Emma Hubbard (née Evans)
by her niece Dame Joan Evans DBE (1893 – 1977)
From Time and Chance. (The story of Sir Arthur Evans, Emma’s brother.)
For a full back ground about life at Market Bosworth go to Time and Chance, The
Story of Arthur Evans and his forebears, written by Joan in 1942. However this
book is not in print, or available as an eBook as at Jan 2013.
Page 47…1838…..Emma
(10 years old) went to be accomplished at Mrs Gee’s expensive school at Ashby de
la Zouch, where her cousin Harriet Dickinson, John’s younger daughter, was also
a boarder. It was a very elegant school indeed, and the Rulebook she brought
home with her, beautifully written in the mistress’s Italian hand, gave her
father a good deal of amusement when he compared it with his own regulations for
his pupils.
“The practise of the exercises for Mr. d’Egville is to be at least half an hour
each day……
The pupils are not to separate from their conductress when out walking but to
keep in front of her and in sight, with a space between two and two.
Talking is not allowed during lessons with the master…..
The book is to be held up to the head and not rested on the table.
To speak French.
To wear gloves.
To use the left hand as much as possible.
To strive continually to acquire a good carriage.
The feet are to be kept flat on the floor and not crossed….
Each pupil to make ample use of her Pocket handkerchief in her Bed Room. It is
always a mark of delicacy to make as little display as possible of the article
when in company……
If the frock is not changed in the afternoon, it is to be taken off for ten
minutes or so……
No excuse can be admitted for holes in gloves, strings wanting to shoes or
articles of wearing apparel, or books unmarked etc.as the afternoon of Saturday
in each week is set apart for the very purpose of keeping all these matters in
order.”
Page 87
(After the death of Arthur Benoni Evans, 1854 her father) …they decided to make
their home in London. A house was eventually found at 16 Kensington Square: …….
The house was old, and countrified even for Kensington with many landings, an
old staircase, and an outlook on two gardens.
Page 88
Emma had an unusual talent for sculpture, though so far it had only been tested
on a small scale.
Baron Marochetti,
who had lately been busy on a bust of old John Dickinson, was a neighbour of
theirs in London, and had seen some of her work. It had so impressed him that he
had offered to take her into his studio as a pupil. The family decision that to
work from the life in a man’s studio was unsuitable was very hard on her;
fortunately for her piece of mind she was now engaged to John Waddington
Hubbard, the young Bosworth surgeon who had been good to her father.
Page 136
Dr Hubbard had long talked (much to Emma’s regret) of leaving Bosworth and
setting up in practice as a surgeon in London. It was now decided that they and
their family should come to occupy 16 Kensington Square, and that old Mrs. Evans
(Anne Dickinson) should live there with them. She was very punctilious that it
should be their (John and Emma’s) house, not hers, and sent the heirlooms to
John at NashMills.
Page 137
Already, however, John Waddington Hubbard’s health was beginning to fail. Soon
he had to be sent to the hospitable cousins (the Phelps) in Madeira, to seek
health in that kindly climate; and soon he lay beside his brother-in-law, George
Evans in the cemetery of Funchal. (1871)
…Emma and her four remaining children and her mother, moved to a smaller house,
a neat classical stuccoed box of a place, newly built in Ladbroke Terrace,
Notting Hill…….
Page
350 (1905)
She had been ill for some time, yet had been happy in her little house at
Kew, sketching in the gardens, watching wild birds, and giving encouragement to
a writer,
W.H.Hudson,
whose work she was one of the first to appreciate.
With her going, the family circle narrowed….
It
had always been Emma that carried on her grandmother’s and mother’s tradition of
a friendly hearth where all would find good talk and a warm welcome. With her
death, Bramblebury, Bosworth, and Kensington Square, all seemed to belong to a
remoter past.