Château Mouton-Rothschild: Pauline
As I have already documented, Baron Philippe de Rothschild’s first wife Elisabeth Pelletier de Chambure died in a concentration camp during World War II. She had given Philippe two children, Philippine Mathilde Camille (born 1933), and Charles Henri (born 1938) who died very young. Being a daughter of a staunchly Roman Catholic family the Vicomtesse Elisabeth had perhaps believed herself safe from such persecution, certainly more so than the Rothschilds who are Jewish. But it was not to be, and her arrest by the Gestapo in 1943 was witnessed by the ten-year old Philippine. To this day the exact details of Elisabeth’s death, in Ravensbrück concentration camp, remain mercifully unclear.
Thankfully Philippine survived, as did her father Baron Philippe, and he returned to Château Mouton-Rothschild following the cessation of hostilities. The archives had been destroyed, and the vineyards were in a sorry state, and he set about their repair as best he could, before ultimately turning his attention to securing Mouton’s promotion, as I have already detailed. In the meantime Philippe continued to live the life of a playboy, with a string of mistresses to his name. In 1954 one of them, the offspring of American expatriates living in Paris named Pauline Fairfax-Potter (1908 – 1976), became his second wife.
Pauline (pictured below in a photoshoot for Vogue in 1950) was seemingly quite a character, able to claim descent from both Pocahontas and Francis Scott Key, who put the lyrics to The Star-Spangled Banner. She was born Pauline Potter, the Fairfax added during her time working for the American fashion company Hattie Carnegie. She had intellectual leanings, and spent her time translating Elizabethan poetry and the plays of Christopher Fry. Looking at pictures of her taken at around this time I suspect she was also someone who lived life to the full. She and Philippe had been together since 1951, living in an apartment on the Mouton-Rothschild estate, sited in some converted haylofts and stables. They shared a love of art, both ancient and modern, and together she and Philippe created the Mouton art museum, collecting pieces from the world over including some that went on to feature on the Mouton labels.
