Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 2).djvu/364

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Portraits of Celebrities at different times of their Lives.

THE EX-EMPRESS EUGÉNIE.

Born 1826.

Age 30.
From a Photo. by Le Jeune, Paris.
Age 37.
From a Photograph.


E UGÉNIE, Ex-Empress of the French, was born in Granada May 5, 1825. Her father was an
Present Day.
From a Photo. by W. & D. Downey.
officer in the Spanish army; her mother, Maria Doña Kirkpatrick, was descended from a Scotch family who had fled to Spain after the fall of the Stuarts. Eugénie's childhood was spent at Madrid, but she was afterwards sent to school in England, and resided with her mother for some time in London. When she was twenty-five she paid a long visit to Paris, where her great beauty and intellectual gifts won the heart of Napoleon III. The marriage was celebrated with great magnificence on January 29, 1853, at Notre Dame. In 1856, the year in which our first portrait represented her, at the height of her remarkable beauty, the Prince Imperial was born, who, in our second portrait, is shown at the age of seven at his mother's knee. On June 1, 1879, occurred the great sorrow of her life, when the Prince Imperial was killed by the savages in South Africa. Her Majesty now lives in retirement at her mansion at Farnborough.