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. The Abbey sits within the ample grounds of Farnborough Hill, a neo-gothic mansion first purchased by Eugnie from the Longman family in 1884. The building that rose between 1883 and 1888 is his most substantial religious commission. This absorbing book tells the story of Empress Eugnie (1826-1920), the wife of Napoleon III and the last empress-consort of France. by Joanne Watson Paperback . 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. Eugenie presided at dinner with her back to the window, the tapestries before and beside her. The main house has an illustrious past and it is set in 60 acres of grounds, which include secluded gardens and woodland. Indeed, with its painted ceiling decorated with flowers, it is unmistakably in the style of Napoleon III. Farnborough Hill and the Empress Eugnie. Even so, the journey meant a trek of several weeks through the veldt by wagon, sleeping in tents that were nearly blown away by storms. Bonaparte 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. She often wrote to Eugnie, especially after her son Crown Prince Rudolph shot himself and his mistress at Mayerling in 1889. Ethel was staggered to learn what immense sums she gave to hospitals in France, in strict secrecy. 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. Learning in 1917 that the Allies considered Alsace-Lorraine to be part of Germany, she sent the French government a letter written to her by William I in 1871, in which he admitted that the provinces had been annexed purely for strategic reasons and not because their inhabitants were seen as Germans. For her generosity, she was conferred the Order of the British Empire (GBE . Eugnies body still lies with those of Napoleon III and the Prince Imperial in the abbey crypt at Farnborough, where the monks continue to sing an annual requiem for their souls. Eugnie again converted her home into a World War One hospital in 1915, supplying it with the latest technologies. Their sale by her descendants in 1927 would have been shattering for her, although it was a boon for French museums, who would over time repatriate these masterpieces for Compigne, Versailles and Fontainebleau. Human beings of her type do not change so very much and it is clear that during her reign she was already the person whom they knew in exile. Anthony Geraghty looks at the house she adapted as the final seat of the French Second Empire. I am alone now, Eugnie wrote to her blind old mother at Madrid early in September 1879, in a country where I am forced to live and die. She described herself as truly crushed. During her stay here in 1894 she went to see the dying Victor Duruy in his flat, toiling up eight flights of stairs. Farnborough was founded in Saxon times and is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086. Anthony Geraghty looks at the house she adapted as the final seat of the French Second Empire. Acknowledgements: Alexandra Neil and Clare Duffin, A sprawling house with a pair of gardens designed by some of the most brilliant minds in modern horticulture is. 9 1/2 x 11 1/2, Architecture:
To either side of this are large pieces of walnut furniture. 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. There was even antagonism on the right, and not just from royalists. 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. Anything she wore, such as the crinoline, was copied across Europe. Geraghty, however, recovers the totality of Eugenie's vision for . Empress Eugenie: A footnote history. This second community took root and flourished. if(typeof ez_ad_units!='undefined'){ez_ad_units.push([[250,250],'thesocialtalks_com-medrectangle-4','ezslot_2',158,'0','0'])};__ez_fad_position('div-gpt-ad-thesocialtalks_com-medrectangle-4-0'); Her courage was also displayed when she and Napoleon survived an assassination attempt in 1858 on the way to the opera. The latter spaces contain copies of the side panels of Rubenss Descent from the Cross in Antwerp Cathedral. See . Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over 25. 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. Eugnie settled in England after the Fall of the Second Empire in 1870, making Farnborough her home between 1884 and 1920. Its deployment at Farnborough Hill is not as obvious as it once was, as Eugnies additions have a decidedly French accent, but it was Kendall, working for Longman, who designed the mullion and transom windows of the ground floor and the elaborate half-timbering and decorated gables of the upper storeys. That Jaguars all-electric I-Pace is the 2019 World Car of the Year comes as no surprise to Mark Hedges. Her architect was Hippolyte Destailleur (182293), best-known in this country as the architect of Waddesdon Manor. The congregation at the funeral on 20 July included George V and Queen Mary, Alfonso XIII and Queen Ena of Spain, and Manuel II of Portugal and the Portuguese queen mother, together with Prince Victor Napoleon, the Bonapartist pretender, and his wife. These collections had been brought to Farnborough from properties on the continent, including Arenenberg in Switzerland (the home of Louis-Napolons mother, Hortense), Malmaison (though not the Empire furniture) and Eugnies villa in Biarritz (the source of seven Gobelins tapestries inspired by Don Quixote from 175257). Speaking noticeably poor English with a strong accent she invariably dropped her hs Eugnie made comparatively few close English friends. France She lived there from 1880 to 1920, and it was in Farnborough that she built a Mausoleum to receive the remains of her husband, the last Catholic sovereign of France, and her only child, the Prince Imperial, who was killed in 1879 when fighting with the British Army in the Zulu War. Station details & facilities Ticket office Luggage They allow us to take a tour through the principal rooms of the house, complete with commentary on the furniture, paintings, porcelain and bibelots that together made the house a mix of dynastic shrine and intimate museum. echnological development. Eugnie, therefore, introduced a wide opening from the gallery, with magnificent glazed doors that slide into the walls. 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. The illustration accompanied a lengthy essay on construction, in which the vaults at La Fert-Bernard were described as the final expression of Gothic architecture. Although she failed to keep her shrine to the patrimony of the so-called fourth dynasty, the Bonapartes, intact, Eugnie did manage to alleviate the morbidity and solitude of her final years with foreign travel, constant entertaining, active support for the war effort and the pleasure of seeing Alsace-Lorraine, annexed by the Germans in 1871, returned to France in 1918. The Empress Eugenie and Farnborough by W.H.C. He was shocked by her appearance. Ethel Smyths account of Eugnie, largely ignored by French historians, is telling. (Palologues account of their meeting should be treated with caution.). He brought Jean Cocteau to see her. In 1880, he was invited to revise his designs for a mausoleum at Chislehurst. Kaiser William II would come in 1894. The exterior of the Cloister Gallery is in the same late-Gothic style as the Mausoleum. Among them were the Golden Rose, paintings by Winterhalter (including that of herself with her ladies), by Mme Vige-Lebrun (of Marie-Antoinette and of the dauphin) and by David. Winterhalter began an official portrait of Empress Eugnie (Eugnie de Montijo, Condesa de Teba, 1826-1920) shortly after her marriage in 1853 to Napoleon III, emperor of France, but it was not exhibited until 1855. . He had plastered the capital with posters demanding a referendum to decide if France should become an empire again with himself as emperor and, promptly arrested by four gendarmes, was immured in the Conciergerie. The death of the Prince Imperial in 1879, aged 23, ended all hope of a Bonapartist restoration. This was constructed in the 1850s and remained empty until the 1950s, when it was swept away as redundant. The Prince was forever in her thoughts and she gave permanent expression to her grief at his early death in the grandiloquent Mausoleum she erected in 188388. 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. Eugnie became godmother to, and the namesake of, one of Victorias granddaughters. Like Ethel, Daudet is at pains to stress that she is neither frivolous nor a bigot. However, Prince Victor Napoleon, whom she regarded as emperor, proved to be an ineffectual pretender. often visited Eugnie at Chislehurst and then when she moved to Farnborough (Hampshire). However, when it reached the Prince Imperials bedroom she nearly fainted and, asking for a chair and a glass of water, raised her veil. Finally, wearing a nuns habit, she was laid to rest. The coffin was taken to the station in the king of Spains state coach, with an escort of halberdiers and footmen carrying tapers. The lantern is enclosed and the crossing is lit by the large windows that dominate the shallow transepts. When the war broke out in 1914 she realised it would be long and bitter, giving her yacht Thistle to the Royal Navy and turning a wing of Farnborough Hill into a small hospital, which she maintained entirely out of her own pocket. British Art,
. Situated on the highest point in Farnborough, it has marvellous views over the surrounding countryside. Find out more. She would have liked Viollet-le-Duc as architect but, anxious not to upset his new republican masters, he declined. 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. Upon the request of Queen Victoria, a cross was erected at his death site, and a monument was built in St Georges Chapel. Eugnie bought the house in 1880 and immediately set about transforming it. Her straight back and upright shoulders do not touch the back of the armchair. Among the books she was reading he saw one of the volumes of Sorels massive LEurope et la Rvolution Franaise. The crossing reveals itself as one moves westwards through the building. Will Pryce for the Country Life Picture Library. She would enjoy the ludicrousness of dear Sir Evelyn Wood falling on his knees before her on the gravel path, and kissing her hand in the costume he adopted.. All of this was dismantled in 1927. Luncheon was at one oclock, dinner at eight, and the rosary was said in the chapel at five. To her immediate left she placed a second sculpted image of the Prince Imperial, aged eight, by Carpeaux. She never tired of travel, her cure for depression, and set out for India on a liner in 1903, although illness forced her to turn back at Ceylon. The Masoleum will be the subject of an article all its own next week. 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. She bought a car, too, a large black and green Renault, engaging a somewhat erratic chauffeur to drive it on one occasion the vehicle and its passengers had to be rescued from a ditch by a steam roller, while in 1913 he was fined for speeding although his employer disliked going at speed. 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. This was a defining moment for the new regime, placing them amongst the power from the mighty empires of Europe. This was likewise conceived around the Gobelins tapestries, the largest of which were displayed here. They had elaborate internal decorations designed by Destailleur and were used to display the principal items of the collection. During her lifetime, Eugnie was known as the 'Empress of Fashion' of the 19th century. It was her last and most effective intervention in foreign affairs. This absorbing book tells the story of Empress Eugnie (1826-1920), the wife of Napoleon III and the last empress-consort of France. Do you know, I wanted to go by aeroplane, but people might have said I was a crazy old woman. Someone else who met her during that winter was the Duchess of Sermonetta, a smart young Roman. Ive come home, she declared happily, and she even spoke of going up in an aeroplane at last when she got back to England, now that she could see properly again. It seemed that her central source of torment was the welfare of the, In 1854, the Royal Hospital for the Blind was placed under her patronage. The religious architecture of the period was damned for clinging too closely to Gothic France or for capitulating too fully to Renaissance Italy. 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. 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. The main reception rooms were at the north end of the gallery and were treated very differently. 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. Viewed in this context, the medievalism of Eugnies Farnborough is less surprising. While her Republican enemies (those who would go on to overthrow the Second Empire and declare the Third Republic in 1870) would depict her as a violent agitator, those closer to her said she assumed the Regent role admirably. It was not lessened by the fall of the Second Empire; Victoria often visited Eugnie at Chislehurst and then when she moved to Farnborough (Hampshire). The visitor who ventures beyond the roundabouts and dual carriage-ways of modern Farnborough will quickly encounter the remnants of an extraordinary 19th-century estate that played an important role in the history of Europe. In 1873 Napoleon III, nephew of the more celebrated emperor, died in disgrace at Camden Place, now the home of Chislehurst Golf Club, having endured German captivity and the disastrous defeat of his armies in the Franco-Prussian war. Today, only the Mausoleum functions as Eugnie originally envisaged. The Emperors tomb is in the north transept; the Prince Imperials is in the south. "Empress Eugenie" redirects here. Destailleurs design, with its Gothic structure and Renaissance dome, was clearly informed by these debates. Find out more. The interior, however, was scrupulously based on early-Renaissance models. From the start she hoped fervently for the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine, and Ethel Smyth recalled what a comfort she was at dark moments, so sane and unshakeable was her faith in ultimate victory. (They are still preserved at the abbey.) On a more practical level, she wanted to be near Queen Victoria at Windsor, which was easily accessible by train. Her judgement did not fail her Bigge ended as private secretary to King George V, who created him Lord Stamfordham. Everyone has heard of the Napoleons the former imperial and French royal dynasty, the most famous being Bonaparte, but very few know of the wife of Napoleon III (Bonapartes nephew), Spanish-born Countess of Teba Eugnie de Montijo. She was outraged when the maniac Edouard Drumont claimed in La Libre Parole that she was anti-Semitic, writing an indignant letter of denial. The latter was located in a completely new wing, built on by the Empress. 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