Constructed in 1680 and situated on some of the most breathtaking acreage in Tuscany, Villa Cetinale may be the world?s most delightful haunted house. According to legend, the builder of the property, Cardinal Flavio Chigi?a nephew of Pope Alexander VII?s?murdered a rival, as princes of the church were inclined to do in those days. Some believe the ghost of the vanquished cleric has rattled around Cetinale ever since. Nevertheless, the magnificent 12-bedroom Baroque villa, designed by Bernini?s great pupil Carlo Fontana, has endured as ?one of the celebrated pleasure-houses of its day,? as Edith Wharton noted in her 1904 study, Italian Villas and Their Gardens.
In May, Cetinale?s latest chapter began, after Edward Richard Lambton, the seventh Earl of Durham, known as Ned, moved in following a five-year renovation. Still, there seems to be a remaining specter or two to deal with, beginning with Ned?s father, Antony, who died on December 30, 2006, at the age of 84.
As anyone over a certain age in Britain remembers, the late Lord Lambton resigned abruptly in 1973 from Prime Minister Edward Heath?s Cabinet, where he had been a junior defense minister, after being photographed in bed with two prostitutes and a joint in his mouth. The tryst, in a Maida Vale flat, had been captured on a hidden camera rigged by the News of the World. In the annals of great English political sex scandals, the episode ranks just under the Profumo affair.
Tony, as the longtime Tory M.P. was called by friends, gave up his political career and went into a grand exile in Italy. In a Lord Marchmain moment, he left his wife and their six children in Lambton Park, their enormous estate in County Durham, in the Northeast of England, and acquired the fabulous but then disheveled Villa Cetinale, near Siena, which was still owned by the Chigi family. For nearly three decades, Lambton held court here, with his mistress, Claire Ward. Highly charming at one moment and lacerating the next, he reigned as the ?King of Chiantishire,? as he was dubbed, and entertained the likes of Prince Charles and Tony Blair. ?When you were invited to Cetinale, you felt like you had really arrived,? recollects an English grandee.
Upon his father?s death, Ned inherited the earldom and became the beneficiary of his father?s entire estate, which included 7,000 acres in England. In accordance with the English practice of primogeniture, his five elder siblings?females all?were bypassed.
Six years later, Ned has just completed an arduous renovation that has restored the villa to its glory. Nonetheless, a bit of drama continues to hover over Cetinale. Some of it is of a happy nature. Fifty-one-year-old, twice-divorced Ned?who has a 27-year-old son by his first wife and an 11-year-old daughter with a former girlfriend?surprised his social circle in March 2010 when he announced his engagement to a longtime family friend, the very lovely Marina Hanbury, who is 20 years his junior. The couple married 10 months later and then welcomed a daughter, Lady Stella, last October.
On the less joyful side, Ned recently stopped speaking to at least a few of his five sisters?Lady Lucinda, Lady Beatrix, Lady Anne, Lady Isabella, and Lady Rose?after the first three threatened legal action against him in a twist that sounds like a Downton Abbey plotline. Because Tony lived so long in Italy, they contend they are entitled to shares of his estate under the Napoleonic Code, the revised version of ancient Roman law, upon which Italian law is still based. Furthermore, Ned?s niece Rose Bowdrey, 39 (Beatrix?s daughter), who had been managing Cetinale for him, made what has been described as a stormy departure around the time she moved in with 52-year-old Domitilla Getty, wife of Mark Getty (co-founder of Getty Images). The Gettys, who have three children and who occupied a nearby hamlet, which they had restored, later separated after nearly 30 years of marriage.
Needless to say, there has been plenty of chatter in Tuscany, and beyond, regarding recent events Up at the Villa.
?It?s the vibe-iest house in the world,? Lord Johnson Somerset tells me over drinks by the pool. Somerset, the bon-vivant youngest son of the Duke of Beaufort and a music producer for Bryan Ferry, is part of a merry weekend house party of close friends who have come from England to help Ned inaugurate the newly renovated villa this past May. Like most members of this group, Somerset was also a guest here in the old days.
Marina, who is cradling in her arms the angelic-looking Stella, came here first as a baby herself, brought by her parents, Emma and Timmy Hanbury, scion of an old brewery family, who are here for the weekend, too. Even before they met each other, both Timmy and Emma came to Cetinale, as they were Lambton-family friends. Emma was a frequent visitor in the late 70s when she was the girlfriend of Jasper Guinness, who lived nearby. Cetinale itself has just been redecorated by Camilla Guinness, who was Jasper?s wife from 1985 until his death, last year.
Over lunch in the garden, near a magnificent avenue of towering cypress trees on the 165-acre property, Emma talks about Cetinale then and now: ?When I first came here, I was blown away by its beauty. But Tony and Claire lived here in a very unflash way. It was incredibly nice and relaxed, but, let?s just say ? by the pool you had a couple of rickety chairs and towels thrown around. Ned has preserved the history of the house, but now it?s like a five-star hotel.?
The Cetinale veterans at the table all agree, too, how vastly the food has improved, thanks to the first-rate chef Ned just hired, who blends classic Italian cuisine with Asian influences. Though reminiscing about the English nursery-school fare served in the old days seems to amuse everybody?when Prince Charles came to lunch, he was served fish pie, reportedly frozen, from Marks & Spencer.
?It was disgusting,? Ned recalls of Cetinale?s former cuisine. ?Mrs. Ward, instead of hiring a chef, had these Australian girls on their gap years do the cooking,? he explains. ?I wasn?t here when Prince Charles visited, but he went to Gordonstoun, where the food is horrid, so it must have reminded him of his childhood. He may have liked it.?
Alean, lanky fellow with handsome features, Ned Lambton has a wonderfully dry English sense of humor. And he is refreshingly honest about the class he comes from. ?I can?t claim that I worked,? he tells me that evening over drinks in a vaulted-ceilinged salon.
?We?ve always lived in County Durham,? he says. ?Some people look down on me because the Earldom of Durham was only created in 1833.? The first earl, he recounts, was John George Lambton, a radical Whig statesman who served as ambassador to Russia and governor-general of Canada.
?I loathed Eton,? he continues. ?My father hated Harrow, so he sent me to Eton. His father had hated Eton, so he sent him to Harrow. How much nicer it would be to stay home, under the loving roof of your mother and father ? ? This last sentence he delivers with faux wistfulness.
Which brings the conversation to his father?s scandal, which exploded when Ned was 11. ?It was on the front pages of the newspapers. They kept them away from me, so I didn?t know what was going on. But one day the school matron took me in her room. I remember her explaining it to me. She didn?t explain it very well.
?She said, ?Your father went to see a woman.? She didn?t explain what kind of woman or what he did with her. I was mystified. I later found out what ?went to see? means. When it was explained it was about sex, I understood it better, but this vital fact was kept from me.?
As the scandal raged and school holidays arrived, Ned?s parents took him and his sisters to a private island in the Bahamas. ?We hid out there until it had died down,? Ned recalls. ?Then everybody forgot about it?except for the fucking Daily Mail. They mention it again and again, to this day. Can?t bear the Daily Mail.?
Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/society/2012/11/ned-lambton-villa-cetinale-restoration
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