“Le patron mange ici” (the owner eats here) is a guarantee of excellence in French restaurants. The same applies to Waddesdon Manor, the patron (in both the English and the French sense) being Jacob, Lord Rothschild, and it has been rewarded with the Museum of the Year and Best National Trust Property awards for 1997.
Rothschild is not the actual owner, because his cousin, James de Rothschild, left the house, contents and 200 acres of surrounding garden and park to the National Trust in 1957, but he is responsible for the two family trusts set up to support it.
Every visitor (160,000 a year to the grounds, of which 90,000 also go around the house) is subsidised by these Rothschild moneys, to the tune of £8 a head, not counting capital investment, three-quarters of which are also paid for by Rothschild funds.
Jacob Rothschild lives nearby and most weekends drops in to see what is going on. The staff speak with some awe of his perfectionism: “Do it again” is the phrase for which he is known.
The day I went down, the drive up to house had just been regravelled with pebbles of a colour that were a better match of the stone 19th-century château, and everywhere I saw signs of more than usually attentive custodianship (yet no one can accuse the National Trust of slovenly ways).
When James de Rothschild’s widow died in 1988, Jacob succeeded her on the National Trust’s Management Committee for the house and almost at once initiated a huge repairs and refurbishment campaign, which included bringing it up to museum standards of lighting, heating, security and humidity control.
This was paid for by the Alice Trust, established by Mrs James de Rothschild to keep up the property and its contents. In recognition of this, the National Trust offered the use of Waddesdon Manor to Jacob Rothschild and his family for private use whenever this did not conflict with its public opening, an arrangement he has made use of whenever, as he put it to The Art Newspaper, he had someone visiting “who would particularly appreciate it”.
Such private use of a house is gradually dwindling away in most National Trust properties, but Waddesdon is a special case because of Rothschild’s commitment to it: “I see it as the exemplar of a Rothschild house,” he says. In one of the upper rooms there is a “family” tree showing all the 60 or so Rothschild houses that once existed, of which only this and Ascott House, in the same county, still have their contents and can be visited. Waddesdon is the last property, in England or in Europe, to display the famous, 19th-century goût Rothschild, that blend of Renaissance and Renaissance-revival with dix-huitième in their most sumptuous manifestations.
This year, the Bachelors’ Wing, where Rothschild stays when in residence, has opened to the public for the first time, redecorated after old photographs in suitably masculine dark reds. It houses Renaissance paintings, glass, goldsmiths’ work, maiolica and enamels which replace the ones bequeathed by Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, builder of Waddesdon, to the British Museum. In honour of Baron Ferdinand’s centenary this year, the museum has lent back a selection of the finest items.
Eighteenth-century boiseries bought by Baron Ferdinand probably for his townhouse have been assembled on the first floor, painted white according to the 18th-century recipe which binds the pigment with animal glue, so letting the grain show through. Two of the Meissen factory’s 18th-century tours-de-force, the extraordinarily rare, monumental white porcelain turkey and goat, are suitably displayed in there.
Many 18th-century pieces have been lent back to the house by the family to furnish rooms open to the public for the first time.
Rothschild denies that he is the “director” of Waddesdon, but admits that whenever there is a major decision to be taken, he is consulted
“We have wanted to enliven the place,” says Rothschild, and one of the first moves has been to make more of the collection of Sèvres porcelain, which is a great treasure of the house. Scholarship, under Mrs James de Rothschild, was bought in, with a series of catalogues commissioned from leading scholars. This still continues (the printed books and bindings, for example, are being studied by Giles Barber of the Oxford’s Taylor Institution), but Rothschild has also appointed in-house curators.
Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, the south front. In one of the upper rooms there is a “family” tree showing all the 60 or so Rothschild houses that once existed, of which only Waddesdon and Ascott House, in the same county, still have their contents and can be visited Photo: Waddesdon Image Library, Andrew Peppard
The Cooper Hewitt-trained Selma Schwartz is a porcelain expert and is doing a series of Sèvres shows. This year’s looks at all the phases in the modelling and manufacture of a Sèvres biscuit figure, from the Falconet marble model to the moulds to the finished piece. And such is the prestige—and security—of Waddesdon that the Louvre and Sèvres Manufactory have both lent to it.
An academic committee has been set up, with the director of the National Gallery, Neil MacGregor, the former surveyor of The Queen’s works of art, Geoffrey de Bellaigue, the National Trust’s adviser on pictures and sculpture, Alastair Laing, and Rothschild himself, to decide on educational, publishing and exhibition policy.
If this begins to sound very like a modern museum rather than just a country house, then it can be explained by Rothschild’s own experience in his second career. He was for six years chairman of the trustees of the National Gallery, where he steered it through the building of the Sainsbury Wing, the reinstatement of its 19th-century interiors and administrative reforms.
In his capacity as head of the Heritage Lottery Fund from 1994 to 1998, he had a crash course in comparative museum practice when he had to assess the applications of England’s museums.
He denies that he is the “director” of Waddesdon, but admits that whenever there is a major decision to be taken, he is consulted.
He himself consults widely. For example, the librarian of the Royal Horticultural Society studied the gardens for a year, which greatly stimulated his interest. His aunt Miriam Rothschild, the world famous expert on fleas and an ecologist, has planted a field in the park with wildflowers. His daughter Beth, who trained at Kew, has got involved in a restoration of the grounds that makes a visit to Waddesdon a return to 19th-century elaborate gardening—but with modern, cost-cutting techniques. This year, Frank Parge, the craft gardener responsible for the parterres (trained at Essen University in garden engineering), planted two beds with the five-arrow Rothschild device in just six hours, with 15 gardeners using 57,000 plants. This was achieved by using preplanted trays of flowers that fitted together like a jigsaw. Last year it had taken five gardeners 400 hours to do the same work entirely by hand.
Just as museums need public financing to run properly, if Waddesdon is to continue at this level of excellence, it will continue to need the Rothschild subsidy. But just as museums have learnt good business practice and now generate their own supplementary revenue, Waddesdon has its own chief executive, its own shop with special Waddesdon souvenirs (such as enamelled tin “Sèvres” picnic plates) and wine from Rothschild vineyards, an excellent café and restaurant, a plant centre and money-making special events.
Altogether, Waddesdon is a model of a mixed economy— public and private, institution—and it is, needless to say, a delight to visit.