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Home > ECF > Vol. 19 > Iss. 1 (2006)

 

Abstract

The image of Ann Mills, in its metonymic representation of English attitudes towards the French during the “long” eighteenth century, acts as a visual token of ancient hostilities (figure 1, facing page). Appearing in James Caulfield’s Portraits, Memoirs, and Characters, of Remarkable Persons, from the Revolution in 1688 to the End of the Reign of George II, the engraving depicts a female sailor standing at the edge of a wooden pier with her back against the sea. She wears a military hat and jacket, a cravat tucked into a buttoned waistcoat, and a skirt that may easily be mistaken for a fanciful pair of trousers. In her right hand, she brandishes a naked cutlass, and dangling from her left is the decapitated head of a Frenchman, which she holds out as a trophy of her valour in combat. Her plain stockings and silver-buckled shoes could as well be the attire of an Englishman or woman. The plainness of her garb and the smoothness of her visage are in striking contrast to the elaborate and beribboned peruke and hirsute profile of her grisly victim. French fashion has certainly been stopped in its tracks. At sea behind her is an English ship tacking in the wind, almost certainly the Maidstone frigate on board which she had “served” (according to the caption). The engraving is an early work of Robert Graves, ARA (1798–1873), who contributed most of the portraits that adorn Caulfield’s book. This engraving is almost certainly a reworking of an earlier, hitherto unlocated image, since a 1786 catalogue of prints being sold by John Greenwood lists “Anne Mills who served on board a Man of War, a cut-las in her right hand, and a French-man’s head in her left.”