BOISSEVAIN Gen6 | Emily Héloïse MacDonnell

Emily MacDonnell (seated) and Friend, 1866. Writing
 at bottom by Hilda van Stockum (1908-2006).

I was given an album of Boissevain photos by my sister Brigid and I found a photo of Emily Heloïse MacDonnell.

It was before she met and married my great-grandfather Charles Boissevain.

Emily is with a friend who looks very severe, even contemptuous. 

Emily herself looks nice enough but she is quite subdued. Later, after her marriage, her reputation in Holland was that of a wild Irish woman.

For example, early in her married life she went out skating arm-in-arm with a member of her household staff. Ahem, not done in Holland.

The fashionable hairstyle of the time seems to have been a part in the middle with the hair pulled back.

A note under the photo from my mother notes that it was taken in 1866–by the Metropolitan Photo Company at its studio on 88 Grafton Street in Dublin.