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Cormell Price [40] was a school fellow of Burne-Jones and was Kipling’s Headmaster when he was at the United Services College, Westward Ho!, Devon - a school founded to prepare pupils for a career as officers in the armed services  They remained great friends. Indeed, in Kipling's 'Stalky & Co', a fictional account of his days at the College, the character of the headmaster Mr. Bates is based on Cormell Price.

Price felt forced to resign from the college in 1894 when it faced financial difficulties and proposed cost cutting measures with which he couldn't agree. Kipling made a speech at Price's 'retirement' ceremony and later wrote:

"It cut Price to the heart to be forced to go. He hadn’t any money saved and of course he had no pension. Now, the school has gone to pot—and I wish to God it was finally wound up”

The following year Price married Emma Hopper - the daughter of a farm labourer who had, along with her mother, been in service at the College. Emma was 32 years younger than Price and her beauty had gained a good deal of attention from the boy at the college. G C Beresford (a school friend of Kipling's) wrote of her:

‘… there was an object of interest at the Head’s house in the shape of the daughter of his housekeeper, a beautiful girl, tall, with a perfect figure, which was emphasised by the tight lacing of those days. She was so chic that she seemed a Parisienne; consequently we had to give her a portmanteau name, compounded of Parisienne and Price – “The Pricienne.” The Pricienne engaged a good deal of attention; and there were knocks and rings at Price’s door on a variety of trumped-up excuses. These calls were simply to gaze at, and exchange a few words with, the fair one as she came to answer the door, and gaze and word were considered to be worth a good deal of trouble and risk. 

Price had been a great friend of the Burne-Jones' and, after being diagnosed with terminal throat cancer, he spent the last few weeks of his life with his family in Rottingdean, in a small house provided by Edward's widow ,Georgiana.

_{Cormell Price, from the National Portrait Gallery}