Mary Francis Ames


Mary Frances Ames, born Mary Frances Leslie Miller, authored and illustrated children's books and humorous books for adults in Great Britain and Canada, published as Mrs. Ernest Ames, sometimes in collaboration with her husband.

Author and illustrator

Her first book was An ABC, for Baby Patriots, which was used for teaching children the alphabet. This was an enormous success with Queen Victoria reportedly buying over a hundred copies. 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." 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, but Ames also wrote humerous, politically satirical works aimed at adults so her writing could also be seen as an exaggerated satire of nationalism. 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 with a caricature of a pipe smoking man whose eye is Paris; Gibraltar and Malta are highlighted in red, as is the cheek of the French poodle which is holding a cane to instruct the young child wearing a German helmet.

A is the Army
That dies for the Queen;
It's the very best Army
That ever was seen,
E is our Empire
Where sun never sets;
The larger we make it
The bigger it gets.
K is for Kings;
Once warlike and haughty,
Great Britain subdued them
Because they'd been naughty.
O is the Ocean
Where none but a fool
Would ever dare question
Our title to rule
Q is our Queen!
It fills us with pride
To see the Queen’s coach
When the Queen is inside!
W is the Word
Of an Englishman true;
When given, it means
What he says, he will do.
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." Comparisons were made with A Book of Nonsense by Edward Lear and Hilaire Belloc.
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." It was "a clever satire with some really droll pictures in it, but in no sense suited for children or likely to interest them."

Illustrator

Ames also illustrated The Maid's Progress to accompany text written by her husband Ernest Fitzroy Ames. 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." 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.”
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." 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.
Sessional: Big Ben ballads 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." 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.
The Tremendous Twins or How the Boers Were Beaten 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?"
Ames also contributed to the Daily Chronicle, The Westminster Gazette, the British Review, The Ladies' Field, and The Speaker. She drew cartoons for the Daily Chronicle, the Daily News, The Ladies Field, and the Tatler. She was a member of the Ladies’ Grand Council of the Primrose League.

Publications

An ABC, for Baby Patriots The Bedtime Book Wonderful England!: Or, The Happy Land Tim and the Dusty Man The Great Crusade: an alphabet for everybody Little Red Fox Watty: a white puppy
Ames also illustrated text by her husband:Really and Truly! Or, the Century for Babes The Tremendous Twins or How the Boers Were Beaten The Maid's Progress

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. She married Ernest Fitzroy Ames on 3 January 1895 at Brompton Oratory, Kensington, and was presented to the Queen.
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. 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."
She converted to Catholicism in 1899. In 1901 they were living in Kensington with four servants; Ernest gives his occupation as "Civil engineer". In 1906 they had been living in Luton. In 1911 they were visiting in Hertfordshire and Ernest gives his occupation as "Civil engineer,, artist". Ernest was also an amateur artist who exhibited his watercolour paintings. They moved to Oak Lodge, Ham Common, London, about 1913. 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.
Ernest Fitzroy Ames was born in 1855 at Hyde, Bedfordshire and attended Haileybury College. 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, followed by three years working on the railway in Venezuela. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Ernest remarried in 1918 at Windsor to a widow, Blanche Mary Dawson. He died on 6 February 1920 in South Kensington and was buried in Mortlake. He left over £16,000 in his will.