Friends of Hastings Cemetery

She first married George Faquhar Leslie  2 Dec 1847, Parramatta, NSW, Australia; he died in 1860 from consumption (TB). [one source says 1855]

Her second marriage in 1865 to Captain Vigant Falbe was also short, although it produced two boys before Falbe's death in 1871.  Their sons were Christian, who died in 1914, and William Vigant, who became a Brigadier-General, and was given the C.M.G. and D.S.O.

Census - 2 Apr 1871 - William Falbe / Son / age 3 / birthplace, France Cannes / living at Catherine Villa, 5 Villa Road, Hastings, St Mary Magdalene, with parents Vigant Falbe (age 44, Late Commander Danish R N, born Denmark) and Emmeline Falbe (age 42, born New South Wales, Australia), brother Christian Falbe (age 4, born Westminster), 4 servants.

DEATHS.  On the 19th June, at St. Catherine's Villa, Hastings, England, Commander VIGANT FALBE, late of the British[sic] Royal Navy, aged 44 years.  (Also from consumption (TB)) They came to St Leonards in 1870 because of his deteriorating health.   Emmeline was familiar with the area as George Leslie’s brothers stayed at St. Leonards.

Madame de Falbe lived some years in St Leonards, and later in Cheltenham, where she died in 1911.

In 1909 at the request of her family she wrote her memoirs which provided a mine of information about her relatives and friends and her pioneering days in Australia. [Jane de Falbe My dear Miss Macarthur: the recollections of Emmeline Maria Macarthur (1828-1911) Kenthurst, Kangaroo Press, 1988]

John de Falbe has written a fictionalised account of his great grandparents’ story in “The Bequest”

The Bequest
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2003/dec/06/featuresreviews.guardianreview18
by John de Falbe - 340pp, Harvill, £15.99

Beware any novel that ends with a bibliography: too often the ever-visible pressure of research mars the deeper interest of the fiction.  …..There are gorgeous settings, from Genoa to Tasmania, and the real, ready-made plot of a second love marked, as was the first, by untimely death.  Add to this already powerful brew the fact that the whole thing is apparently a family story for De Falbe, the fictional lovers being his real great-grandparents, and it must have seemed a writer's gift.

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Captain Charles Vigant de Falbe continued