The rothschilds, p.1
The Rothschilds, page 1
The Rothschilds
A Family Portrait
Frederic Morton
Copyright
Diversion Books
A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.
443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008
New York, NY 10016
www.DiversionBooks.com
Copyright © 1961 by Frederic Morton
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com
First Diversion Books edition October 2014
ISBN: 978-1-62681-394-6
More from Frederic Morton
A Nervous Splendor
Table of Contents
Preface
I. Are They Still There?
1. A Procession at Pauillac
2. Chutzpah and Orchids
3. A Golden Silence
II. Jew Street
1. Little Orphan Mayer
2. A Dreamer in the Ghetto
3. Mayer’s Serenity
4. A Dynasty Aborning
III. Five Flying Carpets
1. The Boys Erupt
2. Something Rotten in Denmark
IV. Rothschild Versus Napoleon
1. Round One: Contraband
2. Round Two: A Million-Pound Idea
3. Round Three: The Giant Gold Smuggle
4. Round Four: The Scoop of Scoops
5. Round Five: Conquering the Victors
V. The Mispoche Magnificent
1. By No Other Name as Great
2. The Escutcheon
3. The Five Dynasts
(a) Mr. Nathan
(b) Beau James
(c) King Salomon
(d) Carl, the Mezzuzah Baron
(e) Amschel of the Flowers
VI. Running Europe
1. The Peacemongers
2. Short-Term and Long
3. The Railway Madness
(a) Austria
(b) France
4. Il est Mort
5. The Grandest Larceny Ever
6. Monsters’ Duel
VII. The Mispoche Junior
1. Inside Society
(a) Anselm
(b) Lionel and Brothers
(c) Country Squires
2. Kings of the Jews
3. Storming Parliament
4. Three Suns at Noon
(a) Natty
(b) Sweet Leo
(c) The Incomparable Alfred
5. At Marlborough House
6. Naughty Bismarck
7. The Plushiest Pilgrim
8. Hoffähig
VIII. No More Plumed Hats
1. Two Kingdoms Resign
2. The Golden Momentum
3. The Great House and the Great War
(a) Peacemongers Again
(b) The War
4. Aftermath
IX. Hitler Versus Rothschild
1. The Depression and Baron Louis
2. Windsor at Enzesfeld
3. The Ides of March
4. Hermann Göring Says Hello
5. Heinrich Himmler Says Hello
6. A Dynasty Enlists
7. The Palace as Souvenir
X. A Dynasty Turns Jet
1. Decline and Rise
2. The Mishpoche of the 1960’s
3. The Ladies
4. The Hush at New Court
Gallery
Bibliography
Preface
For the last 150 years the history of the House of Rothschild has been to an amazing extent the backstage history of Western Europe. How the Rothschilds gained eminence and kept it to this day is a phenomenon that transcends business ability. It is rooted in the virtuoso use of the family as a power unit.
Being a novelist, I have an incurable interest in emotion. A money-changer becomes a great banker, not just because he is good at arithmetic, but because his impulses and reflexes are geared for success. The pages that follow, therefore, focus most closely on the “human” side of the Rothschild epic.
The importance of arithmetic remains. I am neither a trained economic historian nor a trained financial expert. I am aware, furthermore, that a team of scholars might have to spend years in the tremendous archives of the London and Paris banks to produce a detailed technical chronicle of the House. The aim of this book is different. It is to dramatize the personal, flesh-and-blood reality of the myth known to the world as “Rothschild.”
Nonetheless, I have tried to provide the story with all necessary economic and historic underpinnings, and here as well as in other phases of the manuscript I have had the advantage of help from others.
I want to thank most members of the present-day Rothschild clan for the toleration and even encouragement of my curiosity in their offices and homes. Specifically, I am grateful to Baroness Hilda de Rothschild for a general introduction to the subject; to Baron Philippe and his wife Pauline for directing my attention to numerous social and esthetic Rothschildiana; and to Baroness Elie for her information on family art collections. Much appreciated was the cooperation of Baron Guy, head of the French house; his sister, Bethsabée, and his mother, Baroness Edouard; Lord Rothschild; Mr. Edmund, senior partner of the English bank, and his wife, Elisabeth; and the dean of the family, Baron Eugene, and his wife Jeanne. Various members of the family have also provided me with portraits of their ancestors.
I am indebted to a number of Rothschild business associates, such as Mr. Leo Spitzer and Mr. Leonard Keesing of New York; Mr. Leo Kelly and Mr. J. F. Goble of London; Major Peter Barber of the Exbury estate; M. Robert Jablon of Paris. In Vienna, Ritter Wilhelm von Gutmann, Frau Clementine von Ruzicic and Herr Richard Karlberger have given me some valuable facts; as has Mr. Cecil Roth of Oxford, and not only through his excellent account of the Victorian family phase in England, The Magnificent Rothschilds.
For their advice and comment, I am also grateful to Mr. Cecil Beaton, Mr. James J. Rorimer (Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art), Mr. Vincent Sheean, Mr. Peter B. Kenan, of Columbia University’s economics faculty, and Mr. Gilbert Millstein.
Dr. Wilhelm Schlag, cultural officer of the Austrian Consulate General in New York, has been invaluable in procuring art material.
While everyone mentioned above has contributed to the manuscript, no one except myself is responsible for its inadequacies or mistakes.
This is the place to record my obligation to Ted Patrick and Harry Sions of Holiday, who first presented me with the idea of the project. Sections of this manuscript in an altered form have been printed in their magazine.
And now I must admit the biggest debt of all. My wife, Marcia Colman Morton, has been an indispensable partner in this enterprise, from initial research to final revision. The writing of this book has constantly benefited from her editorial resourcefulness and her mysterious good humor.
F. M.
I
Are They Still There?
1. A Procession at Pauillac
On Saturday afternoon, March 4, 1961, an expectant crowd shifted its feet on the cobbles of a small village in southwestern France. Windows brimmed with faces, bristled with binoculars. Shortly after two P.M. a crimson-sashed band sent a fanfare across adjoining vineyards. A specially imported battalion of gendarmes took up positions along the curb. And slowly the fairytale came into view.
It was headed by a master of ceremonies with ivory staff, black garb and silk stockings and by two tiny pages in breeches. Behind them glided, at slow ceremonial pace, the presidential fleet of limousines usually reserved by the mayor of nearby Bordeaux for General de Gaulle. A splendor of orchids smothered the first car from figurehead to tail lights. It bore a princess on her wedding day.
She was gowned in white satin (signed by that august overseer of contemporary idylls, Monsieur Balenciaga), crowned with a diadem of white mink and diamond stars. Her hand held a spray of apple blossoms flown in that morning from Turkey. The bridegroom at her side was—with gratifying appositeness—a very handsome, very talented, very poor young man.
The guests riding behind them had been brought from Paris by a private contingent of Pullman cars added to the Sud Express. And since weddings must have picture-takers, this one had Cecil Beaton, on leave from his post at Buckingham Palace as her Majesty’s official photographer. Here he attended to his duties in top hat, striped trousers and morning coat.
Still, any occasion can glitter for a hundred thousand dollars. It’s not mere shininess that makes a fairytale, but the glow of familiarity; the magic comes not from telling, but from telling once again.
It was being told once again in the village of Pauillac on March 4, 1961. This was a Rothschild wedding. Baron Philippe of Château Mouton Rothschild was giving in marriage his daughter Philippine. Each tint making up the iridescence of the occasion had a tradition handed down by nanny, butler, dowager—by all the archivists with and without livery. Even as the procession still filed down the street, the service entrance of Château Mouton admitted a wedding cake nearly seven feet tall. In pure spun sugar it celebrated the five Rothschild arrows: the family escutcheon conceived a hundred and forty years before, amid Frankfurt pogroms, in the face of cross fire from Austria’s College of Heraldry. And when the wedding limousines stopped before the great gates of the château, a troop of estate workers helped the gendarmes form a cordon; they all wore armbands of yellow and blue—the famous colors that had marked Rothschild couriers as they raced through disaster and triumph from Napoleon to World
No modern name breathes a more storied eminence. No nonroyal family has held so much power so consistently, so peculiarly. Today many members of the clan cannot disguise a lordliness which has become exotic, if not downright exasperating, in our age. It would be insufficient to sum up the family as “still very wealthy.” The Rothschild fortunes in England and in France are as ineffable as ever.
To the world at large, “Rothschild” means proverbial and rather dead money. But to the very rich, to those who actually know the clan or would like to, “Rothschild” conjures something very alive, something enviably, ridiculously, unattainably exaggerated; something like a gilt coach drawn by twelve white steeds.
In the private railroad cars that whisked the clan to the wedding, the Byzantine implications of the name were confirmed by a Byzantine amenity. Alexandre, the Dior of the world’s coiffeurs, admits to his Paris establishment only Tout-Paris (as highest society in France is called) or certified Olympians such as Jacqueline Kennedy and Princess Margaret. Aboard the Pullmans scuttling to Bordeaux, Alexandre and selected stars of his staff waited, combs ready. Their presence was a prewedding favor from the host. Any Rothschild guest could have her tresses perfected by the master himself while white-gloved butlers offered her champagne and caviar. Alexandre well knows the splendor of the family. His own appointment book, a daily Almanach de Gotha, gives a clue. In that book, as in the imagination of the haut monde, a designation like “Comtesse Pierre” is meaningless if a surname isn’t added. But “Baronne Elie” or “Baronne Philippe” can only mean “de Rothschild.”
“They are the true successors to the Bourbons in France,” an editor of the French Vogue sighed early this year. “There are no others where the first name is enough.”
In fact, the celebrants at Pauillac and the people over at Buckingham Palace seem to be the only families left with great functioning kingdoms at their disposal. And for generations the people at Buckingham Palace have recognized the kinship: Queen Victoria often dined and slept in Rothschild houses; the Duke of Windsor fled to a Rothschild (an Austrian one) directly after his abdication. Where kings have vanished, presidents must suffice: the only time President Coty of France dined officially at a private residence was with Baron Philippe, the bride’s father, at his Parisian duplex in 1952.
Like any child born at such an altitude, the bride inherited, in addition to everything else, history. It has been said that on the day of its birth the average Rothschild baby is 150 million dollars rich and 150 years old. The figures may be imprecise, but the idea is accurate. Over the past century and a half, a Rothschild personality has crystallized itself with such definition that no new bearer of the name can entirely escape it. The young Rothschilds today (there are over a dozen under the age of twenty-one) may discuss Sartre or dig cool jazz, but their lives are still part of an old genealogical design. This is due to inbreeding on a royal scale. It is also due to a formidable sense of the ancestral—a Jewish as well as an aristocratic characteristic.
Even the most shocking aspect of the event at Pauillac rested on family precedent. The village priest had solemnized Philippine’s union with a Catholic (delivering a somewhat embarrassed sermon on the Old Testament and the virtues of the Jews). Actually he was only refreshing a venerable Rothschild scandal. From the very first this vehemently Jewish dynasty has permitted its daughters—not its sons—to marry Christians.
Also traditional was the confusion of the guest register at Château Mouton. Seventy-odd Rothschilds signed it. And many of them, through many generations, have the same given names. By this the house emphasizes its unity and continuity, re-creates its ancestors and infuriates its biographers. There is nothing so confounding as the Rothschild family tree. The English branch, for example, began with Nathan Mayer; proceeded to Lionel and Nathaniel; went on to Lionel Walter, Lionel Nathan, James Nathaniel and Nathaniel Charles. Today it contributes to family reunions the present Lord Rothschild, named Nathaniel Mayer Victor, and a son of his, Nathaniel Charles.
Not content with the repetition of first names, the Rothschilds have evolved a lineage of pseudonyms—a peculiarity relevant to the nuptials at Pauillac. Henri de Rothschild, the bride’s grandfather, wrote some successful dramas under the nom de plume of André Pascal. His son Philippe produced plays and motion pictures as Philippe Pascal. And Philippe’s daughter Philippine, the bride herself, receives billing as Philippine Pascal at the Comédie Française. The fact that in Jacques Sereys she married a director of the Comédie shows how every Rothschild interest finds dynastic expression.
What would be a trifling inclination elsewhere becomes here a stately family landmark. The clan’s sweet tooth has not only given the Rothschild soufflé to the world’s menus; not only goaded the master chefs in family employ to push the art of pastry beyond its previous frontiers; not only produced a clause in the 1905 will of Baron Alphonse leaving 25,000 gold francs to his “dear son-in-law Albert…so that he may buy himself some chocolates”; but also engendered the delectable dogma that on all intrafamily visits chocolate soufflé be served.
2. Chutzpah and Orchids
The orchids decking the bridal car manifested another Rothschild habit: impatience with imperfection, however slight. For the Rothschilds, sticking to the best is an obvious imperative, the equivalent of a shoemaker sticking to his last. More than any other group in the world, they have chutzpah. This is a Yiddish word related phonetically and philosophically to the Greek hubris. The latter term conveys uncompromising and in the end self-destructive pride. Achilles died of hubris, but Rothschilds positively prosper on chutzpah.
The orchids lighting up Philippine’s limousine came from a giant estate in Exbury near Southampton. Here stand thirty hothouses, built of teak and putting nearly four acres under glass. They belong to Edmund de Rothschild, the present senior partner of the family bank in London; and the petals he breeds owe their queenliness to the imperious connoisseurship first instituted by his father, Lionel. During World War II, for example, much of the hothouse personnel was drafted. Lionel realized he could not provide for all his young seedlings. “Many, many hundreds were destroyed,” Lionel’s orchid man recalls. “Mr. de Rothschild did not feel inclined to sell them, thinking it impossible for another man to give them as much care as their quality required…”
Turn to the rhododendrons, also very much in evidence among the floral garlands at Pauillac. They, too, had been imported from Exbury. Once Lionel de Rothschild’s army of two hundred gardeners nourished and manicured his vast flower pavilions there. Today Edmund, his heir, owns a landscape which contains more hundreds of thousands of superb rhododendron plants than any other spot on earth. This is due not only to care, but to a chutzpah unmerciful.
“Mr. Lionel,” recalls the estate manager, Peter Barber, “developed over twelve hundred rhododendron hybrids. But he was ruthless with his burnings. He might watch a large batch of seedlings for ten years. He’d wait till they had all flowered in order to pick out the very best ones in the lot—and destroy all the rest. This was a strict rule. He wanted not one flower of merely good quality in his gardens.”
In unpleasant contexts, too, the family remains addicted to the impeccable. During World War II Chaim Weizmann, the head of World Zionism, lived in London’s Dorchester Hotel. The present Lord Rothschild had also moved there, since the drafting of male servants had made the maintenance of more elaborate households impossible. During a German raid Weizmann watched the young lord trying to calm his three tots in the bomb shelter—a vain occupation that lasted through the whole bomb-ridden night. At last Weizmann asked his Lordship why he hadn’t sent his children to the United States, like so many other people of means?
“Why?” his Lordship said, squashing the pacifier in his fist. “Why! Because of their blasted last name. If I sent those three miserable little things over, the world would say that seven million Jews are cowards!”
Even in a frivolous milieu like Paris’ Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter, the family’s consciousness of a special responsibility will not go to sleep. One evening last year three smart young couples sat on the sidewalk terrace of one of the more bohemian cafés. A hurdy-gurdy player came up with his cap. The three men in the group reached for some coins. “Merci,” said the hurdy-gurdy player and was about to leave when in a twinkling the handsome girl called Philippine pressed a note on him. Nobody took much notice, except perhaps those knowing who she was: no longer just a girl on a date, but suddenly a Rothschild confronted by a beggar.
