Rev. Canon R. Creed Meredith, Sir L. Daldry, and Super Bowl XLV

This morning begins Super Sunday, an unofficial U.S. holiday, and I'm anticipating the playing of the American football championship game, the Super Bowl. During the baseball World Series and football playoffs so far I've won two pizzas from Carlos, the custodian at my school. He's bet two more, double-or-nothing (a bet he's already lost once), on the Pittsburgh Steelers, winners of two of the last four championships, hoping to get even. I've bet the pizzas owed me on the Green Bay Packers, the only team owned by its fans—the residents of tiny Green Bay, Wisconsin—and not a corporate conglomerate or egotistical multi-gazillionaire.

Last year I had a similar bet on the Indianapolis Colts, favored against the New Orleans Saints. Throughout the years, I've never been able to pick a Super Bowl winner to save my life, so its safe to say Carlos will likely owe me nothing at the end of the day. Betting my pizzas on the favored "cheeseheads" from Wisconsin almost guarantees that the Steel City will take away the trophy.

My only real chance of being involved in a victory today rides on my wife Janet's chili con carne. The host of the party we'll attend, my colleague Debbie, holds an annual Chili Cook-Off Contest. Last year Janet took the 2nd place ribbon, and this year she's looking to come home with the title!

Anyway, shifting to another field of play, while looking over my vast, panoramic Excel spreadsheet of croquet opponents, partners, and results, a few names do jump out. They may not have been the most regular friends or foes of George, Agnes, and Violet Mills, but they're noteworthy.

First, let's introduce ourselves to the Rev. Canon Ralph Creed Meredith. Creed Meredith played singles against Agnes on three occasions (according to the notoriously "iffy" Times search engine) and beat her twice.

Meredith was a cleric and a mason—something that apparently was a bit controversial at the time. According to the blog The hermeneutic of continuity:

"In 1951, Hannah wrote an article in the journal Theology, entitled 'Should a Christian be a Freemason?' which caused considerable controversy in England, particularly since King George VI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, were both freemasons. As a result, the Church Assembly of the Church of England later that year discussed the issue. The Rev R Creed Meredith, a freemason himself, proposed that a commission be appointed to report on Hannah's article. This was overwhelmingly rejected and the Assembly did not reach any particular decision on the matter."

"Hannah" was Walton Hannah, an Anglican clergyman, who according to the blog "was later received into the Catholic Church."

Nonetheless, Creed Meredith served as chaplain to George VI and Elizabeth II [above, right]. On 28 June 1946, the London Gazette published an announcement which offically appointed him "Chaplain to his Majesty." In 1954, his address is listed in Time & Tide Business World (vol. 35) as "The Vicarage, Windsor."

I'm admittedly unsure how that combined vicarage and appointment [Would this have been simply a title, Honorary Chaplain to the King (K.H.C.)?] relate to the being a chaplain at the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy, where Reverend Barton R. V. Mills served as an assistant chaplain from 1901 to 1908. Nevertheless, it was a likely conversation starter for the Mills siblings with the Reverend Canon. You'll remember that Barton Mills was involved in the official ceremonies at the funeral of Queen Victoria and stayed on at the Savoy, moving his family, including his daughter Agnes (age 6) son George (age 5) to London in time to be counted in the census. Violet was born in 1902.

Around 1960, Creed Meredith had moved to at 9 Kingsbridge Road, Parkstone, Dorset, according to the Church of England Year Book, volume 85, making him a probable member East Dorset Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club, where he beat Agnes Mills (+12) on 13 September 1960. The aging vicar, then 73, fell to her (-4) on 11 July 1961 on her home lawns at the Budleigh Salterton Croquet Club.

According to RootsWeb at ancestry.com, Creed Meredith was "was born 10 Jul 1887 in Dublin, Ireland, and died Jan 1970 in England. He married Sylvia Ainsley [on] 21 Apr 1915, daughter of Joseph AYNSLEY. She was born 16 Aug 1894 in Blyth House, Blyth Bridge, Stoke-on-Trent, and died 20 Sep 1987."

Another fellow the Mills knew on the lawns, one whom we first met yesterday, was Sir Leonard Daldry. The Times archive has himm playing with and against them in croquet twice, under unusual circumstances.

On 10 May 1968, Sir Leonard was victorious over George Mills (+2 on time). Later in the day, he beat George again. In a doubles match, playing alongside Violet Mills, he defeated George and his partner Barbara (Mrs. H. F.) Chittenden (+12), the Mills siblings scoring both a tournament win and loss in the same tilt. Although I'm uncertain exactly how doubles pairings were created at the time, one can assume the Sir Leonard knew at least two of the Mills somewhat well for at least that one day!

Daldry was born on 6 October 1908 and died at the age of 80 in October 1988 in Swindon, Wiltshire, 25 or 30 miles south-southeast of the Cheltenham Croquet Club. The Mills siblings played in croquet tournaments in Cheltenham at least three times, two in 1961 and 1965, during both of which it's possible that Sir Leonard was not in Nigeria.

The National Portrait Gallery describes Daldry in this way: "Sir Leonard (Charles) Daldry (1908-1988), Banker and Senator of Federal Legislature, Nigeria." He is a sitter in 18 portraits taken by the famed photographer "Bassano." In some portraits, Daldry appears with his wife, Lady Joan Mary Daldry (née Crisp). Those were taken on 30 October 1963. He later had individual portraits taken by Bassano on 23 April 1976. Disappointingly, none of these portraits are available on-line. Presumably, they may be of slighly higher quality than the image of Daldry [above, left] I was able to crop from an on-line 1974 MacRobertson Shield teams photograph.

According to Nigerian Wiki: "Leonard Charles Daldry was resident director of the Barclay's Bank for West Africa and later that of Nigeria and the Cameroons. He joined the bank in 1929. In the 60s, he was chairman of the Nigerian Barclay's bank." He is also listed there as a member of the Nigerian First Republic Senate.

On 1 January 1960, Daldry was appointed to the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire "for public services in the Federation of Nigeria," according to the London Gazette.

Daldry is also described as "Nigeria Board of Barclay's Bank, DCO... a member of the Nigerian Railway Corporation [and] a Special Member of the House of Representatives and as a Senator, 1929-61," in Accessions to repositories and reports added to the National Register of Archives by The Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts in the National Register of Archives (Great Britain, 1969).

It seems that Daldry was intimately involved with Nigeria's economics and governance before and slightly after it gained its independence from Britain on 1 October 1960.

He certainly must have had a great many stories and insights to share on the lawns and at the bar in various croquet tournaments around England.

There is a third name of interest among the players during my "Mills Era" of croquet in south England: Lady Ursula Abbey.

We'll save Lady Ursula for another day, for reasons that we'll find out soon. Stay tuned...

Notable Sussex Women

Let's take a break from the proceedings of the third trial pitting plaintiff Valerie Wiedemann against defendant Robert Horace Walpole and consider something else.

In her book, Notable Sussex Women, author Helena Wojtczak has written biographical sketches of 580 women of Sussex from Annie Abram to Nellie Sheail. As a tease, women within are also listed anonymously by accomplishment: "a woman with terrapins in her bra," "the wealthiest prostitute in London," and "Siamese twin entertainers," for example.

Included among these notable women is our Lady Dorothy Mills [née Walpole], daughter of Walpole and Louise Melissa Corbin. I'm uncertain how her accomplishments might have been described in the book's tease, however.

Is she "the white woman who led a protest march of 20,000 black Africans"? If she is, I'm unaware of that event, although Lady Dorothy certainly spent a great deal of time in Africa living among its native people.

Was she one of the "writers of books deemed 'obscene' and 'grossly immoral'"? I know that not every reader was in favor of her adventuring among the savages and even prompting marriage proposals from many.

Could Lady Dorothy's travels in the East have made her the "the titled lady who bred silkworms," a prize she may have returned with after one of her excursions?

With 580 biographical sketches in a 366 page volume, many of the sketches are bound to be exceptionally brief. There are 189 illustrations and 63 glossy photographs. Is there an image of Lady Dorothy Millls? And would it be an image of the young, globe-trotting Lady Dorothy, or of the aging Lady Dorothy who lived away from the public eye in Brighton from the publication of her last book 1931 until her death in 1959?

If you own the book or have borrowed it from a library and can summarize her biographical sketch, or if you own it and can e-mail me a scan of any information on Lady Dorothy Mills [pictured, right] it contains for the purposes of my research, I would be most grateful. Having already spent a couple of hundred of dollars on this strange quest of mine—most of it on shipping from the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand—I hesitate to tell my financial advisor [read: my wife, Janet] that I plan on spending well over £20 (with shipping) to catch a glimpse of a paragraph or two in a book that may or may not be of any use to me at all!

Please e-mail me at will19008 [at] yahoo.com if you can help, and thank you in advance for your consideration!

Sheikhs, Spinsters, and the Local Standard of Beauty

I'm not sure when Lady Dorothy Mills suffered her 1929 automobile accident returning from Ascot, but by 29 November she was not sufficiently recovered to be permitted by her medical advisors to attend a benefit in London for the King Edward's Hospital Fund and recount some of her African adventures.

A year later, in 1930, she published A Different Drummer: Chapters in Autobiography, a memoir presumably written during recovery from an accident that "left her scarred for life."

It's unclear at this point whether or not the 'scarring' referred to is literal or not. Either way, we already have seen that Lady Dorothy has some self-image issues related to her body. Those issues are touched upon in this newspaper piece from The Argus [Melbourne, Australia] on Saturday, 8 November 1930, and are almost used as a punch-line after 1600 or so words on the topics of romance, marriage, and divorce.

Lady Dorothy comments on younger women capturing the attentions of older men, and about the lack of faithfulness of "Sheikhs" once a wife, who once had been showered with poetry and promises, finds she has eventually become "old and ugly."

These adventures must have taken place years before, but they may have taken on new meaning to Lady Dorothy as she was convalescing, much of the time probably spent in her home on Ebury Street in London. It was a home she shared with her novelist husband, Arthur Mills. Was she concerned about Arthur, now that she was 41 years of age, had recently suffered serious injuries unlike any of the discomforts she endured on the road, and was still likely far thinner than she knew the men of England at the time would "admire."

[Update: After sleeping on it, I also can't help but wonder how, after a few years, husband Arthur felt about Lady D. repeatedly regaling friends, family, and the public at airshows and the like with tales of these amorous advances in wild but romantic locales, and how she always led on each fellow and evoked more information about his"proposal". I'll admit, if my wife, Janet, came back from a holiday with such tales, I might be a bit jealous, if not utterly miffed.]

Does she sense here that a page has been turned in her life, and that love and/or marriage would never be the same for her again? Her life had once been filled with adventure, danger, and exotic locales; here she spins yarns on behalf of fantasizing spinsters who do not know the "truth" about men.

See what you think. Here's the complete newspaper text plugging her new autobiography:

DITH M. HULL'S novel is almost forgotten; Rudolph Valentino is dead. Yet for many women sheikhs—the sheikhs of fiction—still have a curious fascination. Lay Dorothy Mills, the author and traveller, who is the daughter of the Earl of Orford, has no illusions about them. She has travelled since she was a child. Among her most conspicuous achievements are those of being the first Englishwoman to visit Timbuctoo and of leading an expedition through Liberia. During her travels she has met many sheikhs—she has even been proposed to by two—and she writes amusingly of her experiences with these great lovers in a chapter entitled "Sheikh-Stuff" in her book "A Different Drummer." The title of her autobiography was taken from Thoreau: "And if a man does not keep step with his fellows, it may be that hears a different drummer."

Lady Dorothy Mills begins by describing an incident in a little tourist town of the North Algerian desert. In the dining room of the same hotel were 12 elderly English women under the care of a harassed, flurried looking courier. "They belonged to one of the less expensive tourist agencies which, in 10 days, from door to door, for ₤30 or thereabouts, give their clients a fleeting taste of the Sahara and its thrills." In the middle of the meal there entered the Caid of a nearby douar with whom Lady Dorothy was acquainted. "He was a tall, handsome, black-bearded man of about 40, with lordly deportment, immaculately dressed in embroidered burnous and snow-white turban, and his rank in life corresponded to that of an English country squire." He made a profound impression upon the 12 English spinsters, and Lady Dorothy basked in some reflected glory because the "sheikh" recognised and spoke to her. She had to answer many questions, and, despite the fact that she was disillusioning them, told the truth: "that the Caid had five wives, three living, one dead, and one divorced, that he had 11 children, that he had never killed anyone in his life, in fact, that he considered fighting uncivilised, that he was a peaceable, home-loving soul, chiefly interested in farming.

The Sheikh at His Best.

"And that is what the 'Sheikh' at his best generally is," adds Lady Dorothy Mills. "The hawk-eyed bit of proud, brown beauty that struts the market-place, causing havoc among the more susceptible tourists, is as often as not, but a hen-pecked householder, who spends his days in money-getting, and loves to play with his numerous children after the day's work. That is the 'Sheikh' at his best. At his worst, he may be a lot of other things, but he is rarely romantic."

There was another side of the incident of the 12 English spinsters. The Caid told Lady Dorothy Mills that he had noticed the interest which they had taken in him.

"Who are they?" he asked. "It was told me that it was an English milord, who travelled with his wives."

"When I denied the truth of this typically Arab conclusion," Lady Dorothy Mills says, "he answered with an equally typical one. 'I thought not,' he said. 'Had it been true, he would have chosen them younger and handsomer. That information, out of the kindness of her heart, Lady Dorothy Mills did not pass on.

"'A queen by night, a beast of burden by day.' Thus, and pretty accurately, has an Arab writer summed up the position of an Arab wife," she says. "The Arab is fond of women as playthings, but he regards the subject of marriage very seriously, and his courtship is a matter of barter. When he finds himself financially able to support a wife and family, his parents search around among girls of marriageable age, that is to say, about 13 or 14, and of suitable requirements, possessing money, virtue, good health and temper, and, if possible, good looks. The girl found, the parents of both young people haggle for days or weeks or months over a dowry, which varies according to her share of the above-mentioned assets. No personal inclination of hers carries any weight, and the young man takes it for granted that his parents have done their best for him.

"They never see each other until the evening of the wedding, though the girl, if she be of the lower classes, may have caught a glimpse of him as, closely veiled, she passed through the streets. In very exceptional cases only can she obtain separation if he is unkind to her, but he on the contrary, can divorce her on any or no ground, providing he returns her dowry, by a few words spoken before the Cadi (town lawyer), for the sum of a few francs. This is certainly not the Koranic law, which is fair and generous in its treatment of women, but it is the custom-made law of the Arabs themselves, in a country where women's lack of education makes it impossible for her to assert her rights and privileges.

Hazards of Married Life.

"The young wife is lucky if her bride-groom is young and amiable; for sometimes he is old and repulsive, with a multiplicity of wives, regular and irregular, who may make her life a burden to her," Lady Dorothy Mills writes. "If she is young, though, maybe it is better for her to be the last wife than the first. For the Arab woman ages early and it is only a question of time, she knows, before her husband takes in marriage a younger, better looking girl, on whom he lavishes his kindness, his endearments, and his presents. As a sad little Arab wife said to me once: 'It is better to be the wife of an old man, the last and favoured one, than that of a young man and to grow despised and neglected in his service.' Luckily for her, the Arab woman is generally too ignorant to be dissatisfied, or to realise that there are greater possibilities of happiness than to simply be well fed and clothed by a husband who does not actively ill-treat her.

"Personally I have met many charming Arab gentlemen, some of whom I am honoured to number among my friends, but I would not marry one of them for all the wealth of the Sahara. And when I have mentioned this fact to them, and we have threshed out the subject; when, more especially, I have enumerated my requirements in a husband, with a grave smile most have admitted to me, from my point of view, to be right! Many Arab wives are happy after their fashion, for they know of no other order of things. But, however she may be beguiled by the imagery of the Sheikh's wooing, or the ardor of his assurances, the Sheikh will treat a white wife—if he can obtain one—just about the same as a brown one, once the novelty has worn off, and the fate of a few white women I have known who have married Arabs has been heartrending."

Although the Sheikh is not as romantic in his wooing, his language is poetic, at any rate to a European woman. Lady Dorothy Mills tells frankly of the two direct proposals of marriage which she has had from Arabs. "Neither flattered my self-esteem," she writes. "The first was from a very beautiful and resplendent creature of Northern Algeria, and his proposal was couched in all the vivid imagery of the 'Arabian Nights.' Among other things, he told me that my hands were like the little pink clouds that race the sky at dawn, and my face like the roses that bloom in a Sultan's garden; all of which pleased me very much! But he came down to earth with a bump when, out of curiosity, I began to probe for practical details."

A Sophisticated Arab.

The following dialogue is recorded:—

"You have already two wives," I told him, "and you know that we Europeans are not in the habit of sharing our husbands with other women."

"I am civilised, madame, I understand perfectly," he assured me. "And if you will marry me I will divorce them."

"But wouldn't you mind that?" I asked inquisitively.

"The elder one I should not mind; she is old and ugly. The younger one I should be a little sorry about, for she is pretty and good-tempered. But if you insisted I would divorce them both."

"But," said I, probing still further, "when my turn comes to be old and ugly, you will divorce me for a younger, prettier woman?" He shrugged his shoulders philosophically.

"Imshallah! If Allah wills!" he said.

"And that, I may add," Lady Dorothy Mills comments, "is what generally happens in Sheikh romances."

The other proposal was from a Caid of Southern Tunisia, "rough and uneducated, sixty and fat, with most of his front teeth missing, but he was a big chief in that wild country. Already he had three wives, two brown and one black, and now he wanted a white one to round off the quartet permitted him by the prophet. His proposal, through an interpreter, was conducted on the most correct lines, and the dowry he offered me was generous in sheep, cattle, and silk. But, he added, though he personally found me charming, I was far too thin to do credit, in the eyes of his people, to so great a chief, and he must make it a condition that I should partake of a local root called khalba, which his other wives would prepare for me, that was guaranteed in a very short time to fatten me up to the local standard of beauty."

It is doubtful, nevertheless, whether all the disillusioning things which Lady Dorothy Mills says in her entertaining book will counteract the romance with which the Sheikh has been invested by fiction and the films.

*"A Different Drummer," Chapters in Autobiography, by Lady Dorothy Mills (London:- Gerald Duckworth and Co. Ltd.); 11/6

A First Edition of King Willow Arrives with Some Surprises

It's a beautiful morning here in the horse country of north central Florida. The sunlight is slanting through the buds on the oaks [the tiny, almond-shaped oak leaves here look far different from the large, splayed leaves of my youth in Pennsylvania, and from what I've seen of oaks in the U.K.] and the birds all seem to calling for their mates.

My mate, Janet, is out getting her hair styled, but were she here, I'd still be thanking here for my new gift: A first edition copy of King Willow, again signed by the author, that arrived yesterday evening. I'd had my eye on it, but thought it was too much money. I was stunned when I opened the package from Canterbury, Kent, and pulled out this well-worn, even slightly beat-up edition. I simply adore it!

Yesterday I wondered aloud about the missing years in my time line of George Mills, and was contemplating writing an entry about his grandfather, Arthur Mills. In lieu of new information about Mills himself, I thought providing some context into which I could situate the life of George would be a logical next step. There are a number of people who would have known G.M. and who would have undoubtedly influenced him, even if they had no influence over him directly.

Thumbing through this not-so-gently-used copy of King Willow, it immediately struck me what a beautiful book this must have been in its day, sort of the same feeling I get when I see, for example, Elizabeth Taylor on the cover of a gossip tabloid at the supermarket. Published by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd., the often browned, stained, and worn pages of this book must have been gorgeous in their day. The paper is still wonderfully stiff and still has a "tooth," or texture, that makes it a pleasure to touch. The author's inscription reads: "To Barbara and Raymond Dones—with best wishes—George Mills July 1938," and is written in what appears to be fountain pen ink that's a rich sepia.

[Note (26 Apr 2010): When my wife ordered the text, there had been a note on the internet saying: SIGNED presentation copy by the author to the front free end paper 'To Barbara and Raywood, With best wishes George Mills, July 1938.' I'll admit: What do I know about British penmanship, circa 1938? Nothing! But if I'd read it myself, I'd have assumed it was Raymond. I didn't change it, though, and put on the web just as the bookseller indicated. I am now assured that it does indeed say Raymond, and many thanks to Barry McAleenan for the chirographic advice!]

It's illustrated by H. M. [Henry Matthew] Brock, brother of the legendary C.E. Brock and a fine illustrator, graphic designer, and painter in his own right as just a glance it the work throughout this edition will ascertain. He's fully credited as the illustrator immediately below the name of George Mills on the title page, and as well as a full-colour frontispiece and 4 full-page plates, he did several other decorative illustrations, and example of which is seen to the left.

What truly surprised me, however, were not only the difference in quality between this edition of King Willow and the other edition, circa 1958 or so, but the dedication and preface. In this earlier edition, Mills has given me a location for himself and his wife in the time that elapsed between 1938 and the publication of Meredith and Co. back in 1933!

Right now, I'll focus on the dedication to the 1958-ish edition that was the first book by Mills I'd ever seen: "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."
Now, I'd been working on finding a young Ian and Beryl, likely in Great Britain, just before the publication of this book in 1938. Needless to say, I wasn't having much luck. The dedication seemed wistfully hopeful, coming from what I assumed was a 40-ish man who'd seemingly been married to Vera Mills for 10 or 12 years at that point, depending on the actual, unspecified date of Beryl and Ian's nuptials. It made me smile.

In those assumptions, it turns out, I must have been entirely mistaken!

Here's the dedication to the first edition of King Willow, which Mills himself dates in the book's preface as June, 1938: "TO THE HEADMASTERS, STAFF, AND BOYS OF EATON GATE PREPARATORY SCHOOL, LONDON, S.W. 1."

Not only does that provide us with a location for Mills and Vera during the span of time between the 1933 publication of Meredith and Co. and its stand-alone 1938 sequel, King Willow, it also puts a completely different spin on the dedication in that late-1950s edition. Beryl and Ian, it seems, were not married near the end of the worldwide Great Depression; they were likely born at that time. Their ship, Matrimony, likely set sail just after the Korean Conflict in the middle of the 20th century, not in the years leading up to the Second World War.

The subtext of the later dedication changes now as well. The latter version is now written by a childless, 60-ish man, over 15 years a widower, watching two youngsters embarking on a journey together that he'd set out on with Vera over a quarter of a century earlier. There are no children of theirs have become the light of his life as he charts his own course, alone, into his own last harbor.

Of course, I labor under the assumption that George Mills never remarried and remained childless. If he did, all of the above is completelt in error, and yet another spin is put on his metaphorical bon voyage to Ian and Beryl.

Another bit of information implied by the late-1950s dedication would be that, seemingly for the first time, Mills has not dedicated a book to a school. My inference is that, by the time of the Fanfare and Viscount Series' Czechoslovakian reprints of his three best-loved stories, Mills has retired. I've not seen a copy of every edition of his three prep school books, nor have I ever seen a copy of his children's book St. Thomas of Canterbury. I'll speculate, however, that when Meredith and Co. was published in 1957 by Andrew Dakers Ltd. with exactly the same preface and dedication found in the 1950 edition [each just relocated within the text], it hadn't occurred to Mills at that point that he could rewrite them—or at least he'd felt no need to until the wedding of Beryl and Ian.

Still, although the two different dedications imply much still to be considered and researched, Mills has definitely pinned himself down to London, S.W. 1, for at least some portion of the time between 1933 and 1938, and without any other school named in this dedication, it suggests that perhaps Mills had finally found a position as a schoolmaster that lasted for a while.

Eaton Gate Preparatory School becomes the next focus of our investigation, although I hope to still learn much more about G.M. from Windlesham and Eastbourne.

As always, please let me know if you have any thoughts, suggestions, or information!

King Willow Arrives!

Besides finding information about this mysterious George Mills, I want to read all of his books. For a start, I've already received:

King Willow; Spring Books, London; printed in Czechoslovakia, Undated. [Illustrated by Tom Thursby]

I ordered it from Paperbackbookshop.co.uk Ltd., in Gloucestershire on 6 February, 2010, but it was shipped a prior from a P.O. box at the Brussels Airport in Belgium/Belgique/Belgie. My wife, Janet, ordered it for me, so I don’t actually know what it cost. It arrived on 25 February. The dust jacket lists it as a title in Spring Books' "Fanfare Series" for youths. It’s 256 pages and contains no copyright date.

This doesn’t appear to be a copy of either of the two editions of King Willow available on the shelves of the British Library. Those editions are:

King Willow, etc.; G. G. Harrap & Co.: London, 1938.

King Willow (New edition); Oxford University Press: London, 1951.

If anyone out there has any idea of the publication date of my undated 'Spring Books' edition, about the seemingly-defunct publisher [Spring Books], about Mills himself, or about the illustrator [Thursby], I certainly would appreciate the information!