Gallery 4: The Artwork of P. White

Similar to the first edition of Meredith and Co.—and unlike Mills sequels, King Willow and Minor and Major—Oxford University Press issued Meredith in 1950 without many interior illustrations. In fact, save the frontispiece, all of the remaining illustrations are found on the dust cover. [Click on any image to enlarge it.]

The jacket and frontispiece are not full colour: It uses a two colour separation (blue and yellow) with black line. The artist isn't renowned. In fact, he is a mid-20th century illustrator in search of a Christian name: P. White.



His wiry and energetic inks, when used to limn people, are somewhat reminiscent of George Cruikshank, making the frontispiece a little gem of a drawing. Unfortunately, it is muddled by the blue and yellow inks of the separation process, which did little for any of the illustrations, interior of exterior.



It is debatable as to whether or not the quality of the illustrator has fallen off from 1939 to 1950, mostly because the work of White here is not shown off in the best light. Certainly, though, we can see that the quality of the overall artistic book and jacket design has fallen off dramatically. Visually, this edition is miles below the level of artwork OUP set when the noted publisher commissioned C. E. Brock to illustrate the first edition of Meredtith.

Searching for the Residence of the Masters

Today's "quick hit" on Warren Hill School (1885-1936) focuses on the words "just below," and is not so "quick."

How much land did the school actually possess? We know from Joshua Goodland's freehold listing in a 1931 London Gazette, he held "Warren Hill, Beachy Head Road, and land in Carlisle Road, Eastbourne."

So how do references to a "master's residence" or "house for masters" figure into all of this? Is it possible that, despite owning the land mentioned above, the school rented a home in which the masters could live during the terms?

Let's take a look at some references to the house that we've had already.

From the Eastbourne Local History Society came this description of the post card image we see above, left: "[This image] is probably from a postcard and shows the view looking up what is now Beachy Head Road with the school on the left. It's hard to date precisely but one can suppose that it is pre 1900. The masters' residence must be the house on the right. The girls walking down the hill are almost level with a group of flint cottages which still stand. One of these was rented during various summers by Arthur Conan Doyle."


Here's a close-up of that house, across from Warren Hill [above]. We've seen it today in a street view from the front, its southern side [click HERE to view the image]. Let's see if we can espy that same side as above by 'driving' down the side street, Denton Road, via Google Street View and peering behind the foliage to get a peek at the eastern wall.

Take a look:


It appears that the same structure is still standing today, with some modifications having been made. If this was, indeed, the master's residence, and the small homes behind it are the "flint cottages" to which the ELHS refers, then it's very possible that the school (and Goodland in 1931) had possession of all of the land across from the school to the north, possibly all the way through to Upper Carlisle Road—some fine acreage!

On the 1930 map we have of the area, there are no structures on either of the two tracts of land below, or east of, the structure discussed above. Arthur Conan Doyle passed away in Sussex in 1930, and if cottages on those parcels are standing today, they must have been standing then. One wonders where the cottages mentioned actually might be.

One other bit of evidence for that large edifice having been the residence of the schoolmasters comes from the writing of George Mills.

In Chapter 6 of Meredith and Co. (1933; the dust jacket of the 1950 Oxford University Press edition is depicted below, right), several of the boys sneak out during the wee hours of the night to retrieve a troublesome lost envelope from the desk in the common-room of the master's residence. Here's the text: "Three perfectly noiseless figures crept down the corridor, a big door at the end was slightly unbarred, and the figures walked across the playground towards the master's cottage."

It appears from photographs and the map that the 'playground' at Warren Hill would have been on the west side of the building [far below], in an area between two outlying buildings. If Mills is referring to the landscape of Warren Hill, and not Windlesham House School which was in Portslade at the time, it seems likely the boys left the building from a corridor leading to the playground in the west and probably would have stolen across the quiet street.

The boys then slip into the cottage through a window with a broken latch, as depicted on the cover shown here. After almost being caught by the obnoxious Mr. Lloyd, we find out the master's cottage in Mills's book has two floors. When Lloyd finally shouts for Mr. Gold, another master, we find: "After a few minutes interval Gold appeared at the top of the stairs. He was in a dressing gown and a bad temper."

While we can't necessarily assume Mills wasn't taking artistic license with this schoolboy yarn and conjuring up everything, we find that, after making the boys had made their way into the larder: "Luck was with them. The window yielded to a little persuasion, and two minutes later they were cautiously entering the school building."


While I'm certain nothing was clocked by a stop-watch, two minutes would seem about right for three frightened boys to scurry from the house across the street, back to Warren Hill, jump the low wall [beside the doorway, above], dart through the foliage, cross the playground, and enter the school.

Of course, we don't know the layout of Windlesham while in Portslade, but the escapade in Mills's book does fit neatly with the geography of Warren Hill.

Except for one thing.


In the page we've examined from an ELHS newsletter (No. 104), we find the troubling, yet very confident sentence [above]: "A house for masters was situated on the other side [of Beachy Hill Road] just below the Denton Road junction."

If I am interpreting "just below" correctly, it would mean across the street and down the hill from the school. The 1930 map shows us only two buildings "just below," or downhill, from the junction, across the street near Coltstocks Road, and they're indicated on the map below.


If one of these houses had been, indeed, the house in which the schoolmasters lived, then it may not have been purchased in the same transaction in which the school was, and Goodland's freehold registration may not have encompassed the residence of the masters. It's even possible Goodland owned it as his own home, with master's rooming there while in Meads. Its status as a rental is also a possibility.


In addition, if either of these two lower houses [seen above and below] was in fact the home of the masters, Mills was clearly envisioning the layout of a different school—perhaps Windlesham—in his 1933 text.

Mr. Mead's First Evening at School

I get the feeling that we're nearing the end of this quest for George Mills & Co. Those who've been willing to help have really helped quite a bit. Those who weren't so keen were sometimes prodded into helping. And some couldn't be bothered replying to requests for help even with a simple "no."

Oh—and there have been those whose replies have focused on me paying them for research and information. One of the funniest phrases I've bumped into: 'Our volunteers charge ₤10 per hour.'

So, feeling as if I've run out of other options, let's see what George Mills had to say about himself—or at least his first days teaching at Windlesham House, and subsequently at Warren Hill School in Meads, Eastbourne.

From Meredith and Co. (1933):

Mr. Mead enjoyed his first dinner at the school. Peter kept an excellent table, and was splendid company. Mead was given the post of honour near his hostess. He had met his future colleagues before dinner and had approved of them. After dinner there was a conference in the study.

'Make yourselves comfortable,' Peter said. 'Coffee over there; cigarettes and tobacco, too.'

When the men had settled down, Peter spoke again…

'Now you have met Mead. He is going to take French throughout the school, and help you, Marshall, with cricket. You can do with some help, I expect.'

'Yes, indeed, I can.'

Peter gave them a hint.

'Well then, we shall meet again in the morning. Good-night. Mead, if you have done all your unpacking, perhaps you will stay behind and finish your pipe.'

Remember, according to Dr. Tom Houston of Windlesham, "Peter," or Dr. Howell Stone, corresponds to Mr. Charles Scott Malden of Windlesham House, circa 1925. Malden and Mills would have worked under headmaster Mr. H. D. L. Patterson, with Malden becoming principal in 1927, after Mills had gone. Malden, however, apparently already had been considered a joint headmaster before that, however.

Mills had been a junior appointment at the time, a position Dr. Houston states was "seldom held for long," although Mills immediately married and purchased a home in Portslade near Windlesham, which was at the time at "Southern Cross" in Portslade, not in Brighton. Mills had come to the school to teach English or "English subjects."

Let's continue with Meredith and Co. [frontispiece, 1950 edition, right]:

When the rest of the staff had left the study, Peter turned to Mead.

'Now then,' he said, 'sit down, and make yourself at home.'

Mr. Mead sat down and waited.

'You said,' Peter started, puffing at his pipe, 'that this will be your first experience of teaching. Do you mind if I tell you a few stories of my first attempts?'

This was a delightful way of putting it, and Mr. Mead appreciated it.

'No, sir, I shall be most grateful.'

'Well,' said Peter, 'everything depends on your first hour in school. You stand or fall by that hour. I am starting you off tomorrow in the Sixth-form. It will help you to start with the bigger boys. You will be out of school the first hour. Books are given out then, and serious work starts next hour. But I want you to make those bigger boys work. Three of them, Meredith, Potter I, and Dimmer I are in for their Common Entrances this term, and will have to get down to it. You will not find that they will try to rag you; they know me too well for that; but they will see how far they can go in the way of taking things easy. Boys always do; I did so myself, and came a cropper! Let nothing pass in the way of inattention and fidgeting about. If you do, you will be at their mercy. When I first started teaching we had a young man on the staff who went into his class-room to take his first lesson, and stood in the doorway and said, "Good morning!" A chorus in the ascending scale greeted him; then he went to his desk and sat down, uncertain what to do next. The boys started playing about, and the young man never kept order at that school! I won't dictate to you how you should teach, but keep the class busy every moment of the time. If you have any trouble, send the boy to me. I shall think all the better of you if you do so, and will support your authority. If you start off by standing no nonsense the boys will respect you all the more for it."

This was very sound advice, to which Mr. Mead listened intently; and the more he saw of the head master, the more he liked him. Peter regaled him with a few funny stories about his early attempts at teaching. He then looked at his watch.

'Dear me, it is half-past eleven! Well, we shall meet again in the morning. By the way, any small thing you want to know ask Marshall, and if you are in difficulties don't hesitate to come see me. Good-night!'

It's difficult to imagine those words aren't to a great degree autobiographical. At the time, Mills was 29 years old, likely fresh from university, and engaged to be married.

Prior to that, Mills had served from 1916 through 1919 in the Great War, rising from a Private in the Rifle Brigade to a Lance Corporal in the Royal Army Service Corps. He began attending Christ Church in 1919 and Oxford in 1921. Dr. Houston speculates that Mills arrived at Windlesham shortly after departing Oxford where he did not take examinations or earn a degree—something Windlesham House believed he had done.

Mills [left] obviously respected Malden greatly, modeling the character of "Peter" on him. Seven years after leaving Windlesham, Mills wrote this book, describing Peter/Malden as "a splendid man with whom to work… as straight as a gun barrel."

It seems that George Mills loved working with Malden. Mills was engaged, just about to be married, and just about to purchase a home on Benfield Way in Portslade at the time. After just four terms, however, Mills no longer appeared on the Windlesham staff list by the end of the summer of 1926.

Houston speculates that Mills "could, like a handful of other prep school masters, have been excited by the General Strike (that term)."

The long-term ends of that work stoppage wouldn't seem to have dove-tailed very nicely with the more immediate needs of Mills's own situation in 1926, being a new husband, home-owner, and provider.

Still, it's still just the evening before the first class Mr. Mead—and I suspect Mills—would ever teach. There'[s so much more yet to happen.

Next time, let's follow Mr. Mead to his debut breakfast with the boys of fictional Leadham House School in Merdedith and Co. I have a hunch we'll find the 29-year-old George Mills sitting at that table as well…

Autograph!

How cool is this bit of "Millsness" that just arrived via Royal Mail from Leeds?

My greatly anticipated signature of George Mills arrived this afternoon with an entire book wrapped around it: Meredith and Co., published by the Oxford University Press, Amen House, E.C.4; Reprinted 1950.

It's simply a beautiful edition with gorgeous, creamy white pages and an illustrated dust jacket. The only illustration inside is a frontispiece printed on lovely, glossy paper. It's a pen-and-ink drawing, printed with a two-color separation, that's clearly signed "P. WHITE" and featuring an menacingly angry child [presumably "The Hawk"] looking very much like a young David Bowie, circa 1976, from The Man Who Fell to Earth.

I've read while surfing the web that 1933 first editions of this book have, at the very least, a cover illustration of Uggles, Pongo's beloved bulldog, by the famous illustrator C. E. Brock. I've never seen it, but would love to!

This edition's dust jacket, however, has oval-shaped exteriors of the fictional Leadham House. There's also a drawing of a boy on the spine that I'll quess is Muggs [Meredith], sans Co. The front cover's cameo is presumably the adventure in which three boys ratchet up a loose window and creep into the Master's Room to retrieve a sealed envelope filled with all of the sixth form's signatures, fingerprinted in their blood, swearing revenge on the often overly-severe Mr. Lloyd. Am I correct in assuming that when a book had been reprinted, acquiring the illustrations from a previous edition would have been a separate financial deal entirely—in this case a deal left unmade?

What made this edition special to me, however, was the author's signature, done with an extremely tired blue ball-point, on the first end paper. It's dated "July 1957". Now, I have no idea what month the undated Andrew Dakers Ltd. edition of Meredith and Co. was actually released and hit the booksellers' shelves, but everywhere I look, that year is recorded as 1957—everywhere except within the book itself, that is. My guess right now, though? It'd be in June or July of 1957.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Mills was likely sitting at a promotional book signing soon after the release of the reprinted 1957 edition [then a distinguished 60 years old] when in must have strolled a long-time fan with a book—the copy that's right here next to me—asking to have his, although I guess I shouldn't be so quick to reject the fact that, even in 1957, it could have been her, older edition signed that day.

This Oxford University Press reprint is interesting. On the flyleaf, it lists the ages of potential readers as "Ages 9-12." Was it completely normal for a children's book, intended for a 9-year-old in 1950, to have 23 fewer illustrations than, say, the 1907 classic edition of Pride and Prejudice?

Meredith and Co.'s first edition in 1933, also published by O.U.P., is catalogued in the British Library and listed as containing "Plates". I won't assume they were all by the likely very expensive Brock, whose classic illustrations of the above-mentioned P&P proliferate to this day all over the internet, but it does imply more than simply a two-color frontispiece.

I've flipped through all of the 288 pages of this text and there's not an illustration to be found within. Does this reflect some post-WW II cost-cutting or simply a difference in children's publishing between 1933 and 1950? The former is my hunch, but the latter wouldn't surprise me given the changes the entire world had seen during those 17 often-bitter years.

Anyway, I'm simply delighted with this wonderful book that eerily smells so much like it was stored for years in a room full of freshly dried marijuana. Please take a moment to let me know if you have any insights into this edition, the illustrations [or lack thereof], the promotional book signings that must have taken place, or the climate of Great Britain in the early- to late-1950s, to provide me with some much-needed context.

Your input would, as always, be most welcome!