Tragedy and Opulence: Waddesdon Manor

It was a wet late afternoon when we visited this imitation of a French Chateau: Waddesdon Manor.

The Rothschilds bear the brunt of many conspiracy theories, but the builder of Waddesdon was a remarkable man. Ferdinand de Rothschild, born in Paris in 1839, married his second cousin, Evelina de Rothschild, and assumed British nationality in 1865. On December 4^th, 1866, Evelina gave birth to a son, and one can only imagine Ferdinand’s happiness—and despair when mother and child died the same day. Ferdinand himself died on his 59^th birthday, thought to be the result of a cold caught when visiting his wife’s tomb. 

Ferdinand Rothschild, a reminder that the rich are equally human when it comes to pain. 

There is evident melancholy in the face, and in conjunction with the quote at the very end of this post, you wonder how much of this was displacement activity. Years later he was to remark: "I am a lonely, suffering and occasionally very miserable person, despite the gilded and marble rooms in which I  live."

Even so, a marble Conservatory must compensate to some extent, along with the rest of this Ali Baba's Cave.

An organ clock portraying Orpheus with internal mechanism that plays tunes circa 1785

A small study in opulence

Followed by a big study in opulence - the Dining room from various angles.

                                             

Close up of one corner of the dining room

From the Breakfast Room above, you can see the entire length of the house to the Baron's Room. Male guests would have had their breakfast here. Ladies had theirs in bed. Food was brought in through a pair of small doors in the corner panelling. 

The Red Drawing Room

The Red Drawing Room was the main reception room for up to forty guests. The carpet was commissioned by Louis XIV and dates from 1683. The table was made in Augsburg between 1710 and 1720. The walls are littered with Gainsboroughs and Reynolds, and you can probably spot the Sèvres porcelain.

The Grey Drawing Room was where the ladies would withdraw to, while the men enjoyed port in the Dining Room. Sufficiently tanked up, they would rejoin the ladies for conversation, cards and sometimes dancing.

Walking along the West Gallery to the West Hall below you will see:

More clocks and Sèvres porcelain than you can shake a stick at, treasures and tapestries galore.

Ferdinand, I think, illustrates a life well spent. In memory of his wife’s death, he endowed the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children in Southwark, pursued other works of charity and became an obsessive collector of art. As a Trustee of the British Museum, he bequeathed his ‘Renaissance Collection’ to the institution on his death.

In 1874, he bought land in the village of Waddesdon from the Duke of Marlborough, levelled a substantial hill, and built Waddesdon Manor in order to house his collection. Built between 1874 and 1889 its design was based on Chateau de Chambord in France. It was very much a labour of love—as it was for us traipsing round room after opulent room.

 A bathroom with its own fire

The State Bedroom where Queen Victoria didn't sleep but rested her small weary body. No doubt over-excited by seeing the electric lighting in the dining room which she insisted on switching on and off.

Another bedroom 

an indoor Sedan Chair for the infirm.

How successfully did a Jewish financier fit in the largely antisemitic English culture of the time? 

It’s likely Trollope borrowed aspects of Ferdinand Rothschild in his creation of his fictional financier Melmotte, in The Way We Live Now, a man who comes to a sticky end when trying to establish himself as a landed gentleman. But the brunt of Trollope’s attack – as it is on Ferdinand Lopez in The Prime Minister—is not on their ethnicity but on the character's lack of roots—the foundation stone of Trollope’s world. In all his books, the villain, irrespective of religion or race is the one who lacks or undervalues duty and a rooted community. 

For those who go for the knee-jerk reaction that Trollope was anti semitic, it's worth pointing out that Rothschild was a close friend of Trollope, along with  John Everet Millais, Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) Robert Browning, and the American Ambassador in London. He was friendly with Gladstone and Disraeli, and also the Prince of Wales. In other words Rothschilds were accepted—money perhaps—but in Ferdinand’s case because he hunted, put down roots and accepted the concept of duty. 

Towards the end of his life, he became keenly aware of dying without a male heir, and bequeathed his estate to his younger sister, the formidable Alice who had no hesitation in telling off Queen Victoria for stepping on one of her flowers. Well worth reading about, here and here. As I said, formidable and would have seen off Harvey Weinstein.

 

 

 Lady Alice

 

 Lady Alice's spectacular collection of arms and armour. She positioned it here to create an appropriately masculine approach to the Smoking and Billiards Rooms used by male guests.

The Bachelor's Wing has ten bedrooms for single male guests, 15 bedrooms for permanent male staff and visiting servants and two rooms dedicated to masculine pastimes of smoking and billiards. The leather coated sofa is on a raised platform, incorporating heating grills, for better viewing of the game.

Covering the billiards table is a large mid C19th spread from Rasht, Iran.

And finally, and possibly of less interest to hard smoking, hard drinking bachelors, other treasures of Waddesdon. Raffles, eat your heart out.

The melancholy returned with a vengeance a year before his death:

‘...future generation may reap the chief benefit of a work which to time has been a labour of love, though I fear Waddesdon will share the fate of most properties whose owners have no descendants and fall into decay. May the day yet be distant when weeds will spread over the garden, the terraces crumble into dust, the pictures and cabinets cross the Channel or the Atlantic, and the melancholy cry of the night-jar sound from the deserted towers.' Ferdinand Rothschild, 1897.

I think he would have approved of how his descendants have maintained it by sharing the building and its contents with the nation in an intelligent arrangement that benefited both family and country. He may even have approved of its use as a film location for the likes of the Carry On film 'Don't Lose Your Head,' 

'The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,' 'Frankenstein,' and Sherlock Holmes.'

If this is an overlong post, it was harder on our feet, minds, and iPhone batteries, but worth it, I hope.

Walsingham

Cambridge and Norfolk come into their own at twilight. The air is soft, outlines blurred, the countryside crossed by sly and winding lanes; nothing quite as it seems. It may be the reason recusants and spies are associated with the area—along with mystics. I’m not so much thinking of Julian of Norwich, rather the mysterious Richeldis and the great shrine of Walsingham—its peace disturbed by Henry VIII. The whole shameful story can be read here. 

The full story of Richeldis and the visitation of Our Lady in 1061 can be read above and below. One thing for sure, the saintly Richeldis and her heavenly friends would make short work of the housing crisis.

I confess, shrines and pilgrimages hold little appeal for me, Lourdes, especially so. I have no rational explanation for this, then again rationality isn’t exactly a factor in religious experience. Perhaps it is the kitsch I associate with Lourdes: coaches, souvenirs and gift-shops; then again, having never been I may equally be missing the point: a religious experience.

The point was made apparent on our third day in Norfolk, when we visited Walsingham. First, a warning: other than the shrine, what you see in this photo is pretty much what you get in Walsingham. 

There is one pub. There is a bookshop that sells tea and sandwiches, light lunches. And there was the curse that dogged much of our trip: everything was closed in one form or another. The shop that sold books and light lunches closed at 4.30. The pub we’d counted on eating in served food two days a week, and they didn’t on the day we were there. On an empty stomach, beer and a packet of crisps held little attraction. These were material shortcomings, and having initially groused about coach parties, souvenir shops and kitsch, I suppose I shouldn’t really complain. 

What Walsingham did have was an atmosphere that slowly seeped into the bone. The largest of the two shrines was the Anglican which was more ‘High Church’ than the Pope. It was beautiful inside and is built within and incorporates much of the original medieval monastery.

The Catholic Shrine is housed in the smaller ‘Slipper’ Chapel just over a mile away at the other end of the village. It derives its name from the medieval custom of pilgrims housing their ‘slippers’/shoes in the chapel and walking to the shrine in bare feet. And presumably back again to retrieve their shoes. Bit like a bowling alley where you exchange your shoes for bowling slippers, but with the disadvantage of a two mile walk in between. 

We walked the ‘pilgrims’ way, with our shoes on. The track was straight and looked medieval. It was in fact a decommissioned rail track but did the job. 

A prosaic but informative board 

 Slipper Chapel exterior

The Slipper Chapel attracted me most strongly. It had a great sense of peace, an atmosphere you could cut with a knife. Totally unworldly. In truth, I could have stayed there much longer. The peace and sense of something other was probably magnified by being out of season. In Pilgrim season, packed with coachloads of the devout, I may have had a different experience. Then again, it may be ‘the sense of peace and an atmosphere you could cut with a knife’ was the residue of others’ religious experience. 

Walsingham was quiet but we did bear witness to a shadow of the medieval pilgrimage, two cheerful but skeletal Catholics proudly displaying their bare feet having done ‘the walk,’ and a chubby Anglican cleric with a small entourage of  'eager souls' who we kept bumping into. 

An interesting day but one that left us with an appetite, a craving for food.