Lady Dorothy "Dolly" Rachel Melissa Mills (née Walpole; 11 March 1889 – 4 December 1959) was a British explorer, travel writer and memoirist.
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Early life and family
Mills was born Dorothy Rachel Melissa Walpole on 11 March 1889 at 4 Queen's Gate Terrace, Kensington to Robert Walpole, a diplomat and former naval lieutenant, and Louise Melissa Walpole (née Corbin; 1866–1909). Mills' father was the son of Frederick Walpole, a politician and member of the Walpole family, and her mother was the daughter of the American mining and railway magnate Daniel Chase Corbin. The elder half-sister of the horticulturist Lady Anne Berry (née Walpole), Mills' brother Horatio Corbin Walpole (1891–1893) and half-sister Lady Gladys Walpole (1918–1919) died in infancy.
In 1894, following the death of her great-uncle Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, Mills' father became the 5th Earl of Orford. Like her mother Mills was educated in Paris.
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 (1924).
After being severely injured in a car accident in 1929, she recovered and resolved to become the first to discover the source of the Orinoco River in 1931, leading to her book, The Country of the Orinoco (1931). While planning a trip to Egypt and the Middle East, her father, Lord Walpole, died in Manurewa, Auckland, New Zealand, on 27 September 1931.
She was a Soroptimist and a Founder Member of SI Greater London, which was chartered in 1923.
Personal life
In 1916, Mills married Captain Arthur F. H. Mills of the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry after he was wounded in the First World War, 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. Mills' father disapproved of the match and disinherited her. Following death her maternal grandfather in 1918, Mills' was left a trust fund which could only be accessed following the death of her father.
Lady Dorothy Mills filed a divorce decree in 1932, on the grounds of her husband's infidelity. The divorce was granted the following year after which Mills "retreated to a quiet and private life" at the seaside Steyning Mansions Hotel at Eastern Terrace in Brighton, publishing no more books before her death in 1959.