Lady Dorothy Mills

Lady Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole Mills (11 March 1889 – 4 December 1959) was a British novelist and memoirist. Family She was born in Kensington, London, the daughter of Robert Horace Walpole, the 5th and final Earl of Orford, and his American-born wife, Countess Louise Melissa Corbin. Her half-sister is Lady Anne Berry (née Walpole), the Anglo-New Zealand horticulturist who founded Rosemoor Garden, Devon. She was a Soroptimist and a Founder Member of SI Greater London, which was chartered in 1923. Lady Dorothy married Captain Arthur F. H. Mills of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry after he was wounded in the First World War in 1916, being presented at the ceremony with a wedding ring made from a bullet that had been surgically removed from his ankle after he was wounded in combat at La Bassée, France. Mills was also an author of both fiction and non-fiction titles. They later divorced in 1933 after he was discovered having an adulterous affair. Career Her travel adventures took her to places such as Liberia, the Bosphorous, Arabia, and Venezuela. She is believed to be the first "white woman" to visit Timbuktu, as described in her travelogue The Road to Timbuktu [Duckworth & Co.: London, 1924].