Despite her seventy-five years, she retains traces of her former beauty, he said. Eugnie again converted her home into a World War One hospital in 1915, supplying it with the latest technologies. (Nikolaus Pevsner described it as an outrageously oversized chalet with an entrance tower and a lot of bargeboarding). Our dear mother was deeply attached to you. Queen Alexandra often visited Farnborough, generally without warning. She did so with three main purposes in mind: she needed private accommodation for herself; she needed social spaces for the small court that she maintained there; and she needed reception rooms befitting her status and dignity. 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). Upon the request of Queen Victoria, a cross was erected at his death site, and a monument was built in St Georges Chapel. 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. 11.50. Not a single friend to pray at my tomb, she prophesied. Both churches were established by Ferdinand and Isabella, the founders of modern Spain. 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. Therefore, he decided to make it the official. Moreover, as a Spaniard, she set a particularly high value on praying for the dead. Today the building houses a girls school, originally founded as a convent school with Eugnies encouragement and still forming a tenuous link with her. The complex vault that surmounts the apse begins with vertical wall mouldings, which, as they rise between the rose windows, detach themselves from the wall. Evocative photographs by Firmin Rainbeaux and Lon Mniszech record the interiors of Farnborough Hill. History 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. She later wrote, as recorded by Edward Legge, who wrote several biographies on Eugnie, I am left alone, the sole remnant of a shipwreck I cannot even die (The Empress Eugnie 1870-1910, E. Legge). When her boat put in to Algeciras the warships in the harbour, Spanish and British, gave her a sovereigns salute of twenty-one guns, which thrilled her as she had not been so greeted since her expedition to Suez over fifty years earlier. Destailleur regarded this as a pivotal moment in French history. The Empress bought the Farnborough Hill estate in 1880, following a decade of personal tragedy: the collapse of the Second Empire (1852-70), the death of Napoleon III, and the loss of her only child. The Abbey sits within the ample grounds of Farnborough Hill, a neo-gothic mansion first purchased by Eugnie from the Longman family in 1884. Geraghty, however, recovers the totality of Eugenie's vision for . It was also at this time that Eugnie sold the one major property in France that the imperial family owned personally. Tags: Photograph: Will Pryce/Country Life Picture Library. Monks are still there and continue to offer prayers for the souls of dead Bonapartes. 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). Her last words were, I am tired it is time that I went on my way.. . While she has few illusions about mankind, she detests cynicism. Farnborough Hill's most famous resident, however, was the exiled Empress Eugnie, widow of Emperor Napoleon III of France. The death of the Prince Imperial in 1879, aged 23, ended all hope of a Bonapartist restoration. She also became interested in the use of radium as a medicine and was fascinated by aviation, reading everything available on the subject in 1908 she went to a flying display at Aldershot by Colonel Cody, being photographed with him. The choice of architectural style, however, was unusual for its date, at least for a house of this size. Eugnie extended the space northwards, bringing in much needed light, and she filled it with important pieces of 18th-century furniture that had previously belonged to Hortense de Beauharnais, Napoleon IIIs mother. Empress Eugnie lived here from 1880 until her death in 1920. This is not immediately obvious from the design of the building, which, apart from the general inclusion of a dome, has little in common with Les Invalides in Paris, where Napoleon I lies buried. A dense hang brought together Winterhalters famous group portrait of Eugnie and her ladies-in-waiting (a star exhibit of the Exposition Universelle of 1855), a version of Davids painting Napoleon Crossing the Alps, and in the grand salon, a suite of four magnificent Grard portraits representing Louis-Napolons parents Louis Bonaparte and Hortense with their eldest son, a dazzling Josphine in her coronation robes and lisa Bonaparte, then Grand Duchess of Tuscany, with her daughter. She offered to lend La Glorieuse to the duchess. It was to England that the Imperial family fled after the fall of the Second Empire, their first residence being at Camden Place in Chislehurst. , including electric lightbulbs and the telephone. . Smyth, Daudet and Filon testify to the empresss integrity. 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. When Charles Tiffany of Tiffany & Co. saw a portrait of the Empress, he knew the shade of blue she wore would become incredibly popular. It was not lessened by the fall of the Second Empire. Eyes sunk deep in their sockets, eyeballs glassy and staring, he wrote. , Pantone No. 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. The architectural historian Anthony Geraghty is the first scholar to treat the complex at Farnborough as a single entity, offering a careful dissection of the house, the collections inside and the mausoleum. A Talk by Anthony Geraghty In 1880, following the death of her husband, Napoleon III, in exile in England, Empress Eugnie bought an estate at Farnborough, Hampshire, where she commissioned the architect Gabriel Hippolyte Destailleur to remodel and extend the existing house, which became the setting . Beyond the original portion of the gallery, Eugnie created two completely new inteiors. The emperors death and the awful tragedy in Zululand should have aroused sympathy for the empress, so sorely tried as wife and mother, Jean Gutary, one of Napoleon IIIs earliest apologists, had written two years earlier. By her death in 1920, British newspapers were almost unrelenting in their admiration for the ex-Empress Eugnie, praising her ability to face revolution and significant changealmost alone. I see in every article of this peace a little egg, a nucleus of more wars. Qty: Add to bag Description His architect was H. E. Kendall Jnr (180585), a specialist in country houses and lunatic asylums. The crowd at Louis-Napolons funeral was estimated to have been around 100,000. However, once she, hospitals and prisons, her approval began to grow. Located in an estate of its own, it is separated from the grounds of the house by a railway line, but it was always meant to be seen across the parkland of Farnborough Hill and the view is essentially unchanged. Grainger Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo. She made it even bigger, so that eventually it needed more than twenty servants to run it. Augustin Filon passed away in the same year. It was her last and most effective intervention in foreign affairs. Find out more. The funerals in their hometown of Chislehurst (Kent) drew in huge crowds, both French and English, a testament to the respect the Imperial family had gained since they arrived in England. In accordance with Eugenies last wishes, on her death in 1920 she was buried above the main altar of the chapel in the crypt, flanked by the catafalcs of her husband and son in two side chapels. | In 1880, the Empress Eugnie bought a house in Farnborough. The Empress bought the Farnborough Hill estate in 1880, following a decade of personal tragedy: the collapse of the Second Empire (1852-70), the death of Napoleon III, and the loss of her only child. The apse originally contained the monks stalls, but the community subsequently purchased an organ by the celebrated Parisian builder Cavaill-Coll and the monks now occupy the north transept. He was shocked by her appearance. In 1870, the Tuileries (the royal and imperial palace in Paris) was converted into a war hospital, where she could often be found caring for the patients herself. Like Ethel, Daudet is at pains to stress that she is neither frivolous nor a bigot. The architect behind these changes was Hippolyte Destailleur, remembered today for Waddesdon Manor, but whose portfolio extended to projects across Europe. Distributed for Paul Holberton Publishing, 272 pages The kitchen wing was also extended, to provide accommodation for the staff, while there was an entire new annexe of three storeys. Whether you are a private individual or a company, if you are a tax payer in France, you get tax benefits on donations to the Fondation Napolon. We know that she was attracted to the surrounding landscape, which reminded her of the imperial palace at Compigne, and we know that she referred to the house as her cottage, which has echoes of Marie-Antoinette at the Petit Trianon. For her generosity, she was conferred the Order of the British Empire (GBE . They shared similar views on foreign affairs, Victoria becoming increasingly pro-French, a development which an angry Bismarck attributed to Eugnie. She was a guest on Thistle when the kaiser came on board at Bergen in 1907, and noticed how Eugnie rather liked him, and said he is always most agreeable and charming to her. Since no doctor, British or French, had dared give chloroform to someone so frail, Eugnie remained half blind from cataracts. Yet France rejected her even before Sedan, as a foreigner and as a woman who dared to covet power. Exiled from France in 1870, Napoleon III and his son lie buried in England at St Michaels Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire. Empress Eugenie: A footnote history. Towering folly at Liverpool Street Station. He was framed against Pampas grasses, gathered by the Empress at the site of his death. There is a story that she showed him just what she wanted by tracing the churchs outline on the turf with her walking-stick. The exterior of the Cloister Gallery is in the same late-Gothic style as the Mausoleum. Looking like a ghost, she was driven to Madrid where she stayed with her great nephew Alba in the Liria Palace. 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. Isabel also tells us that when Eugnie gave a young girl a pair of her own shoes, they proved to be too small, although the child only wore size 3. This absorbing book tells the story of Empress Eugnie (1826-1920), the wife of Napoleon III and the last empress-consort of France. The religious architecture of the period was damned for clinging too closely to Gothic France or for capitulating too fully to Renaissance Italy. They brought with them a tradition of superb Gregorian chant and liturgy that made services in the church worthy of an imperial foundation. She almost invariably went to bed before eleven, the tiny household bowing and curtsying to her when she retired and she herself curtsying in response, as if they were all still at the Tuileries. The church has been restored, and monastic vocations are plentiful. The crossing reveals itself as one moves westwards through the building. 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. The French paintings once contained at Farnborough were remarkable. She often wrote to Eugnie, especially after her son Crown Prince Rudolph shot himself and his mistress at Mayerling in 1889. My Gift She took this in her stride and adapted commendably: her refurbishing of her Farnborough Home, Farnborough Hill, included all the latest. 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. Finally, wearing a nuns habit, she was laid to rest. This abbey is also known for enshrining a Pontifically crowned image of Saint Joseph . The Empress in 1862. Anthony Geraghty explains how their Mausoleum, which remains a flourishing monastery, is inspired by French and Spanish precedent. Situated on the highest point in Farnborough, it has marvellous views over the surrounding countryside. The collection itself included large numbers of modern works purchased in 1850s and 1860s at the Paris Salon or universal exhibitions, together with important family portraits. Farnborough Hill's setting is certainly unique. Ethel was staggered to learn what immense sums she gave to hospitals in France, in strict secrecy. The tapestries were removed after Eugnies death, together with an important series of neo-Classical portrait busts of the family, but this attractive space is otherwise still as the Empress knew it. Station details & facilities Ticket office Luggage She told Lucien about her forthcoming trip to Spain. To either side of this are large pieces of walnut furniture. Before death takes me, I should like to see my Castilian sky for a last time.. Over the years there has been further expansion, all of it in keeping with this Grade One listed building. The Mausoleum stands to the south of the house, on the brow of a hill close by. 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. The Empress Eugnie of France died in exile 100 years ago in July 1920 at a house in Hampshire: Farnborough In Focus: The 160-year-old 'Photoshopped' picture which shocked Victorian England An exhibition looking at four of the giants of Victorian photography has at its centre a remarkable work by the echnological development. 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. 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. 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. Spanish precedent single friend to pray at my tomb, she told Ethel, Daudet and Filon testify to duchess! 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