Arthur
Mee People
of Stapleford >>
Arthur
Mee was born into a working class family in Stapleford in 1875.
He was the second child and oldest son of Henry Mee, a mechanical
engineer, and his wife, Mary. The family was a very happy one,
and in time there were to be ten children altogether. Both of
Arthur’s parents were noted for their piety, and his father
was a deacon in the Baptist Chapel they attended.
Arthur’s
formal education lasted till he was 14 years old. A friend later
wrote that he left school,
...
a sound English scholar, but too soon for even a peep into classical
realms. He had no aptitude for chemistry, mechanics, or geometry,
and as an editor he imagined that present-day pupils might have
been equally unattracted by these subjects. Hence his disinclination
to the use in his publications for the young of technical terms
common to most schoolboys of today. Never would he use such
words, for example, as “diameter” or “circumference,”
but always width, and so many feet or yards round. If a technical
term was not familiar to him, he argued, then it might be unfamiliar
to thousands of others, both adult and juvenile. The practice
had its disadvantages in lack of precision and directness, but
Arthur had ever in mind the one who might not know and might
be gravelled by technicalities.
(Ernest Bryant, quoted in Sir John Hammerton’s Child of
Wonder: An Intimate Biography of Arthur Mee, pp. 27-28)
In
1889 he commenced his first job, as a copy-holder for the Nottingham
Evening Post, and this proved to be the first step to a career
in journalism. He was an excellent journalist, and before many
years passed he was in London, first working for one of the London
newspapers, and then free-lancing.
Shortly
after his move to London, Arthur Mee married Amy Fratson. They
had one daughter, born in 1901, who they named Marjorie. Like
other children, Marjorie was full of questions, and it was this
fact that led to the publication of The Children’s Encyclopedia.
Her father later wrote about it as follows:
“...there
came into her mind the great wonder of the Earth. What does
the world mean? And why am I here? Where are all the people
who have been and gone? Where does the rose come from? Who holds
the stars up there? What is it that seems to talk to me when
the world is dark and still? So the questions would come, until
the mother of our little maid was more puzzled than the little
maid herself. And as the questions came, when the mother had
thought and thought, and answered this and answered that until
she could answer no more, she cried out for a book: ‘Oh
for a book that will answer all the questions!’ And this
is the book she called for.”
(“To Boys and Girls Everywhere”, in volume 1 of
The Children’s Encyclopedia)
Arthur
Mee’s books proved extremely popular with adults and children
alike. His biographer, Sir John Hammerton, comments “Whatever
one’s opinion may be of the merits of Arthur Mee’s
books as contributions to English literature—and there is
room for difference of opinion on that subject—no one is
likely to dispute their inspirational value to their own age (p.
223f.). According to Hammerton, one of the reasons for this popularity
was that “[he] had the power to make plain to the average
man, woman, and child the aspects and imports of the problems
which the very men who had wrested them from nature could not
make so plain” (p. 158) – and this was done in such
a way as to communicate the writer’s own enthusiasm for
his topic to the reader. There are scientists and historians today
who credit Arthur Mee with introducing them to the subject that
later became their specialty. Others tell of how they taught themselves
to read with the aid of the Children’s Encyclopedia, or
how they read it from cover to cover, with obvious delight.
He
was a prolific writer. Apart from The Children’s Encyclopedia
he produced a number of biographies, a Children’s Bible,
Children’s Shakespeare, books of travels around England
and Europe, and various anthologies of quotations from great men
and women of the past (his Book of Everlasting Things, for instance).
He also founded and edited the Children’s Newspaper, and
was dubbed “journalist in chief to British youth”.
Finally,
it must be said that Arthur Mee was a man of his time. He was
known publicly as a Christian, and stood up boldly for Christian
principles, though at the same time he was a staunch believer
in evolution, and seems not to have believed in the literal resurrection
of the Lord Jesus. His view of evolution was like that of Charlotte
Mason (among others) – namely that evolution was a wonderful
discovery whereby people could now see, scientifically, exactly
how God had created the world. He had a great reverence for the
Bible and its teachings, and this comes across very clearly in
what he writes. His writings also reflect his intense patriotism
and his optimism that the world was getting better, and would
continue to do so for the rising generation.
Arthur
Mee died suddenly in May 1943, following an operation.
Further
information on Arthur Mee's life and work may be found in:
Sir. John Alexander Hammerton, Child of Wonder: An intimate biography
of Arthur Mee, Hodder & Stoughton: London, 1946 [out of print]
Simon Appleyard, The Storytellers: A Glimpse into the Lives of
12 English Writers, First published in 1991 by This England Books,
73 Rodney Road, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, ISBN 0 906324 20
3 [available from This
England]
|
