Sir John Evans was one of the most brilliant men of his era. He became owner of the Dickinson paper works on the death of his uncle, and devoted all his spare time to scientific study of all sorts. His books on early flint implements are still standard works, and his private collections of flint artefacts and early coins were world famous. He was President of the Numismatic Society, Secretary and President of the Geological Society, Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries, and of the Royal Society, in fact I have been told that he was at one time either President or Vice-President of every one of the great learned Societies in the Kingdom.
The following story has been told to me of great uncle John, which does not appear in Joan’s book. An extremely important meeting of the Numismatic Society was being held at Burlington House, and the speaker was a world famous authority on ancient coins, some of which, of great rarity and value, he had brought as the subject of his lecture. Great uncle John, as President, was in the Chair. One of the exhibits was the subject of special interest; it was heavy gold coin, and the speaker emphasised the fact that it was the only known specimen of its kind in existence. The coins were passed round the distinguished audience for inspection, and duly returned to to the lecturer. On checking over the coins after his speech, he found to his unutterable dismay, that the one unique specimen was missing. It was of untold value, and. the speaker and audience were shocked and stunned at its disappearance. Everyone searched frantically in every possible corner, but to no avail. Eventually, and with great embarrassment, it was announced that the doors would be locked and no-one allowed to leave until they had submitted to being searched. It is difficult for us, in this more happy-go-lucky generation, to realize the sensation that was caused in that dignified and distinguished assembly by such a procedure. Everyone submitted to being searched with a good grace, however, for they were all as anxious to find the missing coin as was the owner himself; everyone, that is, with the exception of the President, Sir John Evans. Politely, but unflinchingly, he, the most distinguished of that brilliant gathering, refused to submit to the search. He was well known as owning one of the most famous private collections of coins in the world, and he was equally well known for his rigid probity and high principles, but the embarrassment became acute throughout the assembly as at last he alone was left unexamined, and still the coin had not been found. The eyes of even his staunchest friends and supporters turned questioningly upon him, but still he faced them, calm and undaunted. At last, when the tension had become almost unbearable, someone happened to lift a book from the lecturer’s desk, and out fell the missing coin! A wave of relief and relaxation swept over the gathering, and when the hubbub of excitement had died down there was a unanimous demand addressed to the President for an explanation of his attitude. Relieved and smiling now, Sir John felt in his waistcoat pocket, and produced an exact twin of the coin whose great value had been so emphasised by the lecturer, on account of its believed uniqueness. He had brought it with him from his own collection, intending to show it round, but unaware that the lecturer was planning to make his specimen the high light of his lecture, neither man knowing that any specimen other than his own existed. When the lecturer’s coin disappeared Sir John found himself in an acute dilemma. Despite the high regard in which he was held, it would have been difficult for him, to say the least of it, to prove that another specimen existed if it were found in his pocket, so his only hope had been to sit tight and refuse to be searched, and trust to Providence that the lost coin should be found.
Great uncle John married three times. His first wife was his cousin Harriet
Dickinson by whom he had five children. The eldest was Arthur, who later became
equally famous with his distinguished father, as the discoverer of the Minoan
civilization in Crete. Harriet died after the birth of their youngest child,
another Harriet, who later married Charles Longman, the head of the publishing
firm. Thus left with five small children under seven years of age, great uncle
John proceeded to marry another cousin, Frances Phelps, an older sister of Aunt
Janey, who, though she had no children of her own, became a beloved and devoted
step-mother to the children, and remained so to the end of her life. After her
death in 1890 great uncle John, then aged sixty seven, married a third time. On
this occasion his niece, Father’s sister Frances, wrote to him to congratulate
him on “having at last broken yourself of your habit of marrying your cousins”.
The third wife became the mother of Joan Evans, who was born when her father was
seventy years of age. Joan is thus in a most unusual and unique position in the
family. Though only a few years older than myself, she is actually of Father’s
generation, and more than forty years younger than her eldest half brother, Sir
Arthur Evans.
Father told me that at one of the gatherings of distinguished men at Sir John’s
house, Arthur, then approaching the zenith of his career, broke off a
conversation with a group of kindred spirits remarking, “I must go and see what
my sister is up to”. When he returned a few moments later, carrying a tiny child
on his shoulder and introduced her as his sister, there was much amusement in
the party.
The family prowess reached its peak in the generation of Sir John and my grandmother; the standard was nobly borne aloft by Arthur and his generation, but since then it seems that much of the family fire and brilliance has burnt itself out, and Joan is now the only one who carries on the tradition in the grand style. The brains are still to be found in the younger generations, but the strange atmosphere of drama and romance with which the older generations so unconsciously surrounded themselves, has now disappeared. It was some quality in the personality of the individuals which created this atmosphere, some elusive hereditary characteristic which is quite indefinable, but none the less most emphatically existent. Joan traces this elusive quality to an ancestress of the name of Anne Norman, who, in 1776 married into the Evans family. In “Time and Chance” Joan writes of her thus:
“She could claim kinship with half the gentle families of South Wales... She remains the unknown quantity in the family inheritance... It seems as if it may have been from her ancestry that an unconscious taste for romantic symbolism and verbal conceits came into the family. Nearly all her descendants might be trusted to make a jeu de mots, to compose a motto or write an epitaph, or to carry a high flown metaphor to a successful conclusion. Some of them have been versifiers, though none of them strong or abundant poets; few have been without a sense of poetry and a capacity for occasional unexpected verbal felicities. That better heritage could she bring from her family traditions of the Royalist coterie of South Wales, which included her kinsmen George Herbert and Henry Vaughan?”
From Victorian Hangover written in 1962