When Dorothy Mills disappeared to Haiti to research a travel book, the British press led with the headline: EARL’S DAUGHTER GOES TO SEE BABIES EATEN IN BUSH. Mills was never out of the news in the interwar years. She wrote nine novels as well as six travel books, all of which sold briskly, and in 1928 she was the only woman in the starry line-up at London’s Explorer’s Week (Ernest Shackleton’s skipper, Frank Worsley, spoke alongside her).
She was born Dorothy Walpole, in 1889.Her father, Robert, became the fifth Earl of Orford when she was five. Her ancestors included Britain’s first prime minister, another Robert. The young Dolly travelled widely with her parents; her mother was one of the American heiresses who enriched the aristocracy in the 1890s. She grew up in London and the family seats in Norfolk, learnt to drive and fish, and came out, presented to Edward VII and Queen Alexandra amid ‘a swish of society dances’.
She was petite, with a long face, and she displayed ‘a fondness for unusual, theatrical dressing’. In 1916 she married a career soldier, Captain Arthur Mills; instead of sending out invitations, the couple put an announcement in the Times to say that everyone was welcome at their wedding. The earl did not approve of the groom – he didn’t have enough cash – and disinherited his eldest daughter.
This is the first book on Mills. Jane Dismore, whose previous volumes include Princess: The Early Life of Queen Elizabeth II, has found a gripping subject. She frames the story by presenting Mills as ‘the most popular female explorer… at a time when women were finding new freedoms’.
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