The Baroness

by Hannah Rothschild

  6 • Rothschildiana

  I decided it was time to pay my respects to NM and set out to find his resting place. I knew, as my father had taught me, that every year descendants must place a stone on the grave of a forebear as a token of respect and remembrance. However, getting access to the cemetery where NM is buried was a laborious process, due to the fear of a resurgence of anti-Semitism and the recent desecration of some Jewish graves across Europe. Early one cold morning in February 2008 a representative of the United Synagogue Burial Authority unlocked for me the iron gates set into a high brick wall in a side road off Whitechapel High Street and tactfully waited out of the wind in the lee of an adjacent block of flats. Were it not for the odd grape hyacinth and cyclamen, or the raised voices of Muslim children at a nearby school, it would have been easy to imagine a place where time had stopped.

  Most of the gravestones, the majority dating from 1761 to 1858, had fallen into disrepair; moss and lichen have obscured the Hebrew inscriptions and foxes have taken up residence in one collapsed sarcophagus. The inscriptions on the headstones act as keys to the social history and aspirations of Jewish settlers at that time. Some give an address, but only if the place is a long way from Whitechapel, thus proving that the immigrant had risen in this mortal world from slum to suburbia. Trades are also marked on the headstones: a fish indicates a fishmonger and a carpenter is seen felling a tree. At the top of the pecking order are the rabbinical families or Kohanim, with two hands carved at the top of their stone for blessing people, unlike the less important Levites whose emblem is a pitcher of water to wash the hands of their superiors. The graves of NM and his wife Hannah are large, white and simple, with nothing except their names and dates, but on Hannah Rothschild’s is the inscription “I am here. Praise the Lord.”

  Gently, I placed a stone on each tomb.

  Whitechapel, in the heart of London’s East End, has over the centuries been home to wave upon wave of immigrants, the Huguenots, then the Jews, followed by the Irish and, more recently, a thriving Bangladeshi community finding refuge in its narrow streets. Having moved his business dealings from Manchester to London, in 1809 NM bought a property nearby in St. Swithin’s Lane, still the site of the bank, and he worshipped at Bevis Marks synagogue a few hundred yards away. This area, now known as Banglatown, was his true if adopted home and the birthplace of the bank’s British operations. Although he died suddenly in Germany in 1836, aged only fifty-eight, it was NM’s express wish that his body be returned to England and buried in the community he had grown to love, near the many charities he had founded, in the heart of the financial city where he had made such a huge impression.

  For most of his life N. M. Rothschild lived modestly in a small suburban house and remained involved in the minutiae of his bank’s financial transactions until his death. Like many members of the family, before and after, he insisted that his personal papers be burned, but in the business ledgers held in the Rothschild Archive are his last instructions: sell exchequer bills, ship one hundred thousand sovereigns to Paris, purchase two hundred Danube shares, send one hundred bottles of lavender water and a chest of good oranges, and do not allow the gardener to do as he pleases.

  The founding father of the Rothschild dynasty, Mayer Amschel, was against conspicuous consumption, arguing that ostentation encouraged envy. When he made a bit of money, he bought a garden, believing that land could be safely enjoyed without attracting unwelcome attention. The next generation had no intention of keeping such a low profile: they had made money, so they were going to use it and enjoy it. They also realised that business wasn’t confined to the boardrooms; real power and politics were exercised in drawing rooms and on hunting fields. In England, a seamless line connected the Houses of Parliament and the country house party. To get ahead and stay ahead, the Rothschilds needed to be able to entertain the great and the good, and they now had the financial muscle to do this on a remarkably lavish scale.

  Determined to stick together, the family built houses near each other. In London they bought city mansions on Piccadilly and in the country they settled on land in the Vale of Aylesbury, a short train journey away from the city. Here they had constructed the great Buckinghamshire mansions of Mentmore, Halton, Aston Clinton, Hulcott and Bierton. Lionel, the first baron, rented Tring for his son and daughter-in-law, Natty and Emma. The cousins liked to claim that if they stood on the rooftops of their mansions on a clear winter’s day they could wave to each other across the valley. Their houses were gloriously vulgar statements of self-importance: huge, three-dimensional calling cards announcing their arrival.

  Like many newly rich, the Rothschilds had more money than taste; they wanted the trappings of wealth and they wanted them immediately. One story, probably apocryphal but far too good to omit, tells of Nica’s French cousin James, who was so keen to impress the King of France that he organised a pheasant shoot and had parrots trained to fly among the game, squawking, “Vive le roi, vive le roi.”

  Of course, the Rothschilds were just the latest in a long line to erect shrines to their own success. The fabulous palaces of Blenheim, Houghton, Castle Howard and Wentworth Woodhouse were all monuments to military victory, mercantile brilliance or political astuteness, and at the time of their creation they caused shock and consternation. Successive generations have distressed the shiny surfaces of new wealth and added the patina of age and respectability.

  In 1874 Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild employed the French architect Destailleur to create a nineteenth-century version of an eighteenth-century chateau on top of a large hill at Waddesdon. Percheron horses were imported from France to help transport a mass of building material up the steep incline, which included seven miles of copper piping, quantities of fully grown trees, hundreds of tons of brick and lead, and thousands of yards of iron balustrade, all stamped with the distinctive five-arrow crest, the family’s coat of arms, symbolising the five brothers sent like arrows to the capitals of Europe. The panelled interiors and French furniture were acquired en masse from French hôtels particuliers such as the Richelieu and the Beaumarchais following Haussmann’s remodelling of Paris.

  By buying up the assets of grand, well-established families, the Rothschilds were, in effect, tying their history and their provenance to a more illustrious past. The cousins drove up prices in the art market to giddy heights, buying hundreds of paintings, including works by Greuze, Romney, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Cuyp, for their walls. Their rooms were furnished with priceless carpets and furniture. Even if they could only trace their ancestry back one hundred years to Jews Lane, they could now, at least, form strong links via their possessions to the greatest aristocratic and royal families of Europe. By acquiring the panelling of Bourbon kings, the furniture of Louis XV and the paintings of Catherine the Great, plus Gobelin tapestries, Sèvres porcelain and Fabergé eggs, the Rothschilds connected themselves to prestigious dynasties of the past. Their side tables were covered with signed royal photographs and their commissioned self-portraits showed them in ceremonial garb. The French writer Edouard Drumont described one Rothschild house as a place “without a past,” filled with magnificent jewels of French culture stuffed into the huge palace like so much bric-a-brac.

  The family wanted to show that they were no longer stateless, banned from owning land and property, or living at the discretion of others. By building those vast houses and amassing huge collections, by owning horses and hounds, banks and bonds, the Rothschilds were not just conspicuously displaying wealth; they were putting down roots and staking a claim to belong, to be part of something. Having matter made them feel that they did matter.

  They were hospitable on an unrivalled scale. NM and his sons were small; their forebears had grown up without enough to eat and the effects of malnutrition stunted the next few generations. The Rothschilds resolved that their children, guests and dependants would never go hungry, so Rothschild tables groaned with food. Guests were offered the choice of Ceylon, Souchong or Assam early-morning tea in bed
with a choice of longhorn, shorthorn or dairy milk. There were over fifty greenhouses guaranteeing a year-round supply of flowers (the parterre was permanently in bloom), fruits and vegetables. “In some Rothschild houses,” Nica told me, “no one bothered to pick the cherries. It was seen as far more elegant to have the gardeners carry the actual trees around the table.”

  Mentmore Towers, late nineteenth century, designed by Joseph Paxton for Baron Mayer Amschel de Rothschild. His daughter Hannah lived there with her husband Lord Rosebery, British Prime Minister. Now uninhabited. (Photographic Credit 6.4)

  Ascott House was enlarged by Leopold de Rothschild in 1874. It was given to the National Trust in 1947 but is still lived in by Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and his family. (Photographic Credit 6.5)

  Waddesdon Manor was designed by French architect Destailleur in 1874 for Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild. It was given to the National Trust in 1958 but is still run by Nica’s nephew Jacob, Lord Rothschild. (Photographic Credit 6.6)

  Halton House was built between 1880 and 1883 for Alfred de Rothschild. Given to the nation during the war, it is still used as the officers’ mess for RAF Halton. (Photographic Credit 6.7)

  The visitors’ book at Tring Park shows that every day during the summer months between 1890 and 1932 there were lunch parties for up to one hundred glittering guests. The names and addresses of every visitor were written into leather-bound ledgers in an immaculate hand. In the chef’s book, the meals were recorded in detail to avoid the social catastrophe of a returning guest having to consume the same dish twice. The Rothschild women organised these events down to the last detail. Excluded from the boardroom, they knew exactly who would be useful to invite to further their husbands’ business interests. The family’s international connections meant that the guest list was never parochial. The Rothschilds understood the importance of selecting their visitors to create a heady mix of rich and rarefied, artists and royalty, beauty and brains. Indian maharajas, the Shah of Persia, Cecil Rhodes (whom Natty financed in South Africa), Queen Victoria (who insisted on having lunch separately in another room) mixed freely with George V, Edward VII, and a smattering of family, including, later, Miss Pannonica Rothschild.

  The family employed world-class chefs, served the finest wine, organised fêtes, concerts and balls. When Nica’s cousin Alfred Rothschild built a house at Halton he included a private circus ring, a bowling alley, an ice-skating rink, an indoor swimming pool and an Indian pavilion, so that his visitors could sample every imaginable pleasure. One of the few Rothschilds to show an interest in music, Alfred wrote six piano pieces called Boutons des Roses and had his own orchestra, which he conducted dressed in a top hat, blue frock coat and wielding a diamond-studded boxwood baton. Guests were not necessarily appreciative. “The showiness! The sense of lavish wealth, thrust up your nose,” wrote Gladstone’s secretary Edward Hamilton, adding that “the decorations are sadly overdone and one’s eyes long to rest on something which is not all gilt and gold.” Another of Alfred’s visitors, the novelist David Lindsay, observed that “the number of Jews in this palace was past belief. I have studied the anti-Semite question with some attention always hoping to stem an ignoble movement [but] feel some sympathy with [others who say] the Jew is the tapeworm of civilization.”

  In France, James de Rothschild was pilloried by Emile Zola in a thinly disguised description of his sometime host: “Everywhere its mission of ferocious conquest [is] to lie in wait for its prey, suck the blood out of everyone and grow fat on the life of others.” Another regular visitor was Anthony Trollope, who repaid the family’s hospitality in 1885 by publishing a social satire that was clearly inspired by the Rothschilds. Few who read The Way We Live Now doubted that the character of Melmotte, a “horrid, big rich scoundrel … a vile city ruffian” who came from abroad to make a killing on the stock market, was based on Nica’s great-grandfather, Lionel. Not everyone was so critical. Benjamin Disraeli, himself a Jew by birth, wrote, “I have always been of the opinion that there can’t be too many Rothschilds.”

  Gradually the family insinuated themselves into British life. Alfred became the first Jewish director of the Bank of England in 1869, aged twenty-six, a post he held for twenty years until 1889. He himself never received the longed-for acceptance by society but his illegitimate daughter Almina went on to marry the Earl of Carnarvon; it was her inheritance that funded the British exploration in Egypt and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankahmun. Nica’s great-grandfather Lionel, her cousin Jimmy and her grandfather Natty became Members of Parliament. Emma, Nica’s grandmother, became firm friends with Disraeli; Herbert Asquith was a frequent guest at Waddesdon. Winston Churchill stayed with the family many times and attended Nica’s coming-out ball. Another Hannah Rothschild married Lord Rosebery, a leading Tory and the future prime minister. (No male Rothschilds attended the wedding as Hannah had married out of their religion.)

  Queen Victoria turned down recommendations for Nica’s great-grandfather Lionel to be ennobled. “To make a Jew a peer is a step she could not consent to,” Victoria wrote, even though Lionel had financed housing projects in poor areas, loaned the government money, underwritten the US Bond Issue and set up relief funds during the Irish famine. He had also frequently underwritten Her Majesty’s government’s expenses. The family had to wait another generation for Lionel’s son Natty, Nica’s grandfather, to become the first Jew to enter the House of Lords.

  By the time of Nica’s birth, cracks were appearing in the façade of the House of Rothschild and tensions between the cousins increased. The overriding drive to make money had receded. Instead the family wanted wider experiences, to assimilate further into British society and to enjoy the spoils of their success. The role of the Rothschild women became less defined; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they had been silent, indispensable partners, but with the dawn of the twentieth century they had been so successful in integrating their fathers and sons into the fabric of British society that their importance subtly diminished. The younger generation of men, such as Walter or his brother Charles, were not necessarily born to be bankers. For several generations, there would not be a British Rothschild with significant business acumen. The imperative to succeed in the world of business would lie dormant for many decades.

  Less than a year after Nica’s birth, the First World War was declared. Many of the servants and estate workers were called up, only to perish on foreign soil. The Rothschild men, swept up by the patriotic mood, enlisted. Nica’s cousins joined the Bucks Light Infantry; Evelyn was killed in February 1917 during a cavalry charge against the Turks. His brother Anthony fought at Gallipoli but survived. Fortuitously, the British cousins never had to fight their French or Austrian relations. Charles was turned down for military service: physically he was fit, but there were doubts about his mental constitution.

  The death of Nica’s grandfather Natty on March 31, 1915, marked the end of an era. Hundreds of onlookers watched as his funeral cortège made its way from Hyde Park to Willesden, with a carriage drawn by four black-plumed horses. At Tring Park, his widow Emma tried to maintain the previous standards for her grandchildren. For a time she was successful: kept in splendid isolation, Nica and her siblings were largely unaffected by the tumultuous events outside the nursery wing. Their world, however, would be torn apart in a few years’ time by the sudden, inexplicable death of their beloved father Charles.

  7 • The Butterfly and the Blues

  One afternoon in the early spring of 1998 at Ashton, Nica’s sister Miriam talked to me about their father’s depression. She was categorical about its cause. She had, she claimed, the scientific evidence to prove that it was the family’s tradition of inbreeding that had damaged their mental health. It was a degenerative illness, Miriam explained, and as Charles got older, the intervals between his recurring bouts of depression grew shorter.

  Their father disappeared for many months at a time to a sanatorium in Switzerland. When World War I ended it was followed by an outbreak of
Spanish flu, which claimed another fifty million lives. Charles was infected but fought off the virus; it left him physically debilitated and even less able to cope with life. Once again he was sent away to recuperate.

  Everything was tried in the family’s desperate search for a way to help Charles. For all their incredible influence and acumen, they were lost. The Rothschilds finally occupied a position of wealth and power, but they had no weapons in the battle against this faceless enemy. When news of a “talking cure” reached them, promoted by a man named Freud in Vienna, Austrian cousins were dispatched to the psychiatrist to seek his counsel. Other relations and advisors suggested different drugs or sanatoriums. Seeking help in Switzerland was not unusual: T. S. Eliot and Max Linder were among those who went there in search of help for depression and nervous breakdowns. In the family archive I found a letter written by Charles’s companion Mr. Jordan, sent from Fusio on July 25, 1917; so it seems likely that Charles, along with German writer Herman Hesse, was being treated by Carl Jung’s protégé, Dr. Joseph Lang. I longed to know why they had chosen the mystical Jung’s methods over his rival, Sigmund Freud. Miriam said that at the time of her death, her grandmother Emma was reading Freud’s complete works.

  Charles’s illness coincided with the deaths, one by one, of the senior Rothschilds. Between 1905 and 1917 the generation that had dominated Rothschild finance since 1875 was picked off by illnesses and infirmity. Charles was expected after his brother’s death to run the British branch, modernise the bank’s practices and lead British Jewry. All he wanted, however, was to study natural history and spend time with his family.