Ain't It Funny How Time Slips Away...

I've been thinking about Dr. David Evans and his recent description of George Mills [right].

"...a very sociable welcoming person."

"...devoted to his sisters Aggie and Vi."

"...but in no way was he dependent on them."

That's good news. As I mentioned in my last entry, I feared that Mills may have become 'damaged' (for lack of a better term) by a string of personal tragedies and illness he'd suffered during the 1940s.

It's good to know that to a physician (and one from a time during which I suppose healers grew to know their patients far more personally), George seemed hale and happy.

Still, the question nags me now just as it did almost a year ago: Why does a fellow write and publish three well-received books during the years 1938 and 1939, and then never publish more than a letter to The Times for the rest of his life—some 32 years?

Backpedaling to the very beginnings of my search for the identity of George Mills, I'll remind you that Heather Lawrence of Peakirk Books in Norfolk opines, "It is possible he just got fed up with writing!"

"Fed up" is a term that I would typically associate with a writer of far less successful tales and far fewer published works. Still, who can say she's wrong?

Another set of words crossed my mind as well. I received a thoughtful and well-considered message from my dear friend, Jennifer, in Philadelphia. Although on a somewhat different topic, it offers a similar line of thinking:

"Maybe [one's] creative life has just run its course. Margaret Mitchell only wrote the one novel... Not every creative person keeps creating until they die. Maybe some people can't sustain that kind of emotional energy. Maybe they don't want to."

That notion of 'not wanting to,' possibly due to being 'fed up,' returns to my mind again and again.

Perhaps while not completely shattering his life, Mills couldn't 'sustain the emotional energy' necessary to write something book length after those tragic events—the death of his wife, a dear friend, his mother, all during a war that left London bleeding and his own health a shambles.

In the words of that noted philosopher, Willie Nelson (seen left, a man who never seems to have lost his muse), "Ain't it funny how time slips away?" Did Mills always mean to write another book? Was his summer term at Ladycross Boys' Catholic Preparatory School in Seaford, Sussex, in 1956 seen as a chance to collect new characters, develop a new setting, and create new stories about prep school boys—a subject he'd once lovingly depicted in such amazingly precise detail? Dr. Tom Houston of the Windlesham House Association describes George thusly: "Mills evidently had a gift for befriending boys and learning their secrets; Meredith & Co. captures the idiom of pupils during the interwar period more accurately than any other novel."

Peakirk's Heather adds: "Meredith & co was 1 of the first prep school stories of its kind, lighthearted & whimsical, a forerunner to the Jennings books of Anthony Buckeridge, in so far as it emphasizes the comical side of school life. However the importance of games & work are not forgotten."

1933's publication of Meredith & Co. by Oxford University Press—a sumptuous, Depression-era book illustrated by the fabled C. C. Brock—speaks volumes about the high regard that was shown by the industry for his manuscript.

Following that with three more books in 1938-1939, had Mills managed so quickly use up all of his stories, his patience, and his passion for writing? And did he ever try to rekindle it all later in life?

Or, despite a nice, little side income from the re-issuing of his schoolboy titles in the 1950s, did the fact that he was an author become something that Mills simply stopped thinking about and ceased discussing with anyone? Were his conversations eventually filled with the weather, bridge strategies, croquet tournaments, and the results of cricket matches at Lord's? Residents of Budleigh's Westfield Road, which ended at the Mills domicile, Grey Friars, today know that another children's author, Charles Warrell, the aged creator of the famed I-Spy books, lived on that very same lane. Why did no one ever seem to realize neighbor George Mills was a children's book author as well?

Michael Downes recently reported: "Budleigh Salterton has a literary festival, and one of the documents produced by our local museum for that event was a list of authors formerly living in the town. George Mills (along with many others) was not on the list, and I have added to it over the years with other names. So George Mills is quite a find for us."

So it seems Mills probably wasn't always 'meaning to get around to it,' as far as writing another book was concerned. Perhaps he was just waiting for inspiration to strike. Still, he certainly didn't let his neighbors and the community at large know of his past, or of any hope he might've had that his literary muse might someday return. Or is it possible he actually had... and no one very much cared?

Jennifer certainly agrees Mills may have been awaiting inspiration and adds: "[But] you can spend the rest of your life sitting around waiting. Tearing things out of one's psyche is an arduous and not always pleasant process. It's easier to say, well, those days are gone. I don't have the energy for that anymore. It's frightening how easy it is to just let your mind sink into its own puddle of lethargy."

Perhaps George Mills was, indeed, 'fed up.' Perhaps he just 'didn't want to' write. Perhaps he faced his own 'puddle of lethargy' and simply never did meet his muse again—even among the prep boys at Seaford in 1956.

For whatever reason, Mills apparently must have spoken so little of his literary career that Budleigh residents never knew they had a popular author in their midst in the person of the very sociable and welcoming George Mills.

Still, I'd love to know: Why?

And I wonder: Is this really all about George Mills?

Or is this really far more about me?

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!

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…

Minor and Major Arrives via Royal Mail!

Many thanks to Heather at Peakirk Books in Nr Fakenham, Norfolk, not only for the information she provided me earlier via e-mail, but for the edition of Minor and Major by George Mills that arrived today!

While the first edition, illustrated by John Harris, in the British Library is dated 1939, this edition predictably carries no date nor the name of the illustrator(s). Once again, exactly as in my edition of King Willow by Mills, we find it was published by Spring Books, Spring House, Spring Place, London NW5, and printed in Czechoslovakia.

The title page and dust jacket proclaim it to be part of the "Fanfare Series", and many other titles in the series—including King Willow—are listed. Among them are: The Clue in the Castle, The Missing Speed Ace, Backstage with Peggy, The Rawhide Kid, The Savages on Gale Island, The Rivals of Rookwood, The Island Mystery, The Secret of the Study, Holiday Adventure, The Riddle of the Blue Moon, and Speed Dermot.

This edition has 240 pages, a full-colour, unsigned frontispiece [the lustre of which is diminished by having been printed on matte paper] and four black-and-white illustrations throughout. The unsigned full-colour illustration on the dust jacket is not the same one found inside the text.

The dimensions of the book, exactly the same as Fanfare Series companion King Willow, may have been conceived by one Benedict Thomas—something we'll examine in a subsequent post!

I have a copy of Meredith and Co., already noted as being part of something called the "Viscount Series" and having been published by a house suspiciously similar in all ways to "Spring Books". That edition is also undated, but has a gift inscription written by the original owner apparently dating it as at least having been purchased 1957.

The other two nearly identical editions suggest they have been modified from Meredith's slightly larger format. That also suggests they are both more recent than 1957—moving their publication dates into my own lifetime, having been born in 1958.

King Willow and Minor and Major, even more so than Meredith and Co., have an appearance similar to vintage 1946-1965 [5th format] editions of the Hardy Boys mystery series I'd seen and read in the 1960s.

Using 1958 as a target date, selected for both its proximity to 1957's Meredith and Co. reprint and it being the year of my birth, let's say Mills was paid directly for the rights to also reprint King Willow and Minor and Major. Unless the books were published posthumously, he'd have been earning an income from his 1930's written work virtually through 1960—assuming they had stayed available on booksellers' shelves for a year or two.

This is all suppostion, but we'd have to imagine George Mills, at this point in our investigation still a self-proclaimed Preparatory School Master, likely living somewhere in the U.K., in his early sixties [61 years old on 18 August, 1958, my own birth date] and still trading on his years teaching at prep schools during the worldwide Great Depression.

Or is it merely the heirs of George Mills who're reaping the benefits from these reprints, or perhaps his wife, Vera?

New information that was delayed by an incorrect spelling provides more insight into the answer to the above question…

Word from Heather at Peakirk Books, Norfolk

I’ve ordered Minor and Major from Peakirk Books in Norfolk, U.K., and have been getting great customer service from Heather Lawrence. Here’s my order info:

ITEMS ORDERED-------------
Item.........MILLS, George:, Minor and Major
Item Number..14155
Quantity.....1

Email: info@PeakirkBooks.com
Peakirk Books
Cherry Tree Lodge
Guist Bottom Road, Stibbard
Nr Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 0AQ
United Kingdom
Phone: 01328 829944

It's in transit, but cooler than simply sending me the book itself, Heather graciously consented to research George Mills. Apparently Peakirk is still in the process of moving its location and a “reference book on Boys school story authors” was in the old place. After retrieving it, here’s what she found out, from an e-mail stamped Wednesday, March 10, 2010; 5:57 AM [bold face and italic are mine]:

Hello again

Ref George Mills - I retrieved my book and it told me the following (unfortunately more about the books than the man).

G. M. taught for many years at a prep. School after himself being a pupil at one - Parkfield, in Haywards Heath) - so unsurprisingly his 3 school stories have a similar setting. Meredith & co was 1 of the first prep school stories of its kind, lighthearted & whimsical, a forerunner to the Jennings books of Anthony Buckeridge, in so far as it emphasizes the comical side of school life. However the importance of games & work are not forgotten.

The real hero for many is Uggles, a bulldog owned by 1 of the boys whose unexpected appearances cause havoc. King willow was equally a high spirited. Minor & Major was set in a different prep school. - even more whimsical than the previous 2.

Sorry not to have more useful information. The school he went to is located in Sussex, if you want to try and locate it - it may have some information on old pupils.

Kind regards

Heather

Thanks, Heather, for going above and beyond! So, we know that Mills apparently wasn’t primarily a writer, but a veteran teacher at a prep school after having attended one in West Sussex [Parkfield, in Haywards Heath] as a boy. Above, left, you can see a photograph of Haywards Heath [circa 1950] describing that location as “St Wilfrid's Church and the Schools.”

Does anyone have any information on “the Schools”? I'd be very much obliged...