apparently saddled at the time with uniform, pink covers that rob the text of its individuality, and replete with a bobby blowing a whistle as well as a white circle at lower left designating it as: "A Collins Mystery: Guaranteed of a Good Thrill". With all of the books in this series bearing the same cover design, with only the title [printed plainly in sans-serif block caps] to distinguish any particular offering, it would seem that these frugally designed and cheaply constructed novels were created to be consumable, and were perhaps among the first mass-market paperbacks. Collins even sold advertising space on the back covers!

The following information is found on a website called Fly-By-Night: Canadian Paperbacks of the 40s and Early 50s: "Wm. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. published approximately 825 books in their White Circle paperback imprint from 1936 until 1959 in Britain. They also published White Circles in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India."

At least in Canada, these White Circle Books were apparently terrific sellers, at least until the Harlequin series of novels overtook them.

There's evidence that Agatha Christie—arguably the most famous member of the Collins Crime Club—was sold simultaneously as both a Crime Club and White Circe novelist. But I can't find any evidence that Mills ever had the same opportunity.

As I hold this small, cloth-bound edition of The Apache Girl, with its plain, cobalt blue boards, stained and faded, and its gilt-imprinted spine, sadly tarnished, I wonder about Arthur Mills.

His earlier books had been translated into French, German, and even Swedish, and sent around the empire, meaning around the entire globe. Many of his titles crept into multiple printings, up to a half-dozen impressions or more, and when one publisher was finished, another was often there to pick up one Mills' yarns and take it to the streets. I've counted 50 different full-length books authored by Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills, and there are countless short stories in magazines of the era, written under the pseudonyms "Platoon Commander", "Arthur Mills", "Arthur Hobart Mills", and even "Frederick Hobart." And, please understand, I don't mean to pretend that I have compiled even close to an exhaustive list of his work by any means.

I did find a mystery of Mills' for sale on-line, Café in Montparnasse, about which the seller wrote, with my emphasis: "Collins, Great Britain. March 1941, 5th printing, 1941. Soft cover. Book Condition: Very Good. 5th or later Edition. This is the British paperback in less than very good condtion. This pb is scarce and uncommon. Scans availiable on request. Shipping will be reduced to $3.50. Author is Frederick Hobart who used the pen name Arthur Mills."

That last line, we know, is backwards, but Mills did write short story fiction for magazines throughout his career under various names, including Frederick Hobart.

It has been noted, but bears repeating, that at the time of his 1916 wedding, Mills was considered "a handsome and well connected man but with little money." Pounding out 48 full-length books between 1921's Ursula Vanet and 1954's The Maliday Mystery—34 years, inclusive—was quite an undertaking. It seems that Mills likely outworked his reputation as a humble but well-educated officer in the armed forces, but one with no real economic advantages, by sheer perspiration, if not inspiration.

Seventeen—fully one-third of the book titles I've found that were written by Mills—contained between 245 and 255 pages. And all but one of those 17 titles had been published between 1929 and 1940.

As near as I can tell, Mills only published six new titles after after Collins published his White Negro in 1940: Don't Touch the Body [Collins Sons & Co., Ltd.: London, 1947], Shroud of Snow [Evans Bros.: London, 1950], Last Seen Alive [Evans Bros.: London, 1951], Your Number Is Up [Evans Bros.: London, 1952], The Jockey Died First [Staples Press: London, 1953], and his last novel, The Maliday Mystery [Staples Press: London, 1954]. Those last six titles averaged only 218 pages apiece.

Mills, although obviously eschewing retirement, was slowing down. He passed away on 18 February, 1955.

In a blurb in 1951's Last Seen Alive [Ironic, isn't it?], Mills is described thusly, with my emphasis: "Mr. Mills is presently living in Hampshire where his main recreations are golf and gardening. In addition to books of short stories, he has published over twenty novels."

Even in his prime, could his books actually have been considered to be formulaic—comprising almost exactly 250 pages each from 1929 to 1940, no matter the publisher, be it Collins or Hutchison and Co., London? The range in size of 16 books spanned over 11 years was a mere five sheets of paper at the most. That may be amazingly consistent or simply coincidental. Still, I know American pulp fiction writers in the 1930s and '40s were often paid by the word, and quickly learned to meet their goals in the areas of both prose and paychecks!

The notion of "pulp fiction" brings another thought to mind. Was Mills simply regarded as a "hack" by the onset of the Second World War, even after beginning his writing career with seemingly so much promise, something that led his work and his life to be generally forgotten by the industry and the public as well?

I can't help but wonder why Mills published just a single book book, Don't Touch the Body [Collins, 1947], in the full decade between 1940 and 1950. Did the war have anything to do with it? Had he nothing to say, perhaps? Didn't he need the money? Had he been ill or suffered an injury? Couldn't he find a publisher? Was he just tired of writing—something that's been suggested about the brief career of George Mills as an author?

Who knows?

But there may be some clues in his marriage to Lady Dorothy, a childless union that was cut short after what must have been a roller-coaster period in both of their lives.

And we'll look at all of that next time—unless something else comes up!