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?

The Past, the Present, the Future, and the Mysterious Mr. E. M. Henshaw

Sometimes a person is surprised, and sometimes there's simply a level of virtual shock. That happened to me last evening when my 'first edition' copy of Meredith and Co.: The Story of a Modern Preparatory School by George Mills arrived!

I mean, I knew it was coming, but it was coming from half the world away:

Camberwell Books has confirmed your order.-----

Author: MILLS, GEORGE WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY BROCK, C. E.

Title: Meredith and Co. - the Story of a Modern Preparatory School.

Description: Oxford University Press, London, 1933. 288 pp, coloured frontispiece, minor damage at top of spine, else near fine copy in illustrated, papered boards.. Great C. E. Brock cover illustration showing injured bulldog.

Message from the seller:-------------------------
Harry
Will send
Thanks
Mick

The address of Camberwell Books places it in Victoria, Australia, but the parcel was posted from New Zealand. What a stunningly long journey this book took, both through time and space, to find itself here on my shelf.

I was stunned: The text itself is simply gorgeous. The three watercolour plates by the great C. E. Brock are truly wonderful, and the edition itself is simply a tactile delight! The 'tooth' of the paper upon which the text has been printed is fine and creamy white enough to actually paint a fine watercolor upon, and the thickly calendared leaves each will stand stiffly and straight up without assistance, defying gravity and age. Were it not for the small tear at the top corner of the spine and a light blue streak across the back, I would think someone had just purchased this book a couple of years ago. The word 'lustrous' comes to mind—this was money well spent!

Take away all I said regarding book publishing during the Great Depression during my reading of Arthur Mills's The Apache Girl: This book is gorgeous, a sumptuous volume that certainly belies the woeful state of the world's economies, circa 1933!

Overnight observations of a few of the details of this beautiful tome lead me to a pair of new ideas.

First, just yesterday I was writing about the possibility of George Mills having been out of work and striving to put food on the table during the bleak years of the depression. I have to say, I've reversed my course on that line of thinking, at least regarding 1933. The quality and sheer presence of this impressive book makes me think that Meredith and Co.—apparently the first tale of its kind in accurately portraying the lives of schoolboys, their behaviors, and their slang and idioms—was well thought of by Oxford University Press. Weighing in at 5 kilograms and measuring 4.5 cm (2 inches!) thick, this appears to be a real heavyweight championship contender of a book, quite unlike the tiny, cheaply produced edition of The Apache Girl, also published in 1933 [its fifth impression since 1930], that I finished reading a few weeks ago!

I had thought that Mills star might have been rising in 1938 and 1939 when he published his final three books, but to me he clearly had a bright future in the eyes of O.U.P. earlier in that decade. They even assigned Brock—one of the top illustrators of the era—to depict full-colour scenes his initial novel. Mills and this book, it would seem, were not considered marginal.

A second thing that jumped out at me was something I'd just been tinkering with: Its preface! Or I thought I had been tinkering with its preface. A quick glance immediately told me that something was different in the original preface, true Mills aficionado that I have become. There were far too many initials!

Just three days ago we looked at the preface of the 1957 edition, and here's Mills's final sentence: "I am also very much indebted to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material."

Here's that same sentence from the 1933 edition, with the additional words in bold face: "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."

Mr. E. M. Henshaw? Who the heck is Mr. E. M. Henshaw?

'Devastating criticisms'? Useful or not, Mills certainly went out of his way to make sure that we, the readers, knew he had been painfully wounded by those obviously not-so-gently phrased suggestions!

In the short term, Henshaw certainly was acknowledged for his contributions to the publication of Mills's book. In the long term, he ended up being excised like a bad appendix. In 1933, Mr. E. M. Henshaw had been spared the warmth and gratitude Mills had expressed to Mr. A. Bishop and Mr. H. E. Howell in the previous sentence of the preface, while still being acknowledged. In the time elapsed between 1933 and 1950's second impression of Meredith and Co. [then published without its original subtitle] by O.U.P., Mills must have felt any 'debt' owed to Henshaw already had been paid in full, without needing to further acknowledge him in subsequent editions [1950 and 1957].

Obviously, Mills had changed. Once known as a fellow who "made people laugh, a lot", by the late 1930s things are quite obviously different. By the decade of the 1950s, painful memories and associations have been and are still clearly being expunged from Mills psyche. It seems that a melancholy process had started when he looked back to Haywards Heath and Parkfield School at the turn of the century for the dedication to 1939's Minor and Major. Later, when King Willow was reprinted in the late 1950s, a dedication to Eaton Gate Preparatory School was scratched in favor of a lyrical ode to the future of now-unknown newlyweds Beryl and Ian.

Was the George Mills of the late 1950s still in a struggle with the present, while at the same time yearning for a nostalgic and comforting past, and hoping with all of his might for a more benevolent future for himself and those he loved?

Looking back at 1939, Mills soon returned to the military, an occupation he'd left behind as a lance corporal in 1919. Returning as a lieutenant, I suppose it would have given him a sense of real security, something I believe he was craving. It also may have provided him with a sense of purpose patriotically, and even spiritually at the outset of a conflict that certainly aroused moral as well as political issues.

Craving that security over his recent creativity, Mills apparently preferred the dependability of a regular paycheck and a dress service uniform [right] to the life of an author and a tweed jacket and a good pipe. One wonders what other occupations may have been tried by Mills between teaching positions to see him through to his next book before the War. Perhaps he needed more security; perhaps he needed it for Vera, his wife. Either way, he had felt a need that was quite real.

In returning to the service, Mills seemed to be not only revising his present life at the time, he seemed to be revising his own expectations for his future, and was even busy blue-penciling parts of his past. The eventual removal of Mr. E. M. Henshaw from the preface of Mills's most popular novel would seem to be a good example of that last bit of speculation.

References to an E. M. Henshaw abound in the 1930's and 1940's, and many of those references pertain to the field of psychology. It would be completely reasonable to believe that a psychologist might have been critical of the behavior of the boys in George's first novel, or perhaps on the possible effects the behaviors in Mills's manuscript might have had on British youth at the time. That would make sense.

However, that E. M. Henshaw was Edna Mary Henshaw, not the "Mr. E. M. Henshaw" who 'devastated' George Mills over his 1933 manuscript.

Mister E. M. Henshaw has been far more difficult for me to flush out into the open.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts or information you might have about all of this…