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?

Mr. Egerton Clarke, the Siege of the Alcázar, and the Second World War

The last time we met, we left Egerton Clarke in his home—probably at Egerton Gardens, S.W.3 [left]—with his purportedly Irish wife, Teresa, and his three children.

I could speculate on which of the babies with the last name of Clarke, and with a mother's maiden name of Kelly, born between 1926 and 1941 might have been the children of Egerton and Teresa, but there really is no way of knowing. There were a pair—a boy and a girl—born in the late 1920s in Winchester, where the Clarkes had been married in 1926, but I have no sure way to ascertain those were their children.


[Note: The names and even a photograph of the children with their parents can be found in this later entry: Rediscovering Egerton Clarke. It is also worth noting that, according to his graddaughter, Janine La Forestier, Teresa is spelled "Theresa." (08-17-11)]


We also left Egerton having enjoyed his thumbnail biographical sketch published in the Catholic Who's Who and Yearbook, 1941.

Today, let's take a look at how his poetry was received at the time of its publication during the early decades of the 20th century—and I feel so very old writing that last phrase!


In Blackfriars: Volume 13 in 1932, we find this critique of Clarke's new book, The Seven Niches: A Legend in Verse [London: C. Palmer, 1932], available for 2/6:

Mr. Egerton Clarke is a Catholic poet whose earlier volumes have won praise and popularity. In The Seven Niches he breaks new ground and offers a long poem in the form of a Catholic legend. The idea has the charm of originality and the flavour of experiment : both are justified.

He has succeeded in a difficult task. A long poem such as this will tax any poet's sincerity and prove whether he is capable of sustaining his inspiration to the end. Even the physical strain of producing a long poem defeats many a writer. It demands vision, uniformity of mood, consistent style, and balanced expression. A standard tone must be maintained, together with a definite level of inspiration. Atmosphere must be created and upheld. Facility of expression, obvious clichés, commonplace rhymes may creep into a purely narrative poem, where the story is the first thing that matters. Tennyson and Masefield [right] are examples of such almost inevitable lapses.

But The Seven Niches is more like a richly embroidered tapestry than an unadorned tale. Every detail is complete in colour and execution ; every tiny piece will bear close inspection. That is the author's triumph. He has weighed every word, re-cast every phrase. He has considered every image, every metaphor before giving his final sanction. Therefore the poem has emerged clear-cut, glistening, chaste as a masterpiece in stained glass. Because the poem was not easy to write it is not easy to read. It does not carry the reader along with easy rhyme and dancing rhythm. For its understanding there must be concentration — even a mood of spiritual sympathy, almost of devotion.


Amazing praise for a poet of any era, being compared quite favorably to the two Poet Laureates with the longest tenures in history. It is a shame that his mother, Emma Anna Clarke, did not live to hear her son compared to those greats: She had passed away in 1931 while residing in her birthplace, Bishops Stortford, Herts. A solicitor, not Egerton, was the executor of the £194 12s. she proved in probate after actually expiring in "Silverdale Sydenham," south of London.


Most of the critiques of his work that are available today focus on his last book of poems: Alacazar and Other Poems [London: Burns, Oates, & Washbourne, 1937]. Here are some samples from the critics:

From the St Gregory's Society's The Downside Review (Vol. 56) in 1938:

WITHIN the thirty pages of this booklet Mr Egerton Clarke has collected some nineteen poems, several of which have already appeared in various Catholic periodicals. Perhaps the first poem in the book — that concerned with the famous siege of the Alcazar in 1936 — is most representative of Mr Clarke's poetic insight and expression.

The subject itself affords a good touchstone of poetic talent : the the minor poet, elated by the theme, dilates on valour and seldom goes deeper than the barest surface of reality. Mr Clarke sees the event both in its contemporary setting and its ultimate causes. The result is a finely-wrought integration of an historical event and its supernatural ramifications.


Also from 1938, this from the Dublin Review:

In Alcazar Mr. Clarke has produced a volume of poems of value and interest and materially increased his reputation as a writer of poetry.

His interpretation of history in the title poem, in which the communist assault on Christendom is regarded as the final working out of the schism of Byzantium from Rome, is made convincing and the result is a piece of the school of [G. K. Chesterton's] "Lepanto". But there are finer and more individual poems. "Cistercians in the Mangold Field" has great power, and there is an apocalyptic beauty in "Munera Angelorum."


[Note: Egerton Clarke and G. K. Chesterton were, indeed, friends according to Clarke's family. (08-17-11)]


And, finally, this from the Ampleforth Abbey's The Ampleforth Journal: Volumes 43-44, in 1937:

ALCAZAR. By Egerton Clarke (Burns Oates & Washbourne) 1s.

Fr Martindale once said that man is the only creature whose natural posture is on his knees. Mr Clarke shows a realisation of this truth in this little book of poems — there are only nineteen of them — for each is an expression of love through prayer that we find only too seldom in poetry of to-day. But except for this sameness of purpose we should find it hard to believe that the author of the two Christmas poems, "Munera Angelorum " and " Presents from the North " was the same as the author of the loosely-constructed and still more loosely expressed "Solitary Eye."

In the one the poet shows a delicateness of technique which is completely lacking in the other. Similarly in "Black Coat—6 p.m." and "Edgware Road", he departs from direct expression and loses his reader in sentences of enormous length; piling image on image, metaphor on metaphor, until the sense is lost. It is worth while comparing from the point of view of technique (and incidentally of poetic value) these lines from the Solitary Eye:—


…Buses and men

In dark heraldic shapes, of unreal origin

To his one frightened eye, swerve to a vast triangle

filled with designing ladybirds, then scatter

in long expanding pentagons that soon

resolve their shivering blurs to one blue, steady

and returning star, the solitary eye


With these from "The Hand," a poem written on holding the reliquary containing the hand of Blessed Margaret Clitheroe: —

Within my hand thy hand that folded with its twin in prayer...


I only wish that Google Books would provide me with more than that single line of a poem written about the fascinating story of the martyred saint [right] whose hand is kept in the chapel of the Bar Convent in York.


Other poems and articles by Clarke appeared over time in journals like Blackfriars; although the following list is in no way meant to be comprehensive, here is a sample:


• Clarke, E. (1932), REGZNAE EQUESTRIUM (for D. B. Wyndham Lewis). New Blackfriars, 13: 428

• Clarke, E. (1931), THE INHERITANCE. New Blackfriars, 12: 577

• Clarke, Egerton. "William Butler Yeats." The Dublin Magazine, April/June 1939

• Clarke, Egerton. "William Butler Yeats," Dublin Review, 204:409 (Apr- May-June 1939), 305-21. [Includes an untitled poem written in memory of Yeats.]

• Clarke, Egerton. "Gérard Hopkins, Jesuit." Dublin Review, 198 (London 1936) 127-141.


It appears that Clarke's work was well-regarded by contemporary critics in the United Kingdom, and sought after by certain periodicals. However, what I am unable to determine is whether or not it was regarded as completely mainstream, or a highly regarded Catholic niche author.

The idea of the son of a clergyman in the Church of England, and sometimes even the clerics themselves, resolving to become Catholic permeates the story of George Mills. I have heard from British citizens of today that it doesn't matter very much if a vicar might be a Roman Catholic, but I've been unable to determine if that's generally true. Clerics contacted for insight regarding the subject have not replied to those requests.

Here's an interesting point of view from the knowledgeable Jennifer M., Poet Laureate of this website:

Everything I know about the Catholic and Anglican churches in England runs from Henry VIII to Elizabeth I, when converting from one to the other was a huge big deal, and you sure would hide it if you were around certain people. Maybe there was still a stigma attached to it in George’s time. Wikipedia tells me that as of 2001, only 8% of England and Wales was Catholic.

English Catholicism continued to grow throughout the first two thirds of the 20th century, when it was associated primarily with elements in the English intellectual class and the ethnic Irish population.

I wonder if it was easier to make a living as an Anglican cleric, and that’s why [George's father, the Revd Barton R. V. Mills, a Roman Catholic convert who then took several livings as a vicar, and ascended to chaplaincy at the Chapel Royal at the Savoy] did it. Or maybe it was more socially acceptable [by then]. I guess maybe a lot of people had to do things that were against their beliefs in order to survive, whether it was 1883 or 1583.


With that statistic—8% of the population—fixed in my mind, I wonder if Egerton Clarke was a renowned poet or a renowned Catholic poet. I also wonder if there was—or is—a difference.

If not as a Catholic author, but surely as an author whose religion was Roman Catholic, Clarke soon began to write children's books—another area in which he and George Mills shared something in common.

The Catholic publishing house of Burns, Oates, & Washbourne had printed Egerton's noteworthy Alcazar and Other Poems in 1937, his response to the symbolic and propaganda-oriented stand-off [below, right] between Republican and Nationalist forces at Toledo, Spain, during the Spanish Civil War.

In 1936 and in 1937, Egerton had also published children's books with that company: St Peter, the First Pope, and Our Lady of Flowers.

While Egerton did not publish in 1938 any text that I can find, he was still involved in the area of children's literature after 1937.

The evidence is found in the preface to the third children's book of George Mills, 1939's Minor and Major, which focused on boys' preparatory schools:

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.


Once again we find the mysterious Mr. H. E. Howell, and we've discussed the tragic circumstances under which Terence Hadow was lost during the Second World War.

Here, we consider the fact that Egerton Clarke—an old friend of Mills who had recently published children's books of his own—was offering encouragement as well as reading George's original manuscript before the book's 1939 press run.

The fact that Mills doesn't mention Clarke in either of his first two books suggests this was a reunion of sorts for the two old friends. Egerton ostensibly had been pursuing a career as a poet while becoming a father, while Mills had been striving to make teaching his vocation at a variety of public schools and having been trying to make a husband of himself, although he remained childless.

In 1939, Mills would complete the third book of his prep school 'trilogy,' but that would not be the only text he'd have published in that very year, before the looming World War: Mills also published a children's book, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, with—and you may have guessed this—Burns, Oates, & Washbourne. Saint Thomas, still found on the shelves of the British Library, remains the only text of George's that I have not seen or read.


If someone should mention to me it was simply coincidental that Egerton Clarke had helped Mills with the writing and editing of his manuscript for Minor and Major in the same year that Mills also had published St Thomas of Canterbury at the Egerton's Catholic publishing house, that it was all completely unrelated, I would have to disagree.

Perhaps the 1938 release of George's King Willow, the sequel to 1933's Meredith and Co., had come to the attention of Clarke, reuniting the two men after marriage and careers had separated the two old army and Oxford mates. Or perhaps they simply bumped into each other at the theatre or in a coffee shop that year. For whatever reason, they had reconnected.


The year 1938 followed Egerton's publication of his poem "Alcazar," a work that was clearly an intense experience for both the reader and the poet. The siege [left] involving the army of fascist Generalissimo Francisco Franco at Toledo, and the suffering of the innocents involved, foretold the painful story of the Second World War, a global conflict fueled, at least in its European Theatre of Operations, by the tenets of fascism during which the world's suffering was immense.

War was declared by Britain in 1939, the year George Mills published his last published writing, save for the odd letter to the editor of The Times thereafter.

Egerton Clarke, as far as one can tell, had already published his final literary works in 1937.

Neither man would write creatively again.

We know that on 11 October 1940, Mills re-entered the military as part of the Royal Army Pay Corps—where he had once been ceremoniously disposed of as a 'useless' fatigue man—and as a 2nd lieutenant at that.

What became of poet Egerton Clarke during the hostilities, though? Once again, we must look to the reference books. In the text Catholic Authors: Contemporary Biographical Sketches (1948) by Matthew Hoehn, we find this relatively complete entry:


Egerton Clarke 1899-1944.

From 1933 to 1939, Egerton Clarke was children's Librarian of Messrs. Burns Oates and Washbourne, the Catholic publishers. In 1939 he was art editor of the publishing firm of Hutchinson's.

Egerton Clarke was born in 1899, the son of the Reverend Percy Carmichael Clarke, an Anglican Chaplain living at Dinard, Brittany. He was educated at St. Edmund's School, Canterbury and at Keble College, Oxford. When 23 years of age (1922) he was received into the Church. During World War I he served with the 5th Devon Regiment from 1917 to 1918. In 1926 he married Teresa Kelly of Dublin. Two sons and one daughter were born from the marriage. The author of many books of poems, he was a vice-president of the Catholic Poetry Society. Up until his death in October, 1944 he was secretary of St. Hugh's Society for Catholic boys of the professional classes. He is the author of: The Death of Glass and Other Poems (1923); The Ear-ring (1923); The Popular Kerry Blue Terrier (1927); The Death of England and Other Poems (1930); The Seven Niches: a Legend in Verse (1932), and Alcazar (1937). He was also a contributor to periodicals.


Egerton Arthur Crossman Clarke passed away on 20 October 1944. We don't know the cause of Egerton's death, but it is interesting to note that there were Nazi rocket attacks on England during that time, specifically these dates:

Oct. 3, (20.00 hours) A4 rocket fired, impacted in Denton, the impact was about 10 minutes later (longer than normal) creating much damage.

Oct. 03, (23.00 hours) A4 rocket fired, impacted Wanstead (Leytonstone)

Oct. 09, (10.42 hours) A4 rocket fired, impacted at Brooke.


If he had been injured in the collateral damage of those explosions, he could have been in the hospital for a while before he succumbed to his wounds.

It also is entirely possible, however, that, given his lifelong weakness of heart, the organ simply failed Egerton at last, causing his death at the tender age of 45 years.


[Note: No! Clarke actually died of tuberculosis after an experimental procedure according to Janine. She adds: "When my grandfather was ill, they did an experimental treatment on him - deliberately collapsing his lung(s)? - the treatment failed. Clearly." (08-17-11)]


Perhaps Clarke would have published additional poetry and children's books after the war. We'll never know.

But we do know that George Mills never published another book.

The time frame form 1939 through 1945 was a period during which Mills—like many others in the UK and across the globe—lost a great many people who were dear to him, not the least of which would have been his wife, his mother, and Egerton Clarke.

You may recall the London Gazette, dated 2 November 1943, ran the following item:

Lt. and Paymr. G. R. A. Mills (150796) relinquishes his commn. on account of ill health, 3 Nov. 1943, and is granted the hon. rank of Lt.


This bout with "ill health" pre-dates the death of Egerton Clarke the following year, but it suggests that George already was struggling to survive the war, even though it seems improbable that Mills, then 47 years of age, was near any actual combat.

The condition of his health did not preclude George from engaging in a public tiff with a retired Major General in the letter column of The Times in April of 1944 while Mills was using the rocket-damaged Naval and Military Club [right], Piccadilly, as his mailing address.

After the death of Egerton Clarke in late 1944, and his mother in late 1945, Mills went quiet until he wrote a whimsical remembrance of his father's to The Times in April of 1959.

These letters to the editor—written almost exactly 15 years apart—are believed to be the last words that George would publish.


In 1944, George Mills lost a friend and contact in the publishing industry. Still, he had published works with the Oxford University Press and Geo. G. Harrap and Co. without any assistance from Egerton Clarke of which we're aware.

It seems as if the global conflict that changed the world so profoundly may have played a part in silencing George Mills, at least as author, even though he had other windmills at which he needed to tilt before his own passing in 1972.


That's a story for another day, though. Next time, we'll look at the poetry of Egerton Clarke—primarily his early work, circa 1920—from the vantage point of today.

Don't miss it!

Found: W. E. Mocatta and the English Preparatory School in Glion

As we wait for the resolution of Robert Horace Walpole's appeal of the third Valerie Wiedemann v. Walpole trial, let's divert ourselves and briefly examine an unrelated event that occurred during the duration of those three trials: The birth of William E. Mocatta, a man who would seemingly have had at least some influence on the actual subject of this blog, George Mills.

Mocatta was born in December of 1890 in Lancashire of parents Henry and Katherine Mocatta, and his name appears as an infant on the rolls of the 1891 U.K. census. Little is known of Mocatta, an Oxford graduate holding an M.A., until the London Gazette in 10 June 1916 reports his promotion to captain in the West Yorkshire Regiment [pictured, upper left] back on 8 November 1915.

After the First World War, Mocatta married his wife, Joan Winnifrede Spain, in Westminster on 31 July 1920. One might have expected Mocatta, still calling himself "Captain," to have become upwardly mobile in his chosen profession, the military. That, however, is not how he became associated with George Mills. At the time of his marriage, Mocatta lists his profession as "Captain, General Reserve of Officers." At some point after his service in the First World War, Mocatta took control of a boys' school in Switzerland.

By 1934, just a year after the publication of George Mills's first book, Meredith and Co., that educational institution for boys aged 7 to 14 began to advertise in the London Times. The English Preparatory School of Glion boasted having "Captain W. E. Mocatta" as its headmaster, and openly trolled for students in the United Kingdom in both advertisements of its own [pictured left, from 17 April 1934], as well as piggy-backing onto the adverts of recreational facilities in the area above Montreux [seen below, right, from 26 May 1934]. In fact, Mocatta's presence seems to have been the institution's real "selling-point."

In the dedication of Meredith and Co., Mills wrote: "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."

Mills's book was published in 1933, before these advertisements that appeared in the pages of the Times, but that obviously does not mean that the school had just sprung into life in 1934. As previously ascertained, Wells Lewis, the son of American novelist Sinclair Lewis, had attended school there back in 1924, according to the collected letters of the elder Lewis.

Mocatta may not yet have been headmaster at the time of Wells Lewis's attendance in the previous decade, but he likely was by the time George Mills, possibly still claiming to be an Oxford grauate, was added to the teaching roster. Mills listed the institution last, and seemningly then most proximate in time to his 1933 publication of Meredith and Co.

Mills, as we know, spent 1925-1926 at Windlesham House, and subsequently taught at Warren Hill School, The Craig, and the English Preparatory School in Glion, Switzerland, presumably in that order. Can we assume that Mills taught on the continent somewhere between 1930 and 1932? His father, Barton, passed away in 1932, and that would seem to have been a time when George would have returned to London. Possibly endowed with an inheritance and with an inclination to begin putting his experiences in teaching down on paper, Mills probably put down roots in London again after his Alpine teaching days.

Mocatta later passed away "in hospital" on 25 February 1944 of what the Times describes as "illness resulting from service abroad." Mocatta had become a major in the meantime, and presumably wasn't serving in Glion when he became ill, what with the Second World War grinding into its fifth year and his death attributable to his "service."

It seems likely that Mills had departed Glion upon the death of his father in 1932 and was probably on good terms with then-Captain Mocatta, a fellow Oxonian. The latter's death in 1944 might have been simply another straw that was breaking the proverbial camel's back for an already ill Mills. After all, Mills had lost his wife, Vera, during the war in Exmoor on 5 January 1942, and suffered the passing of young friend and muse Terence Hadow on 18 March 1943 in combat in Burma.

Remember that Mills, aged 44, had returned to active duty in the military himself at the onset of aggressions in WWII, but had soon relinquished his commission as a second lieutenant on 3 November 1943 "on account of ill-health." Mills would not have been the only Britisher to suffer continual tragedy during the war years, but something in it all caused him not only to withdraw from the armed forces, but from having been an author. The books he published in 1939, the year he returned to the army, were the last he'd ever pen.

The war seems to have been too much for George Mills.

We know Mills died in 1972 while living in Devonshire with his aging, spinster sisters. How much the death of Major Wm. E. Mocatta [Times obituary, seen below, right] played upon his psyche near the end of the war is open to conjecture. Perhaps he never even knew of the Major's passing, and the passing of his mother, Edith Mills, in the waning months of 1945 had a far greater negative impact on his future.

Still something, or some series of events, turned Mills from a gregarious and convivial young schoolmaster into a relatively reclusive ex-"Writer of Tales for Boys," as he is described in the British Library. My hunch is that it was all a cumulative effect of successive tragedies during the war years.

However, it could also very well be, as suggested by Heather at Peakirk Books, Norfolk, that it's as simple as: "It is possible he just got fed up with writing!"

We may never know. But if you have any information on the now-forgotten English Preparatory School in Glion, Switzerland, William E. Mocatta, or any other part of the life and times of George Ramsay Acland Mills, please contact me. I would greatly appreciate it!

Bringing the Heat and Bringing the Meat

As I sit here pecking away, I'm listening to the drumming beat of hammers on the house and roof. When we returned from Michigan, we were confronted by a leak at the top of the wall over the fireplace. There had been a great deal of rain while we were gone, and it's taken a while to figure all of this out.

The barrage of entries that I've posted lately have been while I've waited for people to return my phone calls, waited for people to show up to look at the situation, and finally around my first trip up onto a roof in many years. Although we live in a "ranch" style house, the ground looked very far away from up there, and I discovered that the only place hotter than the ground here in Florida on a sunny day is up on a roof. I'm glad I wore gloves up there because the roof was seriously HOT. I didn't have a thermometer with me, but it was likely nearly as hot as the surface of the sun. Or at least it felt like it…

As some workers pound in their last nails and fit the soffits and gutters back in place around the newly-sided chimney, I find myself still catching up!

Here's word from Barry McAleenan, weighing in on a number of recent posts. The first is regarding one involving misspellings on, and in the transcriptions of, census forms:

Apparently, the UK government decided to subcontract the transcription of one census to the Prison Service. It was only when 'prison officer' was found to be routinely transcribed as 'screw' that the checkers realised that the inmates were having 'a bit of a larf'. The routine use of 'do' (as an abbreviation for ditto) meaning 'as above', lead to a lot of grief when search results were sorted after transcribing. The enumerators would also have refined their abbreviations as the data was accumulated. The contract was diverted to Bombay for half the price and a quantum leap in accuracy.

From your latest blog:

PHONE NUMBERS It's possible that the phone books were reference office copies, which were annotated with changes for next year's edition; 22/6 and 27/7 were date references; R120 and Kx were correspondence references. Actually, Kx may just be a messy Tx, implying sent or transmitted in line with Rx for receiver and Tx for transmitter, which I have always assumed was 'jargonised texting' which evolved fairly rapidly for telegrams using Morse telegraphy from decades earlier. Abbreviations would have been commonplace and only needed to be read by colleagues.

CARD
You said:
'The person taking the message was told the flowers were from "Mrs. Barton, Agnes, and Violet Mills," but mistakenly heard "Misses Barbara, Agnes, and Violet Mills," and wrote the latter on the card.'
This is a challenging speculation.

Another guess may be:

The person taking the message was told the flowers were from "Mrs Barton and THE Misses Agnes and Violet Mills," but carelessly logged, "Misses Barbara, Misses Agnes, and Violet Mills," and whoever wrote the card decided that the message was nonsense. I'm sure Mrs Barton Mills would have known precisely what she expected to be written on the card.

Thanks, as always, Barry! Now that I look at those notations again, I'm sure it the note in the phone directiory reads "Tx."

In another useful e-mail, Barry weighs in on Lieutenant Terence Hadow, a former schoolboy who had been a friend of George Mills:

May I speculate that Lt Hadow was KIA during Orde Wingate's Chindit 'Operation Longcloth' into Burma in Feb-April 1943. This may explain why he was in the Infantry when he died. Wikipedia gives dates and casualties.

Reading the Wikipedia entries about the campiagn and its leader is somewhat disturbing. While it's written academically, one can easily imagine the absolute nightmare in the jungle that 'Operation Longcloth' apparently quickly became. A couple of sentences in the article above jump out.

First: "On many occasions, the Chindits could not take their wounded with them; some were left behind in villages. Wingate had in fact issued specific orders to leave behind all wounded, but these orders were not strictly followed."

A second frightening sentence: "Of the 3,000 men that had begun the operation, a third (818 men) had been killed, taken prisoner or died of disease, and of the 2,182 men who returned, about 600 were too debilitated from their wounds or disease to return to active service."

Those sentences don't even begin to encompass the lack of drinking water, the dearth of cleared paths, forcing men to "clear their own with machetes and kukris (and on one occasion, a commandeered elephant)," and the constant ambushes by the Japanese that forced the beleaguered Chindits "into a progressively smaller 'box.'"

Reading about 'Operation Longcloth' and its commander, Brigadier Wingate, is quite unsettling, but one can't help but admire the heroism and steadfastness shown by the troops. Here's to them all!

And, as always, Barry Mc was 'bringing the meat' [Is that current colloquial compliment known in the U. K.?] to a table I'd only set with hors d'œuvre. Many thanks…

Eleanor, Edie, Baby Alexander, and Sir George Dalhousie Ramsay

Another outpost heard from while I vacationed was the Isle of Man, where friend of this website David Wingate was on holiday with his fiancée. I'd been pestering him for a while about forwarding me an image he has of Edith Mills, mother of George Mills. Here's an excerpt from David's latest e-mail:

Hi Sam,

Attached is the picture of Edith as a young girl… Pictures of St. Michael's, Bude; St. Olaf's, Ploughill; and St. Andrew's, Stratton will be on their way to you on Monday.

Have a nice weekend,

Regards

David

You see the long-awaited image above, at the left. It features a photograph of "Edie," her father, Sir George Dalhousie Ramsay, his wife, Eleanor Juliat Charteris Crawford, and Edie's brother, Alexander Panmure Oswald Ramsay, who died on 15 February 1897 at the age of 30.

"Edie" was born Elizabeth Edith Ramsay on 27 July 1865 in Kensington, London. She married Reverend Barton R. V. Mills at St. George's Hanover Square in Kensington on 10 January 1894. Their first child, Agnes Edith Mills, was born in Stratton, Cornwall, on 11 June 1895.

Their second child and first son, George Ramsay Acland Mills, was born on 1 October 1896, also in Cornwall where Rev. Mills was vicar of Bude Haven.

After the family moved to London in 1901, Violet Eleanor Mills was born on 17 November 1902.

Reverend Barton passed away suddenly on 21 January 1932 in London. "Edie" lived at Cadogen Gardens in Kensington afterwards with her daughters Agnes and Violet, and possibly her son, George, at times.

"Edie" Mills passed away in nearby Chelsea, probably at the Royal Hospital, during the last few months of 1945 [Oct/Nov/Dec] at the age of 80.

Knowing as we do that George Mills suffered through the deaths of his wife, Vera, in 1942, and a young friend who was important to George's career as an author, Terence Hadow, in the Burmese campaign in 1943, his mother's passing near the end of the war in 1945 certainly made it a difficult three years for Mills, already, as we know, in failing health—he relinquished a commission as a lieutenant in the Royal Army Pay Corps due to "ill-health" in late 1943.

Thank you, David, for this wonderful portrait of Edith Mills with the family of her youth. I'll look forward to receiving those images from Cornwall via snail mail!

Minor and Major and 2nd Lieutenant Terence Hadow

Back from my holiday visiting family in Michigan, what did I find waiting for me but the first edition of Minor and Major by George Mills that I'd ordered a month ago! Here are the details of my shipment from Chesterfield, U.K.:

Sales Order No.: 69490803

Bookseller: J.A'S BOOKS

Estimated Delivery Date: August 9, 2010

Author: George MILLS

Title: MINOR TO MAJOR

Bookseller Book No.: 013655

Book Description: THIS BOOK IS IN GOOD+ CONDITION IT DOES HAVE SOME WEAR AND TEAR BUT A MUCH LOVED BOOK.

Date Processed: June 7, 2010

Approximate Shipping Speed: 14 - 45 business days

Well "GOOD+" is somewhat of an exaggeration in this case: The book has a broken binding. For my purposes, however, it's a delight!

This 1939 first edition published by G. G. Harrap & Co. matches perfectly the format of their 1938 first edition of King Willow. The cover art, color, and typeface are meant to mirror King Willow's appearance and the line illustrations of H. M. Brock. The illustrator here, though, is John Harris. Harris is a stylized draftsman whose layouts, compositions, and craftsmanship are laudable, but whose figures lack the breath of life that previous illustrators C. E. and H. M. Brock imbued in the characters created by Mills.

As I'd suspected, there is more to be found in this edition than in the circa 1959 reprinting by Spring Books that was published in Czechoslovakia. The first edition contains a preface written by George Mills in 1939 that is not found in the subsequent impression. It reads, with my emphasis on names:

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.

It may not seem like much, but short of the discovery of an unexpected trove of letters authored by George Mills, this snippet of writing is a welcome new insight into the man as a person.

An interesting acquaintance of Mills is schoolboy Terence Hadow, who was born in Kensington, London, in 1921. Hadow would have been approximately 12 years old at the publication of Meredith & Co. in 1933, about 17 upon the publication of King Willow, and around 18 when this undated preface was composed in 1939. Presumably, Hadow was a friend of the family, living in Kensington near the Mills. He may even have been taught by Mills at the mysterious "Eaton Gate Preparatory School" in London between 1933 and 1938.

We know that Mills, who would soon become an Army paymaster after the publication of Minor and Major, must have been rocked during the war by the death of his wife Vera in 1942. Tragedy seems to have touched Mills again, and quite soon, a year later.

Here are details from the U.K. Army Roll of Honour, 1939-1945:

Name: Terence Hadow
Given Initials: T M S
Rank: Lieutenant
Death Date: 18 March 1943
Number: 172204
Birth Place: London W
Residence: Down
Branch at Enlistment: Infantry
Theater of War: Burma
Regiment at Death: Royal Welch Fusiliers
Branch at Death: Infantry

The 28 February 1941 issue of the London Gazette lists Terence Michael Scott Hadow (172204) as having been promoted from a cadet in the 142nd O.C.T.U. to a 2nd lieutenant in the Royal Welch Fusiliers on 15 February 1941.

Hadow was obviously close to Mills, although how close is open to speculation. Still, his death following relatively closely on the heels of Vera's had to affect Mills in some way—remember, the London Gazette would quite soon also publish a notice that Mills relinquished his commission due to "ill-health" on 3 November 1943.

Hadow was laid to rest at the Rangoon Memorial in the Taukkyan War Cemetery, the largest of the three war cemeteries in Burma. The following is recorded on-line at the website Britain at War:

HADOW, Lieutenant, TERENCE MICHAEL SCOTT, 172204. 1st Bn. Royal Welch Fusiliers. 18th March 1943. Age 21. Son of Patrick Hadow, and of Monica E. Hadow, of Kensington, London. Face 9.

At the memorial, inscribed on a frieze in the rotunda that is surrounded by the graves of over 6,000 men, an inscription reads:

1939 - 1945
HERE ARE RECORDED THE NAMES OF TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND
SOLDIERS OF MANY RACES UNITED IN SERVICE TO THE BRITISH CROWN
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES IN BURMA AND ASSAM BUT TO WHOM THE
FORTUNE OF WAR DENIED THE CUSTOMARY RITES ACCORDED
TO THEIR COMRADES IN DEATH

Also engraved on the rotunda in English, Burmese, Hindi, Urdu, and Gurmukhi is the additional inscription:

THEY DIED FOR ALL FREE MEN

We don't know for sure how the loss of Terence Hadow, just 21 years of age at the time of his death in Burma, affected Mills. We do know that Mills was ailing after the death, and that he never again wrote a book.

Did the Second World War and its consequences cost George Mills some of himself, a part that he could never really recover?

As always, additional information, ideas, and informed speculation are most welcome!