The House of Rothschild, Volume 1

by Niall Ferguson

  In fact, James was prevented from visiting England by a bout of illness. Instead, he suggested that Hannah Mayer—chaperoned by her mother—come to stay with him in Switzerland, where he planned to continue his convalescence. This suggested “diversion” came too late. The very day after James sent his invitation, the wedding took place at St George’s in Hanover Square. Only her brother Nat attended the service, the bride’s mother having escorted her no further than the church gates. A few weeks later the scandal made it into The Times:

  It is confirmed that the condition imposed upon Miss Rothschild on her marrying the Hon. Mr. Fitzroy was that she should embrace the Christian religion. This is the first instance of a member of the Rothschild family abandoning the faith of their fathers, a circumstance which makes the deeper impression at their native place [Frankfurt], as they had hitherto distinguished themselves by their adherence to the Jewish creed. It is said that the bride’s uncles are by no means pleased with a match which renders a change of religion necessary.

  This last was an understatement. “I admit quite frankly,” wrote an incandescent James from Paris,

  that the story about Hannah Mayer made me so ill that I did not have the courage to pick up a pen and write about this matter. She has unfortunately robbed our whole family of its pride and caused us such harm that it can no longer be redressed. You say, my dear Nat, that she has found everything except for religion. However, I believe that [religion] means everything. Our good fortune and our blessings depend upon it. We shall therefore wipe her from our memory and never again during my lifetime will I or any other member of our family see or receive her. We now want to wish her all the best and banish her from our memory as if she had never existed.

  Even her own mother echoed these sentiments. “The first impressions and regrets experienced on account of the recent Marriage,” she told her son Nat, “is [sic] only exceeded by a desire to avoid any similar circumstances so very much against the habits and inclinations of us all.” Although she confided that she would “be most happy to receive daily bulletins of Domestic as well as all other concerns in which I so strongly participate if there should be any news from an Individual who still so much interests me,” that individual had irrevocably “separated herself from me.” Nat—and he alone—stood by Hannah Mayer. In July he wrote to James arguing that his sister had done “no more than marry ‘a Christian in a Christian country.’ ” The response this elicited from his uncle deserves to be quoted at length for the light it sheds on the older generation’s attitudes to the subject. “From the beginning,” thundered James, who had evidently been nursing his wrath, “I correctly predicted that . . . this most unfortunate matter . . . would disrupt the unity of our family . . . and I can tell you that this event has made me so ill that I honestly think that I may not survive it”:

  I would like to know what more one could do than to abandon one’s own religion and publicly declare that since the age of fifteen one never had any thought of doing anything else. My dear Nat, both as your friend and Uncle I want to give you my very frank and honest opinion . . . We are determined that, as long as the Almighty grants us good health, neither we nor my children will again come into contact with Hannah Mayer, for it is not only one thing [which has brought us to this decision] but so many that I could fill endless pages.

  In part, James’s argument was about the structure of authority within the family and the obedience the younger generation owed to their elders:

  What sort of an example will it set for our children when a girl says, “I will marry against the wish of my family?” I don’t even want to take the notion of religion into account . . . I should then be expected to welcome and entertain this girl as if nothing at all had happened? Why should my children, or my children’s children, ever follow the wishes of their parents if they don’t get punished?

  But “the main point,” as he put it, was “religion”:

  I and the rest of our family have . . . always brought our offspring up from their early childhood with the sense that their love is to be confined to members of the family, that their attachment for one another would prevent them from getting any ideas of marrying anyone other than one of the family so that the fortune would stay inside the family. Who will give me any assurance that my own children will do what I tell them if they see that there is no punishment forthcoming? What if my own daughter, after she has married, should say, “I am miserable because I didn’t marry a Duke although I had enough money to do so, and I see that, despite the fact that this woman renounced her religion, and despite the fact that [she] married against the wishes of her family, she is nevertheless accepted [by the family]. It would have been the same with me?” Do you really think that all the nicely conceived projects [will come to fruition]—that is, that Mayer will marry Anselm’s daughter, that Lionel’s daughter will marry the child of another member of the family so that the great fortune and the Rothschild name will continue to be honoured and transmitted [to future generations]—if one doesn’t put a stop to this?

  Finally, James added some reflections on the social implications of the marriage (evidently in response to points made by Nat):

  Of course, one could perhaps take some steps to prevent this from happening but society may well look askance at such measures. This may indeed be the case but I personally don’t entirely share this opinion . . . [T]he very society which you think is today rejecting you because you are not being very friendly to it over a sister who is behaving against the wishes of her family, that very same society will be just as friendly to you and will hold you in even greater esteem when they see that you stick to your principles and are not prepared to be upset by empty words. The honest and upright man will always value a man of similar character. Adieu.

  Admittedly, James added a disclaimer to this impassioned outburst. Nat “should view this as my, and only my, thoughts and feelings and don’t think that I want in any way to influence your mother or any other member of the family. It would be unseemly and I don’t wish to do so. Everyone is entitled to do what he wants.” But these were empty words. He concluded by asking Nat to show his eldest brother Lionel his letter “and I am sure that he shares my opinion.” For the first time since his brother’s death, James was speaking in the unmistakable tone of the new head of the family, secure in the knowledge that the majority of its members were equally dismayed, if not more so. A letter dated the following day from Anthony—who was in Paris during the crisis—confirms this impression:

  What they wish us to do is not to receive H[annah] M[ayer] for the present and that is easily understood. They say: a sister is married against the consent of one’s family; if after two months you will receive her—what example will it have upon the remainder part of the family[?] They say: will my daughter, who sees her cousin who married against the consent of all her family received by them, will she marry whom I like[?]—no, she will also fall in love with a Christian and God knows what the boys will also do . . . I recommend you . . . now for your own sake and also to keep the union amongst us—not to receive H. M. for the present.

  Nat made a final effort to defend his sister, but was firmly sat on by his uncle.

  The most striking point about James’s response is, of course, the way he equated “religion” with endogamy: “pride in religion” meant, if his words are to be taken literally, intermarriage within the Rothschild family “so that the fortune would stay inside the family.” We may well ask how much this eminently practical principle had to do with “religion” at all. For the thrust of James’s argument was not that younger Rothschilds should marry only other Jews; it was that they should marry only other Rothschilds. By encouraging other members of the family to follow their own inclinations, Hannah Mayer’s rebellion had jeopardised “all the nicely conceived projects . . . that Mayer will marry Anselm’s daughter, that Lionel’s daughter will marry the child of another member of the family.” In Disraeli’s Coningsby, it is said of the younger Sidonia that “no e
arthly considerations would ever induce him to impair that purity of race on which he prides himself ” by marrying a Christian. Yet in reality “earthly considerations” counted for as much in the eyes of some Rothschilds as any racial or religious exclusivity. James came close to admitting this in his letter: “Don’t imagine, my dear Nat, that I have taken to playing the role of a religious man, but I must admit that I take a lot of pride in my religion and very much wish that my children will do the same.” This tallies with what we know of his religiosity: as Nat was well aware, James was far from strict in his observance. Like his brothers, he dutifully played his part within the Jewish community, supporting the Society for the Encouragment and Aid of [Jewish] Indigents in 1843 and asking the Education Minister “why no Jews had been appointed to the academic council of Bordeaux” in 1847. He campaigned as energetically as any Rothschild to improve the civil rights of Jewish communities outside France (where full religious equality had been secured in 1830). But fundamentally his loyalty to his religion was clannish: few, if any, Jews were on a par with the Rothschilds; nevertheless, every Rothschild had to be a Jew.

  James’s appeal was heeded. When—just months after Hannah Mayer’s marriage—Anthony was suspected of harbouring similar intentions, his uncle Amschel leant on him heavily to abide by the “nicely conceived project” that he marry one of his Montefiore cousins, Louisa (sometimes called Louise). This time the pressure was effective, not least because Anthony was at once less romantic and more biddable than his sister. “Uncle A. was a regular bother asking me about getting married,” he complained to his brothers, “and writing to Uncle S. that I only waited until his death to marry a Christian . . . I told him quite short that if Aunt Henrietta [Montefiore] would cash up, I was ready, when he said of course he would not advise me [to do so] without Louis[a] had the same fortune as Joseph and Nathaniel. So, I said very well, and I believe he wrote to that effect—for later we left much better friends.” James was apparently less worried about Anthony than Amschel. “I am absolutely convinced,” he wrote from Naples, in a letter which shows how much attention the uncles were now paying to the marriage question,

  that Anthony does not intend to marry the girl. He is a very weak person but I don’t think that, even for a moment, such a silly idea could enter his head. He is weak and is easily led and I give you my word that I don’t treat this matter lightly and when I am back in Paris again I will do everything in my power to bring this affair to an end. When I was in Paris I often discussed this matter with him but as you well know, my dear Amschel, people would much rather lay down in a ready-made and warm bed. Regrettably, he considers the whole matter to be rather [?humorous]. Well, you can rest assured that one can no longer tell the youngsters what to do as one could previously. As our good [brother] Salomon is coming to Paris too, God willing, so we will deal with this matter then . . . I am delighted to see that the discussions with our brother Carl’s son have been successfully concluded and that everything will be well, God willing.

  This last allusion was to the parallel project to marry Mayer Carl to Louise, Hannah Mayer’s younger sister.

  In due course, James’s confidence was amply vindicated. “I am pleased to note, my dear Anthony, that you are so in love,” he was able to write approvingly in November 1839; a few days later came the announcement of his engagement to Louisa Montefiore; by February they were married and the recipients of pointedly warm congratulations. Three years later—as planned—Mayer Carl married his cousin Louise in London. In August of the same year Nat married another cousin, James’s daughter Charlotte. The contrast between this last, exuberant occasion and the miserable weddings of 1836 and 1839 could not have been more complete:

  The ceremony was performed [at Ferrières] in a little temple erected for that purpose in the garden, the road to it strewn with rose-leaves. After the ceremony some went back to Paris, but the greater part remained, with whist, billiards, walking in the garden etc. . . . Billy & I had a bottle of champagne. At 7 we dined in the orangery, which was beautifully arranged. Lots of toasts were drunk. Your Uncle James proposed the King’s health in a very good speech.

  A pattern had been established—or rather, re-established—which would be continued into the 1870s.

  It is a moot point how far such arranged, endogamous marriages were happy. James’s marriage to Betty seemed to many contemporaries to have paired beauty with the beast: “She handsome—he vulgar,” was how the British diplomat Lord William Russell summed it up in 1843; others were struck by Betty’s more refined manners and cultural sophistication. (This was roughly the way Heinrich Heine saw the couple, though he never underrated James’s intellect; and it is not too far removed from the portrayal of Nucingen and his wife by Balzac—though he never underrated Madame. Nucingen’s fundamental toughness.) Yet Betty’s letters suggest a genuine and deep affection for her husband and there is no evidence whatever of marital strife.

  In London, Lionel and his cousin Charlotte, who were married in 1836, also seemed ill matched to some outsiders. He was an industrious, conscientious man, dedicated to his father’s firm and to the cause of Jewish emancipation, but not passionate in his personal relations, nor sophisticated in his cultural tastes. When Disraeli says of Sidonia, “he was susceptible of deep emotions, but not for individuals,” we are perhaps not far from the true Lionel. She, by contrast, was not only very good-looking, but one of the most intellectually gifted Rothschilds of her generation. It is hard to believe, judging from the frequently mordant, not to say downright malicious tone of her voluminous letters and diaries—with their troubling subtext of frustrated boredom—that she was wholly fulfilled as “Baroness de Rothschild,” wife, mother, hostess and do-gooder. “Ever since I became your wife,” she wrote to her husband in a rare outburst, “I have had to do what others want, never what I would like to do. Pray that I shall be compensated in Heaven.” Disraeli gives some hints of this in his fictionalised relationship between the Neuchatels in Endymion:

  Adrian had married, when very young, a lady selected by his father. The selection seemed a good one. She was the daughter of a most eminent banker, and had herself, though that was of slight importance, a large portion. She was a woman of abilities, highly cultivated . . . And yet Mrs. Neuchatel was not a contented spirit; and though she appreciated the great qualities of her husband and viewed him even with reverence as well as affection, she scarcely contributed to his happiness as much as became her. And for this reason . . . Mrs Neuchatel had imbibed not merely a contempt for money, but an absolute hatred of it . . . In one respect the alliance between Adrian and his wife was not an unfortunate one . . . Adrian . . . was so absorbed by his own great affairs, was a man at the same time of so serene a temper and so supreme a will, that the over-refined fantasies of his wife produced not the slightest effect on the course of his life.

  Yet no matter what private miseries were inflicted as a consequence of the intermarriage strategy—and we can rarely do more than guess at them—all concerned felt or came to feel precisely the sense of clannish collective identity which it had been the intention of their elders to foster. Nothing illustrates this better than the subtly retributive way Hannah Mayer was subsequently treated by the rest of the family, and not least by Charlotte herself.

  Hannah Mayer was not ostracised forever. By 1848, if not before, she and her husband were on good enough terms with her eldest brother to receive presents from him for their children, Arthur and Blanche, and to invite him to visit them at their house at Garboldisham. More surprisingly, Betty reported to her son in 1849 that she had “made my peace with HM” by “invit[ing] her to my place” when the Fitzroys visited Paris. But within the family circle Hannah Mayer was always regarded with that disdain generally reserved by the Victorians for “fallen women”; and, like good Victorians, her sister Louise and her cousin and sister-in-law Charlotte could not resist interpreting every misfortune that befell her as a kind of divine punishment. In 1852 they registered with grim satisfac
tion Hannah Mayer’s “fury” when her husband was passed over by Lord Aberdeen for the post of Secretary at the Admiralty. When the Fitzroys’ son Arthur died six years later (the victim of a fall from a pony), even their niece Constance—then just fifteen—could “not help thinking that all the misfortune and distress which have overwhelmed poor Aunt Hannah Mayer have been a punishment for having deserted the faith of the fathers and for having married without her mother’s consent. All the grief that she caused to that mother she now feels doubly herself.” The death of Henry Fitzroy himself the following year made the portrait of nemesis all but complete. All that was now lacking was a suitably wretched end for his widow and their daughter Blanche. Neither was long in coming—or so it seemed to Charlotte de Rothschild, whose letters to her youngest son Leopold chronicled with outward sympathy and inward relish each step of the Fitzroys’ decline and fall.

  From February 1864 onwards, Hannah Mayer was seriously ill: Charlotte reported that she had “an enormous swelling on her back, like a hump of a camel” and “looked perfectly awful—her face white and shrunk, and furrowed with deep lines expressive of intense suffering. It made one’s heart break to see her in such pain. The swelling on her back is perfectly enormous, and quite hot. Yet shivering and trembling with pain, she would talk of nothing but parties . . . Her ideas are constantly running upon marriage.” Hannah Mayer’s sole preoccupation henceforth was to find a suitable husband for her daughter. As her Rothschild relatives could hardly fail to notice, all the “candidates” considered were Christians; moreover, there was an obvious discrepancy between her ideal—“she would not hear of” Lords Loughborough, Sefton and Coventry though the Marquess of Blandford was considered acceptable—and the realistic contenders. Blanche might be pretty and artistically talented but, cut off from her Rothschild relations and low in the Fitzroy pecking-order, she was no prize catch.