Mary Francis Ames

Mary Francis Ames
Born
Mary Frances Leslie Miller

1860 (1860)
Died1914 (aged 53–54)

Mary Frances Ames, born Mary Frances Leslie Miller (1860–1914), wrote and illustrated children's books and humorous books for adults in the United Kingdom and Canada. She published as Mrs Ernest Ames, sometimes in collaboration with her husband.[1][2]

Author and illustrator

Her first book was An ABC, for Baby Patriots (1899), which was used for teaching children the alphabet.[3] This was an enormous success with Queen Victoria reportedly buying over a hundred copies.[4] A review noted "This alphabet is composed of amusing topical verses, ably illustrated by full-page coloured plates. These are as vivid in their colouring as they are most humorous in conception". "The drawings are exceptionally clever, and the colouring a distinct novelty. The verses are also exceedingly smart."[5]

The book describes the British Empire for children from the late Victorian viewpoint at the height of British imperial power. The verses and illustrations can be seen as glorifying British military power, the monarchy, and colonialism,[6] but Ames also wrote humorous, politically satirical works aimed at adults so her writing could also be seen as an exaggerated satire of nationalism.[7]

This was also a period of heightened tension in the Mediterranean between France and Britain. This might explain why the globe in the illustration for the letter E shows the Mediterranean, rather than India, with a caricature of a pipe smoking man whose eye is Paris. British Gibraltar and Malta are highlighted in red; these were on the route to the Suez Canal and India. The French poodle is holding a cane and is depicted as a young woman (Marianne). The young sulking child is wearing a distinctive Pickelhaube (German helmet), a caricature of German militarism. The 1890s saw the Scramble for Africa with Lord Salisbury following a policy of "Splendid Isolation" without having formal European alliances. Cecil Rhodes was pursuing a policy of a Cape to Cairo railway while signing misleading treaties with various African peoples, so perhaps the cartoon for W is also a satire.

  • A is the Army
    A is the Army
  • E is our Empire
    E is our Empire
  • O is the Ocean
    O is the Ocean
  • Q is our Queen!
    Q is our Queen!
  • W is the Word
    W is the Word

The review of The Great Crusade: an alphabet for everybody noted that "If Free Trade is a suitable subject for the nursery we could imagine no more delightful way of conveying it to the infant mind than by the study of this book. But Mrs Ames's humour and her drawings are, we need hardly say, intended for grown-ups."[8] Comparisons were made with A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear[9] and Hilaire Belloc.[10]

The review of Wonderful England!: Or, The Happy Land noted that "A happy vein of satire runs through this book from the first page to the last. Verses and pictures are indeed amusing, and though the former will be appreciated by grown-ups, the latter will appeal to youngsters."[11] It was "a clever satire with some really droll pictures in it, but in no sense suited for children or likely to interest them."[12]

Illustrator

Ames also illustrated The Maid's Progress (1901) to accompany text written by her husband Ernest Fitzroy Ames.[13] The review in The Graphic described that it "very neatly hits off the wiles and weaknesses of the fashionable damsel and her chaperone, and is thoroughly amusing as a satire on London Society of the present day."[14] The Pall Mall Gazette records that “The spirit of the book is one of mirthful, rather than severe, satire, and the reader follows the career of the Maid with a delighted interest, and with many a laugh.”[15]

In Really and Truly! Or, the Century for Babes "The rhymes and pictures deal each with some striking event of the century, from a comic standpoint."[16] These include The first United Parliament of 1801, Matthew Flinders' circumnavigation of Australia in 1802, Trafalgar in 1805, Waterloo in 1815, The abolition of Slavery in 1833, The Penny Post in 1840, Brother Jonathan of the United States and John Bull of England in the Great Rapprochement of 1898.

  • 1802 Australia
    1802 Australia
  • 1833 Abolition of Slavery
    1833 Abolition of Slavery
  • The 1840 Penny Post
    The 1840 Penny Post
  • 1858 The First Atlantic Cable
    1858 The First Atlantic Cable
  • 1898 Rapprochement
    1898 Rapprochement

Sessional: Big Ben ballads (1906) was a political satire, reviewed as a "Clever adaptions of nursery rhyme associations to 'taking off' the leading boys in the political school at Westminster."[17] It included the verse

Hark! Hark! a German barque
   Is landing beggars in town,
And Herbert of Leeds, full of noble deeds,
   Is hastening, hurrying down.
"Oh stay, oh stay, good people all
   There is nothing we will not do,
To give you a hand and to help you land,
   This country was made for you."

which is about Herbert Asquith and the Anglo-German naval arms race.

Little Bowles-peep
Has lost his seat,
And cannot tell where to find it;
In great distress
He writes to the Press,
But nobody seems to mind it.

[18]

The Tremendous Twins or How the Boers Were Beaten (1900) about the recent Boer War raised some "misgivings. The twins are funny enough in the gaily-coloured drawings, but the war is too new, too tragically near to us, to be the subject of humour.And is it not a mistake to involve the nursery in such a drama of pity and terror?"[19] The Bookseller noted that "the coloured cartoons of their exploits are uncommonly witty and too the point. Without betraying any political secrets, we may say that, beginning with the picture of the twins "waking up" the W.O., to their falling upon the neck of F.M. the C.I.C. in S.Africa, and the flight of Oom Paul, the Twins' portrait gallery is an unqualified success. In particulat, note the "presentment" of the Empress Queen!"[20]

Ames also contributed to the Daily Chronicle,[21] The Westminster Gazette,[22] the British Review, The Ladies' Field,[23] and The Speaker. She drew cartoons for the Daily Chronicle, the Daily News,[1] The Ladies' Field,[24] and the Tatler.[25] She was a member of the Ladies’ Grand Council of the Primrose League.[26][27]

Publications

  • An ABC, for Baby Patriots (1899). Dean & Son
  • The Bedtime Book (1901). Grant Richards
  • Wonderful England!: Or, The Happy Land (1902). Grant Richards
  • Tim and the Dusty Man (1903). Grant Richards
  • The Great Crusade: an alphabet for everybody (1903). Simpkin, Marshall and Co.
  • Little Red Fox (1908). Duckworth & Co.
  • Watty: a white puppy (1913). Duckworth & Co.

Ames also illustrated text by her husband:

  • Really and Truly! Or, the Century for Babes (1899). Edward Arnold
  • The Tremendous Twins or How the Boers Were Beaten (1900)
  • The Maid's Progress (1901). Grant Richards
  • Sessional: Big Ben ballads (1906).

Personal life

Mary Frances Leslie Miller was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in December 1860, the daughter of Patrick Leslie Miller, minister of John Knox Church, Newcastle.[28][29] She married Ernest Fitzroy Ames (1855–1920) on 3 January 1895 at Brompton Oratory, Kensington,[30][31] and was presented to the Queen.[32] They lived with his family at 37, Eaton Square[33] before moving in 1896 to 31, Ovington Square.[34]

As a child she had drawn "ambitious religious pictures and curious cut-out pictures in white paper, representing crosses with supporting angels on either side, the crosses carved like fine lace, and every detail of the angels' wings carefully reproduced." She abandoned drawing but took it up again after her marriage, "in her own natural and untrammelled bent towards the delineation of what might be called the edge of form, drawing of course, from the live model." She had her studio in her house in Ovington Square.[35] She also developed "portraiture in fine pencil, with the face and hair, perhaps, a scarf or sash delicately tinted, a return to the fashion which had great vogue about a hundred years ago."[4]

She converted to Catholicism in 1899.[36] In 1901 they had four servants and Ernest gives his occupation as "Civil engineer".[37] By 1906 they lived at 46, Green Street, Mayfair.[38][39] In 1911 they were visiting her married sister in Hertfordshire and Ernest gives his occupation as "Civil engineer, (Ret), artist".[40] They moved to Oak Lodge, Ham Common, London, about 1913.[1][41][42] Ames died 22 August 1914 and was buried on 28 August at St Mary Magdalen Church, Mortlake, following a requiem funeral service at St Agatha's Church, Kingston upon Thames.[1][43]

Ernest Fitzroy Ames was born in 1855 at Hyde, Bedfordshire[44] and attended Haileybury College.[45] He was an associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, elected in 1892. For five years he worked on the Manchester waterways, then worked four years in Florida growing oranges and engineering. He next worked three years as assistant-engineer on the Mexican National Railway and district engineer on the Inter-oceanic Railway,[36] followed by three years working on the railway in Venezuela.[46][45] Ernest was also an amateur artist who exhibited his watercolour paintings.[47][39] He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.

Ernest remarried in 1918 at Windsor to a widow, Blanche Mary Dawson.[48] He died on 6 February 1920 in South Kensington and was buried in Mortlake.[49] He left over £16,000 in his will.[50]

References

  1. ^ a b c d "Death of a writer. An exceptional and prolific career". Surrey Comet. 29 August 1914. p. 11. We regret to announce the sudden and unexpected death of Mrs. Ernest Ames, the well-known writer of books for children, which occurred on Saturday, at her new home on Ham Common from gastric hemorrhage. Although only resident in Ham for just over a year, Mrs. Ames had become highly esteemed by the wide circle of friends which she had made in the district. As a writer, and also as an artist, Mrs. Ames was, of course, known to a far wider circle. She was chiefly famed for her children's books, the first, "The A.B.C. for Baby Trotters" being very popular and a large number of them were purchased by Queen Victoria. Other of her books included "Really and Truly", "The Tremendous Twins", "The Bed-Time Book", "Wonderful England" and many others. Mrs. Ames' "Little Animal" books were very popular, and the drawings for these were by the deceased. "The Great Crusade" was a political work which received favourable notice, and Mrs Ames contributed largely on miscellaneous subjects to the columns of the "Daily Chronicle," the "Westminster Gazette," the "British Review," "The Speaker" and other journals, as well as drawing cartoons for the "Daily Chronicle" and "Daily News" and other political papers. She had much success, too, as a crayon portrait artist. Mrs Ames was a direct descendant of the first Marquis of Tweeddale, and was married to Mr Ernest Fitzroy Ames in 1895. She had been delicate for a long time, but the end was altogether unexpected.
  2. ^ Silver, Lara. "Canada Fit for War: Image and Development of the Canadian Soldier, 1870–1914" (PDF). British Association for Canadian Studies. Archived (PDF) from the original on 25 January 2016. Retrieved 21 October 2008.
  3. ^ "Reviews. An A.B.C. for baby patriots". Sporting Gazette. 24 December 1898. p. 34.
  4. ^ a b "The Illustrators of Children's Books". Ladies' Field. 21 November 1903. p. 133.
  5. ^ "Dean's renowned children's books". Myra's Journal of Dress and Fashion. 1 February 190. p. 2.
  6. ^ Manktelow, Emily (26 January 2020). "An ABC for baby patriots". Teaching Empire in recolonial Britain.
  7. ^ Norcia, Megan A. (2017). ""E" Is for Empire?: Challenging the Imperial Legacy of An ABC for Baby Patriots (1899)". Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. 42(2): 125–148.
  8. ^ "Mrs Ames's Caricatures". Westminster Gazette. 30 December 1903. p. 3.
  9. ^ "Miscellaneous Literature". Dundee Courier. 24 December 1903. p. 6. This most comical political alphabet forms as delightful a contribution to the lighter side of the fiscal question as could well be imagined. Mrs Ernest Ames is heartily to be congratulated on her drawings and rhymes. The former are very reminiscent of Edwin Lear's world-renowned "Book of Nonsense," and as no better model exists this is as it should be. A sample or two from the rhymes will well repay quotation : —" E is the Empire So smitten with woe, That it totters to ruin (See speeches of 'Joe')." The accompanying illustration depicts in most ludicrous fashion Messrs Chamberlain and Balfour melted to tears before a most absurd statue of Empire, something after the style of the conventional Britannia. Both arms and the nose have fallen off, the effect being comical in the extreme.
  10. ^ "Table Talk". Daily News (London). 25 December 1903. p. 6. Mrs. Ames has been well known as a depicter of animals, an art which she makes all her own. But she has now sprung forth as a caricaturist, challenging comparison with any, and accompanying her work with verses, of which Mr. Hilaire Belloc might be glad to avow the authorship. D is the Duke Who retreated so fast. And said. "For the present I'll stick to the Past."
  11. ^ "Miscellaneous Books". Liverpool Mercury. 23 October 1902. p. 10. A happy vein of satire runs through this book from the first page to the last. Verses and pictures are indeed amusing, and though the former will be appreciated by grown-ups, the latter will appeal to youngsters. Mrs. Ames has something to say of nearly all our British institutions, and she chooses apt words to say it. Here is a specimen : " Our brand new Destroyers, Turned out by the score, Fold up in the middle. What could you want more?" That, of course, is a matter for the Admiralty to settle. In the same spirit Mrs. Ames versifies about peers, about the House of Commons, the statesmen who play golf, the London police man, and the refreshments and flies distributed at railway stations.
  12. ^ "Books for Children". Academy. 6 December 1902. p. 616.
  13. ^ Boehmer, Elleke (1998), Empire Writing: an Anthology of Colonial Literature 1870-1918, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  14. ^ "Satire and amusement". Graphic. LXIV (1672): 804. 14 December 1901.
  15. ^ "The latest social satire. The Maid's Progress". Pall Mall Gazette. 25 June 1901. p. 3. The Maid is "brought out in town" by her Aunt. She arrives from the country, very plain-looking and unsophisticated; but with the help of the coiffeur, the milliner, and the professor of painting, she immediately captivates a little Lord, a Cabinet Minister, a Bishop, a Poet, and finally a Baron, to whom, as he is "the biggest goldfish of the season," she proposes marriage, and is accepted. The spirit of the book is one of mirthful, rather than severe, satire, and the reader follows the career of the Maid with a delighted interest, and with many a laugh.
  16. ^ "Illustrated Gift Books". Bookseller. 12 October 1899. p. 23.
  17. ^ "Taking them off". Sheffield Daily Telegraph. 13 December 1906. p. 5.
  18. ^ "Sessional: Big Ben ballads". Bookseller. 15 December 1906. p. 15.
  19. ^ "For the children". Pall Mall Gazette. Vol. LXXI, no. 11114. 12 November 1900. p. 5.
  20. ^ "The Tremendous Twins". Bookseller. 25 December 1900. p. 31.
  21. ^ Ames, Mrs Ernest (26 February 1907). "Woman's burden. Troubles which a man cannot share". London Daily Chronicle. p. 6.
  22. ^ Ames, Mrs Ernest (21 April 1908). "Edyitha's Garden". Westminster Gazette. p. 3.
  23. ^ Ames, Mrs Ernest (18 May 1901). "Inattention". The Ladies' Field. p. 415.
  24. ^ Ames, Mrs Ernest (25 November 1899). "Childhood a la Mode". Ladies' Field Supplement.
  25. ^ "The Tattiebogle Tales for Children illustrated and written by Mrs Ernest Ames". The Tatler. 180: 18–19. 7 December 1904.
  26. ^ Burnand, Francis Cowley, ed. (1914). The Catholic Who's who & Yearbook. Vol. 7. Burns & Oates. p. 4.
  27. ^ "Ladies' Grand Council of the Primrose League". Morning Post. 27 June 1896. p. 7 – via British Library Newspapers.
  28. ^ Mary Frances Miller in 1861. 1861 England, Wales & Scotland Census. 25, Rye Hill, Elswick, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England. FindMyPast
  29. ^ Mary Frances Miller in 1860. England & Wales Births 1837-2006. Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland, England. FindMyPast
  30. ^ Mary Frances L Miller in 1895 England & Wales Marriages 1837–2005 Kensington, London, England. At FindMyPast
  31. ^ "Marriages". Morning Post. 5 December 1894. p. 5 – via British Library Newspapers. A marriage has been arranged, and will take place on the 3rd of January, at the Oratory, Brompton, between Mr. Ernest Fitzroy Ames, second surviving son of the late Lionel Ames, of The Hyde, Herts, and Mary Frances, youngest daughter of the late Rev. Patrick Leslie Miller, and granddaughter of the late John Hamilton Miller, of Dalswinton, Dumfriesshire.
  32. ^ "The Queen's Drawing Room". Morning Post. 6 March 1895. p. 5.
  33. ^ "Captain Ames's Wedding". St James's Gazette. 6 September 1901. p. 10.
  34. ^ "Court Circular". Morning Post. 12 May 1896. p. 7.
  35. ^ "The Field of Art. Mrs Ernest Ames". Ladies' Field. 14 July 1900. pp. 215–218.
  36. ^ a b Gordon-Gorman, William James (1910). Converts to Rome : a biographical list of the more notable converts to the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom during the last sixty years. London : Sands. p. 4 – via Internet Archive. Ames, Ernest Fitzroy, of Haileybury College; F.R.G.S, Civil Engineer; was assistant-engineer on the Mexican National Railway and district engineer on the Inter-oceanic Railway; author; son of Lionel Ames, of The Hyde, Hertfordshire. (1899){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  37. ^ Ernest Ames in 1901. 1901 England, Wales & Scotland Census. 31, Ovington Square, Kensington, London & Middlesex, England. Find My Past
  38. ^ "Luton". Luton Times and Advertiser. 5 February 1904. p. 5.
  39. ^ a b "The Morning Post". Morning Post. 12 May 1910. p. 6.
  40. ^ Ernest Fitzroy Ames in 1911. 1911 Census For England & Wales. The Rectory Credenhill, Credenhill, Herefordshire, England. At FindMyPast
  41. ^ "Freight Market Report". London Daily Chronicle. 25 August 1914. p. 2.
  42. ^ "Deaths". Times. 24 August 1914. p. 1 – via The Times Digital Archive.
  43. ^ "Burial entry. Maria Francisca AMES". FreeReg.
  44. ^ "Ernest Fitzroy Ames. Vital • England, Births and Christenings, 1538-1975. Christening 2 Oct 1855. East Hyde, Bedfordshire, England". Family Search. 2 October 1855.
  45. ^ a b Milford, L S, ed. (1900). Haileybury Register 1862-1900. Richard Clay and Sons. p. 48 – via Google Books.
  46. ^ "The Institute of Civil Engineers". Colonies and India (1020): 16. 5 March 1892.
  47. ^ "Water-colours by Mr Ernest Ames. Gardens north and south of the Tweed". Daily News (London). 6 December 1902. p. 5.
  48. ^ "Ames of Bristol". Landed families of Britain and Ireland. 27 April 2014.
  49. ^ "Burial entry. Ernestus Fitzroy AMES". FreeReg.
  50. ^ Ernest Fitzroy Ames in 1920. England & Wales Government Probate Death Index 1858-2019. 25 Brechin Place, South Kensington, Middlesex, England. Died 6 Feb 1920. FindmyPast
allikas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Francis_Ames