New Information: Mr Gladstone's, Eaton Gate Preparatory, and Eaton House Belgravia

This message (below) arrived from Bill and Susan Miller of Watford, England [left], regarding the possibility of the contemporary Eaton House School having once been Eaton Gate Preparatory School, employer of George Mills during or around June 1938, when the institution was mentioned in George's dedication to his second novel, King Willow:


We have just stumbled across your website researching George Mills and asking for information re Eaton Gate school. We have an interest in the same school as my wife Susan is the granddaughter of Robin Gladstone, and we have been trying to find out the connection between him and the school in Cliveden Place, Belgravia known as "Gladstone's".

I think you mention that Harold MacMillan [pictured as a schoolboy, right] was educated at Gladstone's early in the 20th Century, but it came to our attention through the memoirs of Tony Benn, the veteran Labour Party politician and former Cabinet Minister, who was also educated there in the 1930s. Curiously he mentions that Mr Gladstone was still active at the school until it was sold in 1937 and moved to Eaton Gate. The Eaton House School website mentions the move from Cliveden Place to Eaton Gate in 1937 so I don't think there is any doubt that Eaton Gate and Eaton House are one and the same school.

What we do find puzzling is Tony Benn's assertion that Mr Gladstone was active at the school in the '30s. This we find puzzling because from 1920-1929 he was, as you mention, owner and headmaster of the Hall School in Hampstead, London. Our family records show that he probably left the Hall on his marriage and took some time off to embark on a round the world cruise with his wife. Curiously however, my father-in-law was actually born in Switzerland, so we are wondering if there is a George Mills connection here, if he later settled at Glion after working for Robin at The Hall. Could Robin have worked for a short period in Glion with Mills?

On their return to England the Gladstones settled in East Grinstead, Sussex, where he purchased another school, The Abbey [pictured below, left], which he ran until 1969. We are a little unsure of the dates here - it is just possible this didn't happen until 1937, in which case he could have been back at "Gladstone's" from about 1930-1937. It also seems unclear as to where T S Morton was at this time. The Eaton House website seems to suggest his ownership and presence at the school was continuous throughout its history until it was sold in 1959. Our own theory is that the Gladstone family had ownership interests in all these schools, and that Morton was an employee and not owner, and hence may have moved from school to school.

I am not sure if any of this helps you with the life of George Mills, but we have been intrigued by the connections and will continue our own researches into Gladstone's, and to see if we can turn up any more information both on the school and on Mills. We would equally be interested to know if you have found any further information on this subject since your last postings.

I have copied a couple of links in to The Hall school website, and to the Abbey School alumni website. Also the reference to Tony Benn's book.

http://www.hallschool.co.uk/home
http://freespace.virgin.net/abbey.school/index.html#top

Tony Benn "Dare To Be A Daniel" published by Random House, London (paperback version) 2005. pp 94-97

Best wishes

Bill Miller
Watford, England


Thank you so much, Bill and Susan, for taking the time to write and share your information!

The reference they cite does, indeed, provide additional evidence for the current Eaton House Schools having been the "Eaton Gate Preparatory School" mentioned by George Mills in his 1938 dedication [seen below, right].

Why did the school change names? It seems unlikely that George Mills and his editors at G. G. Harrap & Co. all would have used the incorrect name for a relatively prestigious institution accidentally, especially if George had been employed there. The name change does seem to have gone undocumented, however, as did the change in names when the school moved from Cliveden place (and it was referred to as "Gladstone's") to Belgravia.

Although, perhaps we are being presumptuous in believing that Mills did teach there. He dedicates King Willow "to the headmasters, staff, and boys" of the school without actually attesting to the fact he was ever an employee.

Still, we know that Mills had taught at Windlesham House School, another prestigious institution, and dedicated his first novel, Meredith and Co., to that school, as well as to schools in Meads, Windermere, and Glion where he also had taught. Would it be odd for Mills to have dedicated this book to his local prep school, even though he was not on the staff in any way? It seems more likely that he worked there, at the very least as an occasional substitute for teachers who were indisposed.

Despite polite entreaties for assistance in academic research, Eaton House Schools has not, as far as we know, delved into any archival material that might shed light on the change of names and/or whether or not George Mills served on the staff.

This message was received from Eaton House Belgravia on 10 May 2010:

Thank you for your enquiry. There is a possibility that there might be a reference in one of our old school magazines.I will have a look and let you know.

Regards,
Lucy Watts

Miss Lucy Watts
Headmistress
Eaton House School
3-5 Eaton Gate London


Later , on 21 July 2010, this message was received:

The current owners,The Harper family,took over in 1977/78. I am not sure about your other queries but I will pass them onto Mrs Harper,via her son-in-law,Rupert Back.

Regards, Lucy


And I have never heard back from Back.

For whatever reason, Mills interestingly did dedicate his second book to the school, and not to his wife, Vera, nor anyone in his family.

One small but also extremely interesting aspect of the above message for the Millers is the possibility of there having been a connection between Robin Gladstone's birth in Switzerland and George's temporary employment in Glion, followed by their subsequent connections to the preparatory school in Eaton Gate.

If any readers have better luck communicating with Eaton House Schools, please let us know. And if you have any information on Robin Gladstone, I would be delighted to pass it along directly to the Millers. Thank you in advance for your assistance!

In Search of Eaton Gate Preparatory School, London, S.W.1

Following up on our discovery of the English Preparatory School in Glion, Switzerland—a place where our George Mills must have taught after leaving his situation at The Craig in Windermere, Cumbria, for whatever reason—we pretty much know at the very least some small amount about the places where Mills was a schoolmaster prior to his writing his first novel, Meredith and Co., which was published in 1933.

The only workplace of Mills's that we are now unsure of is the school mentioned in the dedication to the first edition of his second novel, King Willow, published in 1938 [above, left]. Here's that original dedication [pictured below, right], which Mills himself dated 'June, 1938': "TO THE HEADMASTERS, STAFF, AND BOYS OF EATON GATE PREPARATORY SCHOOL, LONDON, S.W. 1."

There's just something quite strange about that.

A myriad of searches through the internet, library databases, and periodical literature haven't turned up so much a crumb of evidence that such a school ever existed.

The obvious thought is that "Eaton Gate Preparatory School" must have been what the current Eaton House School in Belgravia had been called back in the period from 1933-1937, the period between the publication of his first and second novels.

Awaiting research assistance from the school itself, I have checked the archives of the London Times for more about T. S. Morton—a man [pictured, right] who could have employed George Mills during the mid 1930s if, indeed, Eaton House School was Eaton Gate Prep. (And, by the way, it is "T.S." Morton, not "J" Morton as Eaton House Schools' website erroneously claims.)

Here's Morton's obituary from the Tuesday, 23 January 1962 edition of the Times:

Mr. T. S. MORTON

Mr. T. S. Morton, a well-known figure in the preparatory school world of a generation ago, and founder and first headmaster of the school which became Eaton House School, Eaton Gate, died in a St. Albans nursing home on Sunday in his ninety-fifth year.

Thomas Sale Morton, born in 1867, the elder son of a Hampstead physician, Dr. John Morton, was a descendant of the Scottish antiquarian John Leyden and of W. J. Thomas, founder of Notes and Queries, and thus inherited a tradition of scholarly pursuits. From Charterhouse he went as a classical scholar to Clare College, Cambridge, and in 1888 joined Dr. Williams's staff at Summer Fields, Oxford. It was in the days when the great public schools demanded a thorough grounding in the classics from their young entrants, and the Summer Fields' products regularly carried off a range of scholarships and places at Eton, Winchester, and Westminster. Morton was a skilful Latinist and some of his translations have been used in schools for years as text-books, and he had the gift of interesting small boys in the Greek and Roman worlds.

With the encouragement of Mrs. Maurice Macmillan, mother of the Prime Minister, he planned in 1897 a day preparatory school in Cliveden Place, and soon began to draw large numbers of boys from Belgravia. He used to say that of all the boys he taught he thought "young Harold Macmillan" was the brightest. But he had considerable respect for the classical discipline which emerged in other pupils such as Ronald Knox, Lord Wavell, and in later years Anthony Asquith. He remembered doing private coaching at 10 Downing Street during the First World War with Mrs. Asquith on hands and knees coaxing a reluctant fire to save master and pupil from freezing. He would usually be invited to stay to luncheon and on one occasion was asked to stay in order to keep the conversation going with Lord Kitchener. His devotion to teaching and dislike of administration made him dispose of his highly successful school, and in the later part of his career he was a member of the staff at The Hall, Hampstead. His tall, spare figure was always noticeable at meetings of the Classical Association, and while he bemoaned the decline of the classics in English education he did not resist the conclusion that there were other interests demanding the studied attention of young English gentlemen. He was unmarried.


As we know from the brief history of the institution at the school's own website: "By January 1937, some 50 boys were enrolled, forcing the school to move to 3 Eaton Gate."

That would have been about the time the faculty of the school boasted a published author, George Mills, if it's indeed the same place.

Now, it doesn't say that the school moved to Eaton Gate [left, circe 1965] from Cliveden Place in January of 1937, just that the old school had swollen with about 50 boys by then. How long it would have taken to find a larger place nearby, notify parents, wait for it to open up, close the deal, and actually make the move is open to speculation—especially in light of the fact that there were no fax machines or photocopiers and the there was a global depression going on. Mills, however, wrote King Willow's preface in June of 1938 and actually called the school by an incorrect name.

Is it possible that they were still in the process of moving to the new location and hadn't finalized the name of the school yet?

Harold Macmillan attended the school on Sloane Square known as "Mr. Gladstone's Day School" at the turn of the 20th century. By 1937, "Mr. Gladstone," who was called by Macmillan "an admirable teacher, both of Latin and Greek," may have been long gone from the institution, but if an aging Morton was still in charge at that time, he had an Oxford connection that Mills would likely have used to ingratiate himself.

There are no records about when Morton left Eaton House to take a faculty position at The Hall School in Hampstead, but that school was purchased by a Robin T. Gladstone ["Mr. Gladstone" again?] in 1919 and expanded from 60 students to 270 during the 1920s. That kind of increase in student population would have required a huge influx of faculty, and perhaps Morton was the sort of "star" educator [he'd taught young Macmillan, Knox, Asquith, and a young Laurence Olivier] who could draw wealthy parents [and their wallets] to that expanding school.

If that were so, Morton wouldn't have been around when Mills taught at Eaton House around 1937.

One thing that we do know for sure: Mills wrote the dedication to 1933's Meredith and Co. with explicit "affection" for the boys and staffs of the schools at which he'd taught before 1933. By 1937, his dedication in King Willow to "Eaton Gate Preparatory School" is noteworthy for its complete absence of affection. It's precise—"London, S.W.1"—without any personal touch of warmth or fondness. The overall location of the school was the area in which Mills had been raised [right] , and in which he had always had a great deal of family, and one could assume many of the children at the school [which was never a boarding school until it moved to Haynes Hill, Twyford, Berks in 1939, and then only for the duration of the war] were local kids whose familes he might have known well. In this case, a lack of fondness doesn't seem to fit.

Is it possible that Mills left Eaton House School on less than good terms? Is the misnaming of the school something he did intentionally? It seems peculiar, especially in light of the dedication's brevity, that he had simply miswritten the name accidentally and never noticed his error. Such carelessness could be reflective of something else troubling Mills as he sat to write that dedication. Could it have been true that, in his case, one could not 'go home again'?

Of course, perhaps a typesetter at G. G. Harrap & Co., the publishing house, had bollixed up the dedication, skipping from "Eaton House" in the school's name, onward to "Eaton Gate" in the school's address without ever noticing.

But it is really interesting to note that when Meredith and Co. was re-released in the 1950s, the warm dedication to Windlesham House School, Warren Hill School, The Craig, and Captain Wm E. Mocatta's English Preparatory School in Glion remained intact.

The subsequent edition of King Willow, published by Spring Books in the 1950s, contained a completely different dedication—one in which no Eaton House or Eaton Gate School was ever mentioned at all. Since Eaton House was still operating in the late 1950s when King Willow was reprinted, it may have been no accident that a bitter Mills decided not to publicize the institution anymore, changing to a far more timely and heartfelt dedication to a "Beryl and Ian" [left].

It seems obvious that, with no other school in Eaton Gate at the time, Mills must have been a schoolmaster at Eaton House. What we aren't as sure of is whether or not he left bad blood between himself and the institution.

As usual, if you can shed some light on any of this—George Mills, Eaton House School, Mr. Gladstone's Day School, T.S. Morton, or Eaton Gate Preparatory School—please don't hesitate to let me know!