An exploration of the little-known assemblage of art and architecture that Empress Eugénie created in Farnborough in the 1880s. This absorbing book tells the story of Empress Eugénie (1826-1920), the wife of Napoleon III and the last empress-consort of France. 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 death of the Prince Imperial in 1879, aged twenty-three, ended all hope of a Bonapartist restoration. With the imperial succession removed to another branch of the family, Eugénie resolved to create a permanent monument to her husband and son. In this book, Anthony Geraghty analyzes the principal buildings on the imperial estate and provides the first detailed account of the lost interiors of Farnborough Hill. He traces the origins of the collection back to the Second French Empire, and--drawing upon historic photos, inventories, and sale catalogs--he shows how the collection was displayed in the principal rooms of the house. Finally, the book describes the breakup of the estate in 1927, when the house was sold to a convent school and the collection was dispersed at auction. Today, only the Mausoleum functions as Eugénie originally envisaged. Geraghty, however, recovers the totality of Eugenie's vision for Farnborough. In so doing, he describes how the Napoleonic ideal, for one final time, was made visible through art, architecture, and collecting.

The Empress Eugénie was one of the most glamorous, celebrated and ultimately tragic figures of the nineteenth century. Wife of Napoleon III and close friend of Queen Victoria, she suffered the loss of her beloved sister, her only son, and her adopted country. But did Eugénie take her greatest secret-an illegitimate child, conceived when she was a teenager in Spain and fathered by the only man she ever truly loved-to the grave with her? And if so, what became of the child? After half a lifetime's research Joyce Cartlidge has pieced together evidence from historic records and clues in correspondence from Eugénie and her family and friends, some of it never printed before, to tell a compelling story of love and motherhood that ties the Spanish house of Montijo and the French throne to a small family in Victorian Lancashire. 'An extraordinary odyssey into family history' -The Mail on Sunday