English Authors of Children's Literature: Amy Le Feuvre


Figure 1.--This is an illustration from "Sunday at Home". (Sunday in many families was a comntemplative day in which the children would stay home after church and read or amuse themselves.) The illustrator is ???. The caption reads, "Then Puff was forced to part with the treasured two farthings". Puff is the childen's younger brother. Note the back buttonng smock and bow at the back. His brothers wear Eton suits. We do not see many English boys wearing smocks in the photographic record. We do not know if this because the boys were photographed in more formal clothes or the illustration is not realistic.

A HBC reader has provided us information on an English children's book entitled The Sunday at Home published in 1908 for 1909. It's a big thick hardcover book that looks like an old styled big Bible (a bit smaller than A4 size). It's an omnibus type book and has a whole range of 'leisure' type articles featuring issues and topics of the day, travel, devotional studies, stories for children and adults, book reviews and such like. It was perfect for the many early 20th century English families that expected their children to use Sunday after school to quietly busy themselves around the home with a book or other worthwhile activity. It's packed with many photographs and illustrations. A wonderful and fascinating book indeed. The book included a series of children's stories. We noted one story by Amy Le Feuvre (note the French name) entitled "Us and Our Donkey". The story centers around a large well to do English family in a rural village, of whom the father is clergyman of the town. The mother has passed away and the children are looked after by a fussy aunt.

Book: The Sunday at Home

A HBC reader has provided us information on an English children's book entitled The Sunday at Home published in 1908 for 1909. It's a big thick hardcover book that looks like an old styled big Bible (a bit smaller than A4 size). It's an omnibus type book and has a whole range of 'leisure' type articles featuring issues and topics of the day, travel, devotional studies, stories for children and adults, book reviews and such like. It was perfect for the many early 20th century English families that expected their children to use Sunday after school to quietly busy themselves around the home with a book or other worthwhile activity. It's packed with many photographs and illustrations. A wonderful and fascinating book indeed. The book included a series of children's stories.

Periodicals

Le Feuvre not only contributed to books of collected stories. We also see her work in periodical publications, weeklies, monthlys and annuals. One such publication was The Children's Friend Annual.

Amy Le Feuvre

We noted one story by Amy Le Feuvre (note the French name). We do not know much about the author. We have no biographical information. The French name is interesting. French names were introduced in England during various historical eras beginning with the Norman conquest in the 11th century. Under periods when French people moved to England include the suppression of the Huguenots by French Catholics in the 17th century and more recently the French Revolution in the 18th century. We note that she wrote a variety of classic stories appearing in the early 20th century, incorporating strong Christian moral themes and according to one religious writer are ideal Christian school or Sunday school prizes. One example is "Probable sons" (described as a Victorian tale of conversion), "Teddy's button" (A moving story from the Victorian era), "Lengend led", "Tested", and "Bunny's friend". Some of her stories such as "Bridget's quarter deck" and "Olive Tracy" were published by the Religious Tract Society in London.

Story: Us and Our Donkey

Le Feuvre's story was entitled "Us and Our Donkey". The story centers around a large well to do English family in a rural village, of whom the father is clergyman of the town. The mother has passed away and the children are looked after by a fussy aunt. The story is narrated by the third eldest child of five children, Griesel. As you can see by the illustration, the children are robust and boisterous. Her younger sister's name is Lynette and she is 9 years old. The two older boys are her brothers Denys (13) and Aylwin (12). Lynette is struggling with her youngest brother, George (Puff). He is a lively boy of 6 years and dislikes the fact he has to wear "pinafores". The children have decided to buy a donkey with their savings and as the illustration portrays, George is reluctant to part with his savings box, or is it he is being required to put some coins in the savings box. Apparently piggy banks were not yet popular.

Clothing

The older boys of the family, about the same age, wear rather formal looking Eton suits, even though it is after church on Sunday evening and they are engaged in casual activities at home. This shows how much more formally children dressed before World War I (1914-18). Both boys wear knickers suit, probably with long stockings. Both boys presumably attend a boarding school. Their younger brother is dressed very differently. His hair has not yet been cut short, showing he has not yet begun boarding school. He wears knee pants with three-quarter socks rather than long stockings. Most notably, he wears a back buttoning smock with a back bow--which he very much dislikes. This suggests that smocks were worn by English boys at home, but were not at all popular with the boys at the time. I'm not sure what color the smock would have been, but it was a light color. The family looks to be an affluent family, smocks may have been less common in working-class families. On the morning the older boys would have worn their Eton suits to Church. We are less sure what George would have worn to Church, almost certainly it would not have been his smock. Note that the author refers to the garment as a "pinafore". In modern terms it is clearly a smock as it is a garment with sleeves that fully covers George's clothes. We do not know to what extent these garments were commonly referred to as pinafores in England at the time.

Illustrator

Our HBC contributor reports, "Though I scanned the book carefully, I can't find who the artist is. His signature is on the work but I can't make it out. There are other illustrations by him in the book."

Actual Boys

We believe that clothing and children's attitudes toward the clothing depicted in this story to be a reasonable reflection of late 19th and early 20th century children's attitudes in England and perhaps other European countries as well. We note a variety of families that dressed the children, including the boys, in smocks when they were young.
Austrian brothers: One garment that is not much in evidence is smocks. We know that smocks were not commonly worn by school children in Germany, although they were worn by younger children. We have less information on Austria and Hungary. As we have numerous portraits of this family, including images of the boys when they were quite young, we believe that they did not commonly wear smocks. One 1913 portrait, however, does show Freddy in a smock. He would have been about 7 years old. We believe it may have been a school smock. It is worn with a wide white collar and bow. Unfortunately we have no solid information to go on other than the image. We can make some inferences, based n the images, buy they are only speculative at this time.
Llewellyn-Davies family: Perhaps the most beloved literary characters of all time is Peter Pan. The story was written by J.M. Barrie and first presented on stage in 1904. Published versions of the book delighted children and movie versions, especially the Disney version, brought Peter into the lives of children all over the world. Barrie developed the story in the process of telling stories to the children of a family he met in Kensington Gardens, the Llewellyn-Davies boys. Peter is in fact named after one of the boys, Peter. The ways the boys were dressed provide a glimpse of how some affluent English boys were dressed at the turn of the century. Both parents died when the boys were still quite young. The story of the boys as adults is also very sad.
Crofton family: Some boys in affluent American families also wore smocks in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. HBC has obtained a photograph of the Cocroft family of Staten Island, New York. Mrs Cocroft has 10 children and has she looks rather young, more presumably followed. It is difficult figuring out who is who in her family. She describes the children as "born as close together as nature permits". Mrs. Cocroft appears to have been particularly partial to white smocks, presumably the laundry load was a factor here even if she had help. The family is a good example as to how large 19th century families could be.

Reader Comments

An English reader writes, "I read Us and Our Donkey" and "Christie's Old Organ" as a boy in the 1940s and recall them with great affection."







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Created: May 20, 2002
Spell checked: 6:49 PM 2/25/2008
Last updated: 6:28 PM 2/25/2008