No mere party giver, he was the producer of brilliant social events, works of art with themes, and he had the money to carry them out to the last expensive detail. I looked through Carlos de Beistegui’s scrapbooks and albums, which depict a life of pleasure on an exquisite level. The famous two-story library, with its twin spiral staircases and thousands of leather-bound books, has been often photographed and even copied. The place was a masterpiece of comfort, inviting you to linger in each room, sit in all the chairs, and stare at the pictures on the walls, hung one above the other from floor to ceiling. Rarely have the sensations of “grand” and “cozy” been so artfully united. No amount of bad weather could diminish my initial excitement over that wonderful house. Juan, now in his early 60s, had recently married off his last daughter at the château and was ready to move on with his wife to smaller quarters in a house in the nearby village of Montfort-L’Amaury, after each of his children had declined to take over the showplace, with all the incumbent responsibilities of ownership. Juan de Beistegui, known as Johnny, had married a daughter of the Duc de Rohan-a union that greatly pleased his socially conscious uncle-and spent weekends with his six children at Groussay in a family atmosphere, very different from the milieu of the pleasure-bent court that had always surrounded Carlos, who was called Charlie by his friends. His brother didn’t want the château, so it went to the brother’s son, Juan, who is said to have disliked his uncle and to have never invited any of his uncle’s friends to the château after he inherited it. He died in 1970 at the age of 74, without a will. The elder Beistegui, who never married, bought the 74-acre walled estate in 1939 and proceeded to enhance it by adding wings to the house and building follies. We went in buses, not knowing our destination until we got there, so secret had been the negotiations between Sotheby’s and Juan de Beistegui, the nephew and accidental heir of Carlos. The day we visited was rainy and cloaked in mystery. It was built in 1815 for the Duchess of Charost and subsequently modified during the Second Empire by a Russian princess. The château, which is an hour’s drive from Paris, has an impressive history. Alfred Taubman, the wife of the chairman of Sotheby’s, the auction house, on the day it was announced to a select group of journalists that the famed Château de Groussay-scene of some of the grandest weekend parties of this century-was going to be sold. In October 1997, during a visit to Paris to attend a wedding, I was taken to the château quite by chance, in a sort of sneak preview, by Mrs. It was not my first visit to the Château de Groussay, a magnificent stage set of a château which was the artistic creation of the elegant, theatrical Carlos de Beistegui, scion of a grand Hispano-Mexican family who chose to live in France although their fortune came mainly from silver mines in Mexico discovered at the beginning of the 19th century.
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