Augusta Persse

Unknown photographer

Augusta Persse

ca. 1880

Courtesy of Colin Smythe

This posed studio photograph was taken around the time of Augusta Persse's marriage to Sir William Gregory in March 1880. She wears no jewelry, and her simple center-parted and flat-brushed hair bound tightly back add to the unadorned, youthful, and earnest persona noted by those who knew her then. In a letter to her just after their engagement, Sir William, who was anxious about the difference in their ages, wrote, "[you] looked quite in your early teens when you appeared in your sealskin and hat the other day." As the 1893 portrait at the end of this case shows, she retained her youthful looks, unadorned style, and earnest manner into her widowed 40s.