Sussex's Wartime Evacuations

Once again, my gratitude goes out to the Chittenden family for the trove of information and images that they've provided for us here at Who Is George Mills? This week, we'll take a look at an very interesting document entitled "Evacuation," written recently by Ann, a daughter of Hugh and Barbara Chittenden of Newlands School in Seaford, Sussex. It's a delightful and personal recollection of a five year long event that had the potential to be a nightmare, and one hopes that most of the children who had been evacuated at the onset of the Second World War were able to, like Ann, keep many of the joys of childhood intact—at least to some degree.


Thenford

At the beginning of the war, Newlands School was evacuated for a period of five years, firstly to Thenford House situated in a small hamlet approximately five miles from Banbury in Oxfordshire. It was a lovely Georgian mansion although I remember it being extremely cold in winter, the only heating being provided by open fires. I think Thenford House had approximately 80 acres of land. I started off as the only girl in a school comprising of about 60 boys. Two other girls joined the school later on during the evacuation although for a shorter period.

We had a very carefree childhood. The worry of keeping the school going and the safety of the children must have been an absolute nightmare for my parents, but we were unaware of this at the time and I recall a very happy childhood with a lot of freedom.

Below is a list of some of my extremely random childhood memories of my time at Thenford!

Our classrooms were over the stables.

The owner of Thenford House had left his horses behind and the groom who remained there taught me to ride.

Fire practise involved putting a rope around one's middle and being lowered over the side of the house from the parapet. I doubt modern Health and Safety officials would approve!

There was a large lake on which we skated – highly dangerous! I also learnt to chop firewood with an axe at the age of 8, as did the boys at the school. Again, highly dangerous!

There was a rogue gardener who had locked the kitchen garden and was selling the fruit and vegetables, which were supposed to be for the use of the school. I recall my father, with the school doctor, climbing over the walls in the middle of the night to raid the garden for his own vegetables!

The farm was just beyond the stable yard and, after milking, I used to drive the cattle back to the fields for the farmer at the age of 8.

One night at Thenford we were all taken down to the cellars as Coventry was being bombed. I recall there was a red glow in the sky, although Coventry was a long way away.

I remember going for a walk through the woods with our gas masks on for practise. They used to steam up and I used to lift the sides up to let the air in which would have defeated the object.

My father joined the Home Guard at Thenford [above, left], which was a little bit like Dad's Army!


Wardington

After three years we moved to Wardington House in the village of Wardington near Banbury. My memories of my time at Wardington include:

There was a farm next door to the house with a herd of jersey cows and my mother used to make bowls of clotted cream for us. Delicious!

There were Italian prisoners of war working on the farm. I recall that they used to wait every evening by the front of Wardington House to be picked up and returned to their camp.

I used to ride the butcher's pony for sixpence an hour.

My mother used to provide food for midnight feasts for the school, unbeknown to anyone else!

I remember the Home Guard at Wardington also. The overriding memory is of the Home Guard marching up the village street, with their Commanding Officer shouting “Halt” and they completely ignored him and kept on marching. He kept on shouting “Halt” until he finally gave up and yelled “Oh, for gawd's sake halt!”


Seaford

During the evacuation the school buildings in Seaford were taken over by the French Canadians. They used the weather vane for target practise and shot off the North, South, East and West which were later found after the war in the flower beds in the garden.

All very light hearted memories, of no importance but I hope they are of some interest to you!


Wonderful! I do believe these memories are important, though. The numbers—how many children were relocated, what transportation, average distance travelled, destinations, costs, etc. —are, I'm sure, readily available on-line and in dusty books. The facts and the figures, however, don't really tell the human part of the story.

These recollections help me—and all of us—envision a time and a way of life that's disappearing all too quickly, no matter on which side of the Atlantic one resides. Memories of things like the fire drills, the rogue gardener, the clotted cream, and the Italian prisoners help re-create it all in a way that makes television programmes like Foyle's War so popular—at least here in the States.

Perhaps the most enduring pop-cultural reference to Britain's evacuation of children during World War II comes in the first chapter of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, as described in Wikipedia : "The story begins in 1940 during World War II, when four siblings—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie—are evacuated from London to escape the Blitz. They are sent to live with Professor Digory Kirke, who lives in a country house in the English countryside."

In Lewis's novel there is no reference to where, exactly, the children had been relocated, but it's easy to imagine that, had those Sons of Adam and the Daughters of Eve not become involved in their adventures beyond the wardrobe, they may have instead explored the area around Professor Kirke's country house and had much less fantastic, but quite meaningful, adventures like Ann's above.

How does any of this truly relate to George Mills? First, George lived in this world, and it was far less idyllic than as was perceived by young Ann. Mills returned to the military in 1940, becoming a second lieutenant army paymaster at the age of 40, assuring us that he was keenly aware of his duty during the conflict as well as the dangers for himself and his nation. Understanding the world in which Mills lived provides context for understand the man himself.

Secondly—and as always seems to happen when we study George Mills—we find there is a Sussex connection.

During George's time as a schoolmaster at Warren Hill School in Meads late in the decade of the 1920s, he must have been acquainted with writers (and sisters-in-law) Kitty Barne and Noel Streatfeild. Mills was not a writer at the time, and would not become a published author until the appearance of his breakthrough novel Meredith and Co.: The Story of a Modern Preparatory School on bookshelves in 1933. George had taught with Kitty's husband, and Noel's brother, musician Eric Streatfeild in Eastbourne.

Meredith and Co. contained vignettes undoubtedly culled for his time at Warren Hill, as well as his stint at Windlesham House, then in Portslade, and made a study of the vernacular used by boys of the era, a first in children's literature. It was a device that many subsequent children's authors have imitated.

Later that decade, as children were being evacuated from Sussex and in the same year that Mills was returning to active duty under the Colours, Kitty Barne published her Carnegie Medal winning book Visitors from London, an early novel about evacuees that was set in Sussex.

By 1945, Noel Streatfeild had authored Saplings, a novel intended for adult readers, set in 1939 and describing the wartime experiences of the Wiltshire family, focusing on the children Laurel, Tony, Kim and Tuesday. Saplings, according to a reviewer called Nymeth , "chronicles the psychological effect these separations, this uncertainly and instability, had on those who had to grow up with them," and "capture[s] a child’s perspective and understanding of the world" as it was for them during the war.

The on-line review continues: "The children are actually very well-off, in the sense that they are physically safe, they never go hungry, and they don't suffer discomforts. And yet my heart still broke for them."

That is very much how one might feel regarding Ann's memories above. It's a tribute to Ann, and the rest of the world's ' greatest generation,' that they survived so much and were able, for the most part, to come away with memories of a positive nature. Families were separated, lives disrupted, and a gnawing feeling of fear must have been prevalent, knowing Nazis were just miles away in occupied France, anticipating overrunning and conquering England in much the same way they'd blitzkrieged most of Europe. It's difficult today to think of those times as having been anything but frightening, a feeling of which we find a hint in Ann's recollection of the bombing of Coventry.

Ann Chittenden, as a child, seems to have lived very much in the moment, and if she harbours any grim or bitter recollections of leaving home and family for five years of her life, she isn't dwelling on them.

Noel Streatfeild, however, was still ruminating over the events of the evacuation some thirty years later when, in 1974, she published When the Sirens Wailed, a text described as being "about three evacuees and cover[ing] issues like rations for evacuees, relationship[s] between evacuees and townspeople, and the problems encountered by those who stayed behind." [You can find more about the book by clicking HERE.]

Many thanks, Ann, for adding your own memories here.


George Mills had passed away in 1972, and there's no indication that he ever discussed his feelings and experiences during the war with anyone who still living today. During the conflict, George dealt with the deaths of friends (Terence Hadow, Egerton Clarke), colleagues (Capt. William Mocatta, Joshua Goodland), and loved ones (his wife, Vera, and his mother, Edith), all between 1939 and 1945.

We certainly don't know if he kept in touch with Barne or Streatfeild after leaving behind a career as a schoolmaster and becoming, like them, an author of children's books. What we do know is that whenever we examine George's life, or the lives of those close to him, the path always seems to lead us to Sussex.

Did George spend time after the war teaching in Sussex—Seaford, specifically—at Newlands School? Right now we have no evidence of that.

But it wouldn't surprise me one bit!

Messages from George Mills: His Prefaces and Dedications

Let’s take a moment today to reflect a few messages George Mills sent out into the world without knowing who might read them. His books were primarily for children, but the same can't be said for the dedications and prefaces of his texts: They were meant for persons other than schoolboys.

Taking a look at these brief but meaningful messages within the books—but not part of the stories themselves—may tell us something.

Or they may simply let us know how much more we may want to know.


The 1930s:


• First let's look at the preface of 1933's first edition of Meredith & Co.:

PREFACE

ALTHOUGH all the incidents in this book, with the exception of the 'bait charts,' are imaginary, the book gives an accurate impression of life in a Boys' Preparatory School.

I wish to acknowledge, with much gratitude, the help and encouragement received from many friends; particularly from Mr. A. Bishop, the Head Master of Magdalen College School, Brackley, and from my old friend, Mr. H. E. Howell, who have read the book in manuscript form. I am also much indebted to Mr. E. M. Henshaw for his devastating, but most useful, criticisms, and especially to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material.

----------------------------------------------------------- G.M.


We've examined fairly recently the life and career of Mr. A. Bishop—Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop [right]—and have seen some references to Mr. H. E. Howell, although we have no real idea who he was.

The annoyingly critical Mr. E. M. Henshaw—whose mention was deleted from subsequent editions of Meredith—has so far been difficult to identify. Henshaw must have been an unliked and unwanted obligation, one that in later years no longer needed to appear.

Once again, if you have any notion of Henshaw's identity, or have some clever skills in a database like ancestry.com or The Times, please don't hesitate to let me know!


• Next, we'll examine the dedication to the 1933 edition of Meredith & Co.:

To MR. J. GOODLAND, sometime Head Master
of Warren Hill, Eastbourne; to the STAFF AND
BOYS OF THE SAME SCHOOL, and to those of
WINDLESHAM HOUSE, BRIGHTON, THE CRAIG,
WINDERMERE, and the ENGLISH PREPARATORY
SCHOOL, GLION, among whom I spent many
happy years, this book is affectionately
dedicated.


We've had far more luck tracing our way through this dedication. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Over time, we've been enlightened by Dr. Tom Houston at Windlesham and tracked down a smattering of information about The Craig and the English Preparatory School at Glion.

The amount of information we've unearthed about both Joshua Goodland, a mentor of George Mills, and Warren Hill School in Eastbourne [left], seems comparatively to be a wealth of knowledge!


• Mills's next published book was 1938's King Willow. Let's look at its preface:

PREFACE

READERS of Meredith & Co. will recognize here some old friends ; nevertheless King Willow can be read as an entirely independent story. The characters have no connexion with any people, alive of dead, but the book is typical of life in any big Preparatory School.

Once More I wish to record my thanks to my friend, Mr H. E. Howell, who has read the manuscript and offered helpful criticism ; and also to a host of schoolboy readers who have encouraged me to continue.

------------------------------------------------------------- G.M.

June, 1938


Again, by June, 1938, the mysterious Mr. H. E. Howell remains a dear friend of George Mills, schoolmaster and author.


• Let's look at the 1938 dedication to King Willow:

TO
THE HEADMASTERS, STAFF, AND BOYS
OF
EATON GATE PREPARATORY SCHOOL,
LONDON, S.W. 1.


That's a rather all-encompassing dedication. We have discussed the fact that no school by that name has been found (although I would be delighted to be corrected), and the current school at that location has no real interest in exploring its own past or in assisting in educational research.

It's interesting that Mills misnames the school, yet is precise enough to include the location "S.W.1." It's also noteworthy in that, while it must be the most recent school at which he'd worked, Mills singles out no Headmaster or Principal by name. Might that indicate he had already severed ties with the institution, and under less than joyful circumstances?

These inconsistencies make this is by far the strangest of Mills's prefaces or dedications.


• Now we'll examine the 1939 preface of Minor and Major:


PREFACE


THIS book deals with life in a big preparatory school, and tells about the boys and masters, their goings-out and their comings-in. All the characters are imaginary, and no allusion is meant to any living person.

The boys, who first appeared in Meredith & Co. and King Willow, once again present themselves for a short time during a cricket match.

I wish to record my thanks to my old friend, Mr H. E. Howell, for so kindly reading the manuscript and proofs. I also recognize the kindly aid of a schoolboy, Terence Hadow, whose criticisms have been invaluable, as also has the encouragement given to me by my friend, Mr Egerton Clarke, who has read the book in manuscript form. My thanks are also due to Mr A. L. Mackie, who has kindly helped to read the proofs.

------------------------------------------------------------- G.M.


Mills for a third time pays tribute to "old friend" Howell, but this time extends thanks to a few more individuals.

Schoolboy critic Terence Hadow died in 1942 serving as a chindit[some are pictured in Burma, right] under Major-General Orde Wingate. His remains were interred in Burma.

Egerton Clarke, as we recently learned, was a friend of George's in the Army Pay Corps, and at Oxford before leading George to the publishing house that would print Mills's final new book in 1939. Egerton passed away in 1944.

Finally, we simply do not know the identity of the kindly Mr. A. L. Mackie. Once again, if you have any idea, please let me know!


• Moving along, we arrive at 1939's dedication to Minor and Major:


To the Headmasters, Staff, and Boys of
Parkfield, Haywards Heath, where I received
my early education, this book is affectionately
dedicated


For the first time, Mills takes a nostalgic bent in creating a dedication, hearkening back to the first decade of the 20th century in dedicating Minor and Major to his own masters, as well as the boys with whom he attended Parkfield.

Parkfield is a school we've located and learned about to some degree after hearing from alumni.


The 1950s:

The prep school books of George Mills all were reprinted, Meredith and Co. twice.


• The edition we'll look at here is from 1950, published by Oxford University Press.

In addition to the preface and dedication found in the first edition, Mills, as we know, added this verse by Rudyard Kipling [left]:

Give me a willow wand, and I
With hide and cork and twine,
From century to century,
Will gambol round thy shrine

------------- —Kipling


There is also a subtle change in the preface. The last sentence of the 1933 original reads:

I am also much indebted to Mr. E. M. Henshaw for his devastating, but most useful, criticisms, and especially to that splendid specimen of boyhood, the British Schoolboy, who has given me such wonderful material.

The 1950 version simply reads:

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


Oxford University Press kept no records from that era, so we have no way of knowing if Henshaw was associated with the company in 1933, but had passed away or moved his career to another locale by 1950. Hence, the expression of gratitude to person for whom it's likely Mills cared very little was no longer necessary


• Jumping ahead to the late 1950s and the undated edition of King Willow, we find this revised dedication:


To
BERYL and IAN

Two young people who have just set
out on a long voyage in the good ship
Matrimony. May they have smooth
seas and following winds: may they
from time to time take aboard some
young passengers who will become
the light of their lives until they sail
into the last harbor.


Here George looks back on his life in the context of looking ahead to the lives of this young couple. He reflects on growing old together—something George was himself unable to do with his own wife, Vera, who died 30 years before he did. George and Vera passed away childless, and there is more than a little melancholy in Mills's best wishes for for the couple to be blessed with children.

Despite help from Michael Downes in Budleigh Salterton via his blog, we still have been unable to determine the identity of the newlyweds, Beryl & Ian, who probably would have been born between 1930 and 1940, and would be 70 or 80 years of age by now.

If you know Beryl & Ian, or if you actually are Beryl & Ian, please let me know!


• The 1950s edition of King Willow of also contains an expanded preface:


READERS of Meredith & Co. will recognize here some old friends ; nevertheless King Willow can be read as an entirely independent story. The characters have no connexion with any people, alive of dead, but the book is typical of life in any big Preparatory School.

Once More I wish to record my thanks to my friend, Mr H. E. Howell, who has read the manuscript and offered helpful criticism ; and also to a host of schoolboy readers who have encouraged me to continue.

I also wish to record my thanks to Benedict Thomas, a schoolboy who has suggested many practical alterations for this new edition.

---------------------------------------------------- G.M.


Here we meet a youthful Benedict Thomas, a lad who was helping an approximately 60 year old George Mills with his latest reprint of King Willow.

The only person of that name born in the U. K. between 1940 and 1960 was a "Benedict J. G. Thomas," who was born in late 1953. If Willow was published in 1960, Benedict would have been about 8 years of age when he offered his practical advice to Mills.

The only record at ancestry.com involving a Benedict J. G. Thomas involves his birth—nothing else. There is a location—Northeastern Surrey—and one other interesting bit of information: Benedict's mother's maiden name was Bishop.

That could make young Benedict the grandson of Arthur H. B. Bishop, mentioned in the first preface of George's first book. It would indicate that Mill's friendship with Bishop was long-lasting, but it could also indicate that the aging Mills may have been teaching or living in or near Surrey.


• The 1950s-ish edition of Minor and Major has the same dedication as the original in 1939, but has omitted the original preface seen above.

But there is this, in italic font:


All the characters in this book
are imaginary, and no allusion
is meant to any living person.


Did the publisher, London's Spring Books, include that as matter of course in all fiction books printed in that year? If so, that would provide evidence that the reprinting of Minor and Major was, indeed, the last of the late 1950s – early 1960s reprints. If not, could it be that a schoolboy, schoolmaster, or even headmaster from back in George's past had an issue with a character, thinking it Mils had taken a slap at him?

We'll never know if the latter was the case, but it seems that as the world approached our seemingly increasingly litigious times, that disclaimer may have been inserted across the proverbial board.


The Missing Text:


There is only one bit of information I have been unable to uncover: What might we find in the dedication and/or preface to Mills's final book, Saint Thomas of Canterbury, published in 1939 by Burns, Oates and Washbourne, the Catholic publishing house in London.

A glimpse of what is there could be most informative. One wonders if—given it was Mills's 'swan song' as an author—there might have been some clue in a dedication or preface that would provide insight as to why he never penned another book. Although I frequently check booksellers around the world, a copy of this title simpy hasn't arisen, and the closest library copy to here is about 600 miles away! It may be some time before we get the very last of the messages of George Mills...


As we wind our way down to the last few topics regarding George Mills that I have left to write, many thanks once again to everyone who has contributed in an effort to help me answer the question: Who Is George Mills?

Gallery 5: The Artwork of 'Vernon'

By 1957, the world had entered a Space Age that would lead to, in just a dozen more years, men walking on the surface of the Moon.

George Mills had published his first novel, Meredith and Co. less than 25 years before, but it must have seemed like a century ago in some ways, in the aftermath of a worldwide depression, the Second World War, and Britain's recovery from both under new leadership.

Instead of being alarmed as they once were by the predatory behavior of fascists, politicians worried about creeping communism, espionage, and the threat of nuclear war.

Nothing was the same. And although this change brought with it a new breed of boys' preparatory school books, the surge in the popularity of the genre meant there was still room on the shelves for one more round of the books of Mills.

The illustrative imagery of his books, though, would need some updating, making it more a part of the modern world. 1957's Meredith and Co., published behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia by Andrew Dakers, Ltd., London, featured modernized haircuts and overall appearance of the students at fictional Leadham House School.

Not only does this edition fail to have a copyright date, it also fails to name the illustrator—or illustrators—completely. The dust jacket and frontispiece contain the exact same image: A full-colour, pthalo-hued setting featuring several primary-colour clad boys being caught out of their dorm rooms at night. It's a low budget composition by an artist signing his name only as "VERNON," very reminiscent in character of the sort of cheap, colour children's book illustrations I became familiar with as a boy in the 1960s.

The frontispiece is merely a cropped version of the poorly-registered four-color-separation illustration on the cover, replete with a disembodied hand holding a flashlight at right. Expense quite obviously was spared in putting together this third edition of the text.

It's perfectly non-descript, but that belies the better quality of the artwork inside. There are four nicley done black and white plates that modernise the artwork beyond what the Brocks and John Harris had done—these aren't crafted to resemble engravings—while still capturing the nostalgic charm of the story. It's easy to see why children would have been captivated by these illustrations. [Click any image to enlarge it in a new window.]



"Percy Oliphant Naylor Gathorne Ogilvie, complete with
a nurse, red hair, and freckles, stood with his mother on
the platform at Victoria Station." [Page 9]



"There was a rending, tearing sound . . . " [Page 57]



" . . . his right forepaw clumsily bandaged, and a first eleven
blazer buttoned round his neck, a large brown bulldog was
staring stolidly at nothing!" [Page 129]



"But Finch, flashing past him and Solway, breasted the
tape first" [Page 219]


The four interior plates are unsigned, and may or may not be the work of 'Vernon.' They are as well considered and pleasant as the painting on the frontispiece is ho-hum, and could be his work.

As George Mills and his pre-WWII literary work entered a new age, it seemed as if the artwork min his books, while not quite what it had been at the peak of his popularity, was in relatively good hands.

Kipling, Nicholson, Dewey & Mills

Once in a while, I will thumb through the well-worn pages of the books of George Mills looking for clues. Clues to what, you ask? I'm really never sure, and I'm always uncertain as to what I may find.

Recently I noticed a slight difference between two editions of his first book, the 1933 and 1950 editions of Meredith and Co.

Absent from the 1933 edition are the following lines:

Give me a willow wand, and I
With hide and cork and twine,
From century to century,
Will gambol round thy shrine

                          —Kipling


The verse comes from a publication entitled An Almanac of Twelve Sports, published in 1898 by English woodblock printmaker William Nicholson, "with words by Rudyard Kipling." It is set up as a calendar of sorts:

January – Hunting; February – Coursing; March – Racing; April – Boating; May – Fishing; June – Cricket; July – Archery; August – Coaching; September – Shooting; October – Golf; November – Boxing; and December – Skating

An additional verse also appears within the actual text:

Cricket.

  Thank God who made the British Isles
       And taught me how to play,
     I do not worship crocodiles
       Or bow the knee to clay!

     Give me a willow wand and I,
       With hide and cork and twine,
     From century to century
       Will gambol round my Shrine.


While cricket plays an important part in both Meredith and Co. and it sequel, King Willow, football and track & field are featured as well.

The appearance of this Kipling verse, it seems, is about far more than cricket. This also seems the perfect time to examine it, immediately after entries regarding other features of Mills's first two novels, both of which feature the playing of the sport.


My hunch is that when George Mills attended school himself as a boy—he went to Parkfield in Haywards Heath and then Harrow—things would have been difficult for him. After all, he was slight of build with a speech impediment. How much of the discomfort he felt at school was attributable to any institution, and how much could have been ascribed to the nature of young boys in such an environment, is unknown.

When his first book about boys' preparatory schools, Meredith and Co., was published in 1933 it carried the subtitle: "The Story of a Modern Preparatory School."

In subtitling his text, Mills clearly draws a distinction between the schools he attended—not physically, but in their philosophy of handling and educating children—and the "modern" schools at which he'd taught in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Mills taught in an era greatly influenced by educational reformer John Dewey [left]. Texts of Dewey's with which Mills may have been familiar were The School and Society (1900), The Child and the Curriculum (1902), and Democracy and Education (1916).

Of Dewey, Wikipedia states: "In his eyes, the purpose of education should not revolve around the acquisition of a pre-determined set of skills, but rather the realization of one’s full potential and the ability to use those skills for the greater good… Dewey advocated for an educational structure that strikes a balance between delivering knowledge while also taking into account the interests and experiences of the student."


The books of George Mills clearly illustrate exactly that sort of balance in many overt and subtle ways. While the settings in the books of Mills are traditional, as are the classroom management techniques, the overall focus on the development of the child as a whole is obvious.

In Joanna S. Hall's paper "John Dewey and Pragmatism in the Primary School: a thing of the past?" in the journal Curriculum Studies, Volume 4, Issue 1, 1996 , pp. 5-23, the author studies Dewey's influence on British education.

From the abstract we learn:

In 1906, J. J. Findlay, Professor of Education at Manchester, eased English readers into pragmatism's foreign beginnings by setting John Dewey alongside Pestalozzi, Herbart and Froebel. This paper investigates the interweavings of pragmatism in the years following the First World War, when it appeared in views of children, pedagogy and curriculum.


This is the time George Mills lived, seeing these developments first hand. What a shock it must have been, however, following World War II, when George returned to being a schoolmaster and discovered that his notion of that ideal, modern prep school had been greatly altered.

We read last time about some anonymous readers here discussing their experiences with public school education, circa 1950 – 1975: "I'm afraid that the Catholic school system, as you probably know, was infested for many years by paedophiles and ghastly sadists," and "In hindsight it was a hideous, sadistic and monsterous Dickensian nightmare of a school."

None of that could have coincided easily with what George considered a "modern" education.


Hence, the verse by Kipling [pictured, right] is found, not in the 1933 edition of Meredith and Co.—the first edition, published in a modern era during which Mills had great hope for education—but in the 1950 edition, and subsequently the 1957 edition, the latter printed at a time when Mills—aged 61—would have been jaded about preparatory institutions, their changing philosophies, and their often questionable practices.

This Kipling poem hearkens back to the time of Mills's boyhood, when reality had to struggle mightily to separate itself from a young boy's fantasies, and the simple joys of that time of life seemed as if they might last virtually forever—"From century to century…"


This nostalgic note in the final reprinting of Meredith and Co. is telling. Mills had seen the changes that had taken place in school teaching and education, but he never addressed them directly. No new titles or characters leapt from his pen—or typewriter.

In a subtle change to the original layout of his first novel, Mills inserted a simple verse that allowed himself to drift back, nostalgically, to a time that made far more sense: To reading Kipling in bed, to dewy cricket pitches warming in the sun, to Modern Preparatory Schools, and to the never ending innocence of youth.

While that verse seems to be about the sport cricket, it actually says so much more about the life, the teaching career, and the nostalgic thoughts of an aging George Mills.

Gallery 1: The Work of Charles Edmund Brock

As we continue to try to tie up loose ends here at Who Is George Mills?, it seems a good idea to open an art gallery of sorts related to the writing of George Mills. Over the next few days, we'll be uploading all of art found in Mills's boys' preparatory stories and making it searchable on-line.

Today we're starting with his classic: The first edition of Meredith and Co.: The Story of a Modern Preparatory School, published in 1933 by Oxford University Press, and illustrated by the legendary Charles Edmund Brock.

C. E. Brock, born in 1870, was 63 years of age and at the height of his fame when he was commissioned to do the watercolours for George's first book. That would provide one a great indication of the esteem in which Mills's manuscript was held at OUP at the time.

Besides the cover above [click any image to enlarge it], Brock also did a vertical watercolour of the the boys creeping out of the school at night, as well as a gorgeous frontispiece. You can see these two artworks to the right and below.



Next time, we'll advance to the 1950 edition of Meredith and Co. We'll see you then…

Croquet Gazette: Who is George Mills?

From April/May 2011 (Issue 331) of the Croquet Gazette...



Click the images to enlarge each page in a new window!

Many thanks to the Croquet Association for allowing me space to be a guest author in that issue. For an interactive copy of the entire issue which can be increased to an even greater size, go to: http://content.yudu.com/Library/A1s2ne/CroquetGazette/resources/17.htm

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.



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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.



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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.



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

Discovering Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop at Warwick School

The other day we took a look at one of the first pages of writing that author George Mills published: The preface to his first novel, Meredith and Co., in 1933. There we examined just who "Mr. H. E. Howell" might have been.

Today, we'll take a look at the other name in that preface, "Mr. A. Bishop."

First of all, I don't even want to discuss how many times the characters "a bishop" or "bishop a" appear on the internet. Google will provide "about 126,000,000 results" in about "0.21 seconds." Can you say, "Needle in a haystack?"

I immediately wrote to Magdalen College School, Brackley, and the Old Brackleians for help, but never received replies. Those institutions being my best, and possibly only, resources, the lack of response was truly a sticky wicket.

I trolled telephone directories, sought alumni lists, and grazed travel manifests, birth notices, marriages, and deaths for a year, all to relatively no avail. True, I had some names that seemed more likely than others, but nothing solid.

So, why on Sunday afternoon between mowing our front and back lawns, did I hit upon it? I can't say. It seemed I'd used the same search terms over and over and over (and over, for that matter), but this time received a slightly different result.

I found not an "A. Bishop" who'd been Headmaster at Magdalen College School, but an "A. H. B. Bishop." That was breakthrough, but I also was immediately inundated with "hits" from what appeared to be another A. H. B. Bishop, co-author (with a G. H. Locket) of a pair of science text books.

It didn't take long to unearth a link that referred to Bishop as "former" headmaster at Magdalen School, then currently (in that text) headmaster at Warwick School [right]! It also didn't take me very long to leap to the conclusion that we may have found a school where George Mills might have taught during the post-War years (1945 – 1956), during which we know so little about him!

You can't imagine how swiftly and excitedly I fired off an e-mail to G. N. Frykman, Warwick School Archivist. Then…

Well, let me let Mr. Frykman pick it up from there:

Dear Sam – I have searched the staff registers of Warwick School, and I cannot find the name of G. R. A. Mills, so he didn’t work here. It is strange, therefore, that you claim that A. H. B. Bishop (headmaster 1936 – 62) encouraged him in his publications. I wonder where you heard that? Bishop was himself, of course, a very successful published writer of chemistry text books. I enclose some paragraphs from Warwick School: A History by G. N. Frykman and E. J. Hadley (2004).


I will admit to some disappointment in failing to find a long-term post-War employer for George Mills, but I feel excited that we can learn about Mr. Bishop. It is both fascinating and instructive for our purposes here: He must have had not only an influence on George as an author, having proofed his manuscripts for Meredith, but had an impact on him as a teacher as well.

Here are some of the "paragraphs" mentioned above by Mr. Frykman:

Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop grew up in Cornwall and attended Callington Grammar School. He then served in the army in France, Egypt and Palestine from 1917 to 1920, before going up to Jesus College, Oxford, where he took First Class Honours in Natural Science in 1924. He was a very able chemist, and his two published text-
books (Introduction to Chemistry and An Elementary Chemistry, both written with GH Locket) were widely used throughout the country. His teaching career started at Westminster College, Oxford, but he was soon appointed to the post of Senior Chemistry Master at Radley, and thence to the headmastership of Magdalen College School, Brackley [Bishop's 1933 phone listing there is seen, left].


In 2003, Bill Grimes (Warwick School 1930 to 1938) remembered Bishop’s first assembly in Big School in 1936, when he said: “All my life I’ve wanted to be Headmaster of Warwick School, and now I’ve got here, I’m going to stay here!” This remark made more sense when it was discovered that Bishop had applied for the headmastership when it fell vacant in 1933, but had lost out when Percival Smith was appointed. He was certainly not expecting the chance of applying again quite so soon. Like his two predecessors, Riding and Percival Smith, AHB Bishop was offered a salary of £800 (a sum worth about £41,000 in 2003), together with whatever profits he could make from the boarding house. Almost his first action was to use the Junior House, which had been closed in 1935, as additional classrooms and cloak-rooms. Also in his first term, he gathered the whole school together to listen to the funeral of George V on the wireless in Big School. Within two years, he had arranged for the front of the school to be flood-lit – a short-lived improvement in view of the proximity of the Second World War.


Two things immediately strike me regarding Bishop. First, Mills and Bishop had spent time in Cornwall as youths. Mills was born there in 1896, although his family moved to London in 1901. Bishop had been born in 1898 around Woolwich/Plumstead in London, and taken as a boy to Cornwall.

However, Bishop's address in Callington, Cornwall, was actually closer to Devon, where George's kin owned a great deal of land and George had spent much time as a lad, as well.

With an affinity for Cornwall and Devon, and perhaps some common acquaintances, Mills—at Christ Church, Oxford, from 1919 to about 1922—was thinking about a future as a schoolmaster and probably met Bishop [right] while the latter was attending Jesus College at Oxford.

A second thing that jumps out at me is that, around 1933, Bishop was not appointed to the vacant headmaster position at Warwick School. This is the same time that Mills was set to publish his first book, which, according to advertising in the London Times, was in the stores for Christmas.

Unless things have changed a great deal in education, Bishop would have been considering at length and in depth his philosophies of education, of discipline, of teaching, of management, of selecting personnel, and of business in preparation for his 1933 interviews at Warwick. Helping Mills with his manuscript—especially as the book's fist edition from Oxford University Press was subtitled "The Story of a Modern Preparatory School"—probably helped structure the thinking of both men!

Mr. Frykman continues:

In the 1942 Prospectus, the tuition fees for Warwick boys are given as £5 per term (a 2003 equivalent of £145), and the separate boarding fee as £23 5s per term (£675). Boys from Leamington and beyond had to pay £6 per term. By 1950, as will be discussed shortly, the basic day-boy tuition fee had risen to £18 and the boarding fee to £30 per term, which, with post-war inflation taken into account, were equivalent to £350 and £600 per term in 2003. The tuition fee in 1950 was, in real terms, less than 20% of its value 50 years later. The most likely explanation for this lies in the low salaries paid to teachers at the time and in the fact that the boarders were still subsidising the day-boys.


Although during the Second World War, and beyond the scope of Bishop's editorial relationship with Mr. Mills, the paragraph above about Warwick School [pictured below, left, with Bishop addressing the boys] does much to give us insight regarding our investigations and awareness of preparatory schools such as Warren Hill School, Windlesham House, and elsewhere.

In addition, we have a better idea of the post-War situation for men like Mills, fellows who had been pre-War schoolmasters:

The school that greeted the end of hostilities retained only nine of its 1939 staff, though a further six eventually returned from the Forces. Inevitably, the staff body had been drastically affected by the war, and stability was desperately needed. In fact, for many, especially the younger men, the post-war period offered great opportunities, and it became increasingly the case that teachers did not stay a long time in their posts before moving on, either to promotions elsewhere or to other professions. There were, in short, to be fewer Mr Chips.


Now, we know from Dr. Tom Houston at Windlesham House School, that instability in the teaching ranks was characteristic of the 1920s as well. It would be interesting to know if the situation stabilized in the 1930s, but my hunch would be that it did not much: Schools in England failed during the Great Depression, and masters would have been scurrying for new positions as the rumour mill turned. In fact, of the schools at which George Mills taught, only Windlesham would survive until today.

George Mills, we know, had had a short "career" as an officer and paymaster in the Royal Army Pay Corps during WWII, and had had at least a modicum of training as an office clerk in the First World War. Couple all of that with the fact that it was difficult for schools to retain staff members after the war, and that they apparently often lost them to "other professions," and we… are still left with little direction as to what Mills did after the war. Did he teach? Work in an office? All of these options seemto have been very open to him.


In October 1959, twenty-three years after his appointment as Headmaster, Arthur Bishop was able to report to the governors:

The school is in good heart. For the first time there are well over 700 on the roll. The Junior School and Lower School are overflowing, and the Sixth Form is larger than ever. Both boarding houses are more than full.

At Advanced Level we gained 87.5% passes. At Ordinary Level subject passes improved from 54% in 1957 and 60% in 1958 to 69%. Mr Beeching deserves special mention for the outstanding science results.

The music of the school – orchestral and choral – is improving rapidly. The CCF maintains its high standards. Discipline is good, and the reputation of the school is good. The experiment of admitting boys on Common Entrance from preparatory schools at 13 is going well; the list is already full for next year and a reserve list is being built up.

Much of the credit for this flourishing state of affairs must go to the Second Master, Mr Dugdale and the staff who are most loyal and co-operative. Theirs is a 6 day week as against a 5 day week in the state schools and they willingly give up time to other activities in the dinner hour and after school. I trust the governors will continue their wise policy of recognising this extra work by the staff in their salary allowances.

When the school became independent it had to improve or fall back on state aid. Our scholarship must, at least, compare favourably with neighbouring state schools and in games, society and tone we must excel. That is why we must have a good staff and pay them well to expect so much of them.


George Mills was probably very much retired at the age 63 when this report was presented in 1959. Again, though, it provides substantial insight into the workings of British schools in the mid-20th century. The staff seems to have stabilized, and teachers were at least beginning to be paid commensurate with their worth.

Here's one last paragraph from Mr. Frykman:

It is fair to say that, of AHB Bishop’s 26 years as Headmaster, the early ones were supremely demanding, given wartime conditions. Contemporaries recall that, though not a logical and consistent thinker, Bishop usually got the right answer, and he certainly saw the school through to calmer waters whilst presiding over a huge increase in pupil and staff numbers, numerous building crises and educational changes. It is, indeed, probably fair to say that he saved the school in 1946… After a brief second marriage to Irene Titcomb in 1965, he died in 1969, at Bladon in Oxfordshire, after a short illness.


When I first read of Bishop's scientific background, and the chemistry texts he first published in 1936 (An Elementary Chemistry by O.U.P., like Mills) and 1939 (Introduction to Chemistry by Clarendon Press), I wondered how he got on with George Mills, an artsy fellow, far more in tune with literature, the stage, music, and the Times Crossword than valences, elements, compounds, and the Periodic Table.

Seeing the description above that Bishop was, quite unscientifically, not always "a logical and consistent thinker" certainly caused a friendship with Mills make far more sense.

[By the way, a coincidence: The books Bishop authored in the 1930s were reprinted in 1956 and 1960, just as the books of George Mills also were reissued during the very same time.]


Former Warwick student R. F. Wilmut has a website called Warwick School in 1961 [click here to visit], and he provides some insight into Bishop [seen, right, during the Queen Mother's visit in 1958] as both a headmaster and as an instructor:

A.H.B. Bishop, Headmaster... was born in 1898, and certainly exemplified the old-fashioned approach to being a Head - not necessarily a bad thing: though formal and perhaps a bit rigid in his attitudes he was approachable and certainly very fair-minded. I did once see him go into a near fury over a slightly persistent question (in one of his regular Q & A sessions at the end of his Religious Knowledge classes) over being allowed to wear duffel-coats instead of the regulation navy raincoats: he actually referred to schools who allowed this as 'going to rack and ruin'.

Many of the things I disliked about Warwick - the emphasis on games, a certain academic rigidity, and an inflexibility in dealing with boys (not only me) who didn't quite fit the expected mould - must I suppose be laid at his door, as he did exert a close control over the running of the school: to balance this he was always respected for his fairness and his manners, and indeed for firm leadership even if one did not always agree with him.


It must be remembered here that George Mills came from a different generation of schoolboys: A "modern" schoolmaster must have been a rare breed, indeed, in George's experience at the dawning of the 20th century. A man who, instead, stood for children, who was "approachable" and "fair-minded" while being an educational "leader" was something Mills emphasized in his own stories of prep schools. Unfortunately, what he had viewed as "modern" and much improved in 1933, children in 1961 saw as "old fashioned." Time marches on, eh?

For one thing, "games" were clearly a huge focus of the schools written about by Mills. In addition, formality and some degree of rigidity are apparent in most of George's schoolmasters at fictional Leadham House School, and his headmaster in Meredith and Co., Howell "Peter" Stone, likely was a fusion of the attributes of three leaders, Charles Scott Malden at Windlesham, Joshua Goodland at Warren Hill, and Arthur Henry Burdick Bishop, all of whom Mills found most admirable.

More on Bishop and Mr. H. E. Howell soon, but here in the States this is Father's Day weekend, and I've a daughter coming in!