The House of Rothschild

by Ferguson, Niall

  12 An act of 1707 also made it possible for voters to be made to swear the same oath, though this was not rigorously enforced.

  13 It is significant that Mayer had also been elected a member of Brooks’s Club in 1841. It was not until 1852 that his brother Anthony also became a member. The brothers were also members of the more overtly political Reform Club. In the same way, Alphonse became a member of the exclusive Paris Jockey Club in 1852 as well as the Cercle de l‘Union.

  14 In the same year the old law against Jews owning property was repealed.

  15 Salomons was duly re-elected as an alderman, this time for Cordwainer Ward, in December 1847 and went on to become Lord Mayor of London in 1855.

  16 He promptly initiated a week of lavish dinners at the White Hart Hotel, drafting in a contingent of French chefs in a calculated appeal to the stomachs of his county neighbours. The local press reproduced the menu, commenting in awe that it had been “served in the best possible taste.”

  17 He was one of three names submitted by Russell to the Queen: the others, as she noted in her journal, were a Colonel Fergusson and “another, whose name I cannot remember”—suggesting that Victoria did not attach much significance to the issue: RA, Queen Victoria’s Journal, Nov. 14, 1846. He was in fact Frederick Currie, Secretary to the Government of Bengal. Lionel may have regarded these minor imperial functionaries as unsatisfactory company to keep.

  18 Unusually, the Rothschilds stipulated that the title would revert to Lionel’s eldest son if Anthony failed to produce a male heir.

  19 It is worth noting that at this time Carlyle was romantically entangled with Lady Harriet Ashburton, the wife of Alexander Baring. However, Carlyle does not appear to have made his opposition to Lionel public, leaving that to papers like the Morning Herald, which referred to Lionel as a “foreigner,” and one of the Tory candidates, who declared Lionel’s proper place was as “one of the princes of Judah, in the land of Judah.”

  20 In particular, he appears to have had a soft spot for Anthony’s wife Louisa, to whom he apologised for his earlier attacks in 1848. He dined with the Rothschilds in February 1850 (finding the women “very nice”) and by 1856—7 was in occasional friendly correspondence with Louisa. She appears in Pendennis as “a Jewish lady... with a child at her knee, and from whose face towards the child there shone a sweetness so angelical that it seemed to form a sort of glory round both. I protest I could have kneeled before her too...”

  21 Lauch’s letter deserves quotation for the flavour it gives of the politics of the day: “To be candid—I will agree in what every body says viz: that you, dear Baron! were returned by the Catholics whose accession to your righteous cause determined your victory... it was a great wisdom on your part, two months ago to send for me and not to be ashamed humbly to ask me the favour to give you my assistance in the approaching struggle! I resolved—even if you should not help me as I wanted it for my institution to assist you faithfully and fervently—to honour in your eyes my quality of a Catholic Priest... My great plan from the beginning was to determine the Catholic Electors to vote for you in a body—and you cannot imagine what pains and troubles I had to come to this always acting upon them by different agencies and seldom personally influencing, to prevent prejudices to take hold of them. We succeeded just when I began to despair—because we had a most powerful opposition to overcome or to elude... All this whilst I was in hourly danger of being arrested for debts or seeing execution carried out on the premises of the Institution; likewise every word I have written to you on this head is perfect and sacred truth... Now I say all this to you only to add: that you owe me nothing, that I expect nothing and that the Catholic Agents expect nothing from You, That I take upon myself every expense... Honest and honoured I have nothing to ask at this or any time, but that favour which I asked you, now a year ago, when neither you nor I thought of an election Struggle—I have done my duty to you... and my heart doubts not one moment that you will do yours to me.” Lionel does not seem to have obliged on the scale Lauch had hoped for—though he seems to have put him in touch with the exiled Metternich.

  22 It is worth noting that Disraeli made a second sketch of Charlotte’s character over thirty years later as Mrs Neuchatel in Endymion. Interestingly, he alludes to that peculiar bitterness in her character which became more pronounced as she grew older and hints at unhappiness in her marriage to Lionel: “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 ... Her person, without being absolutely beautiful, was interesting. There was even a degree of fascination in her brown velvet eyes. 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 ... [But] Adrian... was so absorbed by his own great affairs... that the over-refined fantasies of his wife produced not the slightest effect on the course of his life.” Inexplicably, Disraeli decided to make the Neuchatels Swiss by origin, so that Judaism is not touched upon. But their history (as custodians of émigrés’ wealth during the French wars) and the description of “Hainault house” make the model unmistakable.

  23 According to Bentinck, Disraeli was counting on the Rothschilds acquiring Stowe from the bankrupt Duke of Buckingham “with all its Parliamentary influence”; he also believed Russell’s conduct to be aimed at uniting the Whigs and Peelites. The King of Hanover attributed Bentinck’s attitude to “his former haunts on the turf, and thus his connection with the Hebrews.”

  24 Disraeli misunderstood the constitutional position, thinking that “if Rothschild were to go to the table & ask for the Roman Cath[olic] oath, wh: they co[ul]d not refuse him, that he co[ul]d take his seat. The words ’faith of a Christian’ only being in the oath of abjuration, from wh: the Romans were relieved”in 1829. As late as April 1848 he expressed the vain hope that the acceptance of the Jewish bill would unite the Conservative factions.

  25 There was evidently a good deal of ill feeling between Mary Anne and Charlotte by this stage. While Lionel and Disraeli talked in the latter’s study after dinner, Mary Anne complained that her husband had “sich fur uns und unsere gerechte Sache während fünf Jahren seines Lebens aufgeopfert u. nur Undank sei ihm fur die großen Bemühungen seines Geistes, seiner Feder u. seiner Lippen zu Theil geworden. Ich ärgerte mich, und konnte daher nicht schweigen, sagte ihr Mr. Disraeli habe nichts verloren und nichts eingebüßt.” A few weeks later, Lionel suggested that his wife ask Mary Anne “why Mr. Dizzy cannot come up to speak with me whenever he sees me; is there any reason why I should cross the room always to speak with him, he [gives] himself such airs.” This was the nadir of Rothschild-Disraeli relations.

  26 In this fascinating letter, Russell sets out his own reasons for supporting emancipation—“I believe this country stands in need of God’s blessing and that blessing is granted only to the nations who uphold his chosen people in this their second dispensation”—and contrasts them with the motives of the Radicals who were simply “glad to fight at your expense one of their political questions.”

  27 Manners had in fact dined with Lionel before being asked to stand, but Mayer seems to have guessed that he would be; evidently Disraeli was keeping Lionel informed of his party’s intentions. As Disraeli saw it, the erstwhile Puseyite Manners needed to stand primarily in order to convince the rest of the Protectionists of his political reliability. Manners was only one of numerous Conservatives who were happy to dine with the Rothschilds while repeatedly voting against their admission to Parliament.

  28 On this motion, Disraeli voted with the majority, i.e., against his own party, though before the debate he introduced a petition against the admission of Jews to Parliament from some of his own constituents in Buckinghamshire, made virtually no contribution during the debate
and supported a hostile motion from his own side that Lionel be asked directly whether he would be sworn to the three oaths. It was narrowly defeated.

  29 This time Disraeli bravely reaffirmed his belief in the justice of emancipation, after a judicious defence of the House of Lords against Radical attacks.

  30 Ironically, Lloyd George would direct very similar abuse at Lionel’s son Natty when he led opposition to the “People’s Budget” in the Lords.

  31 A dissertation could be written about Charlotte’s “salon” at Piccadilly, if that is the right word to describe the various different social circles which her letters describe. The most important was of course the Rothschild family itself and related families (especially the Cohens and Montefiores). Occasionally admitted into this quite intimate milieu were the senior clerks and agents’ families (the Davidsons, Bauer, Weisweiller, Scharfenberg, and Belmont); and members of closely connected City families like the Waggs and Helberts. Apart from Gladstone and Disraeli, her political friends included not only the Liberals mentioned above but also Conservatives like Bulwer Lytton, the novelist and MP for Hertfordshire, and Lord Henry Lennox, MP for Chichester and Disraeli’s first Commissioner of Public Works. Also clearly part of the political circle was the editor of The Times, Delane. Overlapping but distinct was the diplomatic circle, composed of ambassadors and the members of the exiled Orléanist royal family. Socially on a par with this group were Charlotte’s grand lady friends like the duchesses of Sutherland, Newcastle and St Albans.

  32 Even this temporary residence struck Macaulay as “a paradise”: Lionel told him he had offered £300,000 for the house and its eight or ten acres of garden, but had been refused.

  33 The Paris houses of the 1850s and 1860s were Nat’s at 33 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, which he acquired in 1856; Alphonse’s at 4 rue Saint-Florentin; Gustave’s at 23 avenue Marigny; Salomon James’s at 3-5 rue de Messine; and Adolph’s at 45-9 rue de Monceau, bought from Eugène Pereire in 1868.

  TWO The Era of Mobility (1849-1858)

  1 Born Israel Beer Josaphat, Reuter had begun his career as a clerk in his uncle’s bank at Gottingen, where he met the telegraph pioneer Karl Friedrich Gauss. In 1840 he started work for Charles Havas’s Paris-based Correspondance Garnier, which translated foreign press reports into French, and in 1850 moved to London, where he established the Reuter agency.

  2 Cobden, still fulminating on behalf of the Hungarians, denounced it as an “unholy and infamous transaction”; in fact, like so many loans in this period, the funds raised were earmarked for railway construction.

  3 It is nevertheless true that Barings continued to pay interest on the earlier Russian bonds; the idea of prohibiting this did not occur to the British Foreign Secretary, Clarendon, though he was aware that it was going on. Indeed, Russian bonds continued to be traded in London throughout the war.

  4 The national debt at this time was around 5,012 million francs. The conversion affected around 3,740 million of this, and implied an annual saving of around 19 million francs.

  5 Interestingly, the Paris house was being encouraged by the French government to establish the proposed bank rather than leave the field clear to “English capital,” whereas it was the London house which had the more sceptical view of Turkey’s economic prospects.

  6 Thun was replaced soon after and the Frankfurt protest shelved. Bismarck attributed this Austrian volte-face to “the efforts of the Rothschilds”: “That there are occasions when other but purely business considerations are a determining factor on the attitude of the House of Rothschild in financial operations seems to me to be indicated by the success with which Austria has secured the financial services of the House, since I am convinced that, apart from the financial profit to be gained by such transactions, the influence which the Imperial Government was able to bring to bear upon the Jewish problem at Frankfurt profoundly affected the House of Rothschild.”

  7 Mayer Carl, he reported, “does not go to big functions, and when he does wear orders, prefers to wear the Greek Order of the Redeemer, or the Spanish Order of Isabella the Catholic. On the occasion of the official reception which I myself gave ... to celebrate the marriage of H.R.H. Prince Frederick William, which he would have had to attend in uniform, he excused himself on the grounds of ill-health, it being painful to him to wear the Red Eagle decoration for non-Christians, as he would have had to do on that occasion. I draw a similar inference from the fact that whenever he comes to dine with me, he merely wears the Ribbon of the Order of the Red Eagle in his buttonhole.” James urged Bleichröder to keep the award out of the Berlin press, for fear of arousing hostile comment.

  8 The principal operations of the period were the somewhat unsuccessful 1853 conversion; the 30 million franc loan of 1854, which was shared between the Banque Nationale, the Rothschilds and the Société Générale; and the 15 million franc loan of 1862, handled by the same trio.

  9 Loans to the Duchy totalled 19.4 million gulden between 1849 and 1861.

  10 Carl had demanded that Jews be allowed to live where they please in the Papal states and that all special taxes and separate forms of procedure in the courts be abolished. In January, Pius IX gave James a written assurance through the Papal nuncio in Paris that these things would be done. However, when Carl visited Rome four months later, he found little sign of improvement; and the Roman Jews formally complained to James the following year. Another appeal on behalf of the Roman Jews was made by Anselm in 1857. Rather as with the Jews of Damascus and later the Christians of Jerusalem, the Jews of Rome became a political “football” between the great powers, in this case Austria and France. The Rothschilds seem to have played one off against the other rather successfully, though without achieving much for their co-religionists.

  11 James proposed to establish a new “Comptoir impérial des travaux publics,” but he was at pains to stress that, unlike the Credit Mobilier, it would not “interfere directly in any operation or enterpise on its own account.” In other words, what he had in mind was more like a deposit bank, lending to companies against all kinds of securities in the way that the Banque de France did not.

  12 The authorised capital of the Pereire bank was 60 million francs, that of the Rothschild bank 80; but in the latter case no more than 24 million francs was actually paid in, and this was later reduced. The Pereires, by contrast, had paid in the maximum capital by 1862, and sought to invest not only in railways but also in the Madrid gasworks and various mines. Significantly, the Rothschild bank was wound up in 1868—after the Pereire threat had disappeared.

  13 Between 1855 and 1859, the Austrian government raised 118 million gulden by selling off the state-owned sections of the Habsburg railway network, though that figure excludes subsequent payments by the companies which bought the lines. This should be compared with a total gross budget deficit in the same period of 576 million gulden.

  14 The company also acquired a line on the left bank of the Danube to Szeged, via Budapest, as well as various mining and metallurgical interests.

  15 The merger was a relatively profitable one for the Pereires, who were able to exchange the half-finished Franz Joseph line for shares in the new Rothschild company worth 96 million francs.

  THREE Nationalism and the Multinational (1859-1863)

  1 Between 1860 and 1866, the Credit Mobilier accounted for around 28 per cent of the total deposits of the six biggest deposit institutions.

  2 The Frankfurt house took £1 million of the loan and the Austrian National Bank £1.5 million. The 5 per cent bonds were issued at 80 in London—a disastrous investment for those who bought them.

  3 The total loan announced by the government was for 700 million francs, of which 500 million were to be issued immediately. The Paris and London houses contracted to buy 285,720,000 francs of 5 per cents at a price of 71 with a 1 per cent commission, and to underwrite a further 214,300,000 francs. The London house issued just 75 million francs, as the market for Italian bonds was less firm than in Paris.

&nbs
p; 4 Charlotte to Leo, Cambridge, April 28, 1864: “B. D. says that the Baron is a great man, and the great Baroness a greatly prejudiced lady—immensely conservative, viz. illiberal in her prejudices... Mr. Pereire, the Emperor and the English are her favorite aversions. She calls us maniacs, and heaps all the coals of her eloquence upon our press because it declares that the French are not fit for liberty.”

  5 It was a sound enough judgement; the issuing houses were able to keep the bonds above par only by massive intervention in the market.

  6 Disagreements over American politics may account for the friction between Belmont and members of the London family when he visited them in 1865.

  7 There was another abortive attempt to bring Belmont to heel in 1866, but, as James and Alphonse fatal istically pointed out, he had become irreplaceable.

  FOUR Blood and Silver (1863-1867)

  1 Almost certainly an allusion to Bismarck’s celebrated comment on Austria’s role in the Schleswig-Holstein crisis of 1864: “Il travaille pour le roi de Prusse.”

  2 Mayer Carl had his eye on a Grand Cross with a broad ribbon, but the Prussian King William I continued to regard this as too high an honour for a Jew: “Baron von Rothschild,” he minuted, “has developed a bad attack of tape-worm at the approach of the investiture ceremony. I can’t provide a remedy for this, but I could cure Kreuzschmerzen [literally ”cross-ache,“ a pun on the German expression for lumbago].”