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The Imperial Abbey at Farnborough, 1883–1920

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

Nicholas Paxton
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Extract

‘Those who establish religious foundations are very closely linked with the life their benefaction has made possible. Their influence takes from day to day its part in the life of the foundation.’ So wrote the pseudonymous Robert Sencourt in 1948 as the start of an article about the Empress Eugénie. This present article will explore the elements in Eugénie's character and past life which motivated her to make such an unusual foundation as a mausoleum-abbey at Farnborough, her establishment of its church and house, the relationship between her and its clergy, and the lives of the religious communities (first Premonstratensian, then Benedictine) that staffed the abbey from its foundation until her grand funeral there, which provides the climax of the article.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , October 2007 , pp. 575 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2007

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References

Notes

1 Sencourt, R. (pseudonym of George, R. E. G.): ‘The Empress Eugénie. Foundress of Farnborough Abbey’, Pax 38, No. 247 (Summer 1948), p. 54.Google Scholar

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12 Ibidem, p. 7, text and n. 1; Pax 37, No. 244, p. 105.

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21 Higham & Hogg, File 1, p. 8, text and n. 4.

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27 Paper ‘Archives F’ (1975, 2 sheets), in FAA, an account given by one ‘Fr W.’ to the anonymous redactor in 1975. ‘Fr W.’ was probably Fr Warrilow or Fr Waterman, both monks of the abbey for some time before the dissolution of the community of the Solesmes Benedictine congregation in 1947. As the redactor notes, the account is fragmentary and from well before 1975. See also Moreau, p. 1; Higham & Hogg, File 1, pp. 23–25 and notes; Rollar, pp. 108–109. For details of the obligations by way of Masses and prayers for the imperial family by which the monastic community was to be bound, see Higham & Hogg, File 1, pp. 25–26 and notes.

28 Seward, p. 285.

29 Moreau, p. 1–2.

30 For an overview of Cabrol's career, see his obituary in The Tablet, 12 June 1937, pp. 864–865.

31 Moreau, pp. 3–4.

32 FAA ‘Archives F’ gives the date of independence as 25 November 1899 and adds: ‘Dom Cabrol was duly elected Prior in the early months of the new century’. Higham & Hogg (File 1, p. 30) give the independence date as 28 November and dates Cabrol's election to 4 April 1900; Moreau (p. 6) gives 23 or 24 April 1900 as the independence date.

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40 Rollar, p. 99 and p. 134 n. 31.

41 Higham & Hogg, File 1 p. 20, text and n. I. But the north wing seems later; see FAA ‘Archives F’. On Williamson's life and work, see Anon., ‘St Gregory's Catholic Church Earlsfield: Parish History’, online at http://www.rc.net/southwark/earlsfield/History.htm; A. McQueen, ‘Empress Eugénie's Quest for a Napoleonic Mausoleum’, online at http://19thc-artworldwide.org/winter_03/articles/mcqu.html, text and n. 23, both accessed 8/9/2005; Olson, U. S., ‘The Revival of the Brigittine Monks in the Twentieth Century: Various Attempts’, Analecta Cartusiana Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2000, pp. 37–73.Google Scholar

42 Moreau, p. 9.

43 Moreau, pp. 19 and 21.

44 Hogg-Conway, p. 2.

45 Hogg-Conway, pp. 2–3.

46 Hogg-Conway, p. 3.

47 Hogg-Conway, p. 4.

48 Hogg-Conway, p. 5.

49 Moreau, p. 28.

50 Hogg-Conway, p. 15.

51 Hogg-Conway, p. 22.

52 See for example, letter, Eugénie to Mile Pauline de Bassano, quoted and transi, in Sencourt, R., The Life of the Empress Eugénie (London, 1931), p. 357.Google Scholar

53 FAA, Conway diary, original text.

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55 Higham & Hogg, File 2, pp. 26–27.

56 Hogg-Conway, p. 27.

57 Marshall, G., ‘Two Autobiographical Narratives of Conversion: Robert Hugh Benson and Ronald Knox’, Recusant History, 24 No. 2, p. 251.Google Scholar

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59 Fitzgerald, P., The Rnox Brothers (London, 1977), p. 141.Google Scholar

60 Knox, A Spiritual Aeneid, p. 215.

61 Knox, A Spiritual Aeneid, p. 216.

62 See also Waugh, Ronald Knox, pp. 158–159.

63 Moreau, p. 38.

64 Bierman, J., Napoleon III and his Carnival Empire (London, 1989 and 1990), p. 408;Google Scholar Kurtz, The Empress Eugénie, p. 364; Smith, W. H. C., Eugénie impératrice etfemme (Paris, 1989), pp. 359–360;Google Scholar Turnbull, P., Eugénie of the French (London, 1974), pp. 391–392;Google Scholar Seward, p. 294.

65 Quoted in Higham & Hogg, File 2, p. 28.

66 Personal information from Dom Leander Hogg. For The Times's obituary of Eugénie, see The Times, 12 July 1920, pp. 15–16. For a tribute to her in The Tablet, see The Tablet, 24 July 1920, p. 109.

67 Conway diary, original text.

68 Hogg-Conway, p. 35.

69 Hogg-Conway, p. 35; see also Moreau, p. 40.

70 For The Times’ account of the funeral, see 21 July 1920, p. 11.

71 Quoted and transl. in Sencourt, R., ‘The Empress Eugénie. Foundress of Farnborough Abbey’, p. 55.Google Scholar

72 Hogg-Conway, p. 53; see also Moreau, p. 41.

73 Conway diary, original text, 20 July 1920.

74 Hogg-Conway, p. 35.

75 Personal information from Dom Leander Hogg, O.S.B.

76 FAA, ‘Assorted Farnborough Notes’, p. 3.

77 Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie, p. 644.

78 Personal information from Dom Leander Hogg.

79 Anon., ‘St. Michael's Abbey, Farnborough’, in Prinknash Abbey Archives.

80 In FAA.

81 Anon., ‘Memorandum for Prinknash re the proposed transfer of Farnborough Abbey to our English Province’, in Prinknash Abbey Archives.

82 Hendra, T., Father Joe: the man who saved my soul (New York and London, 2004);Google Scholar Holland, T., For Better and for Worse (Manchester, 1989), p. 214;Google Scholar Williams, R., The Wound of Knowledge (London, 1979), p. viii.Google Scholar

83 Letter, Abbot Taylor [Abbot Visitor of the English Province of the Congregation of Subiaco] to Conway, 10 October 1946, in Prinknash Abbey Archives; see also Upson, W. in Pax 37, No. 243 (Summer 1947), pp. 53–54.Google Scholar