The empress believed firmly that, together, France and England were unbeatable. They purchased the house at Farnborough Hill in 1927 and commissioned Adrian Gilbert Scott to design additional school buildings which included the stunning School Chapel. She also acquired a gramophone, which Filon thought one of the most perfect I ever heard; she told him, it enables me to listen to entire operas without leaving my home. In 1881 the French authorities allowed her to travel through France so that she could attend the inauguration of a monument to Napoleon III in Milan. Within a decade, Empress Eugnie had lost her Empire, her home, her husband, and her only son, Prince Imperial Louis-Napolon. Evocative photographs by Firmin Rainbeaux and Lon Mniszech record the interiors of Farnborough Hill. Realising it was beaten, she foresaw that the kaiser would have to abdicate and that many other crowned heads would have to go with him. What interested her was that Miss Smyth was a composer and, always eager to overcome sex-prejudice, she did everything she could to further her career, even arranging for her to sing before Queen Victoria. For the moment the English were sorry for her, she said but their sympathy would soon fade. Farnborough Abbey, dedicated to Saint Michael, was the project of his widow, Eugnie, who after the fall of the Empire spent her remaining 50 years living outside France, preserving the memory of her husband and only son, the Prince Imperial, who was killed fighting in the British army during the Zulu wars in 1879. The movement of the Queen, crippled though she was, was amazingly easy and dignified; but the empress, who was then sixty-seven, made such an exquisite sweep down to the floor and up again, all in one gesture, that I can only liken it to a flower bent and released in the wind, Ethel tells us. Eyes sunk deep in their sockets, eyeballs glassy and staring, he wrote. She watched events in France but took no part in politics although she still thought that a Bonapartist restoration was not impossible the Third Republic was riven by scandal and royalism was in steep decline, while Plon-Plon had died in 1891. The empress Eugnie - the Spanish-born last empress-consort of France, wife of Napoleon III, mother of the prince imperial - lived for the last 40 years of her life in Farnborough, between. Her most important act of memorialisation, however, was the Mausoleum that she built within sight of the house in 188388. The death of the Prince Imperial in 1879, aged 23, ended all hope of a Bonapartist restoration. The Queen of England was a great source of comfort and support for Eugnie at the time of those deaths, particularly given that Victoria had lost her husband in 1861. It did not. But although a Bonapartist Gutary was also a bigoted anti-Dreyfusard, outraged at Eugnie having sent a letter of enthusiastic support to Colonel Picquart, the officer who established Dreyfuss innocence. Whilst the house was refurbished in the Victorian Gothic style, she considered that the small parish church in Chislehurst was not sufficiently august to provide noble resting places for the remains of her husband and son, and so her building of St Michaels Abbey in 1881 was on a much more significant scale. To either side of this are large pieces of walnut furniture. echnological development. As time passed, they grumbled to each other about the infirmities of advancing age, Eugnies being rheumatism and bronchitis which, privately, she blamed on the English weather. Empress Eugenie: A footnote history. This paper aims to substantiate the oral history tradition of the monks of Farnborough Abbey that links the 'Imperial Vestments' in their care with Empress Eugnie of France (1826-1920). The allusion to Spain is in the architecture, but it is easily missed, in view of the overtly French detail that we have just discussed. , including electric lightbulbs and the telephone. Eugenie, Countess de Teba (born 1826), was the daughter of a Spanish nobleman who had fought for the French in the Peninsular War. She was horrified by the dissolution of Austria-Hungary, and by the Treaty of Versailles although she took it down to the crypt to read to the emperor in his tomb. However, once she, hospitals and prisons, her approval began to grow. In 1873, Napoleon III died following a gallstone operation, and then her son was tragically killed while fighting for the British in the Zululand in 1879. Her qualities were even likened to Queen Victoria, possessed by no other Empress or Queen of the period. . The bodies of the Emperor and the Prince were translated there in 1888. Under Eugnie from 1881, the house was substantially renovated, its external and interior decoration modified, in a process akin to translation into a French idiom. This system of ridge and slab construction, with its combination of late-Gothic and early-Renaissance forms, was copied from the church at La Fert-Bernard, France. None of this bothered Eugnie. The second idea pertains to Spain. . Her qualities were even likened to Queen Victoria, possessed by no other Empress or Queen of the period. Anthony Geraghty looks at the house she adapted as the final seat of the French Second Empire. She displayed selfless courage as she and her husband risked their lives to visit hospital patients. She was also an incredibly inspiring, modern woman, paving the way for many of the 21st Centurys social, educational, charitable, and fashionable standards. Then, once settled in England, she continued to donate to most of her former public charities with donations from her private purse, commenting that others should not have to suffer just because she had. Her charitability, courage, and benevolenceif(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'thesocialtalks_com-box-4','ezslot_6',135,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-thesocialtalks_com-box-4-0'); As a foreign Empress, Eugnie was not initially very popular with the French following her marriage to Napoleon III in 1853. St Michaels Abbey is still used as a monastery by Benedictine monks, and they look after the imperial tombs in the crypt with great care. | Meeting a young scientist called Marconi, she lent him Thistle to try out his experiments between Nice and Corsica. The Farnborough complex should be read as a defiant statement of both Frenchness and historical-mindedness, as the remarkable and reviled woman who today lies in its crypt strove to keep the memory of her ancestors alive. Isabel Vesey, like Ethel the unmarried daughter of a retired army officer who lived nearby, but a very different personality, became no less of a friend. Also known Farnborough Abbey, St. Michael's Abbey is an absolute gem of great historic interest. Eugnie was born in Granada and it was presumably she who instructed her architect to take them as his model. At the foot of the staircase, she placed portrait busts of the emperors Napoleon III (by Iselin), to the left, and Napoleon I (after Thorvaldsen), to the right. The Empress EugeNie in Farnborough by Anthony Geraghty | Waterstones Sign In / Register Wish list Shop Finder Help Events Blog Podcast Win Waterstones MENU SHOPS SEARCH New Before seizing power, Louis-Napolons political vision and social networks had been honed during episodes of exile in London in the 1830s and 40s. 1 E ugnie established St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough, in 1884 after the death of her husband Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon III) and their son, the Prince Imperial, in the preceding decade. Empress Eugnie Photographs by Will Pryce for the Country Life Picture Library. . On a more practical level, she wanted to be near Queen Victoria at Windsor, which was easily accessible by train. The Empress Eugnie of France died in July 1920 after spending 40 years in a house in Hampshire: Farnborough Hill, now owned by the Farnborough Hill Property Trust. The quick, deep-set eyes shine with a steely, sombre fire and you notice her make-up, the pencilled eyeshadow underlining the rims of the faded eyelashes. In 1903, the house was raised to the status of an abbey and the monks extended the modest brick house provided by the Empress with large additions to the north and south, both faced in stone and inspired by Solesmes. While she was no longer an Empress, she still entertained royal visitors especially her dear friend Queen Victoria, in whom she found inspiration and in the grand residence she created at Farnborough Hill she sought to maintain a degree of princely reprsentation. Pronunciation: ou-JHAY-knee. The Second Empire regime that he created in 1852 and steered for 18 years has become irrevocably tarnished by its humiliating demise. These were a community of scholarly Benedictine monks led by Dom Cabrol, former prior of Solesmes, who had been forced to leave their native land by a growing climate of anticlericalism. When Victoria died in 1901, it was an immense loss to Eugnie, and she grieved for the friend with whom she could speak freely about their life experiences. Spanish-born Eugnies own background was grandly aristocratic and her commemoration of the family at Farnborough emphasised the dynastic strand of this tradition. His architect was H. E. Kendall Jnr (180585), a specialist in country houses and lunatic asylums. This was the grandest room in the house and the only interior at Farnborough to match the scale and opulence of the imperial residences before 1870. Get exclusive access to the top art stories, interviews and exhibition reviews, published in print and online. Exiled from France in 1870, Napoleon III and his son lie buried in England at St Michaels Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire. The estate was sold after Eugnies death. Eventually they left, leaving the abbey in a state of squalor. The history of the School itself began in 1889 when The Religious of Christian Education established a convent school in Farnborough. In 1888 alone she was visited at Farnborough by King Oscar of Sweden, King Luis of Portugal, the Crown Prince of Italy and Empress Frederick of Germany, who still remembered with pleasure her visit as the young Princess Royal to Eugnie in Paris over forty years before. This second community took root and flourished. It's a beautiful French-style church in Farnborough, Hampshire built by the Empress Eugenie of France to house the remains of her husband, Emperor Napoleon III and their son, the Prince Imperial. It seemed that her central source of torment was the welfare of the needy or sick. Farnborough Hill, Farnborough, Hampshire, GU14 8AT. Designed by Gabriel Destailleur, this Victorian Gothic abbey built close to the Empresss residence takes after Hautecombe Abbey, the monastic establishment dedicated to Saint Michael not far from Lac du Bourget where the Princes of Savoy are buried. Monks are still there and continue to offer prayers for the souls of dead Bonapartes. Her neck is fleshless, her hands are the hands of a skeleton. She was, after all, ninety-three. A new exhibition in Oxford, Netherby Hall, Cumbria: Roman foundations, a 16th century tower, a Georgian house and a very 21st century future, The strangest museum in London? Find out more. If unacclaimed by her former subjects, it was received with fitting pomp at Farnborough, drawn from the station on a gun-carriage escorted by cavalry to the abbey church. However, a Spanish doctor performed the operation without an anaesthetic, restoring her sight completely. We know that Destailleur was in Spain in 188081. Few could equal the delicacy of this fearsome old lady, who wrote often, always in French, inviting the empress to Windsor or Osborne, or to her Scottish castles. Farnborough Aerodrome was at the forefront of aviation advances throughout the 20th century - pioneering the first powered flight in Britain in 1908 - and the biennial Farnborough International Airshow is a worldwide attraction, putting this quaint Hampshire town well and truly on the global map. If they come, she told Ethel, then at least we shall be in the front line. Ethel suspected that her own terror increased the empresss pleasure at the prospect. Its quite dramatic enough without it.. Architects such as Destailleur were fascinated by periods of transition, none more so than the end of the Middle Ages and the beginnings of the Renaissance. Towering folly at Liverpool Street Station. The Empress Eugenie and Farnborough by W.H.C. In 1857, using money given to Eugnie as a wedding gift from the City of Paris, she established the Foundation Eugne Napolon, a boarding for impoverished French girls. She also donated her yacht, The Thistle, to the Admiralty and donated 200 to the British Red Cross. The Empress Eugnie of France died in July 1920 after spending 40 years in a house in Hampshire: Farnborough Hill, An exhibition looking at four of the giants of Victorian photography has at its centre a remarkable work by the, 'I wisely started with a map and made the story fit,' JRR Tolkien once wrote. Dennis Severs House is art installation, theatre set and 18th century throwback, Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners, Inside the house, she created a museum-like display, architect was Hippolyte Destailleur was responsible for remodelling and extending the house, The extraordinary home in an ordinary Hampshire town where Empress Eugnie of France was laid to rest, In Focus: The 160-year-old Photoshopped picture which shocked Victorian England, A home in Britains oldest chartered town with gorgeous library, indoor pool and romantic views over St Michaels Mount, In Focus: The hand-drawn maps from which JRR Tolkien launched Middle-earth. In 1994, The Religious of Christian Education transferred ownership to The Farnborough Hill Trust and the School is now under lay management. The design was modelled on the Romanesque crypt of Saint-Eutrope de Saintes, again via the pages of Viollet-le-Duc. The collection included many precious items, including furniture dating from the First Empire and previously housed in the state apartments at Fontainebleau, as well as an important sequence of Gobelins tapestries, originally made for Louis XV at Marly and showing scenes from Cervantess Don Quixote (today in Richmond, Virginia, US). In Eugnies day, it contained a series of state portraits by Grard, including the Empress Josphine in her coronation robes, and two display cases (today at Upton House, Warwickshire), which glistened with family treasure. Eugenie would regularly go to pray beside the sarcophaguses of Scottish granite donated by Queen Victoria. Destailleur proved an inspired choice, producing a most beautiful building, admired even by Pevsner, which Ronald Knox described as France transplanted into England. She hates prejudice in her eyes Catholics, Jews and Protestants are equal members of humanity. He mentions her love of handsome people for her, as for the Greeks, beauty, intelligence and goodness are inseparable. Another English friend, loyal if scarcely close, was the general who had gone to South Africa with her, and who often came to play tennis at Farnborough Hill in top hat, frock-coat and white flannel trousers. Bonaparte eagles and bees abound, even in the Romanesque crypt where there is royal as well as imperial symbolism, with a high altar dedicated to St Louis, to proclaim the Bonapartes claim to be the fourth dynasty and the legitimate successors of the Bourbons as rulers of France. Franceschini Pietri, who as the emperors secretary had ridden with him during the 1870 campaign, died in 1916 and was buried as he wished, near the stair down to the crypt of Farnborough Abbey so that the empress would pass him on her way to pray at the tombs of her husband and her son. The Grand Salon, however, was completely re-cast by Destailleurs son Walter, also an architect, in the first decade of the 20th century. Born in 1926, she lived until she was 94, an extraordinary amount of time, especially considering the period she lived through devastating cholera epidemics, a bloody French Revolution, exile from France, and the First World War. Destailleur applied these forms to modern ends and the room makes no attempt at historical accuracy. In the late 1890s Eugnie regained her energy, learning to ride a bicycle when she was over seventy and exploring the shores of the Mediterranean each summer in her steam yacht, Thistle. Nevertheless, more than a few contemporaries thought of her as a character out of a play by Corneille, whose women are embodiments of stoicism and endurance, driven by love, honour and duty, and Admiral Jurien de La Gravire often compared her with Chimne in Le Cid. On three occasions, she was declared Regent - during the 1859 Italian War, when Napoleon was unwell in 1865, and for a final time in 1870 and presided over ministerial meetings. Inside the house, she created a museum-like display that recounted the history of the Bonaparte dynasty from the rise of Napoleon Bona-parte, her husbands uncle, up to the death of the Prince Imperial, her only son, in 1879. When his system of wireless communication was established in Canada, she was the first person after Edward VII to whom he transmitted a message. Dennis Severs House is art installation, theatre set and 18th century throwback, Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardeners, A Hampshire farm with immaculate farmhouse and a huge entertaining barn, just a few miles down the road from Country Life, The Jaguar I-Pace: If I had a spare 65,000, Id buy one tomorrow. Yet I could see at once that even now this pitiful frame was ruled by a vigorous, tenacious, proud spirit. 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