Eight Years Later: The Final Chapter of King Willow

The final chapter of King Willow by George Mills is entitled "Eight Years Later," and it puts the finishing touches on the first two novels of Mills, including his very first, Meredith and Co.

The chapter begins: "It was late on a Wednesday afternoon, and the last day of the Oxford and Cambridge match at Lord's. The ground looked beautiful, the blue sky and green grass combining with the gay colours of the dresses in the crowded stands to make a wonderful splash of colour."

Oxford and Cambridge became the universities where the main schoolboy characters of Mills ended up.

After the match, the three main characters of King Willow—Pongo, Finch, and Falconer, better known as Hawk—end up in the car of Pongo, whom you may recall started as a timid and tearful young boy with a speech impediment at the beginning of Meredith and Co. They begin to discuss their former headmaster, "Peter" Stone, at fictional Leadham House School.

It is here we'll pick up Mill's narrative.


Shortly after the match, the three friends entered a large car that was waiting outside the pavilion. Pongo jumped into the driver's seat, while Finch and Hawk made themselves comfortable at the back. Pongo was on his way down to Sussex, to a small village where he now lived during vacation. He was going to drop the Hawk and Finch at their London hotels before going home…

There was a long traffic hold-up, and Pongo turned around.

'What about coming down and seeing Peter on Saturday? You know he's retired, and living quite near us, in the same village. You'd better come down to lunch, and we'll drop in to tea with Peter. By the way, Hawk, you've got to come see Uggles.'

'Uggles!' cried Finch. 'Is he still alive?'

'Yes,' answered Pongo, 'but he's very shaky on his pins, poor old chap! He'll go nearly mad when he sees the Hawk! There's quite a good train at 10.45 from Victoria. I'll meet you at the other end.'

As Pongo drove off from the traffic block, his mind went back some ten years, and he saw himself once again as a trembling new boy on his mother's arm, as he had waited for the train on the platform of Victoria Station. He addressed his two friends once more.

'I've not seen much of Peter yet, but I'll tell him we're coming. He'll probably give us tea in the garden. He's got a nice little place, and the last time I saw him he was very well.'

By this time the Hawk and Finch had reached their destinations, and Pongo dropped them off with a wave of his hand and a cheery 'Well, don't forget. The 10.45 from Victoria. I'll meet you.'


Longtime readers of this site will recall a message once received from Dr. Tom Houston of Windlesham House School, where George Mills had his first teaching job in 1925-1926. Let's review some of what Dr. Houston revealed about George.


G.R.A. Mills, BA Oxon, taught 4 terms at Windlesham House School [left] from Lent 1925 until Easter 1926, and maybe part or all of the summer, but his name was taken off the staff list by end of summer term 1926…

In 1925 Windlesham was at “Southern Cross”, Portslade, near Brighton; principal Mr Charles Scott Malden; headmaster Mr H D L Paterson; and the dog, Tubby.

In April George Mills married Miss Vera Beauclerc [sic]; they bought a house on Benfield Way, Portslade…

We have no record relating to his sudden (?) departure. He could, like a handful of other prep school masters, have been excited by the General Strike (that term)…

During summer 1935 he visited Mrs Charles [Malden], then in Springwells, Steyning, W. Sussex, and told her he had written a book “largely about Windlesham”, published by O.U.P. “He had been at 2 or 3 schools since, but is very faithful to Windlesham”, she said…

Uggles may have been related to Tubby, the Malden’s popular and heroic dog. The portrait of the headmaster Peter Stone has something of Christopher Malden, who had been in effect joint head for some years; he became principal in 1927. 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.


There is certainly a wealth of information in those few paragraphs.

The excerpt from King Willow above notes that Pongo had a vacation home in a small village in Sussex. Mills, during the late 1920s and early 1930s was a rather itinerant teacher who had taught not only in Sussex, but in Windermere, London, and Glion, Switzerland, during the time. This home of Pongo's, used during vacations from school, could clearly have been based on Mills's own home in Portslade.

Despite Mills having left Sussex to continue to teach, he seems always to have kept ties there, which explains the repetitive nature of locations in Sussex continually cropping up in the later life of George Mills.

1935, incidentally, was the year during which Windlesham "moved to 60 acres in the Sussex downs north of Worthing," according to a more recent correspondence from Dr. Houston. That event may have occasioned some nostalgia on the part of Mills.

By the way, Charles Scott Malden, mentioned above, had died in 1896, the year of Mills's birth, and could not have been at Windlesham during George's tenure there, although the elder Malden still may have been a legend around campus.


However, it is the actual visit to Springwells, Steyning [right], that is of greater interest here. While what follows is not in any way a non-fiction account of that visit, the occasion must have meant a great deal to George Mills.



It was Saturday afternoon at about four o'clock, and three young men might have been seen walking slowly through the street of a beautiful little village in Sussex. They were arm-in-arm and talking excitedly.

'You know,' one of them was saying, 'Peter doesn't look much older. A bit grayer, that's all.'

The three young men went on talking until they reached a short drive entered by a wide gate that had been fixed against a post. They turned in through the gate and walked up the drive. Sitting outside the house, on a balcony, was Peter, with Mrs Stone. The tea things were laid, and Peter was on the look-out. When he saw his visitors he rose and hastened down the drive to meet them. He shook each hand cordially, his eyes sparkling with joy.

'Well, Falconer and Finch, this is a pleasure. Ogilvie [Pongo] told me you were coming down, and we were expecting you.'

The Hawk kept on looking at Peter. The grand old man had changed but slightly. He was as erect as ever, but perhaps somewhat more portly. He led the way up to the house, where Mrs Stone gave them all a very warm welcome.

Peter certainly had found a beautiful home. The house, an old farmstead, stood in a small but perfect garden. A little lawn stretched away from it, and a kitchen garden was at the back. Rose trees dotted about and well-kept flower-beds made the scene from the little balcony one of great beauty. Peter indicated some comfortable wicker chairs and Mrs Stone began to pour out the tea.

When the young men had settled themselves down, Peter talked about the match.

'I wish I had been there. That must have been a hot catch of yours, Falconer. The papers were full of it.'

'Oh, yes, sir,' laughed the Hawk. 'I told Finch that it was a bit of a fluke. He hit it straight at me, sir.'

During the serious business of tea there was little conversation. Peter kept glancing at the three boys, now grown to men, and he was very proud of them. Soon after tea Mrs Stone excused herself and left the men together. They produced their pipes and settled down to talking. They had eight years to bridge—eight years of ups and downs, of successes and failures at their public schools. Peter listened intently, allowing them to talk on.

After a while the conversation turned to the future and the careers they intended to adopt. The boys asked Peter's advice on all manner of subjects, and he did his best to answer them. Gradually, however, the as was only natural, the talk reverted to Leadham House, but this time Peter did not listen. As he sat back in his chair, blowing clouds of tobacco from his pipe, he was gazing into the future. He saw the three boys, now on the threshold of manhood, all making names for themselves and doing credit to their professions.

He knew their characters and feared nothing. He saw Finch destined for the Bar, a just and fearless judge, honoured by all men. Ogilvie, who was going into the army after his university career, Peter saw as a great soldier and administrator. But when he thought of Hawk, Peter smiled to himself. Falconer had been his favorite pupil, but Peter would not have admitted it to anybody. He knew that the hawk was to reach great heights, and he saw him as a priest in one of the poorest London parishes, cheerful and smiling, with a horde of ragged children clinging joyfully to the skirts of his cassock. He saw him in the midst of squalor and poverty going on his splendid way of radiating love and happiness. As he sat on the balcony that afternoon, entirely unconscious of the conversation going on around him, Peter's mind sped back through the years, and saw the Hawk, once more the grubby, laughing schoolboy devoted to sport and animals…


In this paragraph, filled with Peter's fictional reveries, we find some hidden real-life tributes.

First, Finch had earlier in the chapter been the batsman for Cambridge referred to by Falconer.

Finch is destined for the Bar out of Cambridge—much like the well-rounded mentor of George Mills at Warren Hill School in Eastbourne, Joshua Goodland [left]. While Goodland would never become a judge—Joshua would, in fact, pass away the next year while serving as vicar of the parish of Compton Dundon—it's probable that Goodland had shared with George the thought that if he'd stayed in his law career he might have at some point. After all, becoming a judge would have been the next logical step in his legal career. That step, however, was never taken: Goodland instead bought into Warren Hill School and eventually became owner and Headmaster. Perhaps it had been with regret that Goodland spoke of it with George.


And if this fictional visit to a village in Sussex reflects Mills's own visit there in 1935, it's interesting to note that 1935 was also the year in which Fr Basil Jellicoe, the noteworthy and charismatic reformer from the parish of St Pancras, had passed way from pneumonia at just 37 years of age—but most attributed his death to overwork on behalf of the London's poor children.

We've surmised there must have been a relationship between Jellicoe and Mills before, one that would have stemmed from George attending Oxford, where Jellicoe had run the Magdalen College Mission, which was manned by volunteer students from the university.

Once again, this indicates at the very least some admiration for Jellicoe [right] on the part of Mills, and even suggests that—given the intimacy that fictional Peter Stone exhibits in his knowledge Falconer above, as the latter graduates from Oxford—that the Mills and Jellicoe had been close friends.


Lastly, Peter envisions Pongo as an army officer who would make a "great soldier and administrator." Pongo as a timid young boy with a speech impediment (a lisp), as we know, was based on Mills himself.

So here we have a great clue: Pongo's character soon would be off to the army as an officer after of Oxford.
Mills, along with most others, must have seen war brewing in Europe. Soon after the publication of King Willow in 1938, George would be named an officer in the Royal Army Pay Corps out of the officer's reserve in 1940—interestingly, something Jellicoe had done following university, when he entered the navy as an officer during the First World War.


Spending WWII as a war substitute officer [left] certainly must have appealed to Mills. With the advent of hostilities in China and Europe signaling renewed global violence, a return to the military, this time as a officer, must have been on his mind.

So, here we have some evidence that Mills was already beginning to think that he might not spend the rest of his life writing books, especially as we can see that he was sending his most popular literary characters out into the world as adults.

George had been a failure in the Army Pay Corps during WWI, and in choosing Pongo for duty as an administrator in the army, he was—perhaps unknowingly—charting the same course for himself.


As we close things out at Who Is George Mills?, it seems natural that the examination of this chapter would fall close to the end of our work here. With that in mind, I'd like to finish it out to its end, as Peter sits among his billowing smoke, contemplating the future of the boys:


Then for no apparent reason he raised his eyes, and looked down the drive. What he saw made him sit up and smile.

'Ogilvie,' he asked suddenly, 'why didn't you bring Uggles to-day? I have not seen him for some time, and I was expecting him.'

Pongo laughed.

'Well, sir, he's rather weak on his legs these days, and he was so pleased at seeing the Hawk again that I thought it might be too much for him.'

Peter smiled expansively.

'He seems to have settled that point for himself. Here he comes!'

The three young men looked down the drive and rose to their feet. Uggles was labouriously coming towards them, puffing with his exertions, and Ogilvie laughingly called over to him.

'Come along, old chap, stir those stumps of yours!'

But the old bulldog found the pace altogether too hot for him. He was in extreme old age, but radiantly happy. Every few yards he lifted his head and looked up at his lord and master with devotion streaming from his eyes now growing dimmer. He ambled along slowly towards the spot where his friends were awaiting him, and snuffled as he went.



With that ending, King Willow closes with a paean both to the past and George's love of dogs, but with eyes focused clearly on the future.

George Mills was 42 years old when the book was published and surrounded by notes for his next two texts (which would both be published in 1939), but he was, himself, looking forward as well. Mills, who had known many more failures in his life than successes to that point, would begin to turn things around and make right many of the perceived wrongs he'd endured in his past.

This last scene, with a contemplative Peter wreathed in smoke and the worthy and loyal Uggles snuffling back to his friends, is the sort of sentimental tableau that Mills must have envisioned for himself at the end of his own life.

But before that could be, Mills had some unfinished business. First, his failed relationship with the military would need to be mended, leaving him with a point of pride there instead of a closeted shame.

We'll take a look at the ways in which Mills began to work steadily to vindicate what he perceived to be his failures next time.

Discussing Maurice Benington Reckitt

It seems a natural segue to point out here that, at the bottom of The Jellicoe Blog, there is the following statement and link: "We are grateful for financial support for our work from MB Reckitt Trust."

Imagine my surprise when I spotted the name of one of the croquet cronies of George, Agnes, and Violet Mills at the bottom of a blog about the work of Fr. Basil Jellicoe, the subject of our last two entries!

Do coincidences ever cease around here?

Maurice Benington Reckitt (19 May 1888 – 11 January 1980) is described in Wikipedia as "a leading British Anglo-Catholic and Christian Socialist writer. He edited Christendom, A Journal of Christian Sociology from 1931 to 1950. Earlier he was a supporter of guild socialism and a founder of the National Guilds League."

In addition, it includes this information: "Reckitt was a leading player and croquet administrator winning the Men's Championship twice (1935 and 1946). Reckitt was President of the Croquet Association between 1967 and 1975."


We know that Reckitt [pictured, right, by artist John Prince, versus Charles Colman, whose mustard company had merged with Reckitt's family firm] took to the lawns with the Mills siblings on several occasions, and in tournament play, the database of the Croquet Association shows that Agnes went 0-3 against Reckitt, although she went 2-1 against Maurice's wife, Aimee. Violet Mills was 0-1 against Maurice.

The database shows no records for George Mills, but the erratic London Times search engine does give the results of a single match, played on 10 July 1965 in the second round of Handicap Doubles at Budleigh Salterton, in which George paired with Maurice in a loss to Mrs. R. B. N. Smartt and Miss J. Cooper, (-4). Mills and Reckitt presumably had played together and won in the first round.

I admit to being clueless as to how doubles partners were arranged in croquet at that level, and so have no idea if this indicates if the men were close, or if chance happened to make them partners.

Reckitt was born into the fortune of the family business, Reckitt & Sons, now Reckitt Benckiser. It only took a few moments for me to locate several of their products beneath our kitchen sink, in the laundry, or within the refrigerator here in Ocala: Brasso, Cling Free, Frank's Red Hot, Resolve, Old English, Lime-A-Way, Spray 'n Wash, Easy Off, and French's Mustard.

Maurice was not really involved much in the family business, however.

It is not my purpose to write a biography of Reckitt—that's been done. In 1941, at the age of approximately 53 Reckitt wrote an autobiography entitled As It Happened: An Autobiography. He was also the subject of the 1988 biography Maurice B. Reckitt by John S. Peart-Binns.

Ample material regarding his life and the founding of "The MB Reckitt Trust" (originally "The Christendom Trust" before 2005) can also be found at http://www.mbreckitttrust.org/history.html.

Nor is it merely my purpose to point out the next (now almost expected) coincidence regarding the fact that George Mills seems to have been a bystander (and perhaps and acquaintance, or even friend) while two British men of great social and spiritual import—Reckitt and Jellicoe—fought on behalf of Christian social causes. Long after the death of both men, their names are linked by the association of Reckitt's trust with the Jellicoe Community.

The following is an excerpt from information on the history of the trust at the website mentioned above:

Reckitt was brought up as an Anglo-Catholic, and as a young man became involved with guild socialism and various Christian social movements. During the First World War, he joined the Labour Research Department, and in 1923 became Chairman of the League of the Kingdom of God. His most enduring achievement was Christendom, a quarterly journal of ‘Christian sociology’ which he edited (and largely subsidized) from 1931 to 1950. His vocation, in the words of his biographer, John Peart-Binns, ‘was to be available’. He spent most of his life ‘co-ordinating and leavening the thinking of small groups together with such people as T. S. Eliot, Dorothy L. Sayers, T. M. Heron, Philip Mairet and many priests’. He authored and edited numerous books on Christian social issues, of which the most readable and best-known is his account of the social movement in the Church of England, From Maurice to Temple (1947).


Author Martin Jarrett-Kerr continues elsewhere in that website:

Maurice Reckitt [right] was a comparatively wealthy layman, married but with no children. The Reckitt family derived its wealth from ‘Reckitt’s Blue’ in North East Yorkshire. Maurice was educated privately until university, when he went to St John’s College, Oxford, where he got a good degree in history.

He was brought up as a traditional ‘Anglo-Catholic’, but as a youth he soon became worried by the gap, even contradiction, between his faith and the human and social life around him. As a schoolboy he came under the influence of the fine historian Fr John Neville Figgis, C.R., who was not a typical ‘Christian socialist’ so much as a scholar who saw, and taught others to see, the significance of ordinary ‘worldly’ life in the light of the Christian gospel. After university Reckitt became involved in lively and intelligent groups concerned with social ordering…

When Reckitt went up to Oxford ‘I became’, he said, ‘a Socialist in 1908, and I shall always think that, for my generation, a Socialist was a very good thing to have been.’ But he was disillusioned with the ‘Fabian atmosphere’ of Oxford socialism, and found the Church Socialist League more congenial. His practical work in 1916 was as an assistant in London of the ‘Labour Research Department’: his task was to read, mark and index the trade union press. (This is interesting, as disproving the picture of Reckitt as a rich dilettante talking about egalitarianism in comfortable surroundings.)

Later, in 1923, the Church Socialist League ‘was reborn, not without travail, as the League of the Kingdom of God’. One of its members, Sir Henry Slessor, explained that ‘we came to see that our objective was not the promotion of Socialism, but the advent of the Will of God as expressed in His Kingdom on Earth. A society pledged to forward this purpose, sacramental in doctrine, composed solely of communicants, seemed far nearer to our desires than one pledged to Socialism, in part supported by modernists and persons only sub-Christian in belief.’


Interestingly, the change from "Christendom" to "MB Reckitt" in the actual name of the trust in 2005 was based strictly on practical matters, according to the fund's website: "The change of name was decided upon because the Trustees considered that the term ‘Christendom’ nowadays carries connotations that have nothing to do with either the origins or the focus of the Trust, and which could mislead the public. By using the name of the benefactor who endowed the Trust, continuity with the honourable past of the Trust is maintained."


How the term Christendom (which was also the name of a quarterly journal subsidized and published by Reckitt from 1931 to 1950) came to be used for the trust is exemplified here in this passage written by theologian Duncan B. Forrester:

It has become conventional to assert that we now live in a post-Christendom situation, and to look back patronizingly to the attempts to revive a rather romanticized version of medieval society on the part of Maurice Reckitt, V. A. Demant and the Christendom Group, or even T. S. Eliot in his The Idea of a Christian Society, with its ringing pronouncement that ‘The Christian can be satisfied with nothing less than a Christian organization of society – which is not the same thing as a society consisting exclusively of devout Christians. It would be a society in which the natural end of man – virtue and well-being in community – is acknowledged for all, and the supernatural – beatitude – for those who have the eyes to see it . . .’ But if that kind of political theology has had its day with the recognition that Christendom has passed away beyond recall, there remains an urgent need for a post-Christendom beyond theology.

Reckitt's vision, however, probaby is summed up better in what is essentially a mission statement for The MB Reckitt Trust: "Being and building communities that are diverse and cohesive, in order to bring about a stronger society."

The Mills family, notably George's father, the Revd Barton R. V. Mills, struggled with at least some aspects of religion. The elder Mills converted to Roman Catholicism during his time at Christ Church, Oxford, but spent virtually the rest of his life as an Anglican vicar, chaplain, and cleric, even having been an assistant chaplain at the Chapel Royal of the Savoy, in which one of his first services was during the funeral of Queen Victoria.

Barton Mills was an erudite man, a lover of history, chess, and debate, and a scholar whose translations and interpretations of the work of Bernard of Clairvaux are still cited today. He also gave of himself, serving as an Acting Chaplain to the Forces during the First World War, in which sons Arthur and George served, and as an officer of the Associated Societies for the Protection of Women and Children, and as founder of the Association for Improving the Status of the Unbeneficed Clergy.

Mills seemed to share the belief of Fr. Jellicoe, as explained by the current Archbishop of Canterbury, that: "[H]e had no problem at all in coming to preach in a church part of which was reserved for the service of Christ in the form of his poor."

For the Reverend Mills, this was all about career choices, subjugating personal belief and allowing himself opportunities to do the work to which he felt called, while also being able to support his wife and children. Roman Catholicism was a matter of personal devotion; the Anglican Church provided his public pulpit, as well as his bread and butter.

It would be stunning to me to find out that these theological and deeply personal matters of faith had not been discussed with George, especially just before Barton's death in 1932. This is corroborated by the fact that George's funeral service was held in the Catholic Church of St Peter, Prince of the Apostles [left], at Budleigh Salterton in 1972.

No, the Catholicism of Barton Mills was not a secret taken to his grave.

Reckitt had an Anglo-Catholic upbringing, but his lifetime of work as a Christian socialist seems to have transcended denominational barriers as well.

A 1958 manifest from a ship called the Rangtiki documents it sailing into England from New Zealand with Maurice and his wife, Evelyn Aimee, aboard. Their address is given as "157 St. James Court, Buckingham Gate, London SW1."

While this address is a bit closer to The Guards Museum than the London stomping grounds of the Mills family just to the west of Buckingham Palace Gardens, it would have been within extremely familiar territory to George Mills.

The men also shared a common Oxford background (although Mills did not earn his degree) and likely many similar lifelong beliefs on social and religious subjects. One does not doubt they had their differences regarding how exactly those beliefs should be acted upon, perhaps even assertively expressed over cocktails at the bar in the clubhouse at Budleigh, but their similar backgrounds of privilege, with some devotion to helping those in need, no doubt gave them a wide berth of common ground upon which to stand.

Reckitt's wife, Aimee, was as we know a competitive tennis player in the second decade of the 20th century [Wimbledon 1923, 1925, 1927; pictured, above, in 1927 with Lili Alvarez, Aimee at left], but was apparently not a particularly healthy woman overall. She passed away in 1968.

We also know this from the trust's website:

Miss [Dorothy] Howell-Thomas compiled a ‘Bibliography of Maurice B. Reckitt’s published work, for his ninetieth birthday’ (1978); and this was revised and enlarged in 1980. She also helped the archivist of the University of Sussex to sort out the Reckitt archives deposited there, along with other related material, especially that associated with Reckitt’s friend and colleague, Philip Mairet, sometime editor of The New English Weekly to which Reckitt frequently contributed.


Reckitt lived to the age of 91, and was still active in matters regarding his trust until his death in 1980. His bibliography is vast, and the amount of archival material related to Reckitt's life and work held at the University of Sussex is, to me, astonishing.

In addition to his work on Guilds and Christian social issues and philosophies, Reckitt also penned the text Croquet Today, and as we know, was an avid player of championship caliber, as well as a successful administrator for the Croquet Association, giving him yet another interest in common with George and the spinster Mills sisters.

But Reckitt's legacy is his trust, and its requirement that the projects which it endows should not simply be charities, but institutions and organizations that… well, let Mr. Jarrett-Kerr explain:

From time to time, before his death in 1980, Reckitt protested that the Trust was still behaving in too theoretical a manner. He submitted a ‘Statement’ to be read and discussed at the Trust meeting of 6 May 1973, which emphasized the clauses in the Trust Deed that the Trust is ‘charged with promotion of research into the application of Christian social Thinking’ and with obtaining expert advice ‘upon the form and feasability [sic] of research projects and the areas where they could best be affected’. He feared that the Trust had neglected its duty in this respect – the duty ‘to initiate, seek out and further enquiry into what we may judge to be the vital aspects of modern economic and industrial disorder’. Instead it was ‘tending to confine itself to doing exactly what it began by repudiating – distributing its resources (on) purely charitable gifts.’


Reckitt's trust apparently has stayed true to his vision of not simply bandaging the ills of society, but endowing those who would work to prevent society's wounds from manifesting themselves at all.

Fr. John Basil Lee Jellicoe, Part 2

When I was a boy, my parents used to drag my brother and me on family holidays to camp in a caravan at various scenic locales in the eastern portion of the United States. Almost invariably, my father would strike up a conversation with some fellow around a campfire and inform him we were from Pennsylvania.

That chap, no matter where he himself was from, would typically say something to my father along the lines of, "Oh! Pennsylvania! Do you know our friends, the Smiths?"

After politely assuring him that the Smiths (or whomever) that we knew were very unlikely the same Smiths that he knew, Dad would still grumble later about the fact that a couple of million people lived in The Keystone State, and about people's stupidity in general.



* * * * *

Sometimes I wonder if my father wouldn't have a good long rant about me and what I'm doing here, in essence asking the entire U.K., "Say, do you happen to know a bloke named Mills?"

I mean, sure, George Mills was an officer's reserve military paymaster (in WWII) and went to Oxford (Christ Church) and was concerned about the Anglican Church and Roman Catholicism. And Father J. B. L. Jelliocoe was an officer's reserve paymaster in the military (in WWI; perhaps this is where Mills got the "reserve officer" idea) and went to Oxford (Magdalen College) and was concerned about the church as well. And A. B. H. Bishop went to Oxford (Jesus College) at the same time as those two, and was Head of Magdalen College School at Brackley during the same period Jellicoe was head of the Magdalen College Mission in Camden. Oh, and Bishop was raised in Cornwall, where George Mills was born, but raised quite near George's Acland family ancestral home at Killerton in Devon.

And it likely is just a coincidence that Mills and Bishop left Oxford and each became involved in independent preparatory schools. And that Mills was writing books about those preparatory schools at the same time that Bishop was advancing his career in the schools. And it's likely just a coincidence that George's father was a social reformer in London, based in Kensington, during the 1920s and early 1930s, while Jellicoe was a London social reformer in nearby St Pancras during that same era.

Small world, isn't it?

So it's probably just a colossal coincidence that, when the young but worn-out Jellicoe passed away in 1935, his memorial service was attended by a gentleman named "Mr. H. E. Howell," a chap bearing the same moniker as a gentleman who, as an old friend of the author, had helped George Mills by reading the manuscript for his first novel, Meredith and Co.: The Story of a Modern Preparatory School, in 1933.

This Howell attended the service as the representative of All Saints Margaret Street, a Victorian Anglo-Catholic High Church that rests almost midway between the Kensington address of the Mills and the St. Pancras parish to the northeast, where Jellicoe had worked so diligently on behalf of the poor.



* * * * *

So much of what we've discussed above may all simply be coincidental. Let's look at some hard-copy evidence.

Here's is how the London Times documented Jellicoe's death on 26 August 1935:


THE REV. J. B. L. JELLICOE

SLUM CLEARANCE IN ST. PANCRAS

The Rev. John Basil Lee Jellicoe died on Saturday in a nursing home of pneumonia in his thirty-seventh year. He will be remembered for his remarkable work as the chairman and organizer of the St. Pancras House Improvement Society, Limited, which has demonstrated that the improvement of slum areas by private enterprise is a sound financial proposition. The elder son of the Rev. T. H. L. Jellicoe, of Sullington Warren, Pulborough, Jellicoe took his degree from Magdalen College, Oxford, and after preparation at St. Stephen's House was appointed in 1922 head of the Magdalen College Mission and curate of St. Mary's, Somers Town. He resolved that he would not rest till his people had homes fit to live in, and the rehousing schemes started by his society have already provided many excellent flats with gardens, trees, ponds, swings for the children, and other amenities. Although the rents charged are not more than what the tenants paid for the old slums, the loan stock receives 2 per cent. and the ordinary shares 3 per cent. In 1929 Messrs. Whitbread entrusted the control of the rebuilt public house in Stibbington Street to Father Jellicoe. It was licensed to sell beer but not spirits, and was provided with a roof garden, a restaurant, and various games. When it was proposed to form a college for publicans, to be conducted by Church of England clergymen, Father Jellicoe said it was hoped "to attract young men of the best type who would regard the office of publican as a great and honourable profession. They should regard it also as a magnificent opportunity of social service by providing decent and happy recreation for their fellow-men." The progress of the society was steady, with the support of the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the late Minister of Health (Sir Hilton Young, now Lord Kennet), and others, and more blocks of flats were opened. But, as a letter in The Times last June showed, the society still needs at least £150,000 in loan stock and Ordinary shares to rebuild three verminous and overcrowded sites in Somers Town already in its possession. Last year Father Jellicoe moved to St. Martin-in-the-Fields as curate.


In that obituary we find that by 1935 Jellicoe had moved his career locale even closer to Kensington (and George Mills, who was probably teaching at Eaton Gate in Belgravia), taking over as the incumbent at St. Martin-in-the-Fields at Trafalgar Square. By the way, 1922 was the year that Mills ended his pursuit of an Oxon degree.

Details of Jellicoe's funeral were published in the Times on 29th August 1935 [my emphases]:



THE REV. J. B. L. JELLICOE

The funeral of the Rev. Basil Jellicoe took place at Chailey Parish Church {right]yesterday. The service was conducted by the Bishop of Dover, assisted by the Rev. H. J. Boyd and the Rev. H. H. Matravers. The choir boys of St. Mary's of the Angels Song School, under the Rev. Desmond Morse-Boycott, took part in the service. The principal mourners included:–
Mrs. Jellicoe (mother), Lieutenant-Commander C. J. L. Jellicoe (brother), Mrs. I. L. Murray (aunt), the Rev. John and Mrs. Murray, Mr. Felix St. H. Jellicoe, Mr. St. Alban Jellicoe, Miss Jellicoe, Mrs. Jellicoe and the Rev. Arthur H. Boyd and the Rev. Halbert J. Boyd (uncles).

Among others present were:-
Mrs. Madge Waller (representing the Under 40 Club), Mr. Eric Beetham and Mr. R. D. Just (representing the Fellowship of St. Christopher). the Rev. N. Scott, Miss E. Terry, Mr. R. L. Atkinson, Mr. L. Day and Mr. Ian B. Hamilton (representing St. Pancras House Improvement Society), the Rev. J. C. Nankivell (representing the Isle of Dogs Housing Society), the Rev. N. G. Powell (representing Canon Carr, St. Michael's Housing Society, Penzance), Mr. Donald G. Pelly (Strichard Housing Society).

The Rev. C. P. Shaw (representing the Church Union Housing Association), the Rev. Percy Maryon-Wilson and the Rev. Lorimer Reece (representing the Magdalene College Mission), the Rev. H. W. Grepe, the Rev. W. T. Norburn, the Rev. Hampden Thompson, Canon H. L. Pass (representing the Dean and Chapter of Chichester Cathedral), the Rev. C. W. Handford, the Rev. A. R. H. Faithfull, the Rev. C. E. B. Neate, the Rev. F. G. Fincham, the Rev. Montague Cox, the Rev. Donald V. Beckingham, the Rev. W. A. C. Ullathorne, the Rev. B. Thackeray, the Rev. E. I. Frost, the Rev. C. P. Orr, the Rev. C. G. Earmaker, Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Blencowe, Mr. and Mrs. I. Blencowe, Miss Blencowe, Mrs. Morse-Boycott.

Mrs. Maryon-Wilson, Miss Bartlett Blake, Elsie Lady Shiffner, Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Boyd, Lieutenant-Commander and Mrs. E. B. Martino, Mr. Alan L. Todd, M.P., Miss Margerson, Mr. and the Hon. Mrs. Maryan-Wilson, Mrs. Hampden Thompson, Mr. and Mrs. Basil Henriques, Lady Kenderdine, and Mrs. Reginald M. Mason.

A memorial service was held at St. Mary the Virgin, Somers Town [left], yesterday for the Rev. John Basil Lee Jellicoe. The Rev. Percy Maryon-Wilson officiated, assisted by the Rev. H. L. O. Rees and the Rev. T. M. Parker.

Among those present were:-
Mrs. D. G. Morris, Mr. Halliday McCartney, Miss Critchley, Mr. S. Rundle, Mr. and Mrs. John Gillard, Mr. W. H. Sheppard, the Rev. Langtry Williams (New York). the Rev. Eric Bailey (All Saints', Margaret Street). The Rev. T. A. S. Marsden, Mr. P. Henniker Heaton, Mr. A. J. Stewart, Miss Hunt, Mrs. Kightley, Mrs. M. White, Mr. John F. Dell, Mr. L. Myers, Mr. and Mrs. Toop, Miss E. Miller, Miss S. G. Saunders, Mr. Charles Low, Miss E. M. Evans, Miss Oaker.

Miss F. A. Day, Mrs. M. P. Leonard, Mr. W. L. Cooke, Miss Packer, the Rev. L. Jones, the Rev. J. W. E. Hooton, Mrs. A. Clark (St. Mary's Schools). Mrs. Ayrton, Mrs. Davidge, the Rev. Adam Fox (representing Magdalen College).

Miss Collet, Sister E. Armstrong, Miss De Rougemont, the Rev. Nigel Scott (representing St. Pancras House Improvement Society), Councillor F. Howson (former Mayor of St. Pancras), Mr. E. Ormnan, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. W, Bell, Miss Crowe, Miss Gedge, Miss E. Ayr, Miss E. Perry, the Rev. Norman Haigh, Mrs Henley Chater.
The Rev. J. A. Gorton, Brother Kenneth (B.S.F.A.), Mr. H. E. Howell (All Saints', Margaret Street), Sister Gent, the Rev. M. Le Marrino, Father Biggart (representing the Community of the Resurrection), Mrs. W. Sharp, Father Ferguson, the Rev. C. D. Horsley, the Rev. A. Swift, Mrs. E. A. Taylor, Miss Horsley.

Miss Edith Neville (chairman of the St. Pancras House Improvement Society) was unable to be present owing to absence abroad, and Lady Warren was unable to be present owing to serious illness.


I did not transcribe the above myself (my thanks to Chailey 1914-1918), so I do not know how accurate any of it is. For example, there's a fair chance that "Miss Margerson" may be "Miss Margesson," daughter of Mr. M. and Lady Isabel Margesson, a couple that attended the wedding of George Mills and Vera Louise Beauclerk in 1925. In addition, not only did they attend the wedding of George's brother, Captain Arthur F. H. Mills, to Lady Dorothy Walpole, but Mr. Margerson gave the bride away (as she was not on speaking terms with her family because of the couple's union that day).

As a frequent transcriber of the predominant font of that era's London Times (and with the crow's-footed bifocal squint to prove it), an "ss" as in Margesson can appear to resemble a "rs" as you can see in the name "margesson" in the fine print of this item [right] from the Times regarding the Mills-Walpole nuptials.

Nonetheless, there's no reason to think that the Mr. H. E. Howell mentioned there is part of any transcription error.



* * * * *

Anyway, again dispensing with what may be simple coincidence and looking more at facts, the contemporary "Jellicoe Community" of today still allows students from Oxford to volunteer and work in the community to meet the needs of the local people, just as it did back in the days of Camden's Magdalen College Mission.

Even before the days of Jellicoe's stewardship, students volunteered. From the 1916 text In Slums and Society: Reminiscences of Old Friends by James Granville Adderley, we read an instructive description of the Magdalen College Mission: "I shall never forget my initiation to that 'open house,' where burglars and undergraduates fed and played and slept under one roof."

That was written during a time just before Jellicoe, Bishop, and Mills all attended various constituent colleges at the University of Oxford, from which the mission drew those compassionate undergraduates.

Moving forward in time, into the 1920s and 1930s when Fr. Jellicoe became established at the Mission, we read this from a website entitled The Jellicoe Blog describing the sometimes theatrical nature of the legendary reformer: "Jellicoe had been born into privilege and used his many connections to assemble a powerful alliance for change - enlisting the support of the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Housing Minister in his St Pancras House Improvement Society. He understood the importance of dramatic flourish – erecting vast papier-mâché effigies of the rats and bugs that infested the slums, and ceremonially torching them as the first slums were demolished. And he used the ‘new media’ of his age: making an early film of the conditions in which his parishioners lived, and making a mobile cinema in a trailer, so that those who lived in prosperity up and down the land could see what life in the slums was really like. After each showing he told them: 'Now you know what life is like. You have no excuse for inaction.'"

Back to (almost) unbridled speculation…

We know George Mills attended Harrow School at The Grove, the school's house strong in drama and the arts, and that Mills worked in with children at Windlesham House School in Portslade in performances, dramatic productions, and even musicals. Again, would it be a stretch to consider that perhaps working with the ever-present and attention-starved (as well as quite often actually starved) children of the slums that followed Jellicoe around could have been what helped nudge Mills along towards becoming a schoolmaster after departing Oxford?

Still, London and its environs comprised populous and bustling metropolis that was the crossroads of England and the rest of the U.K., if not the entire Empire, upon which the sun never set.

What were the actual chances that all of these men knew each other well? What were the chances that all of these circumstantial occurrences were anything other than sheer coincidence?
We've no evidence these men ever met while attending Oxford, or that any save Jellicoe ever worked at the Mission. There's no evidence that the Howell at the 1935 funeral service is the Howell thanked in the 1933 preface of Meredith and Co. And, although their names rest alongside each other's for eternity in that preface, we have no proof that Howell and Bishop ever met, even though they both knew George Mills. And, finally, George's father, Revd Barton R. V. Mills was a much older man than Basil Jellicoe, and although they both crusaded for social reform, each man in his own way, they may have run in completely different circles and may never have so much as met.

There also is no solid reason to think that it's noteworthy that Jellicoe, born in 1899 and son of a cleric, was raised in Chailey, Sussex, just 15 miles or so north of—of course!—Seaford, East Sussex, a coastal town that simply won't stop cropping up coincidentally in the story of George Mills. But if you do think 15 miles is simply too far away from Seaford to connect it with Mills, let's discuss the fact that Chailey sits just four miles or so east of the location of Parkfield School in Haywards Heath, where George, born in 1896 and son of a cleric, attended classes.

What we do know is that, in some way—even loosely—these men somehow are linked to George Mills, circa 1933, perhaps if only in a way similar to the logic behind Six [or, depending on whether or not the teller understands the concept, Seven] Degrees to Kevin Bacon [right]. Exactly how they were linked is the mystery, one we may never solve.



* * * * *

It has been over a year since my first messages to All Saints Margaret Street, Magdalen College School, and the Old Brackleians were sent. No replies with research assistance have been forthcoming so far, and may not ever be.

We may never know more than we now do about these men who seem so tantalizingly close to each other—personally, historically, and even spiritually. Perhaps this is all a series of overblown coincidences, neatly if not randomly arranged on an undreamed-of internet some 80 to 90 years later, and even if it is true these men did know each other, that in itself doesn't make any one man's behavior at the time in any way causal in regard to any aspect of another's life.

But I find it hard to believe that such strong-willed, talented, and outgoing men wouldn't have influenced each other in many ways, directly and indirectly.

In a way, all of this seems suspiciously as if a nearby camper asked my father if he knew the "Smiths" from Pennsylvania, and the more the fellow described them, the more it became apparent that they—out of millions—actually had been our neighbours…


* * * * *

Fr. Jellicoe inspired a stage musical [left] that recently played at the Shaw Theatre on Euston Road in London, and his memory is held fast by the communities he helped, as well as a more figurative, charitable community that still works in his memory.

I'll close with these words from Fr. Rob Wickham, rector of Hackney:

Jellicoe was angry. He saw 5 children to a bed, he saw children with breathing difficulties, and he saw the effect that mass unemployment can have in a community. He saw loan sharks at work, and he saw people every night affected by fleas, bed bugs, rats and cockroaches. “How can I preach Jesus when people live in such filth? The devil is the Lord of Somers Town," came his cry.

This vision of a new Jerusalem led him to use a local workforce to charge the same rents after the rebuilding as before, and to keep a community strong through its nurseries, rent clubs, furniture clubs and even a pub – a place where clergy and churchwardens might go after evensong!

This vision holds dear today. It is a vision which undergirds the principles of the Jellicoe Communities and Community organizing. Local people doing something – galvanizing their efforts to make a difference in the communities in which they live and where they service.



* * * * *

For more information about the Jellicoe Community today, see http://www.theology-centre.org/jellicoe-community.

Fr. John Basil Lee Jellicoe, Part 1

Today, we'll take a look at a short thread we've been following, trying to get some closure on the preface to the 1933 book Meredith and Co. by George Mills. There are a few other loose ends to pursue besides this, and I think my work here at Who Is George Mills? will be just about complete.

As we know, the preface referred to two men, as having been helpful and encouraging during his production of the manuscript for the text: Mr A. Bishop, the "Head Master of Magdalen College School, Brackley," and Mr. H.E. Howell, an "old friend."

H. E. Howell remains unidentified, a mysterious man of some influence on George Mills, but unknown to us today.

Last time we found out that Bishop was Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop, not only once Head Master of Magdalen in Brackley, but longtime, successful Head at Warwick School. Many thanks to Mr. G. N. Frykman, archivist at Warwick for his wealth of information on Bishop and the school of his era (1936-1962), as well as for his effort to get someone at Magdalen College School to contact me.

Magdalen College School, or should I say schools, has an interesting history. There are apparently three: Oxford, Brackley, and Lincolnshire, although it appears the name of the last is the Skegness Grammar School. That name, interestingly, was taken in 1933 upon its relocation from Wainfleet.

The Oxford school, originally located in Magdalen College, since has moved across the Magdalen Bridge and expanded.

The institution of our interest here, though, is Brackley, and according to Wikipedia, the college still owns the site in South Horthamptonshire, and has a presence on the governing board.

This historical presence ties the school to the famed Magdalen College, Oxford, and it is there that our investigation leads us. First let's look at an historical figure with close ties to Magdalen College as well.

During the 1920s, a fiery reformer named Fr. Basil Jellicoe [right] took the stage. Born on 5 February 1899 in Chailey, Sussex. Jellicoe is noted in a 1917 Chailey parish magazine as having been "Univ OTC, Oxford." Subsequent issues note that Jellicoe served with the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve during 1918 and is described as an 'assistant paymaster,' a designation that ended in July 1919, when Jellicoe was presumably disembarked from his service after the end of hostilities in the First World War.

The 2004 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography says this about Jellicoe:

Jellicoe, (John) Basil Lee (1899-1935), housing reformer and Church of England clergyman, was born on 5 February 1899 at Chailey, Sussex, the elder son of Thomas Harry Lee Jellicoe, rector of Chailey, and his wife, Bethia Theodora, youngest daughter of Sir John Boyd, of Maxpoffle, Roxburgh, lord provost of Edinburgh from 1888 to 1891. His father was a cousin of J. R. Jellicoe, first Earl Jellicoe.

A few months before the end of the First World War he left Oxford to join the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and served for a short time in the Mediterranean.


On the website Chailey 1914-1918, Paul Nixon gives his opinion regarding that entry:

This rather spare and stuffy review does not appear to do justice to the man. In the 1920s he campaigned successfully to replace the Somers Town slums in Camden, north London with decent housing and was a colossus in the neighbourhood as well as a firm favourite with the residents. He founded what later became the St Pancras Housing and Humanist Association and helped set up similar groups throughout England. He worked tirelessly for the benefit of poorer communities and must have been sorely missed when he died at the young age of 36.


Father Luke Miller, President of the Haileybury Society, wrote this of Jellicoe:

Just after the First World War Jellicoe had come down from Magdalene Oxford, been ordained and appointed as the Magdalene College Missioner, responsible for a Christian Mission to the area round S. Pancras station in London supported and funded by members of his college. It was an area of slums: dark alleys, stinking tenements, jumbles of dwellings with no sanitation, no light and providing hardly any shelter.

Seeing the terrible housing conditions Father Jellicoe insisted that the spiritual duty of the church for the souls of her children must extend to a physical duty to their wellbeing and specifically to their housing.

Jellicoe cajoled the owners; raised the funds; demanded support; lobbied politicians; worked to change opinion, employed the press – Gaumont films made a news reel that was sent round the country and the world – and generally made himself a nuisance to anyone and everyone to get things done. It was fabulously successful. Things were done and the whole area was transformed.

His work spread beyond to confines of his own parish. He was called on to develop his new concept of Housing Associations in the Isle of Dogs in London and in other cities in the nation. His idea spread round the world, and he is the father of social housing.

Father Jellicoe was not a social reformer. He was a Gospel preacher. Once he described the beginning of the work with the housing. “We wanted money for these building schemes” he said, “So whom do you suppose we went to? Well we went first to a poor paralyzed woman who hadn’t a penny, who couldn’t use anything but her lips, but who knew how to pray. That was the beginning of everything.”

It was costly what he did. It was costly to others who had to give up their preconceptions and their prejudices and be carried along by him in his enthusiasm for the gospel. But it was also costly for him. Twice he had breakdowns under the pressure of the work. He drew strength from his daily offering of the Body and Blood of Jesus at the altar in his church; he organized a prayer guild to sustain the mission in prayer, and he drew on the power of the scriptures in his spiritual warfare. But it cost him nonetheless.

Someone who knew him well wrote of him, “I can see him now, pacing round and round the room, a soul on fire within a rather faded cassock, his eyes ablaze with what I can only call a fury of faith for the fighting of ancient wrongs, his heart aglow with affection for all sorts and conditions of men and with visions for their greater good. I wondered how long it would take for so keen a flame to burn out.”

Basil Jellicoe died, burnt out and exhausted, aged just 36.


At a Service of Thanksgiving celebrating the renewal of St. Martin-in-the-Fields 0n 28 April 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury mentioned Jellicoe: "In the days when St Martin's was gloriously beginning to reinvent itself in the second and third decades of the last century, a very great Anglo-Catholic priest, Father Basil Jellicoe, at that time the incumbent at St Paul's Convent Garden, was challenged by some of his more narrow-minded High Church friends about why he would come to celebrate and preach in a parish church like this where the blessed sacrament was not reserved. Father Jellicoe said he had no problem at all in coming to preach in a church part of which was reserved for the service of Christ in the form of his poor."


I will not pretend to have any real knowledge of the High Church, Low Church, Anglo-Catholicism, or of the relationship between the Anglican Church and Roman Catholicism.

Although we have not established fully a relationship between Jellicoe and George Mills, regular readers will find a few items already begin jump out from the above. More coincidences involving George Mills? His life seems at times to have been not much more than a series of interesting coincidences!

While it is no more a coincidence that Mills and Jellicoe served in WWI than it would be for any of the other countless men and women who served, it is interesting to note that both Mills and Jellicoe served in the pay corps during the conflict.

Interestingly, despite being a pay corps wash-out as a fatigue man in the Great War, Mills righted the ship of his military career by later himself becoming a member of the reserve of officers [how, exactly, is unknown] and serving as a lieutenant paymaster during the Second World War.

After the First World War, we know Mills attended Oxford, the location of Magdalen College, where Jellicoe received undeniable financial help via the "Magdalen College Mission," as we can see from the image at right.

In addition, Revd Barton R. V. Mills, an Anglican cleric converted to Roman Catholicism and the father of George Mills, is noted for having "founded the Association for Improving the Status of the Unbeneficed Clergy, and was [honourable] secretary of the Society for the Protection of Women and Children" during his life, as described in his obituary in the Times of London. These charitable works occupied the time of the senior Mills from the 1920s through his passing in 1932.

In fact, as early as 1884, when Barton Mills was beginning his career as a cleric, he was found "sitting on the Battersea Committee as an active member, according to a 15 December [1884] report by The Council of the Society for Organising Charitable Relief and Repressing Mendicity," and during the First World War, he had served as an "Acting Chaplain to the Forces."

The Rev. Mills had spent his life doing good works, and in a time when the young Jellicoe—a man with so much passion and vision—couldn't have helped but capture the notice and perhaps fancy of the elder cleric, George's father.


Lastly, we also know that much of George's life was concerned with religion. His father obviously had strong but ambivalent feelings about the exact nature of his own spirituality, converting to Roman Catholicism during the period in his life in which he also began serving as a vicar in the Anglican Church, and Barton later an assistant chaplain in the Chapel Royal at the Savoy.

The tribute paid by the Archbishop of Canterbury above to Fr. Jellicoe seems to apply to the Rev. Mills as well: "[He would have] had no problem at all in coming to preach in [any] church part of which was reserved for the service of Christ in the form of his poor."

Despite current skepticism by the Savoy itself, it's clear that the Rev. Mills had converted to Roman Catholicism (as did many of the men he saw as role models of his youth, like Rev. R. S. Hawker, who converted on his deathbed). By 1956, we find George Mills teaching at Ladycross School [left], a Catholic preparatory school in Seaford, Sussex, and having his own memorial service held at Catholic Church of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles in Budleigh Salterton in 1972.


Jellicoe saw a blurred line between an exact daily practice of Christianity and its more important function of providing a necessary service to humankind. He was a charitable reformer in the same city at the same time George's own father was. Both Mills and Jellicoe had ties to Oxford in the 1920s. And just before that time, Jellicoe, like Mills, recently had served under the Colours in the pay corps, of all things!

These still could be coincidences, but we'll try to tie them together even a bit more tightly (and weave in Bishop and Howell) next time—stay tuned!

Who Was Mr. H. E. Howell?

Here in the States, we just love numbers that end in fives, but we love zeroes even more. And a number just isn't anything unless it ends in double or triple zeroes. A baseball player with 99 career home runs is just a guy, as they say. A fellow with 100 home runs in his career—now he's something special!

There was a news bit the other evening that the St. Louis baseball manager, Tony LaRussa, was the first since the legendary Cornelius McGillicuddy in 1950 to reach 5,000 managerial wins for his career. Of course, LaRussa was also the first one since then to reach 4,998 and 4,999, but they just weren't quite the same accomplishments, now, were they?

I say this because the temperature here in north central Florida is predicted to reach 99°F today, and despite the discomfort it will cause, there are those who will be disappointed if it doesn't touch the century mark!

This all has nothing to do, however, with the topic of today's back burner item, although the word "burner" is clearly apropos.

It now has been over a year since I received a copy of the first book written by George Mills, 1933's Meredith and Co. At the time, I posted the contents of the book's preface. In part, it reads [emphasis mine]:

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 very much indebted to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material.

First of all, wouldn't it be something were that original manuscript copy to turn up?

Secondly, while I've closed the gap on the identity of Mr. A Bishop (and hope to write about that soon), Mr. H. E. Howell remains a mystery.

The first matter of business in chasing down any such name is to try to tease a Christian name out of those initials. In this case, I'm afraid there is not even a very solid guess that I'd go to war with.

Mills, I've felt, must have been writing Meredith in London, although that may not be accurate. Labouring, however, under that assumption, I scoped the London telephone directories of the era for a Howell with the first initial "H."

One name did jump out immediately: Hinds Howell, a physician who lived and/or practiced at 145 Harley Street, W.1. He certainly would have been well-schooled enough not to simply offer Mills a pat on the back about his book and to diagnose certain inadequacies.

Also, that name "Hinds Howell" traces back into the late 19th century when a "Canon Hinds Howell, MA," resided at the Drayton Rectory—where Watkin Williams, friend and colleague of George's father, the Revd Barton R. V. Mills—once was located.

However, the physician, Hinds Howell, turns out to be Conrad Meredith Hinds Howell (1877 – 1960), and clearly not an H. E. Howell.

Now, I'm sure, the term "old friend" doesn't necessarily imply Howell's chronological age, but the fact that he and Mills had enjoyed a friendship that lasted many years. Where might they have met? Parkfield School? Harrow? In the neighbourhood at Kensington? Under the Colours? At Oxford?

There was also a Hamilton Howell, who resided at 14 Norfolk Terrace in Brighton. Mills might have met him while teaching at Windlesham House and living in Portslade in 1925–26. Would that time frame characterize an "old friend" by 1933?

In 1937, there are also a "Harry E." and a "Herbert E." among the Howells of London, along with our discredited "Hinds."

But who are they? Our answer here clearly doesn't lie in the telephone book.

One might assume Howell was a learned man, a man whom Mills would have trusted for advice of a literary nature. I'm sure Georges wife and perhaps his sisters also read his manuscript, followed by a hearty, "That's simply wonderful, George!" The men mentioned in the preface above, though, are likely men of letters who would have provided more of a practical critique.

Let's look elsewhere.

We find an H. E. Howell mentioned in the 1913 edition of The Devonian Year Book of the London Devonian Association. On page 25, there is a description of a re-enactment of the game of bowls being played when the "Armada" was sighted, and a speech was given in the Great Empress hall by Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty (who, in his remarks, announced he "sprang from a good old Devonian family" ), to the London Devonian Club, the Exeter Club, the Three Towns Association, the Barumites of London, the Ottregians, the Tivertonians, representatives of the Devonian Clubs of Southend, Southampton, Swansea, Newport, Portsmouth, etc., as well as "the men and women of Devon."

Among the specifically named members of the company, on page 26, we find a "Mr. H. E. Howell."

Besides honeymooning in and retiring to Devon later in life, George Ramsay Acland Mills had family in Devonshire that once owned vast amounts of the land: The Aclands. In 1913, those holdings had not been converted to the National Trust or sold, and Mills most likely was able still to avail himself of Acland hospitality during holidays away from both Cornwall as a youngster, and London as an older boy and young man.

Devon is as likely a place for the "old" Howell – Mills connection as any. Perhaps they met there as children.

[An aside perhaps of interest only to Keith's mum: It was during a London Devonian Association dinner in honor of his neighbour, Clive Morison-Bell, held on 17 March 1914, that Ernest Shackleford sketched on the back of his menu card his planned route for the Imperial Trans-Arctic Expedition, including calculations that could be used to "fix" the South Pole. The expedition, however, ended up with his ship, the Endurance, crushed in pack ice in the Weddell Sea and the crew temporarily marooned on Elephant Island. Incidentally, the menu that evening was "turbot dieppoise, tomato with tapioca, Kirsch sorbet and glace plombiere."]

Another reference teased out of the blizzard of information provided by the internet is this nugget [right], gleaned from The Liberal Magazine, volume 19, in 1911. It contains an item attributed to a "Mr. H. E. Howell" of "Brierley" on "April 19th, 1911" that reads: "Though Lord Beaconsfield had not the privilege of English blood himself, he was the greatest of English statesmen since the days of Pitt. In these days there was a curious renaissance of the Celt in politics. . . . There was a boiling-up of Celtic fervour, something like that last great effort in the early colonising days before King Alfred, which broke itself in useless fury against Saxon steadfastness on the despairing field of Brunnan- burgh."

That "snippet" is all I can read on-line, but these words indicate the sort of learned man that George Mills might have relied on for advice, as well as friendship. It also isn't clear if the Brierley cited is in Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, or Herefordshire. Is there one in each?

However, the dates here are instructive. Mills was born in 1896, and would have been 15 years old when the item above was written, and 17 when Churchill made his speech.

If this is our "Mr. H. E. Howell," he is then quite probably at least a few years older than George Mills. And a location in Brierley—situated some 182 miles north of London—makes sharing a manuscript difficult in the days of no faxes, PDFs, or e-mail attachments. Perhaps the geography had changed a great deal by 1933.

A 1911 U.K. census summary [above, left] shows no H. E. Howell in London or in Brierley—but one living in a cottage on Bath Road in the civil parish of Wells in Somerset with a female and another male. There is no other "H. E. Howell" in the census.

Two men—Harry Howell and Herbert Howell—show up in "Brierley" (or at least in "Hemsworth/Yorkshire West Riding" in the 1911 census.

Harry was born in 1883, some 13 years before Mills, in Plymouth, England. That would make him a Devonian!

There is also evidence of soldiers named H. E. Howell having served. One was killed in action.

Records from World War I show [right] there was, however, a "Harry E. Howell" in the Army Service Corps—a A.S.C. private, just like George Mills—during the First World War. There is no other indication that this Howell is our man, however.

Another—very clearly listed as "H. E. Howell," with "Herbert E." added later—had been a gunner in the Royal Field Artillery corps from February 1915 until July 1917. He earned a couple of medals in France, but there are no remarks about wounds, death, or a forwarding address; simply: "Dis. 20. 7. 17." "Dis." would presumably mean "discharged"?

Having been assigned to France, it is unlikely he's our man, Mills having served, but stayed in England.

Let's get back to the Herbert Howell from the 1911 census. He was born in 1891, but I can't find a place of birth.

There's only one other Herbert E. Howell among the WWI records [left], and he served as a private, at first in the 2nd London Regiment, but then transferred to—you guessed it!—the Army Service Corps.

Again, though, short of his initials and assignment, there's no real evidence that this is our man. After all, I suspect that the whole of the A.S.C. was comprised of more than, say, a couple of dozen chaps who all knew each other very well.


So, where are we in all of this?

According to the internet, the temperature here has reached a steamy 99, but the heat radiating from our sun-drenched back patio is causing the thermometer out there to read a even more sultry 106° F.

I know the heat isn't really on to discover the identity of this Mr. H. E. Howell, a man so obviously important to George Mills, personally and as an author, professionally. But I do want to.

Right now, there's one more link to Mr. H. E. Howell that we haven't touched on, and it involves All Saints Margaret Street Church, Father Basil Jellicoe, Magdalen College, and the identity of the Mr. A. Bishop mentioned in the preface.

We'll take a look at that last link next time. Stay tuned…