Watercolourist, illustrator and carver.

Fifth child, second daughter of Arthur Benoni EVANS and Anne DICKINSON

Born 13th September 1828 at Britwell Court, Burnham, Buckinghamshire

Died 2nd June 1905 at Bradenham Lodge, 7 Holmesdale Road, Kew

Buried at Brookwood (C of E) Cemetery, St George’s Avenue 155358 in grave no. RA154

Married John Waddington HUBBARD MD, 10 January 1856 at St Mary Abbots Church, Kew.

Children:

1 Arthur John HUBBARD 1856 - 1935

2 George HUBBARD 1859 - 1936

3 Mary HUBBARD 1860 - 1865

4 Frances HUBBARD 1862 - 1919

5 Emma HUBBARD 1863 - 1891

Frances Ann Roper (née HUBBARD) writes about her grandmother:

The last years of my grandmother’s life were spent at Kew, and though I was only five when she died, I well remember being taken over to see her when we lived at Ealing. I was always rather in awe of the beautiful old lady but, young as I was, I fell completely under the spell of the family charm of personality with which she was so richly endowed. She was a wonderful artist, and I have never seen any water colour sketches or pencil drawings to equal hers. The walls of our house were lined with her water colours, and many years later a whole gallery in one of the houses in Kew Gardens was given over to a collection of sketches she made there. She was a great friend of W.H. Hudson and was largely instrumental in obtaining for him the Civil list pension. She also did the pencil sketches for some of his books. Like all her family she was a friend and admirer of Professor T. H. Huxley, and of all the scientific “nobs” as great uncle John described them. Her brilliant mind could not bow to the narrow and restricted Church doctrines in which her generation had been brought up, and this was the basis of much of the thinly veiled disapproval with which my mother regarded them. With the exception of my father almost all his family were “atheists”, a word which for many years struck a note of hushed horror to my young heart. I grew up with the feeling that there was something slightly “wicked” about Father’s people, which I regret to confess, merely had the effect of making them even more intoxicating and desirable than ever.

Emma was born at Market Bosworth soon after her father, the Rev. Arthur Benoni Evans, had been appointed Headmaster of the Grammar school there.

Some twenty-five years later a new young doctor John Waddington HUBBARD came to take over the practice in the district.

The Times 6 June 1905:

Mrs. EMMA HUBBARD, whose death was announced in The Times of Saturday, was left in 1870 the widow of John Waddington Hubbard, M.R.C.S., by whom she leaves two sons and a daughter. Mrs. Hubbard was the younger daughter of the Rev. Arthur Benoni Evans, D.D., of Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, and was born in September 1828. Her elder sister, Anne Evans, was well known as a poet and musician, and her brothers, Sir John Evans, K.C.B., and Sebastian Evans, LL.D., have achieved for themselves some position in the world of science and literature. Mrs. Hubbard was a not infrequent correspondent of Nature and other scientific periodicals, more particularly on the subject of birds and their ways, and several of her poems, either with or without her name, have appeared in Longman’s Magazine and elsewhere. She was also an artist of considerable power, and her delineations of some of our rarer insects, drawn from the life, are remarkable for the knowledge they indicate of insect habits and attitudes, as well as for their scrupulous anatomical accuracy. Her principal pictorial work, however, consists of a series of watercolour sketches in Kew Gardens, for many years one of her favourite haunts. These drawings, remarkable not only for their artistic merit, but as an historical record of the garden woodlands at the beginning of the 20th century, may, it is hoped, like those of Miss North, find a permanent and appropriate home in one of the museums in the gardens themselves. In the more laborious and far less generally appreciated art of indexing scientific works Mrs Hubbard was exceptionally successful. Among other standard works Sir Michael Foster’s “Physiology” and her brother’s “Ancient Stone Implements” owe no small measure of their practical value for the student to the admirable indexes she complied for them. The wide range of reading, however, and the power of co-ordinating its results, which so well qualified her for tasks of this kind, necessarily appealed almost exclusively to the specialist. Among her personal friends she will be best remembered not so much by her intellectual gifts as by “genius for friendship” which was her most distinctive characteristic.