CHAPTER XII — THE ROTHSCHILDS TODAY:
‘The times never move without the Rothschilds, for the Rothschilds always move with the times,’ someone observed in the 1950s, when the French Rothschilds gave up their Bentleys and began riding around Paris in chauffeur-driven Minis.
Rothschild financial supremacy, of course, was a thing of the past. No longer did the family — or any family for that matter — control the money markets of the world or regulate the rates of exchange or crown and uncrown kings. When haute finance, that mysterious capitalist invention, disappeared into the mists of the First World War, the Rothschild monopoly vanished with it. Even the structure of Rothschild banks had altered drastically, for although they remained private concerns, ever since 1908 they had operated as independent entities. This was convenient in war, but in time of peace the separation deprived the family of the internationalism that had once been its strength.
Then came three perilous decades with special hazards for bankers: the inflation of the 1920s, the depression of the 1930s the violence of the 1940s. Temporarily much of Europe was overrun by Hitler, permanently much of it enslaved by Stalin. During this process the Rothschild banks shrank from three to two, although New Court and the Rue Laffitte bravely continued to sport the emblem of the five arrows.
For a while it even looked as though that very special Rothschild commodity, money, might be in short supply. Once again death duties had tom gaping holes in the pockets of the English Rothschilds, while the Austrian Rothschilds tried in vain to get adequate compensation for the vast properties seized by the Nazis and later nationalized by the Iron Curtain regimes. And although the majority of the fabulous treasures owned by the French Rothschilds trickled back to Paris, some Rothschilds, Maurice’s sister, Miriam, for one, had come off badly. The valuables sent to Germany were recovered, but many pictures that she had hidden herself were lost. Apparently the place where she concealed them was ransacked by a looter who was never caught.
Yet the Rothschilds were famous for their resilience and most people were confident that when the fog of disorder lifted, the clan would play its part again as one of the rich and civilized families of Europe. Others were less sanguine, arguing that the post-war era of mass-movement, mass-production and mass-control was bound by its very nature to frown on the individualism that made the Rothschilds famous.
No one prophesied a Rothschild renaissance. No one predicted that the family would welcome the new era and breathe vitality into it; that they would embrace the age of the common man, cosset it, enhance it, walk to the altar with it. And that this enthusiasm would recapture Rothschild power, not as a family, not as a financial giant, but as a group of individuals, each with his own particular contribution, his own particular influence.
It was befitting that the opening shots in the revival should have been fired by the London bankers, heirs of the great Nathan. The reverberations came in 1962 when New Court was turned over to a demolition gang, and in 1965 when N. M. Rothschild & Sons moved into a glossy, glassy, black marble and aluminium-plated building on the same site. Apparently the Japanese were not surprised. This was the sort of thing they expected from the Rothschilds, but when their London correspondent telegraphed that the new building would consist of six storeys, Tokyo thought the figure must be a misprint for sixty. Surely the Rothschilds still did things in a big way?
If the way was not yet spectacular, the reorganization at least caught the attention of the City, for a new generation of Rothschilds had taken over the firm. Anthony had died in 1961 after an illness which for several years had kept him away from the office. Edmund, at forty-five, had taken his place as senior partner, assisted by his thirty-four-year-old brother, Leo, and Anthony’s twenty-nine-year-old son, Evelyn.
The changes came slowly as English merchant banks were deeply set in their ways, hemmed in by traditions that made them unlike any other banks in the world. Herded together in what is known as ‘the Square Mile’, they stand on streets with wonderful names — Bishopsgate, Poultry, Cheapside, Lombard, Thread-needle, Old Jewry. Perhaps because they are within a stone’s throw of one another everyone knows everyone else’s business. Consequently more verbal deals, running into more millions, are done in the City than in any place in the world. This means that integrity is the merchant banker’s most priceless asset, and the expression ‘an Englishman’s word is his bond’ is quite literally true. Paradoxically, although the merchant bank is looked upon as England’s most English possession, nearly all the originators were foreigners. The Rothschilds came from Frankfurt; the Barings from Bremen; the Warburgs and the Schroders from Hamburg: the Lazards from Alsace; the Brandts from St Petersburg; the Morgans from Boston.
Even in 1945 Rothschilds still had the distinction of being the private bank with the most famous name in Europe. As it was also run as a feudal hierarchy, with stem rules and traditions that had never been broken, every change created a stir. In 1960 the company accepted the first outsider as a partner — a position hitherto only open to Rothschild men — and in 1970 the bank ceased to be a partnership and was reorganized as a limited company. Both events were widely reported. Partnerships were forbidden by law, first to have more than ten, and then more than twenty partners, and ambitious young newcomers would not stay with the bank unless they felt they could reach the top. The limited company, of course, was still in Rothschild hands with a paid-up capital of £10,000,000, excluding reserves, 95 per cent of which was owned by the family. The number of directors began to expand rapidly, and today there are twenty-nine, only four of whom are Rothschilds.
The modernization that took place in the 1960s included mechanization and advertising (hitherto frowned upon) and new methods of recruiting personnel. Not everyone welcomed the changes and Ronald Palin, secretary to the bank, felt that the civilized Anthony would have hated the brashness of the modem approach. Yet Anthony’s son, Evelyn, seemed to disprove this theory. Although Evelyn was not quite thirty when his father died in 1961, and inherited the largest single shareholding in the bank, he not only welcomed changes but instigated many of them himself. He was the first Rothschild to press for the inclusion of non-Rothschild partners, and the most enthusiastic Rothschild in favour of demolishing New Court and erecting a new building. Indeed, although fairly inexperienced, he made himself entirely responsible for the new building. He selected the architect and worked alone with him achieving a result that was both striking and practical.
Evelyn was devoted to the memory of his father, and longed to vindicate his conscientious overlordship during the most difficult years of the century. He was convinced that only by drastic reorganization could the bank once again leap to the forefront; yet what gave the spirit of change the velocity of a high wind was the arrival of Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, son and heir of Victor, the third Lord Rothschild.
Unlike his father, who went to Harrow and Cambridge, Jacob was educated at Eton and Oxford. A tall, gangling youth with what writers like to call ‘the protruding Rothschild lip’ — although no other living Rothschild has this characteristic — Jacob was brilliant, moody and aggressive. He had a deeply ingrained belief in his own intellectual superiority which did not make him an easy boy to manage. Needless to say he was not a success at Eton, and was very unhappy. He left at seventeen and did his national service with the Life Guards at Windsor. He began as a Lance Corporal and was popular with the N.C.O.s and privates, one of whom gave an interview to the press describing him as an eccentric because he frequently claimed to be ‘broke’.[155] Unfortunately he produced an unfavourable impression on his superiors, and applied three times before he was accepted in a training course for officers.
Not until he arrived at Christ Church, Oxford, did he come into his own. Here he made half a dozen life-long friends; and here he took first-class honours in history. The bank was his objective, but he did not want to enter the firm until he had some knowledge of money. So he took a crash course in accountancy, did a short apprenticeship with a London finance company, and another spell in New York with Morgan Stanley.
From the moment that Jacob stepped into Rothschilds he knew that he had found his metier, and so did his cousins. At first meeting he seemed quiet and controlled, a pleasant young man with a high forehead and a steady gaze, but beneath a deceptive air of modesty, he concealed an iron will and strong likes and dislikes which were not easy to dislodge. Yet no one was left in any doubt that the mantle of the great Nathan had fallen on Jacob’s shoulders, for his incisive brain seemed automatically to understand every nuance of the market-place, and he took decisions as quickly and easily as his famous predecessor who had boasted that he was ‘an off-hand man’ who settled prices on the spot.
Jacob’s immediate concern was to introduce modem techniques, for the firm had just suffered a humiliating defeat by failing to defend its client, Odhams, from a take-over by the Mirror group, directed by Sigmund Warburg. ‘The boom years for take-over struggles had begun,’ wrote a City Commentator, ‘and Rothschild was publicly seen to be not as much of an adept as it ought to have been in this branch of banking practice.’ Other financial writers criticized Rothschilds for tactical errors, such as advising Odhams to send its shareholders a letter raising dividends from 17½ to 37½ per cent and according to the Sunday Times, ‘illustrating the records of Odhams and the Mirror with a strange selection of profit figures’. ‘They failed to save Odhams from being taken over by the Daily Mirror,’ chirped the Sunday Telegraph, ‘though of course they can always look back with pride to having helped Disraeli get control of the Suez Canal.’
Jacob had no intention of looking back at anything. A new department of corporate finance was introduced with himself at the head, whose business was takeovers, mergers, Euro-dollar loans, in fact, all the services that modem investment bankers could devise. Jacob’s ideas were positive. ‘Merchant bankers must not wait for opportunities,’ he told the press, ‘they must create them. Conversely, clients should come to us for ideas, not only for money.’
The notion that a bank should be a Brains Trust is no longer a novel conception, but Jacob strengthened it by bringing into the firm a handful of talented contemporaries, the star of which was Rodney Leach, Balliol’s cleverest classical scholar for a generation. The new group became so expert in raising Eurodollar loans that today Warburgs, the first English bank to pioneer the field, is being given a strenuous run for its money. Although all the bank’s departments have been revitalized, the corporate department has drawn the heaviest fire and kept Rothschilds continually in the public eye. During the first years of its existence it was successful in advising Showerings in its takeover of Harveys, and equally successful in defending Metropolitan Estates, England’s largest property company, against a takeover by the Commercial Union. It helped the Sun Alliance Insurance Company to swallow one of its competitors, a particularly satisfying transaction as the Alliance had been founded by Nathan Rothschild. Now it was worth £100,000,000 and, gratifyingly, a loyal Rothschild client. Among the most famous takeovers was the £420,000,000 offer by Grand Metropolitan for Watneys, the largest bid in British commercial history. In this operation Rothschilds was referred to as the ‘éminence grise’. However, the part played by the firm in advising Mr Jim Slater in his triumphant bid for Isaac Wolfson’s master company, Drage’s, was not at all shadowy or even grise.
The rise of the corporate department was so meteoric that the staff, which in 1959 consisted of Jacob alone, today boasts 108 members and ten directors. And in this age of advertisement the publicity it provoked undoubtedly increased the bank’s prestige. Even the orthodox business of raising loans has reached new heights — over a billion pounds in the last ten years, with such famous borrowers as Shell, Anglo-American and Philips, the electrical giant. The British Government also became a client, for after the Conservatives came to power in 1970, Rothschilds was invited to find buyers for the Industrial Reorganization Corporation’s portfolio of investments which had been built up by the Labour Government. And recently another public servant — this time the liquidator of Rolls Royce — selected Rothschilds from a dozen applicants to dispose of the profitable Rolls Royce Motors.
In 1972 another of Jacob’s particular concerns, the Rothschild Investment Trust, reached new heights. Jacob took over the chairmanship in 1970 and within two years the market value of the Trust had grown from £5,000,000 to £80,000,000 while the original shares owned by the public had more than doubled. Some of the investments were amusingly original. The Trust bought twenty per cent of Sotheby’s, the famous auctioneers, and fifteen per cent of Wedd, Durlacher, the City’s most successful jobbers. Jacob and his partners are not eager to acquire a controlling interest in any business, no matter how profitable; bankers, they feel, should stick to their last. ‘What do we know about frozen fish?’ Jacob asks blandly.
Jacob is married to Serena Dunn, who is not Jewish. She is a granddaughter of the Earl of Rosslyn and of Sir James Dunn, a Canadian financier who made a fortune of Rothschildian proportions. Her father, Philip Dunn, is a business man, who at one time found himself in the surprising position of Chairman of the News of the World. Serena and Jacob have three daughters and a son, Nathaniel, born in 1971.
Jacob works a twelve-hour day, complaining that he does not know how other bankers have time for pleasure, but the truth is that work is his recreation. He is doing what he likes best, and he does it superlatively well. Although he sometimes finds it difficult to hide his arrogance, stepping on people’s toes and arousing needless hostility, the cleverest men in the City acknowledge his expertise and place him among the top handful of his profession. Indeed a former member of the World Bank refers to him as ‘the most brilliant banker in Europe’.
Like most English Rothschilds, Jacob lives modestly. He has a London house in Little Venice, charming but unpretentious, and a house in the country at Hungerford. He plays tennis and collects early twentieth-century English paintings. His main hobby, however, smacks of a busman’s holiday, for recently he bought P. D. Colnaghi, one of the oldest and most distinguished firms of art dealers in London; and a few years ago he acquired a hundred acres in Corfu, a purchase likely to provide a handsome inheritance for his son.
If Jacob is the cleverest of the banking Rothschilds, Edmund is the most kindly, Leo the most modest, Evelyn the most diplomatic and perhaps the most generous. All three are sportsmen. Edmund and Leo like to race their sailing yachts, while Evelyn is a crack polo player who, until several years ago, frequently led his team, ‘The Centaurs’, against teams captained by Prince Philip or his French cousin, Baron Élie.
As Chairman of Rothschilds Edmund’s office abounds in family portraits and historical mementos. He sits behind the desk once owned by his great grandfather, Baron Lionel; and on the wall is a letter authorizing Nathan to ship gold to Wellington’s army in Spain. One of the ancestral paintings looks exactly like Edmund, grey hair, grey moustache, pink cheeks, largely kindly eyes. This is grandfather Leo, that ‘angel with a revenue’ who seems to have endowed Edmond not only with his looks but with his pride in his Jewishness.
Of all the Rothschilds Edmund is the most race-conscious. Although he does not pretend to be strictly orthodox he regularly attends the Great Synagogue where he is warden. He is on the boards of many Jewish philanthropies, including the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women, of which he is president, and the Council of Christians and Jews, of which he is joint treasurer. His four children have been brought up in the Jewish faith. When his eldest son, Nicholas, became a barmitzvah in 1964, the ceremony marking the event — the equivalent of confirmation — was conducted by the Chief Rabbi Brodie. A great many relations were present including Baron Eugene of Austria, Baron Philippe of France and Lady Rothschild of England.
Like all Rothschilds Edmund was deeply disturbed by the Six-Day War, and spent time and thought trying to find a practical solution to an insoluble problem. At the end of June 1967 he wrote a letter to The Times suggesting that Britain, the United States and Russia build desalination plants capable of producing 100,000,000 gallons of water a day in Israel and Jordan, and a smaller plant in the Gaza Strip. The idea was that if the desert suddenly bloomed there would be food for all, and nothing to fight about.
Although he inherited his father’s three-thousand-acre estate near Southampton, both he and Leo live in modest houses overlooking the sea. The lovely, eighteenth-century Exbury House, once upon a time occupied by the Mitford family, stands empty and forlorn, although it is neither large nor forbidding. For two months a year, when the wonderful shrubs burst into bloom, the public is allowed to wander about the grounds, and fifty thousand people take advantage of the opportunity every year. Edmund has inherited Lionel’s love and knowledge of flowers and has won many horticultural prizes including the trophy presented by his father. Although he has cut the number of gardeners from sixty to thirty to make the undertaking pay, he has not dimmed its glory.
Unlike their forebears Edmund and Leo do not move in fashionable London circles or, for that matter, even in the corridors of power. Edmund entertains distinguished overseas visitors at the bank, and anyone fortunate enough to be invited to luncheon will be given delicious food and drink. But Edmund’s social life takes place in the country, and the four or five days that he spends in London are given over almost entirely to official business or to one of his many charities, which range from the Freedom from Hunger Campaign to the Institute of District Nursing.
Leo is even less interested in social life. He heads the Latin-American department in the bank, serves as a Director of the Bank of England, and sits on the board of Sadler’s Wells. His outside interests are classical music and industrial archaeology. Of the Rothschilds, he is the least publicized.
Cousin Evelyn, on the other hand, graces all the most amusing London parties. Tall, dark and handsome, he is much admired by the ladies; and, like his father, has a splendid stud farm and takes a keen interest in racing. Nevertheless at forty he is hard working and serious. Proof of the impact he has made on the City is the fact that in 1972 he was invited to become chairman of The Economist, Britain’s most respected financial journal. He is also deputy chairman of the corporation that runs the new town of Milton Keynes, a Government appointment.
Whereas Jacob is chairman of the executive committee which runs Rothschilds and master-minds the big financial deals, Evelyn concerns himself with the bank’s overall strategy and the smooth running of the various departments. Many people regard him as the most charming of all the Rothschilds as he not only is tactful and perceptive but a man of infinite good will who takes pleasure in helping those around him. Apart from his domestic responsibilities he acts as the firm’s roving ambassador. During the past ten years he had made many trips to America, Canada, Australia, the Far East and Africa, in search of new business. One of the feathers in his cap is the close relationship existing today between Rothschilds and the De Beers Anglo-American Charter Group.
Evelyn also spends a good deal of time in France, and just as Guy de Rothschild serves as a director of the English bank, so Evelyn sits on the board of directors of the Banque Rothschild. As he is half French he is the right Rothschild to throw a bridge across the Channel, and to keep the French and English cousins au fait with each other’s plans. In 1972 N. M. Rothschild & Sons launched a new company with Evelyn as Chairman, known as the New Court Investment Trust. Its aim is to make money for itself and its clients by investing in expanding European businesses.
The most striking feature of the English and French banks is the same element that has distinguished them since their inception: the family. Despite the changes of the last ten years, male Rothschilds and only male Rothschilds still financially control both firms. In London two Rothschild brothers and two cousins work together while in Paris two Rothschild brothers and one Rothschild cousin direct the business, with three young ones as recent recruits; Guy’s son, David, Alain’s son, Eric, and Élie’s son, twenty-six-year-old Nathaniel, the first member of the family to have graduated from Harvard Business School.
The French Rothschilds did not lag behind their English cousins, but so far their reorganization has proved less fruitful than the revolution across the Channel. Unlike English bankers French bankers have an irresistible urge to control industry. Therefore when, in 1967, the French Rothschilds grouped their interests into a holding company, La Compagnie du Nord, which had been formed 130 years earlier to launch the Chemin de Fer du Nord, their most important satellites were commercial, not financial. The world-famous Rothschild bank, for instance, was a small venture while Le Nickel-Penarroya was the second largest producer of nickel in the world and one of the leading producers of zinc and copper.
Baron Guy de Rothschild is Managing Director of the Compagnie du Nord; and although the latter is not a giant but a medium-sized company capitalized at about £60,000,000, its subsidiaries are both varied and far-flung with interests which stretch from New Caledonia to South America, Africa and Europe. Its mineral companies range from the famous Le Nickel to Mifema which produces iron ore in Mauretania and to the Compagnie Frangaise des Minerais d’Uranium which produces uranium ore in France. The ‘Nord’ also controls real estate companies, food companies, credit companies, tourist organizations, cargo ships and a group ready to finance a tunnel under the English Channel.
However, it was the reorganization of the bank Messieurs de Rothschild Frères that aroused the most interest. It was something of a feat that Baron Guy and his two cousins, Élie and Alain, had been able to reconstruct the roughly-handled firm at the end of the war. They not only put it on its feet again but attracted a recruit who was to become one of the great statesmen of France. M. Pompidou joined the firm in 1956 when M. Fillon, formerly a tutor of Baron Guy, and an employee of the bank, decided to go into politics. Fillon offered to find someone to take his place, and came up with the name of Pompidou, who was doing a rather dull job as a civil servant. Pompidou had remained a schoolmaster throughout the war; and in 1945 someone had recommended him to de Gaulle, who had asked him to study the French educational system and to give him a report on what changes should be made.
Pompidou had an impressive academic record. He had graduated first from the École Normale Supérieure, and as a schoolmaster had prepared boys for the matriculation in Greek and Latin. He served de Gaulle as a minor civil servant and when the latter went into the wilderness in 1946 remained in his obscure job. He gladly accepted Baron Guy’s offer in 1956 and rapidly rose to the position of general manager. In 1958 de Gaulle again sent for him, and he left Rothschilds for nearly a year. However, he returned in 1959 and remained until 1962 when de Gaulle invited him to become prime minister. Fillon, who had left banking for politics, was temporarily eclipsed but he emerged again at Rothschilds where he is now Chairman of two companies and a director of many others.
In 1967 the bank underwent drastic alteration. Like their English cousins, the French directors said goodbye to the famous old building at 19 Rue Laffitte and pulled it down to make way for a modem concrete superstructure. Baron Élie’s wife, Liliane, who has a brilliant flair for colour and design, was responsible for the interior which she supervised in partnership with Michel Boyer. The function of the bank also changed; instead of specializing in investment services it became a deposit bank with a drive-in counter on the ground floor. Even the name was changed to ‘La Banque Rothschild’. ‘A banker,’ Baron Guy told reporters, ‘is Mr A who borrows money from Mr B to lend to Mr C.’ This, of course, was the definition of a purely commercial bank, something very different from an English bank, and very different from the role played in former days by Messieurs de Rothschild Freres. Apparently M. Pompidou was among those who advised Guy to make the change as a certain way of attracting new capital to invest in industry.
Unfortunately things did not work out as the family hoped, for the Rothschild bank found itself a small fish in a big pond. The cost of opening deposit branches in the suburbs and provincial towns was excessive, while the attempts to compete advantageously with the publicly-owned French giants was a losing battle. And the bank was not the only worry.
Far more serious was the fact that Le Nickel was in difficulty due to a world slump in the demand for nickel. Shares which had reached $54 in late 1970 were in the region of $20 as 1973 began. Inevitably Le Nord’s shares suffered too, declining from $12 in 1971 to $8 in 1973.
However, at the first sign of trouble the Rothschilds had begun an impressive reconstruction of their many holdings. Shipping interests were pruned down, credit and real estate companies streamlined. Jimmy Goldsmith, the London financier, was brought in to reorganize the Rothschild food business, and Baron Edmond, owner of the Banque Privée in Switzerland, and a merchant bank in Paris, was invited to become a director of the Banque Rothschild. Although the future policy of the bank is still under discussion, the younger generation — Eric, Nathaniel and David — are believed to favour closer ties with the English bank, even a merger following the pattern of the last century.
Despite the publicity, not all Rothschild interests suffered and Newsweek reassured its readers that the family was ‘hardly on the rocks’. Others predicted that the graph of the Compagnie du Nord had already started its upward swing and after a bad start the seventies would mark a triumphant advance. One of the family’s most challenging and successful enterprises is the PLM. These initials were taken from two Rothschild railway companies which were merged in 1857 — the Paris-Lyons and the Lyons-Méditerranée. The dashing Baron Élie became president of the PLM in 1956, at the age of thirty-nine (displacing a gentleman of eighty-nine) and ten years later turned it into a firm to build and promote hotels, motels and restaurants. The first PLM hotel in Paris, the Hotel Saint-Jacques, with 812 rooms, was opened in 1972.
The Baron’s wife, Liliane, was in charge of the decor and dozens of Rothschild employees were asked to spend a night there during the first month, to test beds, mirrors, hot-water taps, lavatories, food, service, in fact everything that came their way. Baron Élie himself knew exactly what he regarded as essential. ‘I want my bath to run hot in two minutes fiat. I don’t want to hear plumbing noises. I want a good bed and pillows. I want my breakfast right away. I want good croissants. After all, we’re in Paris. I want people to be polite to me and I don’t want to hear their side of the story.’
The Baron got what he wanted, and as a result the Saint-Jacques is booked up several months in advance. The hotel is only one of a chain in various parts of France and in Switzerland. There are seven PLM restaurants on the French motorways, and one in the Casino in Chamonix which was bought by PLM, in partnership with M. Ortiz Patino, several years ago. Apparently permission to renovate the Casino was difficult to secure as the building had been occupied by Napoleon III and Eugénie when they visited the resort and was classified as an historic monument.
Although Barons Alain and Élie are very different in temperament and move in very different French circles, they are devoted to one another. Alain is a distinguished-looking man who heads the Jewish community in France. He prefers the conservative atmosphere of the Faubourg Saint-Germain to fashionable society. In his spare time he sails and occasionally competes in yachting races. He is married to the former Mary Chauvin du Treuil, one of the prettiest and most amiable hostesses in Paris.
After the war the two brothers shared the house at 23 Avenue de Marigny where they had grown up as children. This was the great mansion into which Lord Rothschild had moved during the war. But in the late 1950s Baron Élie and his wife Liliane moved into a house of their own at 11 Rue Masseran. Their new residence was almost as big as 23 Marigny, but more attractive; an eighteenth-century house, previously owned by Count Étienne de Beaumont, and built by Brongniart in 1785. Liliane has impeccable taste and today the house is a brilliant mixture of Rothschild portraits and bibelots, eighteenth-century furniture, twentieth-century paintings and old-world masterpieces.
The Marigny house is very different, a blaze of gilt and red damask that the English call ‘Victorian’ and the French ‘le style Rothschild’. Until the end of 1972, 23 Avenue de Marigny was the only Paris residence built by a Rothschild (it was built by Gustave in 1885) still occupied by a Rothschild, Baron Alain. But even this sentimental distinction has ended, for in 1972 the house was sold to the French Government for £2,500,000, much to the fury of the left-wing press. ‘The Gift Of Pompidou To The Rothschilds’ was the headline of Minute on 27 October. ‘The Pompidolian Republic’, commented the editor, ‘is a young lady who can never say “no” to a Rothschild.’
Alain de Rothschild has surprised people by reserving a piece of the garden where he will build a new house of considerable proportions. Apparently no one has embarked on such a novel course since the end of the First World War. 23 Avenue de Marigny is only a few yards from the Élysée Palace and the Government will turn it into a guest house.
As very few Rothschilds find themselves in the divorce courts, Baron Guy’s separation from his wife Alix, who was adored by the family, and his re-marriage in 1957 caused something of a stir. The bride was a twenty-six-year-old divorcee whose grandmother had been a Rothschild, Countess Marie-Hélène van Zuylen, married to Count Nicolai. Although the Countess was a Catholic her marriage had been annulled by the Vatican, which left her free to re-marry. It was not easy for Guy, however, who after much thought decided to withdraw as head of the religious organization of the Jewish community, a position which passed to his cousin Alain. Nevertheless Guy remained as chairman of the largest social organization in France, the French Jewish United Appeal; and their only son, Édouard, has been brought up in the Jewish faith.
Marie-Hélène is one of the most controversial figures in Paris. A woman who arouses strong likes and dislikes, the very mention of her name can plunge a dinner party into heated and prolonged argument. For this relatively drab age, her entertainments are on a grand scale. Every few years she throws open the doors of Ferrières and gives a fancy-dress ball which is attended by the ‘beautiful people’ the world over. Her last party took place in December 1972. Salvador Dali did the decor and the guests were asked to come in surrealist costume. Everyone was there from the Comte de Paris to Elizabeth Taylor, from Princess Grace to Gunther Sachs. The new world, as someone put it, against a fabulous background of Old Masters.
After Guy’s second marriage his eldest son, David, moved into a flat with his mother Alix. One day in 1969 there was a knock on the door, and in walked a twenty-three-year-old gunman, Joseph Stadnik., formerly of the French Foreign Legion. Joseph brandished a revolver and threatened to shoot Alix and David unless they produced £150,000 in cash. David telephoned to Guy, who assured him that he would come to the flat as soon as he could collect the money.
Young David, twenty-six years old at the time, took charge of the situation, advising his mother to go to her bedroom and wait until his father arrived. Meanwhile he sat with the gunman making stilted conversation. At one point Stadnik accidentally pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into the carpet, and poor Alix, shivering behind a locked door, thought that David had been murdered and came running into the room.
Eventually Baron Guy appeared with a satchel full of notes. He insisted that Stadnik count them, in order to gain time, as he had told the police, who were in the process of organizing a trap. Stadnik, however, was wary and insisted that David drive him out of Paris in his (David’s) car. But Guy managed to persuade the gunman to leave David behind and to take him instead.
The two men climbed into Guy’s car and began making their way through Paris. Soon a police car was in front of them, another behind them, one at the side; all were disguised and Stadnik was unaware of what was happening. The traffic was halted by a red light and suddenly Stadnik’s door was whipped open and he was staring down the barrel of someone else’s gun. It happened so quickly that he had no time to put up a fight.
The story had an odd ending. Apparently Guy felt sorry for Stadnik, who was not a criminal, merely a young man searching for ‘social justice’. The culprit bemoaned the fact that he had ‘ruined the Baroness’s carpet’ by firing a bullet into the floor. This melted Guy’s heart and he gave his testimony in such a way that Joseph received a suspended sentence of five years. For once the newspapers — at least the English papers — were disapproving of the Rothschilds. ‘Nobody wishes to quarrel with the humanity of the judge,’ wrote the London Evening Standard on 28 May 1971, ‘but other would-be imitators of this particular act might now be tempted to put a political gloss on crimes of this nature.’ Baroness Alix, however, was delighted. ‘He had read too many thrillers, that was all,’ she explained to reporters.
Everyone had behaved astoundingly well. David had been brave, Guy even braver, and Alix had turned the other cheek. The result was gratifying. The gunman relinquished crime and took a steady job. Every December he sends Guy a Christmas card.