Ella C (Nellie) HOPPS of San Francisco [23270]

  General Notes:

Draft of biography of Nellie Hopps Howard, by Alice Erskine
Courtesy C Ihori 2016.
Among the sinews of early San Francisco was, of all people, a woman painter, Nellie Hopps. Her strength encompassed decades of such acclaim shown by the fact that at the age of ninety-one, she would travel alone to Florida to see a favorite relative, a cousin of her husband's family.

Her father, Charles Hopps, a "heraldic and fancy painter" of Boston, was born in England. He was christened in St. John.s Church, Leeds, on August 15, 1808. His father, Charles, had been christened there in 1777. Hopps's paternal and maternal grandparents also were born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England.

His mother Amelia Hopkinson died at his birth. Her father Jonathan Hopkinson, was Bandmaster of the West York Regiment, a position held later by her brother John.

Charles left home when he was eighteen, the youngest of seven children, and sailed to the Argentine where he left his ship and, for a time, was a rider on the pampas with the gauchos. He then came to the United States and settled in Somerville, Middlesex County, Massachusetts. According to family legend, four Hopps brothers came to this country, besides Charles: his older brother Joseph, born 1806, and his step-brothers, William, born 1813, and Henry, born 1816. In the latter years, he was established as a partner with Breslow and Bowditch and was listed in the 1850 census as a painter. He married Jennetta Hart, born April 7, 1815, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The spirit of adventure still strong, he came to California during the gold rush, crossing the continent on horseback. His wife followed him after the birth of their son James H. in 1851. She came around the Horn with six children and her mahogany furniture.

Hopps succeeded in San Francisco, though he did not join the many who went to the gold fields. He established an art supply store, which in 1868 became Hopps and Sons. Situated at 429 Pine Street, the establishment still carried that name as late as 1900. As Charles Hopps prospered, he acquired land and goods and eventually owned a great part of Geary Street. He continued painting and was listed as a contributor of four paintings to the fourth annual San Francisco Art Association exhibition in 1873: "Life on the Pampas", "El Rodeo", "Bombardment of Forts Hatteras and Clark", and "Tiger's Head".

Charles Hopps built a home for his family on Geary street, next to the corner of Mason adjoining the home of Lucky Baldwin and across from where the Saint Francis Hotel now stands. Here a little girl, Ella C. Hopps, was born December 6, 1856. She liked to slide down the dunes accross from her house, and her mother would admonish her about getting mussed up. She was a life long friend of E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin's step-daughter, Mrs. Mary Virginia Ford. Within walking distance of her home, there was also a French boarding house where the renowned Scottish author of "Treasure Island", Robert Lewis Stevenson, and his wife lived. They soon became fast friends.

When eighteen, Nellie made her first trip to Europe with her father, to visit cousins. While there, she went to see the family graves at St. John's Church, Leeds. Later, when they visited Windsor, she asked, pointing to an addition, "What is that?" and was told, "It is a bathroom". Four years later, she made a second trip.

When she began her school years, she called herself Nellie. Thereafter, she signed her paintings "Nellie Hopps" and is listed in the census and the directories as Nellie.

Nellie was a student in the first class of the California School of Design, under Virgil Williams. Started in 1874, it is now the San Francisco Art Institute. She exhibited her water colors that year and, later in 1877 and again in 1878, she won silver medals for oil paintings. At this thirteenth annual exhibition, she submitted three landscapes, one of which was for sale.

The silver medals and diplomas were awarded to those pupils "whose best general work throughout the year shall, relatively, merit them." The rules continued, "The prizes are publicly awarded by the President of the Art Association after every exhibition of paintings and drawings by the students of the School of Design."

The Hopps had a long association with the San Francisco Art Association. George Hopps had exhibited a painting with them before the school was established. In 1893, it was known as the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, and the firm of Hopps and Sons loaned to the Semi-Centennial Anniversary of Admission Day, September, 1900, an oil painting, "The Celebration of the Admission to California into the Union, September 9, 1850". It was "from a water color made by Lieutenant Marryatt, son of the English novelist, Captian Marryatt, of the British Navy, and presented by him to the late Mr. Charles Hopps, who executed this enlarged copy in 1851. The location is the corner of Montgomery and California streets; the two brick buildings adjoining the corner are still standing." The reference is Catalogue of Loan Exhibition, exhibit # 201, September 1900, Mark Hopkins Institute of Art. Nellie's brother, George H. Hopps, was on the Board of the School from 1885 to 1891. He contributed a painting to the spring exhibition of 1896. Her nephew, the son of George, was included in the spring exhibition, April 1887, by "Off the Heads" and "Pilot Boat" by Harry Hopps. He exhibited watercolors at the Mechanic's Institute in 1893 and 1896. His daughter, Alice, and granddaughter of George, attended the school in 1910.

Nellie's nephew, Harry, was a great favorite of hers. She would bring back many things to him on her return trips from the Orient. Also, his wife, Julia, often gave her commissions to buy for her.

Harry and his brother, Bert Hopps, were the founders of the United Glass Co. They designed and made the art glass that was prevalent in San Francisco. The family Crest showed the oak tree meaning strength, the shells romance, and the hand extended for friendship and willingness to help. This was significant "as it was family heritage, past, present, and future." In Cypress Lawn Cemetery at Colma, near San Francisco no one can look at their ceilings without enjoying their work in the Mausoleum where Nellie lies.

Nellie proclaimed her independence by listing herself in Lingleys Directory of 1881-1882 under the heading, "Painter Landscape and Marine, with a studio at 728 Montgomery," while in the earlier directories she is listed only at home, at 406 Geary, along with her brothers. She maintained this listing, "Miss Nellie Hopps, landscape artist," through 1885.

"Miss Strong and Miss Hopps, are occupying the studio in the old Criminal Court Building, which soon they will have to vacate. Miss Hopps has lately returned from the Russian River redwoods, with an excellent set of sketches from very pleasant subjects which will in due time appear on canvas." This account of Nellie Hopps appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, December 8, 1979, in "Palette and Easel". In the same edition was a note that Rix and Travernier, who had been occupying the court rooms, were looking for a new location. "It would be difficult to find a group of studios elsewhere so pleasant or convenient" for the artists who were planning a speedy flight.

Nellie Hopps and Lizzie Strong moved to 728 Montgomery Street, where they maintained a studio during the late seventies and early eighties. They were the center of a Bohemian group. Nellie was always center stage, without being pretentious. She was rather not involved. A painting, "In My Studio", about 1880 and signed N. Hopps, shows her easel, a number of paintings, palette, brushes, paints in a container, a wicker chaise-lounge, and animal skin rugs. Many of her "boy friends" were newspapermen. One was "Old Iron Jaw", so named because he was always the last one spouting forth at the Bohemian Club. He happened to be the brother of Mrs. Marshall Field of Chicago and was making his way as a newspaperman. Her father thought she "was going to the bowwows" when she was going with a journalist of the Chronicle.

Oscar Wilde, when he was in San Francisco in March 1882 was a frequent visitor to Nellie and Lizzie's studio. Julian Walbridge Rix was also an admirer. Born in Vermont, he was brought to San Francisco when he was four years old. After his mother died in 1857, he was sent to live with an aunt in Petaluma, from where he returned to San Francisco in 1865, at the age of sixteen. His father, an Associate Judge of Court of Sessions who had remarried, did not support his artistic interest, and Rix got his first real job as an errand boy for a paint store, Charles Hopps and Son. Then he worked as an apprentice sign and decorative painter.

Rix exhibited his paintings at the San Francisco Art Association in 1876 and 1877. He was a member of the Bohemiam Club, 1879, and went with an unconventional group of artists: Joseph Strong, Jules Jotten, and the "bohemian of bohemians", Jules Tavernier. He had a studio with Tavernier and Strong in the old Supreme Court Building, situated at 790 Montgomery Street, at the corner of Jackson, as did Virgil Williams, Strauss, Garibaldi and Robinson.

It was perhaps at this time that Nellie knew Rix. When Rix told Mac he was going to marry Nellie, he bought a little picture "Autumn, 1880" by Nellie. It is of trees on the left, leaves are blowing off the water, and a low cloudy sky with mountains in the background. It is probably a view of Tamalpais from Tiburon. It is now number 14 in the P.E. McCarthy (Mac) picture collection at the California Society of Pioneers. Nothing ever came of his engagement to Nellie. He moved to New York in 1881, and never married.

It was about this time that she met Benjamin Chandler Howard. He was an agent of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, living at the Palace Hotel. Nellie had her studio on Montgomery street, and they passed each other coming and going. Nellie says she picked him as her husband and was formally introduced later. But Nellie was enjoying life and very serious about her painting. She had exhibited a number of times with the San Francisco Art Association. By 1884, she had saved enough money to go to France and study in Paris for two years. She refused to marry Howard and said that if they felt the same in two years, she would marry him.

She had her tickets and went off, getting as far as New York. There, the headlines were all about the cholera scare in Europe. When she read the news, she "blew" all the money she had saved, bought a trousseau, returned to California, and married Howard. Later, she learned the reports were exaggerated. Had she known that at the time, she would have gone ahead.

B. Chandler Howard came from a sea-loving family. His grandfather formed the commissions house of Chandler and Howard (afterwards Benjamin Howard and Son). In 1849, during the California gold rush excitement, Chandler and Howard became interested in Clipper ships and owned shares in many of the famous ones. His father, B.C. Howard sailed on the clipper ship Witchcraft, coming from Hong Kong to San Francisco, May 16. 1852.

When he was eighteen, Benjamin Chandler Howard sailed on the Fearless, coming to the same port as that to which his Grandfather had come nearly fifty years earlier, in 1820, in the Charleston. Aside from outward passages, the clipper made eleven runs, prior to 1868, from Eastern ports to San Francisco. Seven of them were from Boston.

Howard entered the service of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company in 1878. He is listed in Langleys Directory of 1879-80 as purser of the Pacific Mail on the SS City of Peking, and in 1881-84 as ticket agent, residing at the Palace Hotel. He was a member of the Bohemian Club.

The Argonaut published an account of the Howard-Hopps wedding, a quiet affair at the home of the bride's parents. The bride was described as "one of our most promising artists, a young lady whose sterling worth and amiability have made her a host of friends". The groom was mentioned as being "well known in society and business circles, who is liked by all for his urbane and jovial disposition." After a brief reception, the young people departed on a steamer for Los Angeles.

They were the recipients of many elegant gifts, listed with the names of the donors as was the custom of the period. Among them was a handsome silver dinner set from George H. Howard, a cousin. His mother was Agnes Poett Howard. He lived at "El Cerrito" a showplace of northern California where Nellie and Chandler Howard visited.

The George Howards had employed a Scotsman, John McClaren, to maintain their large estate, and he was with them for fifteen years, becoming their Head Gardner in 1874. When he finally departed for San Francisco to begin his career, he tackled the sand dunes which became Golden Gate Park of world renown. Nellie knew him and called him "John"; though he was ten years older, he called her Mrs. Howard. In 1940, he visited Nellie at the Clift Hotel, where she was celebrating her eighty-four birthday. Asking if she minded a question, he asked her her age. Nellie rolled her eyes and said, "Eighty-four". McClaren exclaimed, "Oh, to be eighty again!"

Following their marriage, they Nellie and Benjamin Chandler Howard lived on the southeast corner of California and Franklin. Nellie kept her studio, which was first at 726 Montgomery and then at 728 Montgomery, listed separately as long as the Howards remained in the City.

She continued to exhibit and several notices appeared. In the Argonaut, April 18, 1885, "Among the local artists work are the following pictures: "A Study" and "Tahoe from Squaw Lake" by Miss Nellie Hopps. She exhibited again according to the Argonaut, in June 20, 1885, in a free exhibition - all of the paintings are for sale - "Squaw Lake". In Auguts 29, 1885, the Argonaut, local artists who will exhibit at the Mechanics Fair are ... Miss Nellie Hopps." And on December 5 of that year, Art Notes coming exhibition of "Lady Artists" who contributed to the decorations are .. Miss Nellie Hopps". Again on December 19, Ladies Art Exhibit .. "The following artists who exhibit: Miss Nellie Hopps.."

In 1884, Chandler was transferred to Japan and became the Agent of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, subsequently known as the Dollar Steamship Company and, today, the American President Lines. He and Nellie settled in Yokohama, which became Nellie's home for some thirty years and where, at that time, there were only five other Americans. Notices continued to appear: "Miss Nellie Hopps, who is in Yokohama, met with quite a loss during the fire there. She has had a bungalow erected and will commence sketching soon, being delighted with the magnificent view in the neighborhood". So reported the Argonaut of March 1886.

"The Spring exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association closed last Saturday. It was an occasion of considerable interest to many members of the Association, as the pictures were to be distributed among them by lot. The pictures were drawn as follows - Edwing Bonnell #3 by Nellie Hopps, George Hopps #5 by M. Strauss, L.G. Steele #8 sketch by Nellie Hopps, -- and so on, May 1886.

At that time, the Pacific Mail was the only American line making the Pacific crossing to the Orient. Their's being one of the few American homes in Japan, they had many visitors, including widely known personages. Prominent among whom was the celebrated hero of Khartoum, Lord Kitchener. This founder of British military genius came to the Orient to indulge his hobby of collecting priceless Chinese porcelains. Nellie also spoke of the charm of the ill-starred French engineer, Count de Lessops, whom she knew before his failure to complete the Panama Canal.

She established friendships with many well known Japanese families, such as the Iwasakis, whose children were educated at Princeton and Vassar.

Frank Pixley, the editor of the Argonaut, visited the Howards in Yokohama. Nellie wrote to him when he returned to San Francisco, and he was so delighted with her letter that he asked permission to publish it. For several years thereafter, was a regular correspondent for the Argonaut.

When Nellie was asked if she liked tea, she answered. "I attended my first and last tea soon after I reached Yokohama. I much prefer to paint in the studio my husband fixed up for me, or to climb Fujiyama in three days. Incidentally, we were once forced to stay in our temporary camp part way up the mountain because of the weather!! It is the incident she describes in her first letter to Pixley.

F. McC. June 24, 1889 writes: "Yokohama is the most modernized part of Japan, and very many foreigners are in business there. Upon the "Bluff", overlooking the city and the bay, are some elegant dwellings surrounded by gardens, which are fairly ablaze with flowers. Up there, the charming correspondent of the Argonaut, Mrs. Nellie Hopps Howard, dwells among her beautiful works of art and one thousand teapots."

I wonder if the question came before or after she had tea with the Emperor? She was the only woman who ever had that privilege. She never liked women much and introduced the cocktail party to mix men and women. She didn't like the way Japanese separated the men and women.

In the Philippines, she knew General Douglas MacArthur and his father, who was governor. In later years, when she lived in Laguna Beach, Mrs. MacArthur visited her whenever she came to Los Angeles. She had entertained Mrs. Douglas MacArthur and Churchill's mother as house guests in Japan.

Chandler Howard also became in 1892, the Agent of the Occident and Oriental Steamship Company, an allied organization of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. He was for a short time Consul General of the Republic of Hawaii, resigning this appointment in 1896. He served on the committees and boards of many of the public and business associations of Yokohama and was thoroughly identified as a public spirited man with various charitable organizations whose work centered in Yokohama. His position made him a well known man throughout the Far East, and his broad humanity, sense of fairness, and lack of prejudice, attracted to him a large circle of friends. He was thoroughly respected not only by the foreigners but by the Japanese as well. This respect was notably evidenced by the conferring upon him in October of 1911, by his Majesty the Emperor of Japan, at the request of the Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture, the decoration of Order of the Rising Sun, Fourth Class.

Chandler Howard was still the General Agent in Japan of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company when failing health compelled him to leave Yokohama for California in 1912. Three months later, he died in Santa Barbara. In accordance with his wishes, Nellie brought his ashes back to Yokohama where they were interred in the Foreign Cemetery of that city.

Nelly Hopps Howard had a strong commitment to family. Her daughters Gladys and Sybil, born in Yokohama on November 22, 1886, and December 28, 1891, respectively, were raised in that city too. She lost an infant son at birth in 1890. The young girls were educated at Miss Bransom's School in Mill Valley. Nelly came each year to visit them. She said she had crossed the Pacific one-hundred and ten times to visit her family.

Sybil married Robert F. Moss of Columbia, Missouri, who went to Japan in 1910 representing the Truscon Steel Company of Youngstown, Ohio, and lived in Tokyo. Gladys Howard was educated in Berkeley and returned to the Orient where she married her husband, Charles W. Atkinson, head of Standard Oil of China. Nellie lived with her daughter in Shanghai for a number of years. While there, she met John D. Rockefeller Jr.

After her husband died, Nellie stayed on in the Orient, living there for a total of some fifty-seven years. She spent much of her time traveling leisurely and painting. She was an inveterate traveler, covering the face of the globe and still riding camels at the age of eighty. She said she was completely happy when traveling, even on the burning sands of the African desert, and commented that if she only had a new pair of legs she would get around more. She was certain there was no education comparable to world travel, and at ninety-nine she yearned "to be on the road again", especially now that she had outlived all of her own generation of friends and was desirous of making new ones in far away places.

Visiting her grand daughter, Virginia Atkinson Farnsworth in Rochester, New York, and then spending a few days in Carmel-by-the-Sea, Nellie was caught by World War II. She could not return to the Philippines, where she now made her home. She carried on a brisk correspondence with her grandson, Richard Moss, a Japanese Language Officer with the Marines in the Pacific. Her letters are full of people and their doings. She kept in touch with all her family and enlivened them with her activities: By the way, I was in Newbegins recently, buying a book--Sumner Wells, "Time for Decision"-- I knew him in Tokyo when he was Secretary to the American Embassy "she wrote in one letter to the Pacific. Another time, "I love my memories of my travels' and it has been interesting following the war through countries I am familiar with, like North Africa and Europe."

Gran, as her grandchildren and great-grandchildren learned to call her, enjoyed telling stories of her life in Japan and of her many friends. Nadya Klotz Giussi, a great-granddaughter who, more any other member of the family, and by virtue of circumstance, was privileged to spend considerable time with Nellie, enjoyed sitting at her knees and listening. One story was about a girl notorious for chasing fire engines, Mrs. Lillie Hitchcock Coit, after whom the Coit Tower is named. Gran and Mrs. Coit were intimate friends, and one of her paintings, "California Alders, "showing a grove of those trees, tinged with autumn coloring and with the sunlight sifting through to the ground below, was painted in 1884 at "Lakemead" the Coit estate in the upper Napa Valley. Just before Nadya went to Italy, Gran told her that when one is over eighty-eight, one has only memories, and that she didn't regret anything--she would have done it all again, just the same.

Nellie lived for a while with her daughter, Gladys, who was now in San Francisco. After Gladys's death, she decided to move to the Laguna Beach Hotel. Though quite on in years, she was a delightful lady, very animated and talkative, according to John Cunningham who came to know her when she was visiting her granddaughter Barbara Atkinson Erbe in Carmel. He had a nice, rather new Pontiac station wagon and volunteered to drive her down. So, with Babs, he drove Gran to Laguna Beach and got her situated in the hotel, where she lived for a few years.

Gran missed travelling and Nadya suggested a trip to Carmel. Her doctors maintained she was too ill to travel, except by ambulance. Undaunted, Gran came by ambulance, sitting up in front all the way. When she was ready to return, she didn't seem to think anything of going by bus and train. But John said, "Gran, I'll drive you down. You're too advanced in age to take a trip like this alone".
"Oh, no I'm not" she retorted. "I can do it."
He said, "Look, I'm taking you, that's all there is to it." So he took Gran down, and she was so absolutely enthralling, telling all about her early life in San Francisco, that he doesn't remember saying a word himself. He does remember that at every gas station or restaurant they stopped at on the way, Gran made sure her stocking had no creases in them and that her hat was on perfectly straight. She was wonderful in reminiscing about her days in art school, the courses she took, and how the women couldn't or wouldn't draw from the nude. During the nine hour to drive to Laguna, her entertaining stories kept one in laughter.

On a cool Monday morning in December, on her ninety-ninth birthday, Nellie sat on the terrace of her room at the Laguna Beach Hotel, receiving congratulations, telegrams, and boxes of her favorite candies, and Swedish matchsticks. Never an early riser, she had brunch at eleven, enjoying the terrace from twelve until two and reading the newspapers with only her gold lorgnette. She never wore glasses. At seven, she had a cocktail before dinner. Always the belle of the ball, she was looking forward to her birthday party that evening, given in her honor by the Hotel Laguna. She planned to wear a black velvet dress, with a black velvet cape trimmed in ermine and her gardenia corsage. Her room was a bower of flower arrangements and corsages of orchids, rose buds, and carnations, remembrances from her many friends. She had a wonderful sense of humor. Upon receiving orchids and a seaweed engagement ring from an eligible bachelor, she observed that not every girl gets a proposal on her ninety ninth birthday.

In 1942, at the age of eighty six, Nellie, a life-member of the San Francisco Art Association, held her first local show under the auspices of the American Women's Voluntary Services. Her exhibition, held at the Palace Hotel, included landscapes painted in California, some of them fifty or sixty years earlier, and others in her later years. Some were painted in Japan and China and the Philippines. The exhibition was for the benefit of the A.W.V.S., and the paintings priced at twenty five dollars-each, were all sold. Years earlier, during the First World War, she had held a similar exhibition at the Grand Hotel in Yokohama, for the benefit of the Red Cross.

She never tired of transferring to canvas the interesting and picturesque scenes amidst which she lived.

In spite of all that happened in the Pacific, she thought sorrowfully of the beautiful, picturesque island country that she lived in so long and her many charming and hospitable friends. Among them were ladies of the Japanese aristocracy and members of the American and British colonies.

Nellie settled in San Francisco for a time but finally chose to make her home in Laguna Beach where she could enjoy its wonderful climate and spend hours sitting on the terrace and gazing at the Pacific horizon. When she first visited Laguna, it had but one house on the waterfront. Now at the water's edge, with her eyes on the horizon, she commented, "Whenever I sit here I "see" Japan, my home for nearly seventy years."

  Research Notes:

Cypress Lawn Cemetery in Colma, CA
Garden/Building: WS-Section E
Mausoleum Niches
Row/Tier/Division: 3
Niche/Crypt/Grave: 126

Ella married Benjamin Chandler HOWARD of Boston Mass. [23269] [MRIN: 8354] about 1884 in Californiaq USA. (Benjamin Chandler HOWARD of Boston Mass. [23269] was born on 11 Jun 1849, died on 10 May 1912 in Santa Barbara CA USA and was buried in Yokohama Foreign Cemetery.)