While Charlotte de Rothschild and her husband would always live in Paris, in 1853 they purchased the Château Brane-Mouton vineyard that they renamed Château Mouton Rothschild. In 1878, Charlotte bought the Abbaye des Vaux de Cernay in Cernay-la-Ville in the Vallée de Chevreuse, at the time only a ruins of a Cistercianabbey built in 1118. She undertook extensive restoration work and new construction to make the lakeside property into a country home. The property remained in family hands until 1945 when it was by sold by her grandson Henri James de Rothschild to aircraft manufacturer Félix Amiot.
Charlotte de Rothschild's interest extended to music, entertaining musician friends such as Georges Bizet and Camille Saint-Saëns. Charlotte de Rothschild's lifetime of involvement in art and music would greatly influence her offspring, producing writers, actors and playwrights.
Later years
Tragedy struck her family in 1881 when she lost her eldest surviving child, thirty-seven-year-old James-Edouard.[citation needed] An attorney in the Rothschild bank in Paris, James-Edouard de Rothschild had served in the Garde Mobile during the Franco-Prussian War and suffered from a number of illnesses, including depression that led to his suicide.
^Chopin, Frédéric (2007). Grabowski, Christophe; Rink, John; Samson, Jim; Eigeldinger, Jean-Jacques (eds.). The Complete Chopin - A New Critical Edition (in English and German). Vol. Waltzes. London, Frankfurt, Leipzig, New York: Edition Peters. pp. 136f. ISMN 9790577085579. OCLC1328129061.