Arthur Evans entered the world on the 8th of July 1851 at Nash Mills in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. His father John Evans ran a paper mill business founded by his maternal uncle John Dickinson. The family lived in a brick terraced house known locally as the red house because it lacked the sooty patina of neighboring buildings. Harriet Ann Dickinson, Arthur's mother, was the daughter of the mill owner and became his wife in 1850. They moved into her childhood home in 1856, a mansion with a garden where their children could run free.
John Evans maintained his position as an officer in the company while pursuing distinguished work in numismatics and geology. He studied diminishing water resources to protect the mill from lawsuits involving canals that consumed large amounts of water. This geological expertise made him a legal consultant for the firm. In 1859 he conducted a geological survey of the Somme Valley alongside Joseph Prestwich. The elder Evans published numerous books and articles on antiquities before dying in 1908 at age eighty-five.
Harriet died after childbirth in 1858 when Arthur was seven years old. He had two brothers named Lewis and Philip Norman and two sisters named Harriet and Alice. A stepmother named Fanny raised him along with his siblings. She predeceased her husband but they got along very well. His father later married Maria Millington Lathbury, a classical scholar who bore him a daughter Joan in 1873. Joan would become an art historian.
Balkan Journalism And Political Adventures
In June 1871 Arthur Evans visited Hallstatt with his brother Lewis. His father had excavated there in 1866 and added artifacts to his collection. They traveled through Paris and Amiens shortly after the Franco-Prussian War concluded. Prussian troops occupied Amiens and Evans wore a dark cape which border guards ordered him to remove lest they shoot him as a spy. He hunted for stone-age artifacts in gravel quarries while the Germans focused on souvenir hunting.
The following year he and his brother Norman entered Ottoman territory in the Carpathians during a period of political tension. They crossed borders illegally at high altitudes with revolvers ready. Evans purchased a set of clothes belonging to a wealthy Turkish man including a red fez and baggy trousers. Fraser's Magazine published his enthusiastic account in May 1873. In 1875 he and Lewis planned to spy against Montenegro from the village of Bobovo.
On the 15th of August 1875 Ottoman authorities expelled them from Pljevlja during the Herzegovina uprising. They boarded a ship in Dubrovnik after traveling through triple mountain ranges. The brothers spent a night in a wretched cell in Slavonski Brod when Austro-Hungarian officers suspected them of being Russian spies. Evans threatened the authorities in the name of the British fleet and demanded the mayor appear personally. A crowd followed them to the holding cell where Evans harangued them despite understanding only German. Dr Makanetz leader of the National Party of the Croatian Assembly intervened and secured their release.