CHAPTER VII — VICTORIAN HIGH NOON (1860-80)
When the Queen’s Prime Minister, Mr Gladstone, suggested that Her Majesty might like to bestow a peerage on the great banker, Lionel de Rothschild, Victoria was deeply shocked. ‘To make a Jew a peer,’ she replied, ‘is a step she could not consent to. It would be ill-taken and would do the Government great harm.’
Even Lord Granville, whose opinion she greatly valued, could make no impression. ‘The notion of a Jew peer is startling,’ he admitted. ‘Rothschild de premier Baron Juif does not sound as well as Montmorency le premier Baron Chretien but he represents a class whose influence is great by their wealth, their intelligence, their literary connections.’ He added that it would be wise ‘to attach the financial interest in the City of London to the Crown instead of running the risk of driving it into the extremist camp’.[89]
Mr Gladstone bravely returned to the fray arguing that ‘if his religion were to operate permanently as a bar … it would revive by prerogative the disability which formerly existed by statute … ‘ But Her Majesty remained adamant. She could not think, she said, that one ‘who owed his wealth to contracts with Foreign Governments for Loans’, or to ‘successful speculations on the Stock Exchange’ could ‘fairly claim a British peerage’.[90] Thus the Victorian maxim was emphasized that whereas the best people spent money they did not make it.
This was one of the places where the Prince of Wales parted company from his mother. The landed gentry were rich and dull, whereas the new financiers and industrialists not only were creating the world tomorrow but, like magicians, had the dazzling ability to produce millions by a wave of the hand — on the floor of the Stock Exchange. No one enjoyed luxury more than the Prince, yet compared to many of his subjects he was not a rich man. Even when he married Alexandra of Denmark, in 1863, and moved into Marlborough House, his allowance was fixed by Parliament at a beggarly £100,000 a year. He complained bitterly that this sum was not large enough to provide a Court and to pay for his entertaining, clothes and travel. Certainly he was not well off by the standards of the day; from land alone the Duke of Buccleuch derived a yearly income of £217,000, the Duke of Devonshire £181,000, the Duke of Northumberland £176,000, the Earl of Derby £161,000.
Yet none of these men had the same fascination for Albert Edward as the Rothschilds. His mother might sniff at ‘trade’ but the new breed of millionaire enjoyed power as well as riches and was far better company than most members of the landed gentry.
The Prince had made friends with Lionel’s sons during his brief sojourn at Cambridge. The brothers were the third generation of Rothschilds to live in England, but the first generation to receive an English education. The conditions were not entirely satisfactory as Oxford and Cambridge would not award degrees to undergraduates who did not declare allegiance to the Liturgy of the Church of England. But whereas Oxford demanded the pledge before accepting a student Cambridge was willing to take the assurance at any time before matriculation, even the last day of the last term, which meant that Jews could get an education, if not become Bachelors of Arts.
In 1861 twenty-one year old Nathaniel, known as ‘Natty’, was in his final year at the University when Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, was transferred from Christ Church, Oxford, to Trinity College, Cambridge, for the usual, fleeting, royal stint. At first Queen Victoria insisted that the Prince live four miles out of town, in Madingley Hall, much to the young man’s disgust. The Master of Trinity, however, finally persuaded Her Majesty that the heir to the throne should be allowed rooms in college for ‘occasional use’. Hereafter the Prince rode into town each morning on horseback: and soon had made friends with the two undergraduates most closely connected with riding to hounds: Charles Carrington who hunted the Drag and Nathaniel Rothschild who paid for it.
Soon the Prince numbered among his close friends not only Natty but Natty’s brothers, Alfred and Leo; not only their father Lionel but their uncles Mayer and Anthony; not only French cousin Alphonse but Austrian cousin Ferdinand. Other Jews followed, the Hirshes, the Beits, the Sassoons and the Cassels, but in the Prince’s youth none enjoyed the same relationship as the Rothschilds. And as His Royal Highness lived far above his means, the Rothschilds were accused of paying his debts. No doubt the banking Barons helped to invest his money, and no doubt, if and when the investments failed to come up to scratch, they made up the difference from their own pockets; but this is speculation, for no one knows what transactions took place. However in 1876 a pamphlet appeared entitled Edward VII containing a vicious parody both on Shakespeare and the Prince. Should the Prince confide in his mother, the formidable Victoria, and ask her to pay his debts?
Tell all or not tell all that is the question
Whether it is better of the Jews to borrow
To take the cash of base-born, low-bred men
Who out of necessities would make
A ladder up to peerages, who claim
My notice, ’cause I take their ill-gained coin
Who whine for invitations to my house
As though the cad who sells the gold deserv’d
More notice than the ones who sell you hats,
Or build you coats, or fashion you your boots;
Nay, not so much, for these are honest men —
Whether ’tis better their demands to suffer
Or make clean breast of it; declare my debt
And pay off all the Jewish herd in full
With money that now fills the royal purse;
Methinks I will.
Although there was far less prejudice against the Jews in England than on the Continent, such broadsides were plentiful in the high noon of Victoria’s reign. But as the Rothschilds were indispensable to the Prince’s pleasure, a relentless pursuit, he refused to allow the attacks to disconcert him. When he went to Paris he liked nothing better than to be entertained by Alphonse or Gustave, sons of the late Baron James, who now ran the bank. Alphonse was married to the English Leonora and both had a happy knack of producing a guest list with just the right mixture of grandeur and allure.
Alphonse and Leonora stood at the centre of the French world of power and fashion. Alphonse was a frail, delicately boned little man who tried to make up for his under-sized body by a pair of magnificent side whiskers. Apparently his temperament was more British than French, for he prided himself on never allowing anything to ruffle his composure. Even on the occasion of a splendid pheasant drive at Ferrières, when one of his guests managed to shoot him in the face, he maintained an icy calm. The accident finally resulted in the Baron’s losing an eye, yet he never revealed the name of the unhappy delinquent.
Leonora was greatly admired by the French despite the fact that she clung stubbornly to her English ways. She taught her French chef to make treacle pudding and always served afternoon tea: and when she made her will she stipulated that her body should be sent back to Buckinghamshire for burial. She entertained her English visitors in true English fashion. Frances, Countess of Warwick (at the time Lady Brooke), tells of a visit to Ferrières in the early 1880s, describing the Alphonses as ‘the most lavish entertainers of their day’. Certainly no one could have taken more trouble on this occasion, for Leonora asked her brother Natty (the future Lord Rothschild) to send her a draft of stag-hounds from the pack at Tring for the weekend. Apparently there was no difficulty in shipping them across the channel, and when the Brookes arrived they found that an English chasse had been arranged in their honour.
The rendezvous in the morning, near the Château, was a very pretty sight [wrote Lady Brooke]. The men wore red coats made in England while the Hunt servants were in green and gold. There was also a sprinkling of officers in full uniform, swords and all, from the neighbouring garrison at Melun. Baroness Alphonse, who hunted sometimes in England, and myself, were the only ladies in the saddle. The rest of the party, in chars-a-banc and victorias, drove with the chasse to different places in the vast woods where ‘obstacles’ — a kind of hurdle covered with bushes — had been put up in the grass rides, to give the spectators a chance of seeing us leap them. They called out ‘Houp-la’ in admiring tones, as if we had been performing in a circus.[91]
Alphonse was not only sociable but extremely good-natured. Only once was he known to lose his temper. When he was travelling by his own railway — the Chemin de Fer du Nord — to Bruges to dine with King Leopold, suddenly his train veered to a siding where it remained for two hours until another, very special train roared past. Baron Alphonse missed his dinner engagement and furiously demanded an explanation. The mystery was solved when his valet admitted sheepishly that he had forgotten to pack the Baron’s evening clothes and had sent it after him by special courier who, unlike the Baron himself, had taken full advantage of the Rothschild name.
Unlike his father James, Alphonse had received an education suitable for a financial crown prince. He had worked in the family banks in London, Frankfurt and Vienna, and even travelled to America to study New World methods. He was a skilful banker and a perfect gentleman, courteous, sophisticated and dazzlingly rich. His house was filled with treasures collected by his father; indeed, many of the pictures had been purchased from Napoleon’s uncle, Cardinal Fesch; one of the finest acquisitions was a Vermeer, The Astronomer.
Alphonse sometimes entertained the Prince of Wales at Ferrières, sometimes in his enormous town house at the comer of the Rue Saint-Florentin, overlooking the Place de la Concorde, originally the home of the famous Prince Talleyrand. James de Rothschild had purchased the house from Talleyrand’s niece, the Duchess of Dino, in 1838, a few weeks after the statesman’s death, and eventually presented it to Alphonse.
Politically Alphonse was one of the best-informed men in France. Apart from the network of Rothschild agents who reported to him regularly, he had access to everyone from Napoleon III to Otto von Bismarck: from the Empress Eugenie to the courtesan, La Castiglione, a mistress whom Alphonse apparently shared both with his brother, Gustave, and with the Emperor. Bismarck frequently stayed at Ferrières when he was ambassador to Paris in 1862 and 1963; and when he visited France in 1865, as Prime Minister of Prussia, he again spent the weekend with the Rothschilds. On this occasion he hoped that Napoleon would ask him to dine on Saturday night.
‘On the day the big shoot took place at Ferrières’, wrote the Rothschild agent, ‘C. de B.’, ‘M. de Bismarck said he would not dine. He was expecting an invitation from Napoleon. When this invitation did not arrive he asked permission to remain at Ferrières.’[92]
Now that Bismarck had become minister-president it was obvious that his overriding ambition was to make Prussia the dominant force on the continent. He fired an opening salvo in 1864 when he snatched Schleswig and Holstein from Denmark. And now, in 1865, rumours were rife that the next test of strength would come with the Habsburgs. The fact that Austria had been weakened by her defeat at the hands of Italy and France was grist to the Prussian mill. Alphonse who, like his father, was deeply opposed to war, had a clear grasp of the situation and did everything in his power to make Austria see the futility of clashing with Bismarck. ‘Prussia is not a country with an army,’ he said, quoting the French military attaché in Berlin, ‘but an army with a country.’
Alphonse’s cousin, Anselm of Vienna, who had been so effective in forestalling the Credit Mobilier in Austria, joined Alphonse in urging the Habsburgs to be wary of being coerced into war. Although Austria no longer was the great power it had been when Anselm’s father, Salomon, had worked hand in glove with the famous Prince Metternich, it was still a vast empire and still part of the European concert. If anyone could influence the Government it was Anselm, for he had become part and parcel of the Austrian way of life. His name was inscribed in the Golden Book of the capital and in 1861 he had been made a member of the Imperial House of Lords. Although occasionally clubs blackballed him because he was a Jew, he knew how to hit back. Indeed, when the Casino Club near Vienna refused him membership he bought a small sewage disposal unit from the adjoining village and installed it within sight and smell of his tormentors. The Club instantly tried to right the situation by despatching a membership card. He refused to remove his sanitary unit, however, and returned the card deliciously scented with the best French perfume.
During the crucial year of 1865 only a family wedding could induce Alphonse and Anselm to absent themselves from their banks. On this occasion Anselm’s son, Ferdinand, married Lionel’s daughter, Evelina. Evelina, of course, was a sister of Alphonse’s wife, Leonora — and just to muddle the reader still further, Anselm’s wife, Charlotte, was a sister of Lionel — so the clan gathered in London in full force.
Disraeli once again proposed the toast to the bride in his flowery way. The reception took place at Lionel’s newly built house at 148 Piccadilly and the Christian bridesmaids boasted the most illustrious names in the land. The bride’s father could not resist teasing Disraeli who, unlike the Rothschild’s, was a baptized Jew. ‘Ben,’ Lionel called out in front of all the guests, ‘there are so many Christians present that our chazan wants to know whether he should just read the prayers or sing them as in the synagogue.’ ‘Oh! please let them sing it,’ Dizzy replied. ‘I like to hear old-fashioned tunes.’
When Anselm and Alphonse returned to their respective countries they continued to apply pressure on Austria to exercise some cunning in dealing with Prussia. But the Government refused to heed their warnings. In the old days the House of Rothschild prevented war merely by withholding its money; but now nations plunged into hostilities without a penny, relying on victory to enable them to establish new credit. Alphonse was particularly angry with Prince Richard Metternich, the son of the famous statesman and Austrian ambassador to France, who insisted that the Habsburg armies would ‘wipe the floor’ with Prussia. ‘The army from the War Minister down to the junior subaltern does not doubt that Austria will be victorious,’ he declared pompously, as though such opinions were conclusive evidence.
Alphonse finally decided to draw attention to Austria’s recklessness by raising a storm in a tea cup. He instructed his bank to return a cheque of Prince Metternich’s for the trifling sum of 5000 francs with the statement that he had not even this small amount standing to his account. The story swept Paris and Princess Pauline Metternich was so furious that she said in future she would treat the Rothschilds as tradesmen, not gentlemen. That same evening the Rothschilds gave a fancy-dress ball at which the Metternichs were conspicuous by their absence. A few days later the Austro-Prussian War broke out which ended seven weeks later in Austria’s total surrender.
*
Europe was shocked, but the gloom did not put a stop to the whirl of social life that characterized the Second Empire. ‘Gaiety is now setting in heavily,’ wrote an English journalist in Paris in 1868. ‘Everything indicates a prolonged and severe season.’
Baron Alphonse was convinced that Prussia would not delay much longer before seeking its climactic confrontation with France: and he was one of the few men who doubted France’s capacity to resist. His information on Bismarck’s intentions came from two impeccable sources: his friend and fellow banker, Herr Bleichröder in Berlin and La Païva, the most notorious courtesan in Paris. La Païva’s value sprang from the fact that she happened to be the mistress of the fabulously rich German, Count Henkel von Donnersmarck, a personal friend both of Bleichröder and Otto von Bismarck.
The astonishing adventuress had begun life in the Moscow ghetto, and at seventeen had married a tailor. She had made her way to Paris where she found a rich protector; and in due course managed to marry a Portuguese aristocrat, the Marquis de Païva-Arauje. Her ambitions were not fulfilled, however, until she ensnared Count Donnersmarck, whose fortune came from Silesian coal, and who gave her 3,000,000 francs a year to spend. She built herself a huge house on the Champs-Élysées which is today the Travellers’ Club. It was completed in 1866 and its extravagances, even in an age of ostentation, created a sensation. The lavatories were made of onyx and the bathroom taps and keyholes studded in jewels. ‘When I visit your hotel,’ Baron Rothschild told La Païva, ‘mine seems like a hovel to me.’
Because of Count Donnersmarck’s aggressive Prussianism, people said that La Païva’s house was a hot-bed of espionage. Baron Alphonse made a point of keeping in touch with the Count and, in the spring of 1870, when the latter abruptly quit Paris with his mistress, Alphonse predicted that a diplomatic war would follow. He was right, for a few weeks later an Imperial messenger summoned him to attend the Emperor Napoleon at Saint-Cloud.
Napoleon III told Alphonse that Prussia was trying to foist a Hohenzollem on the Spanish throne; that France could never consent to such an impertinence and if Prussia persisted he, the Emperor, would have no alternative but to declare war. He therefore hoped that England would put a restraining hand on Bismarck: and since England happened to be without a Foreign Minister (Lord Clarendon had died and Lord Granville had not yet been appointed) he wished to make use of Rothschild channels to convey his views.
The family, of course, had been engaged in manoeuvres such as these for decades. So Baron Alphonse sent a cypher message from the Rue Laffitte to New Court which was decoded by cousin Nathaniel and taken to Mr Gladstone’s residence at Carlton House Terrace. The old man was about to leave for Windsor for an audience with the Queen. Gladstone pondered; but the answer was no. The Spanish people, he said, were not adverse to a German prince, therefore Britain was in no position to interfere.
No one foresaw the fall of France. Indeed crowned heads and statesmen alike believed that at long last Bismarck had taken on an impossible task. Although the Prussians withdrew their Hohenzollem candidate, friction between Prussia and France had reached such a pitch that Napoleon in rose to Bismarck’s bait and used the famous Ems telegram as an excuse to declare war. ‘The odds are fearfully against us,’ wrote the Prussian Crown Princess to her mother, Queen Victoria, ‘… our existence is at stake.’ The French were cock-a-hoop. While the people cried: ‘à Berlin’, the Minister of War declared that the French army was ready to the last button. ‘We enter the war,’ the Prime Minister told a packed audience, ‘with a light heart.’
Baron Alphonse was not so sanguine. He packed his wife and children off to England to stay with Leonora’s father, Baron Lionel. Here, throughout the month of August, poor Leonora read of one Prussian victory after another. On 2 September, barely six weeks after the start of hostilities, the French suffered a crushing defeat at Sedan. Constance de Rothschild wrote in her diary that when she entered the breakfast room she was struck by the dismay on the faces of her Uncle Lionel and Aunt, while Leonora’s eyes were red with tears.
A fourth person, Mr. Bauer, looking gloomy and dark, stood at the table with a telegram in his hand. These were the words of the dispatch: ‘The Emperor [Napoleon] has surrendered himself to the King [of Prussia] and the army of forty thousand men has capitulated.’ Poor Laurie [Leonora] felt humiliated like a French woman. Then came the fear of revolution. She was dark crimson with excitement and her voice trembled so that she could hardly speak. After a few moments her children came screaming and shouting into the room. They were allowed to make a fearful noise as no one seemed to mind them. In the midst of their childish voices came the muttered doubts and fears concerning the Empire …[93]
The Empire had fallen. Twenty-four hours earlier France had declared itself a republic. The new Government expected reasonable armistice terms and was astonished to learn that Prussia’s demands were as rapacious as though the culpable Emperor were still on the throne. The conditions were refused and the Prussian High Command decided to invest Paris and starve it into submission. Bismarck recalled his agreeable visit to Ferrières in such glowing terms that the Prussian King and Field-Marshal von Moltke decided to make the chateau their headquarters. King William moved into the private apartments of Alphonse but insisted on setting up his iron camp bed. Bismarck contented himself with the suite once used by Baron James while Moltke occupied the rooms of Baroness Betty. The King brought his own cooks and the estate was forced to supply fruit, vegetables and flowers. Over three thousand men and twelve hundred horses were quartered in the park.
Although guns could be heard in the distance, the weather was warm and sunny and Ferrières seemed to epitomize the delights of peace — and money. Swans glided lazily across the lakes; the greenhouses were bursting with grapes and orchids; the coverts filled with game, the stables stocked with thoroughbreds. ‘Kings couldn’t afford this,’ William of Prussia is said to have remarked. ‘It could only belong to a Rothschild.’
In those faraway days kings behaved like gentlemen, and William made it clear to the General Staff that looting was strictly verboten. According to the Rothschild steward, left in charge of Ferrières, the King also restrained Bismarck from indulging his passion for shooting. The steward’s reports to his master, still preserved at the château, must be treated with reservation as the author is greatly concerned to paint a flattering picture of himself. After refusing to serve wine from the Rothschild cellars to the self-invited guests he was summoned by Bismarck who rebuked him for his churlishness, and asked him if he knew what ‘a truss of straw’ was. The steward looked puzzled and Bismarck explained that it was an object on which obstinate stewards were laid with the backsides uppermost. Apparently this threat was sufficient to make the wine flow, but the steward let his master know that the Germans actually had threatened to beat him.
Meanwhile the haut-monde of Paris took their minds off France’s unexpected military collapse by making jokes about the invaders. In December the Prussians shot down a balloon containing a letter to the Countess de Moustier with the following sentence: ‘Rothschild told me yesterday that Bismarck was not satisfied with his pheasants at Ferrières, but had threatened to beat his steward because the pheasants did not fly about filled with truffles.’[94]
Bismarck was furious when the story was relayed to him, for the truth was that despite the King’s prohibition he had been sneaking in a bit of shooting on the side. ‘What will they do to me?’ he asked in mock terror. ‘They won’t arrest me, for then they won’t have anyone to arrange peace.’
The peace terms were not signed until Paris had been under siege for nearly five months and the population close to starvation. Meanwhile the King and Bismarck had moved to Versailles where they were joined by Herr Bleichröder, the Berlin banker who, until the war had broken out, had represented Rothschild interests in the Prussian capital, and none other than La Païva’s millionaire lover, Count von Donnersmarck.
M. Thiers and M. Favre, spokesmen for the new Republic, travelled to Versailles to ask for peace terms. They were received by Bismarck and his financial advisers, who told the Frenchmen that Prussia not only intended to annex Alsace and Lorraine but demanded an indemnity of 6,000,000,000 francs. ‘Quite impossible!’ M. Thiers exclaimed. ‘Why if you began to count from the time of Jesus Christ and went on until today you could not finish counting out such a sum.’ ‘That is why I sent for Bleichröder,’ replied Bismarck, ‘who begins to count from a much older date than Jesus Christ.’[95]
The Frenchmen were in no mood to laugh at Bismarck’s quips. It was impossible, they said, to commit their Government without taking expert financial advice themselves, and they begged leave to summon M. Alphonse de Rothschild.
Bismarck’s face darkened when he heard the name of the man who had linked his name with the jokes about pheasants flying with bellies full of truffles. He said angrily that the negotiators were procrastinating: that the patience of the King was exhausted: that he himself was not willing to continue talks which the other side deliberately was trying to break down. ‘It is exceedingly accommodating of me to take all this trouble,’ Bismarck stormed. ‘Our conditions are an ultimatum — they must either be accepted or refused. I am not going to discuss the matter further.’ Then he added petulantly. ‘Bring an interpreter tomorrow — I shan’t speak French in future.’
Meanwhile Thiers had summoned Baron Alphonse by telegram. He arrived at 7.30 the following evening. Bismarck was extremely rude to him, not only because of the Ferrières incident but because ‘he refused to speak German and behaved as though he were a “full-blooded” Frenchman’. Bismarck reminded him, in his most offensive manner, that his father and uncles had been brought up in Frankfurt, and that Salomon had been a friend of Prussia. He then upbraided him because he had not settled the method of payment with Bleichröder and Donnersmarck during the first hour of his arrival.
The final agreement was reached the following morning: it specified that the war indemnity would be 5,000,000,000, not 6,000,000,000 francs, and that all the great money merchants of Europe would serve as guarantors. Three days after the signing of the peace Bismarck told an assembled company at Versailles how churlishly the Rothschilds’ steward had behaved to him; and then referred slightingly to the Rothschilds, pointing out scornfully that Alphonse’s grandfather had been ‘Court Jew’ to the Elector of Hesse and ‘private Jew’ to many other families.
In the middle of March the revolutionary Commune was established in Paris. The Tuileries were burned, but although much looting and bloodshed took place, the Rothschild house emerged unscathed. Order was restored by the end of May and slowly Government and people settled down to a new era. Baron Alphonse and his cousins handled France’s war indemnity so efficiently that the huge sum was paid off in 1875, two years earlier than anticipated, freeing France of German troops.
Thus the French Rothschilds not only survived but prospered; once again they emerged from an upheaval financially intact: once again they had the confidence of the new Government of France.
*
Although the 1870s began with the sound of cannon-fire, it was a good decade for the family. Indeed 1871 was known in England as ‘the Baron’s year’, not because of any startling financial coups, but because Lionel’s brother, Mayer, won the Thousand Guineas, the Derby, the Oaks, and the St Leger, all in the same season. The prize money totalled £25,000, regarded as a huge sum.
Although Mayer was the Member of Parliament for Hythe, he copied Lionel in never making a speech, and people said that he preferred the faces of horses to those of his fellow MPs. No doubt this was true, as he gave more time to his racing stable at Newmarket than to the House of Commons, and Disraeli once referred to him as ‘a man with a stable mind’. He spent a fortune improving his breed until the Rothschild colours — blue jackets and yellow caps — were seen on every racecourse in England.
In 1872 Mayer was convinced that he had yet another Derby winner in a horse named Laburnum, and advised his constituents ‘to follow the Baron’. His horse, however, failed to live up to his expectations; and the Baron was so chagrined at having misled the electorate that he refused to stand again for Parliament. However, he consoled himself the following year by buying a charming hunting box at Ascott, near Leighton Buzzard, within view of Mentmore Towers.
That same year, 1873, Mayer’s brother, Lionel, head of the bank, who had hunted in the Aylesbury Vale for years but had never owned anything but a small hunting box, suddenly began to acquire land in such profusion that he left everyone breathless. A decade earlier he had moved into his vast mansion at 148 Piccadilly, but throughout his life had remained faithful to his country house, Gunnersbury Park at Acton. Now he had a longing for glorious Buckinghamshire, and gratified it by purchasing a fourteen-hundred-acre estate, Halton, near Aylesbury. A year later he struck again, this time acquiring Tring Park, with four thousand acres of farmland and a lovely seventeenth-century manor house designed by Sir Christopher Wren. The ceilings were profusely decorated with ‘NGs’ for the house had been presented to Nell Gwynn by her lover Charles II. Some people thought that the crotchety old Lionel was an odd person to take possession of a lush establishment where once upon a time an orange seller from Drury Lane had held a high-spirited court; nevertheless the Baron was immensely pleased with his new estate.
Yet it was not a British Rothschild who set Buckinghamshire agog. It was Anselm’s son, Ferdinand of Vienna, who trumped Lionel’s aces by erecting a French chateau six miles from Aylesbury, the like of which nobody had ever seen before — at least in the middle of the placid English countryside.
Ferdinand’s wife, Evelina, a daughter of Lionel, had died only eighteen months after their wedding in 1865. The twenty-six-year-old widower was distraught and gave hundreds of pounds to charity in her memory. While his father-in-law financed the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem, he founded the Evelina de Rothschild Hospital for Sick Children in London. He had taken British nationality at the time of his wedding, and although he never married again spent his life in England, becoming a great patron of the arts and, later, a Trustee of the British Museum. He also represented Aylesbury as a Member of Parliament and sat on the first Buckinghamshire County Council.
Ferdinand’s interest in pictures had begun as a child. ‘Long before I was born,’ he wrote, ‘my father had acquired a collection of Dutch pictures in Holland. Day after day I would reverently study them, learning under my mother’s tuition, to distinguish a Teniers from an Ostade or a Wouvermans from a Both.’ As he grew older, however, Ferdinand became increasingly critical of Anselm’s artistic judgement, particularly his passion for snuff-boxes. ‘My father might have formed a matchless collection as he lived in a country where for years old works of art were deemed worthless. But his taste was limited to a small range as he cared for minute articles only …’[96]
Ferdinand’s most poignant experience came when he visited St Petersburg in 1867. Princess Golytsin’s wonderful collection came up for sale and a French friend told Ferdinand that he could have first refusal of anything he fancied. ‘He begged me not to tarry as a gang of foreign dealers — “la bande noire” as they were called — were lying in wait like a pack of wolves.’ But Ferdinand was in deep mourning for his wife and ‘not in the mood to take advantage of the opportunity’; so he bought only two or three objets, one of them a large topaz cup for his bereaved father-in-law, Uncle Lionel. However ‘Uncle Lionel disdained it and put it aside as he possessed one of the same kind, only more important and finer still … My only consolation for the idiocy of my behaviour was … the boundless rage of the “bande noire” at having lost the cup …’[97]
In 1874 Anselm died, charging his seven children, like so many Rothschilds before him, ‘to live constantly in perfect harmony’ and ‘never to become unmindful of the family tradition’. The bulk of the estate went to the two eldest sons, Albert and Nathaniel, who lived in Vienna. No one knows exactly what Ferdinand received but contemporary accounts talk of £2,000,000.
Ferdinand was a tall, spare, restless man with a feeling for adventure. Out hunting one day in the Vale of Aylesbury, he took a fancy to a desolate, windswept hill, a misshapen cone commanding a fine view of the valley and decided that this was the place on which he would implant a house. He bought the hill and seven hundred acres of land from the Duke of Marlborough, and work began in 1874. First, a piece of the hill had to be sliced off, like the top of a soft-boiled egg; then a railway line fourteen miles long had to be built to bring the huge masses of Bath stone on to the site.
At the same time hundreds of workmen strove to transform the bleak countryside into a mellow park, complete with gardens and fountains. This required the transplanting of trees on a truly heroic scale, particularly as Baron Ferdinand had a liking for oaks, beeches and conifers. No less than sixteen horses were required to pull each one of these trees along the road; and every journey necessitated taking down the telegraph poles along the route.
Ferdinand adored the engineering dramas as it was just as enthralling to see what hazards the industrial age could overcome as to imagine the final results. Whereas in France Baron James had employed an English architect to build Ferrières, Ferdinand imported a French architect, M. Destailleur, to build Waddesdon. Furthermore, the Frenchman was instructed to incorporate in his plans the best features of four châteaux.
Waddesdon Manor took nearly seven years to complete, the first house party being given there in 1881. Guests were amazed to find the two towers of the Château de Maintenon; the chimneys of Chambord; the dormer windows of Anet; two versions of the staircase of Blois. Most of the furniture came from France where it once had been in the possession of the royal family, and priceless objets d’art included Savonnerie carpets, Beauvais tapestries, Sèvres porcelain. The enormous manor consisted of seventy rooms and, as a journalist put it, was ‘an absolutely stunning circumvention of cosiness’.
While Waddesdon was being built, Mentmore Towers, the first great Rothschild house in Buckinghamshire, passed from father to daughter. The originator, Mayer de Rothschild, Lionel’s brother, died in 1874, followed shortly afterwards by his wife. Their only child, Hannah, inherited not only the house but also £2,000,000 in cash, making her the greatest heiress in the land. Four years later, in 1878, Hannah married Lord Rosebery who was widely regarded (quite rightly as things turned out) as a future Prime Minister.
As the twenty-seven-year-old bride was not beautiful and rather plump, Rosebery was believed to be marrying her for her money, and soon dozens of anecdotes, all invented, swirled around the couple. For instance, Rosebery was said to have written to a friend: ‘I am leaving tonight. Hannah and the heavy baggage will follow later.’ These ungallant stories have been relayed from one writer to another and there is not a word of truth in them. In fact, Rosebery was devoted to Hannah and overjoyed when she accepted him.
One line to say that I am really engaged and very happy in my engagement [he wrote to a friend, Mrs Duncan, on 10 January 1878]. The awful deed was done at 4.25 p.m. on Jan. 3. May I never go through such another ordeal.
You do not know my future wife. She is very simple, very unspoilt, very clever, very warm-hearted and very shy. This description is for your private eye. I never knew such a beautiful character …[98]
When Hannah died twelve years after the marriage Rosebery was heart-broken and remained inconsolable throughout the years. The racing world had acclaimed the union, not because of the alliance between two houses, but between two studs; the Crafton and the Durdans. They were right in thinking it an important event for eventually Lord Rosebery won the Derby.
Hannah was the third female Rothschild of the English branch to wed a Christian. Her cousins Annie and Constance, daughters of Anthony, had married Eliot Yorke, son of Lord Hardwicke, and Cyril Flower, the future Lord Battersea. Both girls retained the Jewish faith and managed to secure parental consent. But although Hannah also clung to her religion, the prominence of the bridegroom attracted a glare of publicity and prompted some members of the family to make a muted public protest by refusing to attend the ceremony. Disraeli however played his usual role as a Rothschild master of ceremonies and gave away the bride, while the Prince of Wales made up for the omissions in the guest list. The English girls had started something. On the continent two of the seven daughters of Mayer Carl, who had left Italy to take over the Frankfurt bank, followed their example, and during the 1870s and early eighties became the brides of Christian aristocrats: the Due de Gramont and the Prince de Wagram.
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Although Lionel competed in the property field, he never allowed this absorbing pastime to obscure a good business deal. Indeed, in 1875, four years before his death, the venerable Baron pulled off the greatest financial coup of his life and at the same time made history. It started at dinner at the Rothschild house at 148 Piccadilly. Prime Minister Disraeli made it a habit to sup with his old friend on Sunday nights. At the end of the meal a footman brought the Baron a telegram from one of the foreign agents, announcing that the Khedive of Egypt, a notorious spendthrift who was drowning in debt, had decided to sell off a large block of his shares in the Suez Canal. The Khedive had offered them to the French Government but the latter was haggling over the price; two syndicates were competing but neither had agreed to pay the price he was asking. Disraeli had known for some time that 176,000 out of a total of 700,000 shares might come on the market. More than once he had expressed fears that the French Government might snap them up in order to gain control of what he termed ‘a vital British interest’. ‘We must buy them,’ he exclaimed to his host, and the Baron despatched a telegram enquiring what price was being asked.
Two days later Disraeli tackled his Cabinet. The Prime Minister’s secretary, Monty Corry, has left a colourful version of what happened. He tells how he waited outside the Cabinet room; how Disraeli poked out his head and uttered the single word ‘yes’; and how he sped to New Court and told Baron Rothschild that he needed £4,000,000. ‘When?’ asked Lionel, who was sitting at his desk eating muscatel grapes. ‘Tomorrow.’ The Baron spat out a seed. ‘What is your security?’ ‘The British Government.’ ‘You shall have it.’
‘… It is just settled, you have it. Madam,’ Disraeli wrote jubilantly to Queen Victoria on 24 November. ‘… Four million sterling and almost immediately. There was only one firm that could do it — Rothschilds. They behaved admirably: advanced the money at a low rate, and the entire interest of the Khedive is now yours, Madam …’[99]
The House of Commons was not as ecstatic as Disraeli about the financial arrangements. The Rothschilds had provided £2,000,000 on 1 December, £1,000,000 on 16 December and £1,000,000 on 5 January. They had charged two and a half per cent commission, which came to £100,000. This sounded reasonable enough but as Parliament repaid the money on 20 February the Opposition pointed out that the average rate of interest worked out at thirteen per cent. Baron Lionel justified the amount, however, on the grounds that only he could have raised the money swiftly and secretly enough to avoid upsetting the exchange rate. As these sleight-of-hand operations had been invented by the Rothschilds most people were satisfied with the explanation. As time passed the £100,000 seemed a bagatelle, for the purchase turned out to be one of the best investments ever made by the Government. In 1898 the market value of the shares was £24 million; in 1914 £40 million; in 1935 £95 million. And for nearly twenty-five years earnings were at a rate of fifty-six per cent on the original investment.
In the 1870s, the last decade of the magnificent English brothers, the Rothschild family seemed to stand at the apex of their financial power.
Not only were they railway magnates but they controlled large quantities of mercury, copper, nitrates. They financed Cecil Rhodes’s diamond dominion in South Africa, acquiring a large block of shares in De Beers; and in 1883, through the French Rothschilds, they lent the Tsar of Russia money in return for a petroleum concession in Baku that was so large that it made them the chief competitors of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Of course in those days oil was not important, being used mainly as a substitute for candles. But in 1911 they sold the B’nito Petroleum Company to the Royal Dutch Shell Combine for a handsome profit although not as handsome as it would have been twenty years later.
Nevertheless, the empire that Baron Lionel and his two brothers passed on to the new generation was a formidable institution still underpinned by the famous Rothschild solidarity. The unity was present even in death, for although this time the three English brothers did not leave the world in the same year, they departed in the same decade: Mayer in 1874, Anthony in 1876, Lionel in 1879.