LOOKING BACK 1928: Of mice and women

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It was the story of a little mouse named Mr. Mogo Mouse in Czechoslovakia. As far as literature goes, it wasn’t much of a story. What is remembered about Mr. Mogo Mouse 80 years after the book was published is the artwork.

The pages were filled with art deco illustrations, which one bookseller has said is similar to the work of The Bobsey Twins illustrator Janet Laura Scott. However, these illustrations were drawn by Jane Beachy Miller of Cumberland who was described as a pretty and “somewhat madcap” young artist by the Cumberland Evening Times.

Miller graduated from Allegany High and from there went on to the Maryland Institute of Art to pursue her passion as an artist. She graduated with an art degree and a scholarship that allowed her to travel through Europe in 1928 and study art.

Miller had always wanted to be an artist even as a young girl. “Even in her grammar school days, the local girl was more interested in art than in music which her mother was anxious for her to study,” the Cumberland Evening Times reported. Her mother actually thought Miller’s study of art was a waste of time and energy.

Even in art school, Miller challenged herself to expand her skills. She developed a children’s series and began submitting her story and artwork to publishers.

“Why I even told her when she submitted her illustrated stories to the publishers, not to expect anything favorable as thousands of others are sending in the same kind of material week after week,” her mother, Mrs. Walter C. Ort, told the newspaper.

One publisher saw something in Miller’s work, though. Publishing company P.F. Volland offered Miller a contract for what it said would be a new style of children’s series written and illustrated by Miller. The first two titles in the series were called Mr. Mogo Mouse and Trinkelette. The expected publication date was 1929 or 1930.

Volland was a good place for a children’s author to launch her career. P.F. Volland Company was founded originally as a greeting card company, but it quickly evolved into a book publisher with illustrators that included “Johnny Gruelle, Tony Sarg, Holling C. Holling, M.T. Ross, John Rae (of Howard Pyle’s Brandywine School), John Gee, and Maginel Wright Enright, the sister of architect Frank Lloyd Wright,” according to the company’s web site.  P.F. Volland Company is probably best known as the publisher of the Raggedy Ann stories by Johnny Gruelle.

By the time word came out that Miller’s manuscripts had been accepted, Miller was already on her way to Europe.

When the newspaper asked Miller’s associates what they thought about her becoming a published author, it came as “complete surprise to her many friends who did not even suspect that she was adventuring in the field of literature,” the Cumberland Evening Times reported.

Mr. Mogo Mouse was published in 1930 under the name Jane Ort (her stepfather was Walter C. Ort). It shows the signs of being a Depression-era book. After the stock market crash of 1929, P.F. Volland Company started using cheaper paper and covers to keep their costs low so the company could stay afloat. However, the company stopped publishing books in 1934 and there is no record of Trinklette being published.

Miller, who was called “one of New York’s hardest-working young fashion illustrators” by the Cumberland Evening Times, went on to have a successful artistic career illustrating articles for magazines like Good Housekeeping and Ladies Home Journal with her pen-and-ink drawings. She also won an 1934 Art Directors Club Gold Medal beating out thousands of artists nationwide. Some of her drawings were included in Allegany County’s Sesquicentennial Celebration in 1938.

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