A Hodge Podge of Mills Miscellany

The temperature here in steamy Florida—and across the U.S. for that matter—simply has been sweltering! I should be out finishing the task of painting the house, but it has been easier just to stay indoors, enjoy the air conditioning, and work at cleaning out the George Mills-related folders that have been squirreled in and all around this computer, I have some miscellaneous items that I want to post before we wrap things up here at Who Is George Mills?

Here they are, in no particular order:


WWII R.A.P.C. Regimental Pay Office:


First up, Part I of the April 1944 edition of the Quarterly Army List provides a snippet of information that may help us understand one aspect of the life of George Mills a bit better.

In October 1940, Mills rejoined the army and was named an officer in the Royal Army Pay Corps. I have been unable to locate information regarding where he was assigned after that. We do know that M ills had family that at one time owned much of Devon—the Aclands—but there's no reason to suspect that the army would have given much care to that in assigning him.

However, we do know that Vera Mills, George's wife, passed away at Minehead, Somerset, on 6 January 1942. Why she may have been residing at Minehead in January is unknown, but the Quarterly Army List does contain this, in a list of APC Regimental Pay Offices:

Exeter

Regimental Paymaster —
Booth, Lt.-Col. E. W., O.B.E., M.C., R.A.P.C.

Second in Command —
Coate, Maj. (war subs. 1/7/42) R. D., R.A.P.C.


It may simply be a coincidence, but the second in command at the Exeter pay office in 1944 had drawn his assignment there on 7 January 1942—the day after Vera's death.

Mills may not have been there at all, and Major Coate may have taken over as second in command at Exeter in an unrelated transaction. Still, it is a clue as to where George may have been between late 1940 and early 1942.


Manifests and Paperwork, 1913 and 1919:


We know that it is extremely likely that Vera Mills (née Beauclerk) had been abroad (in Canada or the United States) with her mother and sister during most of the First World War before returning to England and later marrying George Mills.

Found are a couple of indices recording the entrance of 19 year old Vera Louise Beauclerk into Honolulu, Hawaii, on both 26 March 1913 (arriving aboard the Marama) and again on 16 June 1913 (aboard the Chiyo Maru).



You can see the records above. [Click to enlarge any image in a new window.]


Warren Hill in 1896:


George Mills was born in Bude, Cornwall, in 1896. At the same time, across England, A. Max Wilkinson, Head Master of Warren Hill School in Meads, Eastbourne, had had a telephone installed at the school. You can see pages from that seemingly ancient 1896 directory.



George would be grown and working at Warren Hill by 1930.


We also recently located the master's residence across Beachy Head Road from the school, circa 1901. Thanks to the yeoman work (yeoperson?) of the resourceful Jennifer M., we also know who lived there during the 1911: Charles Ridley Witherall and Robert Mervyn Powys Druce, both "schoolmasters" at a "private" school. Also on the census form are Scottish sisters Mary and Janet Robb, the housekeeper and cook respectively.



This is the residence in which George Mills would have lived while he was teaching at Warren Hill, and is likely the one described in his first novel, Meredith and Co.

And, before we leave a subject that concerns A. Max Wilkinson, his Times obituary card has been located: It reads: "WILKINSON.—On Oct. 27, 1948, at Exmouth, very peacefully, A. MAX WILKINSON, sometime of Warren Hill, Eastbourne, and Wittersham, Kent, aged 92 years. Cremation, private."


Monica Cecil Grant Mills (née Wilks):


There are dual listings for the second marriage of George's half-brother, Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills, born 1887: His second wife in one place a Monica Wilson, and in another she is a Monica Wilks. The correct one is clearly Monica Wilks, and here is her birth record from 1902 at Ecclesall Bierlow:



There is also a record of her death—the only one I can find—in the London Gazette dated 17th August 1981 on page 10642. After her name, Monica Cecil Grant Mills, in a column labeled "Address, description, and date of death of Deceased," it reads: "Rivlyn Lodge, Shorefield Road, Downton, Lymington, Hampshire, Widow. 5th August 1981."



Winds Cottage, Downton, is where Monica lived with Arthur Mills until his death in 1955. I am still unsure whether or not Monica—15 years younger than Arthur—bore him children. If so, they are not among the records at ancestry.com.


Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills in China:


We have had only one image of Arthur Mills here, and the on-line caption I found with the photograph makes reference to Arthur having returned with relics from a trip to China "circa 1925," pictired, left.

We now know that trip occurred during 1928. While I cannot find a record of him arriving in England, there is a record of him steaming into Los Angeles, California, aboard the S.S. President Cleveland on 23 February 1928, having departed Hongkong [sic], China, on 30 January. He is listed a 40 year old "writer," who had obtained his visa on 26 January in Hongkong.

There are oddities: Mills lists his birthplace as "Woltexton, England," although his birth took place in Stratton, Cornwall, and he was raised in Bude.

Incredibly, is it possible that this was simply a mistake, and that the typist simply placed an "x" where Mills had wanted an "r"? Wolterton is the ancestral family home of his wife, Lady Dorothy Mills, who was estranged from her family because of her marriage to Mills. Was this simply a perverse joke on the part of Arthur, or did he think listing his birthplace as the estate of peerage—the Walpoles—would gain him some shipboard advantage?




In addition, Mills is the only person on the manifest's page [above]. Apparently no one else was making the trip from China to L.A.

Having always wondered if Arthur had missed george's 1925 wedding because he was in China, the answer now comes back a resounding 'no'...

Uncle Dudley and Jamaica:


Although Arthur and George's uncle, Dudley Acland Mills (Lt.-Col., Royal Engineers), is commonly associated with his eccentric activities in China, we find him here, on page 2326 of the 3 April 1906 edition of the London Gazette, being named by the King to be a member of the Legislative Council of the Island of Jamaica [below].




The Rev. Barton R. V. and Rev. Henry Mills:

I did not record in which text I found the following thumbnail sketches [below] of the lives of Barton Mills, father of George Mills, and Barton's uncle, Henry Mills, also a cleric in the Church of England. (We met Henry once before.)




Gillmore Goodland, Revisited:


In our seemingly never ending study of Gillmore Goodland and family, there was an additional weirdness that has just come to light. The 1901 census lists Gillmore, a 34 year old "civil engineer," as living on London Road at Royston, Hertfordshire—a place we recently examined in relation to the maternal family of Egerton Clarke—with his daughter, Kathleen G. Goodland, aged 5 months, a 28 year old Scottish nurse/domestic named Mary Woodhams, and his 23 year old wife, "Martha L. Goodland."

Goodland's wife was also named "Kathleen." It’s odd that the census taker managed to get her middle initial—standing for "Lillis"—correct, but somehow managed to get "Martha" in as her first name. Peculiar.


In addition, when we looked at Gillmore Goodland's children, we found Kathleen and Joan Goodland, his daughters. What we did not find was much about his son, Desmond Gillmore Goodland, who must have been born around 1910.

There is a birth record for him now, seen below, having been born in Godstone, Surrey, in the summer of 1910. That's the location recorded for his older sisters on the 1911 census.

We had thought young Desmond (he would sign his name in 1941 as "Desmond Gillmore Goodland" below, right) was in Wales, during that census, possibly with his aunt, Grace Goodland.

We now know that's incorrect. The infant in Wales recorded as "Gilmore Goodland" actually had that first name spelled correctly: Gilmore, with one "L". This child was actually Frank Gilmore Goodland, son of Gillmore's brother Ernest Talbot Goodland, who was then living in Australia, and Ernest's wife, Winifred Margaret Goodland (née Owen), who was visiting "her sister Florence Owen together with my great grandmother Selina Owen in Cardiff."

Many thanks to Winifred's descendant, John Owen, for providing the above information in his own words, as well as for helping me work out the lad's identity.

However, that begs the question: "Where was infant Desmond Gillmore Goodland—less than a year old, with his mother and father in North America for a year and his sisters in Godstone—during the taking of the 1911 census?"

It still seems odd that Gillmore and Kathleen would have sailed to America when he was a newborn—and they clearly did—presumably leaving him in England, but sequestered in a place where the infant would not make the census count.

Peculiar. But, then, there were many peculiarities in the story of Gillmore Goodland, Engineer.


Sir Leonard Daldry on Tape:


Daldry was a croquet player who competed at the time the Mills siblings were on the circuit along the south coast of England. Those with an interest (and the access, which I do not enjoy) may want to peruse a taped interview with Sir Leonard. It is entered in the text: A Guide to Manuscripts and Documents in the British Isles Related to Africa: British Isles (Excluding London) by James Douglas Pearson and Noel Matthews (London: Mansell, 1994).



The entry, seen above, reads: "1935 – 1961. Daldry, Sir Leonard Charles: Transcript of taped interview, 1970, relating to service in east Africa and Nigeria, 1935 – 1961; banking, railways, House of Representatives, Senator. (MSS Afr. s. 1576)"

My hunch is that the interview would be fascinating.


I Wish I Could Dial It and See Who Answers:

Lastly, there is something about a single, innocuous entry, tucked away in the 1951 Brighton telephone directory that holds my interest. There is no way of knowing if it is our George Mills, but it reads:

Mills G. 36 Vernon ter, Brighton 1 . . . . . . . . . Hove 36575

Is it the George Mills of our interest? For all we know, it could be a Gareth or a Guy Mills.

I'm not certain why entirely, but of all of the G. Millses I've come across in all of the telephone directories, on all of the World Wide Web, this one makes me think it could be George...


And, as always, if you have any information, speculation, or recollections of George Mills, his family, his friends, his life, or his times, please don't hesitate to contact me, and thank you very much in advance!

Egerton Clarke: A Final Look at the Man and his Work

After a month of almost full-time study, I feel as if Egerton Arthur Crossman Clarke—orphan, scholar, soldier, poet, librarian, and art director—has become a part of me.

While I can appreciate and enjoy Clarke's poetry, I'll admit to being far more of a "free verse" sort of fellow, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda being my one of my favourites, along with American Langston Hughes. Egerton's early work in couplets and quatrains simply doesn't move me the way I am certain he would have preferred, and any critique I could offer, save a dim "I like it," would be embarrassingly uninformed.

To the rescue comes friend of the website Jennifer M., an English Literature major from prestigious Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. Over the past few weeks of my obsession with Egerton Clarke, I've shared information and his poetry with her, and she has generously consented to share with us her thoughts on our subject.

The real beauty of what she has written is found in being able to follow her along the linear path of her thinking about Egerton Clarke, his life, and his work. Flavoring it along the way with thoughts of the poetry she's read, as well as some personal experience and the influence of outside readings she has done, makes the result a commentary, rooted in informed speculation, on the life and times of Clarke, and to a degree, George Mills.

Mostly regarding Clarke's text, Kezil and Other Poems, and presented in her own words, here it is, interrupted only an occasional note answering any questions she had along the way. You can also click HERE to read the poems in a different window as she discusses them.


Sunday, June 26, 2011 11:49 AM

What really interests me is the dedication. Ernest "opened the door for me," Gerald "opened my eyes once and for all," and the mysterious "Kezil" who inspired so much. My first thought is that Egerton was gay, and he's subtly paying tribute to friends/lovers who helped him come out in some small way. The poem refers to Kezil as a "she" but of course that could have been just for cover.

It's an interesting coincidence that you would send me this now, because I just added Wilfred Owens' poetry [Owen is pictured, right] to my Amazon wish list, and Clarke's book was written around the same time. I know I had read "Dulce et Decorum Est" in high school or college at some point; when I read it again just recently I appreciated it on a whole new level, and I decided I would like to read more of his poetry. Clarke's poetry is different, of course, not all about the horrors of war.

I often prefer "old fashioned" poets like Clarke or Owens; I can understand what they're trying to say, and because they don't use the surrealistic or outlandish imagery of later poets, the ideas can really sink in more easily.

I like "Kezil." It's very romantic in a mysterious, "Far East" kind of way. The imagery of all the red and the sun and the feast on the lawn reminds me of some of the imagery of Maugham's stories. I imagine a landscape hot, maybe in the desert, the sky is shades of red, orange and gold, and lying about as the heat starts to increase as the sun rises, remembering the lovemaking of the night before as "poems of his body's memory/Carved upon the lawn." Clarke is remembering all this from a long time ago, and it was so wonderful he thinks it may have been "but a garden dream." The poem is "writ/But as yet unread," maybe because Clarke never told "Kezil" of his feelings for her/him?

Feel free to tell me I'm way off base, if I am. But I have a feeling I'm pretty close.

I loved "Shadows" because the imagery is of a time that I enjoy reading and watching movies about: a graceful old England, tea in the garden but not a simple picnic, no, we have a table with lace cloth and the good china things brought out to the garden by the servants. It reminds me of some reading I've done about the British Raj, where these people in India would go on an outing and take half a dozen donkeys with tents, furniture, household utensils, and loads of other things just to spend the day outdoors, but in
comfort and with as much style as they would have at home. I was just out on my balcony cooling off before coming in to write this, and while I just have my little folding chair, it is nice to sit outside, away from TV and music and internet, and just laze around with a book on my lap, or just look around me at the trees, thinking my thoughts.



Monday, June 27, 2011 7:30 PM


It occurred to me yesterday after I sent you my thoughts about Egs that maybe I was viewing him through "Maugham colored glasses," so to speak. I've read most of Maugham's works and two biographies of him (the best by far is The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings). He was gay, but for most of his life homosexuality was illegal in England, so he constantly had to hide who he was. He traveled all over the world, where in some places it was more tolerated, and retired to France. He had two long term relationships (Gerald Haxton and Alan Searle) and a number of other lovers, as well as a wife (Syrie) for cover, who bore him a daughter (Liza). The caption under the first picture of him is "a lonely child, guarded and withdrawn." People who knew him guessed that having to hide his sexuality went a long way towards making him a guarded and private person in general, who often had little tolerance for other people's foolishness. His stories are brilliant, his travel writing also fascinating, yet most people who knew him felt they didn't really know him. There is one *ahem* remarkable picture in the book of Maugham and some male friends sunbathing nude. So on their private estates they could let their hair down a little, but they also had to be careful who was around.

Anyway, I realized that I was applying many of these standards to Egs, and assuming he was gay. And they could all be true, or none of them true. But that dedication sticks with me. I'd be curious to see the dedications in his other books. I think the one in Kezil is one of the longest I've seen in any book. Do you have any idea who Gerald Crow and Ernest Duggan were? (And I agree with Egs that deciding who to dedicate your first book to would be a difficult choice, which makes his selection of Gerald and Ernest all the more significant.)

[Crow was an influential poet at Oxford during the time. Duggan did not attend Oxford, and there is not enough information about him to identify him from among the many Ernest Duggans of the era.]

I was thinking too about George, and your comments in your croquet article that there was really no trace of him after WWII, except for the croquet results. I imagine it would be hard for him, serving as an Army paymaster but not serving in the Army itself, handing out pay to men he knew might never come home. That could mess with your head. Do you know how George and Egs met? Was it in the Army?

[As we know, Egerton served almost exclusively with the Army Pay Corps in Winchester, Hampshire, where he became acquainted with George Mills, during his months in the military.]

After living through WWII, with Nazi rockets slamming right into your house, I can see how one would want to retire and just play croquet for the rest of your life. After something like that, maybe stories about boys' schools didn't seem so consequential anymore. I'm sure a lot of things that seemed important wouldn't matter much anymore after an experience like that. Perhaps some of the real boys he based the characters on died in the war.

So, back to the poems (in no particular order).

Envy: Well, I saw a whole bunch of "the love that dare not speak its name" in this poem. Making of evidence a lie, he dares taste only the seeds, coward comforts, nought is real before the eye, and in spite of all this make-believe, contented he would be. Of course, if the poem turns out to be something else entirely, I'm gonna feel like a goof. But the more I read them over the more I'm convinced he's talking about something he can't really talk about. Do you know what year he was married? I would be interested to see if it was before or after this book was published.

[Clarke married Teresa Kelly at Winchester, Hampshire, in 1926, and they had three children together.]

Reverie: This one made me sad, because I can relate to his feeling of going back to the places of your childhood and realizing that those days are gone forever. I, too, "understand the present lack of all the half-remembered moods." The places where you were a child may not have changed, but you, the person, surely have. "Is irretrievable the time/When afternoons meant nurse and walk?" Sadly, when you're a grown-up, they do seem to be.

In Hospital: This one brought to mind some of Wilfred Owens' poems. This one is a good portrayal of someone in pain in the hospital, not really aware of their surroundings, but everything makes them uncomfortable and they just want to sleep…

Was Egs in WWI, and was he wounded?

[Exclusive of his first few days under the Colours, Egerton served only in Winchester, Hampshire, in England. He easily could have come in contact with casualties receiving treatment for combat wounds, though.

By the way, is it a mere coincidence that his service and his marriage both occurred in Winchester? Might Teresa even have been one of his nurses?]


Sunday, July 03, 2011 7:31 AM

I've been rethinking my sweeping assertion that Egs and Gerald were gay. I was reminded yesterday of a book by Sharon Marcus called Between Women: Friendship, Desire and Marriage in Victorian England. I've never read it, but I've heard it referenced elsewhere.

In this persuasively argued, provocative book, Marcus makes the case that women in late 19th-century England engaged in intimate friendships—which "the Victorians... believed cultivated the feminine virtues of sympathy and altruism"—that often had a sexual component of visual objectification and even sexual intimacy.

The history of gender and sexuality becomes much more interesting, difficult, and subtle after [reading] Between Women. Reading the love and affection of nineteenth-century women now requires a new level of care and historical self-consciousness that may be painful to possess, as it will remind us of our own losses--of the affection, eroticism, attachment, encouragement, and tremendous fun between the ordinary women--real and fictional--Marcus has so valiantly re-imagined, recovered, and recorded.

I think both men and women can form deep attachments to members of the same gender without it having be a gay or lesbian romantic relationship. I think that's what I was missing when I was looking over Eg's and Gerald's poems. Today people don't generally express such deep emotions so openly. Also taking into account that these men served in WWI, a horrific experience, which would probably bind them closer to their comrades then ordinary friendships. So I withdraw my assertion that I'm certain one or any of them are gay. I just don't know, and there's really no way of knowing, now.

I'm planning to read through Kezil again so I'm sure I'll have more to say about some other of the poems.


Sunday, July 03, 2011 7:40 PM

I've read this poem over several times in a row now, and I'm still not sure what to make of it. On the surface, it's about two people sitting up all night with a friend's body. From reading I know that used to be a custom in many places, that relatives would sit up all night with the dead the first night after they died.

And yet little phrases come in and kind of skew the meaning, and make me think there's something else behind it:

Customary vigil kept
Yet gave no thought to the dead

Knowing Convention had bought
Our silence, we were afraid

But never a thought we took,
For the pale and shuttered eyes

Each thinking the other's thought,
With never a thought for him,

We knew how Custom had bought
Our love for a dead man's whim

So these two people are sitting up with their dead friend, but why aren't they thinking about him? What thought are they sharing? Seeing phrases like "convention has bought our silence" makes me drift back to the idea that Egs was gay, but I'm trying to steer myself away from that, to be open to other interpretations. Whatever is going on between him and the other mourner, it's eating at them both, and they can't think of anything else, and they don't want anyone else to know about it. Something that happened in battle, in WWI? Or they're sitting up with the dead person out of custom, but that don't really want to, it's a "dead man's whim"? I just can't get a handle on that this poem is trying to say, or rather, trying not to say.



Saturday, July 23, 2011 1:33 PM

You know, I'm really starting to second guess myself on the whole "Egs is gay" thing. I was so sure at first, but the more I learn about him from all the research you did, I'm kind of changing my mind. I think he and George were very close friends, sure, but I'm no longer convinced it was anything more than that. I think friendships between people, women or men, were different and sometimes more intense "back in the day," and I was trying to apply that using today's standards. I mean, maybe I was right, but we'll never know for sure.


Saturday, July 23, 2011 7:29 PM

Reading [this] all over, I don't think I really have a summing up to write... Just that Egs was a good poet, and maybe we're not meant to know for sure, much more about him than that.


This missive arouses a notion that has crossed my once in a while during my time researching George Mills: Could George have been gay?

Egerton's dedication, if nothing else, certainly plants the seeds for wondering something like that. He and George had been friends in the Army Pay Corps and likely also at Oxford, although they studied at different colleges: Mills at Christ Church and Clarke at Keble.

They both were extremely sensitive individuals who probably never fit into the regimentation of the military, and perhaps not even into the institutional discipline required for success at Oxon. It seems they may have relied upon one another to make their way through those experiences, although it seems as if Mills may have been more reliant on the Clarke, who ostensibly had been an orphan and already must have had ample experience taking care of himself under the auspices of an institution, St Edmund's School [left].

George's 1925 marriage to Vera Beauclerk, indeed, could have been a cover for his romantic preference. That would explain in part his childlessness, as well as providing a possible reason that Vera was residing away, in such an unusual place—Minehead—at the time of her death early in 1942.

Still, not a bit of that means, or even really suggests in the least, that he was homosexual.

It seems far more likely that George's dirty little secret as a young man—something his family knew but most others would not—was that he, like his father, was a closet Roman Catholic in a land brimming with Anglicans, of both the Low and High Churches.

It's quite possible that his faith in Catholicism might have rubbed family members the wrong way. There must be, after all, a reason why his relations today are often unaware of the existence of Georges entire branch of the family. It is possible that his mother, Elizabeth Edith Ramsay Mills, may have found herself distanced from her own family when, after they believed she was marrying an Anglican vicar, it turned out she had married a secretly devout Roman Catholic. As much as I am told it really didn't—and doesn't—matter, something certainly 'mattered' that managed to erase Revd Barton Mills and his progeny from all of his in-laws' family trees.

I find it difficult to believe that, by chance alone, they all simply happened to be entirely forgotten by everyone.


There have been other suggestions along the way here that things with Mills may not have always been what they seem. The sentence, "I'm afraid that the Catholic school system, as you probably know, was infested for many years by paedophiles and ghastly sadists," once shared by a friend of the site, springs immediately to mind. It regarded why, in the end, George [pictured, right, at Ladycross School in 1956] may have been disappointed by the union of his faith and his career in education, and eventually left teaching.

This is not to take a swipe at only Catholic prep schools regarding a problem common to many institutions. We recently received this message, attached to an entry regarding Parkfield School in Haywards Heath: "In hindsight it was a hideous, sadistic and monsterous Dickensian nightmare of a school."

There may, in fact, be some aspects of the story of George Mills that one might consider a bit on the dark side. Still, there's nothing in the evidence to verify or even indicate that George participated in any of it.


George Mills may simply have been a relatively bland fellow: A bit sickly, tall, slight of build, overly sensitive, with a speech impediment, a fine sense of humor, a keen eye for observation, and a proclivity for failing to finish what he started, especially regarding any of his careers. There may be a part of us that would like some sensational quality upon which to hang our metaphorical hat regarding George Mills. We are, after all, often privy these days to many of the controversial secrets of those in the public eye, and we have almost come to the point as a society where it's not a matter of 'if they exist,' but 'when they will be revealed.'

But that does not seem to be the case right now with our George Mills.

Returning in conclusion to Jennifer's implication of some Higher Power overseeing all of this, or with at least the sure and steady hand of fate writing out this script, she sums up everything succinctly above: "Maybe we're not meant to know for sure much more about him than that."

Focusing on Warren Hill's Master's Residence, 1901

As regular readers know, some time ago, Michael Ockenden of the Eastbourne Local History Society sent this message: "Another Michael of Eastbourne Local History has turned up these two photographs of Warren Hill School. The first 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."

It's that post card image that interests us today, especially regarding that master's residence.

The last time we looked at Warren Hill School, we determined that the configuration of the structure in those 1880 photographs discovered by Barry McAleenan was essentially the same as the image of the school from the post card mentioned above. Mr. Ockenden's assessment of the image as dating from before the turn of the century was spot on!

The house in the image is now 10, Beachy Head Road, and we've wondered for a while here about the possibility of it being the hard-to-find master's residence. I had searched the "West Ward" census for 1901 and found nothing that could be called a Master's residence, although I did find many homes and flats containing a schoolmaster or two!


It turns out that the "West Ward" document I could access using the name of Head Master A. Max Wilkinson (giving me access to the census at Warren Hill School that day) did not contain the houses across the street down near what is now the junction with Colistocks Road [pictured above, today]. And the only way of "getting in" was by knowing the name of a resident—shutting me out of those nearby houses completely.

The problem has been solved by the intrepid Jennifer M., a dear friend and a wizard with these census documents.

Here's what she had to say:


Looking at the 1899 map [which you can see by clicking HERE], I’m fairly sure the building on lot 161[which is on the 1930 map, which you can see by clicking HERE] (#10) is what the 1901 census taker called “Warren Hill cottage.”

The inhabitants are:
     1. Charles E King, 38, schoolmaster
     2. Francis H. Brodrick, 33, schoolmaster
     3. George Anderson, 24, schoolmaster
     4. Eliza Shepherd, 46, housekeeper - domestic
     5. Isabella Morrison, 25, parlourmaid


I think #6 BHR is “Fairfield Cottage.” It has a family living in it by the name of Broson. I think. The handwriting is old-fashioned and curly. The family members names are Arthur, Orpha, Katie and Edith.

I’m not sure which are the Beachy Head Villas #1 and #2 (maybe on the 1899 map in section 115 2-790?), but I think “new cottages 1-6” are the ones next to #6. If you want those names, too, let me know.

And when I searched, yes, the school itself was in a different district from all the cottages on the other side of BHR.


So, we find that the cottage of schoolmasters was appropriately named "Warren Hill Cottage." You can see the entire page of the census document by clicking HERE.


Along the road today, traveling west toward the site of Warren Hill School [as seen, above], we can start at the intersection of Beachy Head and Meads Street. On the right hand side, now recessed off the road and behind a thick hedgerow, would seem to be the "new cottages." We clearly can see cottages number 5 and 6, however, listed on this excerpt from the full census page.

Then the census taker came to Nos. 1 & 2 Beachy Head Villas. They would seem to be the L-shaped buildings across the road, to the south.


Then the taker went to both Warren Hill Cottage and Fairfield Cottages [seen, above, as they appear today, No. 10 (left) and No. 6]. One of the two buildings would be the master's residence of Warren Hill School, although I might have guessed it would have been what is now No. 6, Holly Cottage. We'll never know, however, the exact path walked by the census taker on 31 March 1901.

What is particularly interesting would be to know if the cottage was owned by Warren Hill School. We know the school's grounds encompassed land along Carlisle Road up to Boston House, which is now a girls' school. Could that tract of land have extended east to include the cottages mentioned above? Or did the school simply rent a house for the use of the schoolmasters. It would seem to have been a fairly posh set-up: In no other residence of an ordinary schoolmaster did we find domestic servants—at least not in the West Ward!

Nonetheless, it would seem the entrepreneurial enterprise known as Warren Hill School would have been flush with assets that went beyond the mere operation of the school early in the 20th century. It is staggering to consider what all of that land would be worth today!


When Joshua Goodland bought and then sold the institution [above], around and during the onset of the Great Depression, it was probably a substantial transaction. It also allowed Goodland to hire a young schoolmaster named George Mills, who is the focus of our research here.

George in all likelihood lived in that master's residence while his wife, Vera, stayed in Knightsbridge with her mother and sister, and described it in his novels. It may not be exciting for everyone, but I'm delighted to have a location for Mills during his time in Meads!

Many thanks to the relentless Jennifer, the Sultana of the Census, for her persistence in locating first, the census document, and then the residence itself. And many thanks for her kindness and friendship as well.

The Winifred Hughes Coincidence

Last year in late March I obsessively transcribed the text of an item in The Times from April 1925 [left, and below, right] describing the wedding of George Ramsay Acland Mills and Vera Louise Beauclerk. Both families to some degree had ties to peerage, and the guest list attending the ceremony in Brompton and reception at the Hans Crescent Hotel was fairly extensive. It took me the better part of a morning to get it all down, given my proclivity to hunt-and-peck at the keyboard.

Three weeks later, on 17 April, I was contacted for the first time by Barry McAleenan regarding George Mills. Barry, as you may recall, had been aware that Mills taught at Ladycross Catholic Boys' Preparatory School in Seaford during the summer term of 1956. You may recall Barry writing:

I only vaguely remember Mr Mills and suspect that he used snuff. Many of his books were in the school library and I'm sure I read them as one of the key characters was called Pongo - which was slang at the time for the Army, as in 'the pongos are going in to Suez'… I cannot remember if I was taught by him - the chances are that he was only there that one summer term; the classes were small and I was only 10 at the time; he was very old in the days when being 40 was ancient and my teachers are only remembered for being gifted (rare) or abusive.

Barry, however, also pointed out another person in the photograph, although not right away. Two weeks later, Barry wrote:

Miss Winifred Hughes, mentioned in George Mills's wedding guest list [seen, right] was the name of the school nurse at Ladycross. This does not mean that they were the same person. She is third from the right in the central part of the 1956 school photo [click to see it]. She last appeared in the 1974 school photo and could have retired when she hit 65 - implying that she was born in c1909. Mainly remembered for giving us a monthly dose of 'rhubarb and soda' - an unnecessary and unpleasant laxative comprising washing soda flavoured with rhubarb. It's almost possible that she may have introduced George Mills to the school ...

So a Winifred Hughes was on the wedding list of George Mills and in attendance at Ladycross in 1956. That coincidental information simmered on my back burner for almost a year—until I explored the croquet playing of the Mills siblings in Budleigh Salterton.

That's when Barry also pointed out in the group 1957 Devonshire Park croquet photograph: "The man at 9 in the photo, E.A. 'Tony' Roper was the former (till 1954) headmaster of Ladycross."

So we find yet another connection between George Mills and Ladycross School, although it certainly doesn't prove that Miss Winifred Hughes attended George's wedding was the same rhubarb-pushing "Sister" at Ladycross, circa 1956! [Barry also has determined she is pictured in Ladycross photographs as late as 1974.]

Incidentally, for the clarification of American readers like myself, Barry adds: "Convents/workhouses and then hospitals shared staff titles [like "Sister"] by evolution... She had been a senior nurse in a hospital - a clinical role. Her colleague [at a school] would have been a matron - having domestic and laundry responsibilities."

He recalled this Sister Hughes [left] as: "[I]n her 50's - a devout Catholic and rather cheerless. She usually wore a short red cape."

How many women named Winifred Hughes populated England at the time? Many. Would there be a way of winnowing away the chaff while searching for this Winifred Hughes?

The real key to the identity of the Winifred attending the wedding of George Mills and Vera Beauclerk on 23 April 1925 rests in the name of the guest who accompanied Miss Hughes: "Theodosia Lady Hughes and Miss Winifred Hughes" were in attendance together.

Assuming they were mother and daughter, that means that the Winifred Hughes at the wedding was Winifred Emily Frederica Hughes, who we know inherited £4897 10s. 5d. after Theodosia's passing in 1931. [Even more money was left to someone we can only assume would have been Winifred's brother, a Frederic James Robert Hughes, esquire.]

The trouble is that no one by the name 'Winifred Emily Frederica Hughes' ever was born or died in the UK, or anywhere else I can find for that matter, according to those databases! That name produces no results in Google, either. While she may, indeed, have been referred to by family and friends as Winnie, Millie, or Freddie, those names would not have appeared on U.K. documents recording her birth or death

Her only existence is a probate document [below, right] describing her inheritance after Theodosia's 1931 death in Surrey, as mentioned above.

Regarding attendance at the nuptials, some connection to Vera Beauclerk's family seems probable. The Miss Hughes on the list attended the affair with Lady Theodosia Hughes, who would have ben an in-law to another wedding attendee that day, Mrs. Topham Beauclerk, whose full maiden name was Gwendolen Loftus Hughes, 4th daughter of Capt. Sir Frederic Hughes, and mother of the 13th Duke of St. Albans, Charles Frederic Aubrey de Vere Beauclerk (1915-1988).

Perhaps it's just another in a line of coincidences, but Lady Theodosia's late husband, Capt. Sir Frederic (official documents show no "k") Hughes of County Wexford, Ireland, had fathered a daughter, Winifred Emily Frederica (the lone official document again shows no "k") Hughes.

He also sired another daughter, artist Kathleen Myra Hughes (sometimes Myra Kathleen Hughes), who was a noted artist who was associated with Seaford in early 20th century. Yet another Seaford connection!

M. K. Hughes, by the way, is listed in the Dictionary of Women Artists: An International Dictionary of Women Artists Born Before 1900 by Chris Petteys (Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1985).

Hughes studied in London at the Westminster School of Art and the Royal College of Art where she trained in engraving and etching by Frank Short and Constance Potts. She exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Paris Salon, and was elected an associate of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers in 1911.

Frank Short's career was notable because of his association with, and depictions of, Seaford, Sussex, where Hughes drew the etching seen at the left.

And here's something interesting: That artist (and spinster), M. K. Hughes (born in 1877) had died in 1918 at about the age of 40 in Surrey. Her probate records show that her own relatively substantial estate (£3825 9s. 5d.) passed on to—You may already have guessed it!—the mysterious "Winifred Emily Fredericate [sic] Hughes spinster" in 1920.


Let's take a look at some other documentation.

In 1897, Hughes, Lady (Theodosia) is listed in Who's Who: "d. of Edward James of Swarland Park, Northumberland; widow of Capt. Sir Frederic Hughes, Kt. Rosslaw Fort, Wexford."

Dod's Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, of Great Britain and Ireland in 1901 further described her in this way: "m. 1871 as his 2nd wife, Sir Frederic Hughes, D.L., J.P., late capt. 7th Madras cavalry, and knight of the order of the Lion and Sun of Persia, who died 1895. Residences—Barntown House and Rosslare Fort, Wexford."


The London Gazette of 29 July 1919 published a list of 31 July recipients of the Royal Red Cross to "the under-mentioned Ladies in recognition of their valuable nursing services in connection with the War." Among the honorees, we find:

Miss Winifred Hughes, A.R.R.C., Sister, Q.A.I.M.N.S.R., Berrington War Hospital, Shrewsbury.

Berrington War Hospital [right] at Shrewsbury was later known as Cross Houses Hospital. Whether this Winifred Hughes was also George's 1925 wedding guest, I don't know, but it is likely that she would be Ladycross's Sister Hughes. (The title "Sister," by the way, in the QAIMNS Reserves, now QARANC, would seem to have implied a military rank similar to a lieutenant).

There isn't much else known here except what Barry recalls: "Now that you've mentioned Winifred Emily Frederica Hughes's full name, I have this notion that when she wrote out chits (at Ladycross), she signed them WEFH - but this has to be very unreliable after 55 years. It's also possible that her name may have been spelt Frederika or Frederike. I'm not convinced that she [Lady Theodosia's daughter] is necessarily the same person as in the 1974 photo. Just forensic reticence I suppose."


That is exactly why Barry is so invaluable to Who Is George Mills? Whereas I might get a running start and pitch myself headlong upon a conclusion that these Winifred Hugheses were one and the same, his reticence keeps me in check, and I appreciate it very much. Here's what we actually know:

● George Mills taught at Ladycross School in Seaford, east Sussex, in 1956.

● George Mills played croquet with E. A. "Tony" Roper in East Sussex in 1957.

● Roper had been Head Master at Ladycross through 1954.

● The nurse at Ladycross during those years was a Sister Winifred Hughes.

● A Miss Winifred Hughes attended the wedding of George Mills in 1925.

● That Miss Winifred Hughes was a relative (in-law) of George's wife, Vera Beauclerk.

● That familial relationship stemmed from Winifred's half-sister, Gwendolen Hughes, marrying Aubrey Topham Beauclerk.

● Winifred's half-sister, M. K. Hughes, was an artist of some renown whose mentor was Frank Short of Seaford, Sussex, a locale which Hughes herself often depicted as well.

● Myra Kathleen Hughes [whose works from the British Museum are seen above, left, and at right] was close enough to Winifred to leave her sizable estate solely to her, despite having at the very least other sisters (or half-sisters) Gwendolen Loftus and Georgina Theodosia, and likely a brother, Frederic, mentioned above.

● Two women named "Winifred Hughes" (no middles names in the records) passed away in Sussex after 1974—one, born in 1894, died in the Lewes district(encompassing Seaford) in 1977, and one, born in 1896, left us in not-too-far-off Brighton in 1986.

● Both would have been about the same age as George Mills.


Perhaps Mills coincidentally knew two different women named Winifred Hughes, of the same approximate age, at different times in his life. And each also had an attachment to Seaford, East Sussex.

Could these women have been the same person? Or is this simply an amusing coincidence that would have had George remarking, "Miss Winifred Hughes? My! I once had an in-law, long ago, called Miss Winfred Hughes, and her sister so loved to come here to Seaford to sketch!"

And, as always, if you can help determine if these two Winifreds are one and the same—or not—please don't hesitate to contact me, and thank you in advance for your help!

Considering the Relationship Between Joshua Goodland and George Mills

George Mills taught at Warren Hill School sometime in the late 1920s. Historians at Windlesham House School [left, now in Brighton, but then in Portslade] believe that Mills was in his first job as a schoolmaster when he spent over a year there, from Lent, 1925, through the end of the summer term in 1926.

Mills published his first novel, Meredith and Co.: The Story of a Modern Preparatory School, in 1933, and since we know from a promotional leaflet he was not on the staff at Warren Hill around 1930-1931, it's likely he would have been employed in Eastbourne sometime between 1926 and 1929. Mills also found himself teaching at The Craig School in Windermere and the English Preparatory School in Glion, Switzerland during those years, but it makes sense to surmise that he made a smaller move from Portslade to nearby Eastbourne before exploring career opportunities farther afield

George's Uncle Dudley Mills had been an officer in the Royal Engineers during George's childhood, and he had been quite a raconteur and world traveler. It's easy to imagine George and his siblings gathered around Uncle Dudley during one of his returns to England, listening intently to stories of faraway lands. For example, Dudley once apparently traveled around China dressed as in Chinese garb, speaking the language, and eating local delicacies.

It's also easy to imagine George sitting in the lounge at Warren Hill or having a pint in Meads at The Ship Inn, listening to Joshua Goodland's tales of travelling around the entire world, and his experiences as he had studied education, architecture, and law to that point in his life. Goodland was the holder of an M.B.E., had designed buildings, taught elementary school, tried important cases, hunted big game in Canada, hiked near the Arctic Circle in Sweden, golfed in Sussex, coached law at Cambridge, sailed around the world, saw San Francisco recovering from the 1906 earthquake, visited modernizing Japan and Czarist Russia before the revolution—well, it probably seemed to George that Goodland had done just about everything!

George's own schooling had taken him south to Haywards Heath and his military experience had led him to exotic Dover and Shropshire [below, left].

In Goodland, George may have seen some possibilities for himself and his future that were not apparent within his family of origin. George's father, Rev. Barton R. V. Mills, had been ticketed for university, and eventually a life as a cleric and scholar, while his brother, Dudley, went to military school. My supposition would be that many parents with a pair of sons at the time may have made similar decisions: An education for one, the military for the other.

During the early 20th century, George's father did indeed make a similar decision regarding his own two sons. Barton's elder boy, Arthur Frederick Hobart Mills, went from Wellington, to Sandhurst, to the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry as an officer. Young George was ticketed for Harrow, where his learned and degreed father and grandfather both had been schooled. It's even possible George ended up in an apprenticeship after he left Harrow in 1912.

We know from his records that the military simply didn't work out for George during World War I. After an initial and quite unofficial stint as a lance corporal, he was kept at the level of "fatigue man" for the duration of the war without any hope of promotion. George enjoyed none of the military success that his brother—who was decorated for heroism under fire—had found in the Great War. The younger Mills had washed out as a clerk. Perhaps he simply was not cut out for the military.

It's difficult to say how well George Mills did when he attended Oxford following his hitch in the military. We know he was there from 1919 through some time in 1922 at the very latest, but there are no records of what he might have studied and no record of him having taken any examinations.

Perhaps George simply was not cut out for academia, either. In a family that seems to have valued the dual career choices mentioned above, things must have looked grim for George Mills in regard to gaining and retaining the genuine respect of his family.

Both the military and institutes of higher learning would seem to organizations which have a great many rules to be followed, expectations to be met, and a fundamental duty to reshape their clients into something different—something better—than they had been upon entering. Routines, procedures, systematic progression, and an institutional socialization would have been de rigueur, and perhaps that aspect of military and academic life was what Mills had the most difficulty with in both.

George Mills was probably not considered an extremely able student when he left Harrow [right] after two years. He was tall, slightly built, and beset with both varicose veins on his lips and a speech impediment. His interaction with strangers—and upon entering Harrow, everyone there must have been a stranger—may have been difficult and painfully protracted by his impediment.

Under the pressure of other boys teasing him or stern schoolmasters demanding answers, he may have continually wilted, unable to effectively communicate, eventually becoming reticent even to try.

Humor would have been a marvelous coping mechanism for George as he grew to know some of the other boys and his masters, but one wonders if he could have made enough people laugh to have deflected what must have been a great deal of cruel teasing, and to achieve academically all he might have at Harrow. He may simply have been in survival mode most of the time (and actually may have spent time after his time at Harrow involved in the harrowing speech therapy and familial support of the day, as depicted at the beginning of The King's Speech [left]).

Things must not have gone much better for him in khaki, with orders being barked, snappy replies requested, and impatient superiors continually crying, "Spit it out, soldier!" Increased anxiety under pressure, and an inability to communicate clearly and efficiently in the midst of the most brutal conflict that had engulfed the entire planet, could not have been looked upon very favorably by anyone.

Ironically, however, Mills had a keen ear for language and an exceptional facility with its use in manuscript, despite his speech. The characters in his books are realistically articulate in both the King's English and the unique adolescent slang of the era.

Far from being perfect, the student characters in George's stories possess foibles and traits that often lead to trouble—sometimes a less-than-pleasant bout with the Head Master's tennis shoe or being ostracized by one's peers. Mills has insight into the mistakes boys make, but more so, he has insight into how adults could—and in his mind—should handle them.

It is no accident that his first novel bore the subtitle "The Story of a Modern Preparatory School [my emphasis]. "

George, in becoming an educator in the late 1920s, had for all intents and purposes returned to the scene of the metaphorical crime, or at least the very real schoolboy "crimes" that he felt had been perpetrated upon him. George, clearly a part of a new, humanistic, "modern" world of education, would right many of the wrongs that he'd experienced at his own schools decades before. And there is a good reason to believe that Joshua Goodland acted as the lynchpin in developing that goal and career choice.

Goodland was living at 144 Ashley Gardens in 1925, although it's difficult to tell exactly when he and his family vacated that address. Ashley Gardens is less than a mile from George's family's residence in Kensington at the time [24 Hans Road], and even closer to where his George's step-brother, author (and veteran of campiagns in France, China, and Palestine) Arthur F. H. Mills, was living with his wife, Lady Dorothy Mills, on nearby Ebury Street.

Given Goodland's proclivity to travel, and being a member of the Royal Geographical Society (also conveniently situated in Kensington), it's quite possible that Joshua was acquainted with George's globetrotting Uncle Dudley or Lady Dorothy. Lady D. already had begun traveling the world in the early 1920s, an activity that led her to become the era's foremost female travel writer/explorer. She published multiple monographs as a Fellow in the society (as well as a books and articles for mainstream periodicals) and was renowned throughout the United Kingdom and much of the world.

Lady Dorothy was the sister-in-law of George Mills, and a great deal of interesting activity—Lady Dorothy's travels, Goodland's own interest in travel, George's return home from Oxford and engagement to be married in 1925, and Goodland's waning interest in practicing law—were centered in less than a square mile of acreage in Kensington. George's fiancée and soon to be wife, Vera Beauclerk, was a granddaughter of legendary Sir Robert Hart and had herself been born on China! It's easy to surmise that the paths of George Mills and traveler Joshua Goodland must have crossed at some point.

George may have decided to try his hand at teaching just after Goodland had become a partner of F. R. Ebden [left] at Warren Hill, and Joshua actually may have been soliciting additional staff for the preparatory school in Eastbourne. At that time George, who was successfully engaged as in a junior appointment at nearby Windlesham, may immediately have sprung to mind. It's easy to imagine that George—then thirty years of age and gaining confidence as he taught—may have become more comfortable in his skin, and with his speech.

The Summer Term at Windlesham House this year (2011) runs from 1 May through 9 July. Assuming it was similar at the time, Mills would have been teaching at Windlesham through the Summer Term, July 1926. If Goodland had connected with Mills earlier in Kensington, it's possible that they became reacquainted during early 1926, possibly during cricket or football matches involving the boys at Windlesham and Warren Hill.

We have always assumed Mills left Windlesham against his will: Perhaps because of the General Strike, perhaps because he was found inadequate, or perhaps because it was discovered he had lied about his Oxon credentials.

Is it possible Mills left of his own accord, eschewing a newly purchased house in Portslade near Windlesham for the chance to work with Goodland in Meads? Mills might even have been lured by a bit more salary or the offer of a free residence, allowing Vera and him to sell their new home in Portslade.

George always had struggled in determining 'what he wanted to be when he grew up.' In Joshua Goodland, he'd have found a somewhat kindred spirit, a man who was had always been wanderer along a circuitous career path that included elementary school assistant, architect, law coach, barrister, schoolmaster, entrepreneur, and eventually, as we know, "sometime Head Master of Warren Hill School," all within a four decade span from 1891 to 1931.

Mills thought enough of Goodland [right] to make the "sometime Head Master" the only person singled out by name in the dedication of his first novel. It's likely the feeling was mutual. It is possible that Goodland saw something in Mills that might never have been noticed before. It is also possible that, even if George's potential had been recognized in the past, Goodland was the first to help him begin to realize it.

George never made it through Oxford, earning a degree, although that fact didn't stop him from telling potential employers that he had. It may be that he even told Goodland he was degreed. No matter, George suddenly saw possibilities—even the possibility of future success—despite having a made few career changes, and even if he had already turned thirty.

Joshua Goodland was short, gregarious, intelligent, and probably an energetic man with a wealth of talent, but it does seem he his ambition was accompanied by a lack of clear focus.

George Mills had his own set of talents, and a certain charm, wit, intelligence, and affability that eventually drew people to him. Both men were essentially social beings who obviously enjoyed teaching, and they were keen observers of people.

Mills, it seems, also shared Joshua's lack of focus.

The eminently successful Goodland must have been a larger-than-life image and role model to Mills, and it is no wonder George found himself gravitating to the man.

Why Mills soon departed Meads and ended up teaching in isolated and far flung locales like Windermere and Glion is unknown. For whatever reason, however, Goodland was still the only person mentioned by name in the dedication of George's first novel in 1933. It is difficult to believe the two men parted acrimoniously.

We don't know if Mills and Goodland remained close, but we do know that after Joshua's passing in 1939, Mills [left] never published another book despite living until 1972.

If Goodland had truly been an inspiration, and if subsequent texts continued to win Joshua's approval for George, Goodland's death may have been a real hurdle that Mills found it difficult to clear.

Mills had lost his own father in 1932, and it is possible that George—failed apprentice, failed soldier, failed academician, and a schoolmaster unable to hold the same teaching position for longer than a year or two—knew he had been a disappointment to his father. Goodland was 23 years older than Mills, and may have become an understanding and sympathetic father figure to George at a time when Mills realized he'd never lived up to his late father's expectations.

It may be a coincidence that George's most noteworthy success—1933's Meredith and Co.—was published on the heels of his father's passing in late 1932, the same year Joshua had lost his brother, Theodore. It may also be a mere coincidence that the book's dedication singled out the older Goodland for his influence on George at that critical point in his life. And it may be that the eventual demise of Joshua Goodland only coincidentally occurred in the very same year that saw the demise of George's career as an author.

But that would be too many coincidences for me to dismiss out of hand.

Mills closed the book (no pun intended at first) on his life as an author in 1939. War was imminent for Great Britain, with a resurgent emphasis on the realm's military. Having recently come to grips with finding a literary success that would have pleased his father—a scholar who had authored and edited texts of his own—Mills still had some unfinished business owing to his failings in the military..

After spending more than a decade as an schoolmaster and author, it was time for George to return to the scene of yet another crime against him: The Royal Army Pay Corps.

But that's a story we already know much of, at least pending access to his Second World War military files.

I'll have just a bit more on Joshua Goodland—a man I believe had as powerful an influence on George Mills as anyone—next time. Then, on to other topics!