Alice de Rothschild at Villa Victoria and Waddesdon Manor

Many citizens and some visitors to Grasse will have heard of Alice de Rothschild, who built the Villa Victoria, which was subsequently re-built as the Palais Provencal apartment block in the late 1920s. It’s a little further along from Le Grand Palais (once the Grand Hotel) along the avenue Victoria. Here’s an old postcard, written in 1913, showing it, together with approximately the same view today.

However, this grainy image, taken from another postcard in 1928, perhaps gives some better idea of its former glory:

What locals and visitors often do not realise is that the Villa Victoria, with 140 hectares of gardens extending way up the Malbosc hill to its north, was, for over twenty years, just Alice’s winter vacation ‘cottage’. Her main residence, following the death of her brother Ferdinand de Rothschild in 1898 when she inherited it, was the huge mock-chateau pile of Waddesdon Manor:

This house, near Aylesbury, about 50 miles north west of central London, is set in an estate of over 1,000 hectares. Alice lived there, in London's Piccadilly and at Villa Victoria until her own death in 1922. There is one obvious resemblance between the two buildings - the Rothschilds seem to have been very keen on pinnacles!

Unlike the Villa Victoria and its gardens, however, Waddesdon Manor, which was designed by a French architect as a pastiche of a typical Loire chateau, still exists and thrives, owned by the UK’s National Trust and managed by the Rothschild family. Last year, it put on an exhibition about Alice de Rothschild – “Alice’s Wonderlands”. It has gone now but you can still see something of it online here.

Alice gave Villa Victoria its name after Queen Victoria visited it during her time in Grasse while staying at the Grand Hotel in April 1891. Famously, the Queen is said to have called Alice ‘The All-Powerful’ after she inadvertently trod on some flowers and was given a round telling-off.

At the time of Victoria’s visit, however, there was a much closer royal relationship with Waddesdon. Victoria had visited Alice at Waddesdon in 1890, but according to Jane Ridley’s Bertie, A Life of Edward VII (Vintage Books, 2013), “Bertie stayed most years during the 1880s in mid-July at Waddesdon…Waddesdon became a favourite place for the prince to entertain, effectively an alternative court. Guest lists were sent in advance ….for approval….The Rothschilds appealed all the more in the 1880s as, squeezed by agricultural depression, Bertie’s English friends no longer vied so keenly for the expensive honour of entertaining him.” But… “Waddesdon was no longer an option [after] Ferdinand de Rothschild died suddenly in 1898.” It seems that Alice, who became chatelaine of Waddesdon on her brother’s death, didn’t want any visits from the Prince of Wales!

The only surviving relic of the Villa Victoria is the Tea House (Pavillon de Thé), built in 1893 after Victoria’ s stay in Grasse. It can still be seen – just! – near the top of the Malbosc hill.

Originally, it was accessed via Alice’s private 3km lane which is now variously named bd Alice de Rothschild, Chemin Coste d’Or and bd Président Kennedy. The tea house can be glimpsed through the trees from the Chemin de Champs de Tir behind it and at its main entrance at 7, allée Beau Site.

The startlingly bright glazed blue and yellow tiles (the colours of the Rothschilds) still stand out in sunny conditions, even though these images are the best I can get.

According to Christian Zerry (Alice de Rothschild, Editions Campanile, 2014), Queen Victoria visited Alice to see the Tea House in 1895 when she was staying at Cimiez in Nice.

What I find interesting is that Waddesdon also has a rather whimsical building some way from the main house (but at least not at the top of a hill), known as the Dairy of Waddesdon and apparently built to house Ferdinand de Rothschild’s herd of pedigree cattle:

Perhaps when Alice had the Tea House built, reputably to her own design, she had the dairy (built in 1885, before the Villa Victoria) in mind?