The House of Rothschild, Volume 1

by Niall Ferguson

  The tables could be turned, however. In May 1816 Salomon gave a dinner to which he invited the leading members of the diplomatic corps, as well as Bethmann and Gontard. All accepted. As a Rothschild cousin related with glee:

  Today Kessler [a Frankfurt broker] asked me at the Stock Exchange whether it was true that it was really so exquisite at the Rothschilds’ house. Apparently there was much talk about it at the casino. He also wanted to know who was present. I mentioned the Ministers, Bethmann, Gontard etc. I assure you that Bethmann as well as Gontard were full of praise, saying that it was a very lively affair and that Madame Rothschild knew how to arrange everything well. Bethmann especially liked the children, Anselm and Betty; he said that Betty had a fine education.

  When one of the family’s most ardent foes heard that “Gontard was dining with Salomon, he said: ‘Mr Gontard as well?’ and sighed . . . He seemed upset and that is something.” Three months later Amschel and Carl threw an even larger dinner, principally for the diplomatic representatives of the larger German states. Among those present was Wilhelm von Humboldt. The exercise was successfully repeated a year later. Only the Frankfurt Bürgermeister and one other invitee declined to attend.

  The speed of this shift in attitudes astonished the Bremen Bürgermeister Smidt, one of the most determined opponents of Jewish emancipation of all the state delegates in Frankfurt. “Right up until the end of last year,” he commented in August 1820,

  it was against all customs and habits of life to admit a Jew into so-called “good society.” No Frankfurt banker or merchant would invite a Jew to dine with him, not even one of the Rothschilds, and the delegates to the Confederal Diet had such regard for this custom that they did the same. Since my return I find to my great astonishment that people like the Bethmanns, Gontards [and] Brentanos eat and drink with the leading Jews, invite them to their houses and are invited back, and, when I expressed my surprise, I was told that, as no financial transaction of any importance could be carried through without the co-operation of these people, they had to be treated as friends, and it was not desirable to fall out with them. In view of these developments, the Rothschilds have also been invited by some of the ambassadors.

  It was not long before Amschel was inviting him too. He accepted. By the 1840s Amschel was routinely giving such dinners “about once a fortnight [to] all visitors of rank.”

  In Vienna it proved much harder to overcome the traditional social barriers. Although Metternich had no objection to “taking soup” with Amschel in Frankfurt in 1821, the Austrian capital was a different matter. Contemporary comment strongly suggests that social life in Vienna remained more segregated along religious lines than elsewhere. In the 1820s, Gentz remarked, the Jewish “aristocracy of money” tended to dine and dance together, apart from the aristocracy proper. When the English writer Frances Trollope (the novelist’s mother) visited Vienna in the 1830s, she encountered the same schism:

  Neither in London nor in Paris is there anything in the least degree analogous to the station which the bankers of Vienna hold in their society. Their wealth as a body is enormous and, therefore, as a body they are, and must be, of very considerable influence and importance to the state . . . And yet with all this—with title, fortune, influence and a magnificent style of living—the bankers are as uniformly unadmitted and inadmissible in the higher circles, as if they had continued as primitively unpretending in station as their goldsmith progenitors.

  Trollope was no unbiased observer, of course. She herself disliked being “surrounded . . . at the the largest and most splendid parties of the monied aristocracies . . . by a black-eyed, high-nosed group of . . . unmistakable Jews” (a prejudice which she managed to pass on to her son). But, writing in the 1830s, it was not unreasonable for her to doubt:

  how far they are, or will ever be kindly or affectionately amalgamated with the other members of this Christian and Catholic Empire . . . Their power, as a rich body, is very great and penetrates widely and deeply amongst some important fibres of the body politic; but they are not, perhaps, the better loved for this by their Christian fellow subjects, and the consequence is, that their social position is more pre-eminently a false one than that of any set of people I have ever had an opportunity of observing . . . No one who visits Vienna with his eyes open and mixes at all in society, but will find reason to agree with me in the opinion that any attempt to blend Christians and Jews in social and familiar union may answer for an hour or a day, but will not eventually lead to affection or tolerance on either side.

  Only in the late 1830s were senior political figures willing to accept invitations to dine with Salomon in the Hotel zum Römischen Kaiser. The Metternichs did so in January 1836, along with Princess Marie Esterházy and a number of other distinguished guests who were duly impressed by his French chef. But when Count Kolowrat accepted an invitation from Salomon (evidently for the first time) in 1838, “some people of his own position in society told him that this was giving offence. ‘What would you have me do?’ he said. ‘Rothschild attached such enormous importance to my coming that I had to sacrifice myself to the interests of the service, as the State needs him.’ ”

  Nathan had fewer difficulties. Foreign ambassadors and other dignitaries accepted his invitations to dinner from an early stage: he dined with the Humboldts in 1818, as we have seen, Chateaubriand dined with him in 1822, and the Esterházys were regular guests. Prince Pückler’s letters record a number of different social occasions at Nathan’s, including a “splendid dinner” in 1828, the dessert of which was served on solid gold dishes. What is not certain is whether Nathan’s apparently close relations with Tory politicians like Herries, Vansittart and Wellington extended as far as the dinner table: quite possibly the greater part of the conversations he had with such figures took place in their offices. By contrast, proponents of Jewish emancipation among the Whig aristocracy like the Duke of St Albans and the Earl of Lauderdale were happy to dine with him, as was the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, a prominent supporter in the Commons, who was a Rothschild guest in 1831. It also seems reasonable to assume that most of the visiting English aristocrats whom James invited to dinner in Paris had already been entertained by Nathan: “your charming Lady Londonderry,” for example, whom James “stuffed” with best British venison provided by Nathan in 1833; and the Duke of Richmond, whom he invited to dinner a year later. The brothers’ careful cultivation of the British royal family and its Saxe-Coburg relations also paid social dividends (though it was not until after Nathan’s death that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge accepted an invitation to Gunnersbury). In the winter of 1826 Carl played host to Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, entertaining him with amateur dramatics, “balls and soirees” at his villa in Naples. Then, as now, members of the social elite found it difficult to resist the offer of Mediterranean hospitality in the middle of the North European winter. The Montefiores also found Carl entertaining and being entertained by the indigenous aristocracy when they visited him in 1828.

  Of all the Rothschild brothers, James made the most determined effort to achieve social success; perhaps his superior education gave him the confidence to do so. In 1816, equipped with a handbook of etiquette, he scored his first success, inviting the duc de Richelieu’s private secretary to dinner à deux. But he too encountered resistance. Despite the social upheavals of the Revolutionary and Napeolonic eras, the French capital was far from free of snobbery and prejudice, and he was treated to an especially flagrant snub from his rivals Baring and Labouchère in 1818. It was not until March 2, 1821, that James really launched himself as a society host with his first full-scale ball in the refurbished rue d’Artois hôtel. The somewhat world-weary Berliner Henrietta Mendelssohn described how

  for the past two weeks nothing has been talked about in the world of the great and the rich here, save a ball which Herr Rothschild finally gave yesterday evening in his new and magnificently decorated house. As yet I have no details as to how it went, but I can scarcely believe it was ot
her than as I have heard for more than ten days—I do not exaggerate—from people of every age and class: that 800 people were invited and at least as many besieged him with visits, letters and pleas in the hope of getting an invitation . . . As I am presently feeling—for whatever reason—daily more miserable and peevish, I did not make use of my invitation to this ball, though it was sent by Herr Rothschild with the most courteous billet ever written.

  The campaign was relentless. In April 1826 the Austrian ambassador described a sumptuous meal chez “M. de Rothschild” attended not only by the other ambassadors of the great powers, but also by Metternich, the Duke of Devonshire, the Russian Prince Razumovski and a small galaxy of French aristocrats: the duc and duchesse de Maillé, baron de Damas (the French Foreign Minister of the day), the duc de Duras and the comte de Montalembert. A year and a half later, when the maréchal de Castellane dined with James, he encountered the English and Russian ambassadors, the duc de Mouchy and the comte Juste de Noailles. On average James had around four dinners a week, each with at least ten guests and sometimes as many as sixty. The night before the birth of his first child, Charlotte, he had eighteen to dinner; the following evening twenty-six.

  Part of the attraction of a Rothschild event—as James well knew—was the sheer extravagance of the hospitality. As Henrietta Mendelssohn commented sardonically, invitations to James’s ball in 1821 went to a premium when it was heard “that all the ladies would be given a bouquet of flowers on entering the ballroom with a diamond ring or brooch” or that there would at least be “a lottery which would give a prize to each of the ladies.” When Apponyi dined with him in 1826, the table was dominated by an immense silver-plated platter in the form of a candelabrum—worth, Apponyi guessed, at least 100,000 francs—and the food was prepared by the famous chef Antonin Carême, who numbered among his previous employers the Prince Regent and Tsar Alexander. So rich was the combination of turtle soup and madeira that a dyspeptic Apponyi resolved to pay the customary visite de digestion eight days later than usual.

  In many ways, Carême’s elaborate cuisine was James’s principal attraction in this early phase of his social ascent. The popular writer Lady Sydney Morgan was only one of many who drooled over his cooking when she dined with James at Boulogne: “[T]he delicate gravies were made with almost chemical precision . . . each vegetable still had its fresh colour . . . the mayonnaise was whipped ice cold . . . Carême deserves a laurel wreath for perfecting an art form by which modern civilisation is measured.” The coup de théâtre on this occasion was an enormous cake with her name inscribed in icing sugar, surrounded by all the supporters of the Holy Alliance. James took pains to find a worthy successor to Carême when he needed a new cook. Nor was he the only member of the family to value his chef. Though they themselves never tasted a mouthful of it, both Amschel and Salomon insisted on providing their guests in Frankfurt and Vienna with the best of French cooking. Disraeli was one of the most frequent recipients of Rothschild food outside the immediate family itself, and his account in Endymion of “delicate dishes which [guests] looked at with wonder, and tasted with timidity” gives an idea of its crucial social function.

  Snobbery

  Yet, although their invitations were accepted, it cannot be said that the Rothschild brothers were liked. Contemporaries found Nathan Rothschild an intimidating man: unprepossessing in aspect and coarse to the point of downright rudeness in manner. Prince Pückler was given a typically rough ride when he called on “the ruler of the City” at New Court for the first time in 1826:

  I found the Russian consul there, engaged in paying his court. He was a distinguished and intelligent man, who knew perfectly how to play the role of the humble debtor, while retaining the proper air of dignity. This was made the more difficult since the guiding genius of the City did not stand on ceremony. When I had handed him my letter of credit, he remarked ironically that we rich people were fortunate in being able to travel about and amuse ourselves, while on him, poor man, there rested the cares of the world, and he went on, bitterly bewailing his lot, no poor devil came to England without wanting something from him. “Yesterday,” he said, “there was a Russian begging of me” (an episode which threw a bittersweet expression over the consul’s face) “and,” he added, “the Germans here don’t give me a moment’s peace.” Now it was my turn to put a good face on the matter . . . All this in a language peculiarly his own, half English, half German, the English with an entirely German accent, yet all declaimed with an imposing self-possession which seemed to find such trifles beneath his notice.

  Flattery was only partially successful. When Pückler and the visiting Russian declared “that Europe could not subsist without him” Nathan “modestly declined our compliment and said, smiling, ‘Oh no, you are only jesting; I am but a servant whom people are pleased with because he manages their affairs well, and to whom they let some crumbs fall as an acknowledgement.’ ” This was sarcasm, as the discomfited Pückler knew only too well.

  In his novel Tancred, Disraeli—who, as we shall see, came to know Nathan’s son Lionel well in the 1830s—drew on similar recollections when describing his hero’s attempt to gain an audience with the elder Sidonia, a character at least partly based on Nathan:

  At this moment there entered the room, from the glass door, the same young man who had ushered Tancred into the apartment. He brought a letter to Sidonia. Lord Montacute felt confused; his shyness returned to him . . . He rose, and began to say good morning when Sidonia, without taking his eyes off the letter, saw him, and waving his hand, stopped him, saying, “I settled with Lord Eskdale that you were not to go away if anything occurred which required my momentary attention.” . . .

  “Write,” continued Sidonia to the clerk, “that my letters are twelve hours later than the despatches, and that the City continued quite tranquil. Let the extract from the Berlin letter be left at the same time at the Treasury. The last bulletin?”

  “Consols dropping at half-past two; all the foreign funds lower; shares very active.”

  They were once more alone.

  Such bruising encounters in the office were later distilled into the famous “two chairs” joke, probably the most frequently reprinted Rothschild joke, which must surely have been inspired by Nathan. An eminent visitor is shown into Rothschild’s office; without looking up from his desk, Rothschild casually invites him to “take a chair.” “Do you realise whom you are addressing?” exclaims the affronted dignitary. Rothschild still does not look up: “So take two chairs.” (One of many variants has the visitor indignantly announcing himself as the Prince of Thurn und Taxis; Rothschild implicitly offers each a chair.)

  Nor was it only on his own territory—his office—that Nathan was famed for his blithe disregard for social rank. Even to the dining rooms of polite society he brought the abrasive manners and harsh, puncturing humour of the Frankfurt Judengasse. When Prince Pückler was invited to dine with Nathan he was “diverted” to “hear him explain to us the pictures around the dining room, (all portraits of the sovereigns of Europe, presented through all their ministers) and talk of the originals as his very good friends, and, in a certain sense, his equals”:

  “Yes,” said he, “the ____ once pressed me for a loan, and in the same week in which I received his autograph letter, his father wrote to me also with his own hand from Rome to beg me for Heaven’s sake not to have any concern in it, for that I could not have to do with a more dishonest man than his son. ‘C’était sans doute très Catholique’; probably, however, the letter was written by the old ____ who hated her own son to such a degree that she used to say of him,—everybody knows how unjustly,—‘He has the heart of a t_____ with the face of an a____ .’ ”

  After a dinner at which Nathan had brutally deflated a fellow guest, the German ambassador Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote to his wife:

  Yesterday Rothschild dined with me. He is quite crude and uneducated, but he has a great deal of intelligence and a positive genius for money. He scored off Ma
jor Martins beautifully once or twice. M. was dining with me too and kept on praising everything French. He was being fatu- ously sentimental about the horrors of war and the large numbers who had been killed. “Well,” said R., “if they had not all died, Major, you would probably still be a drummer.” You ought to have seen Martins” face.

  Even in less exalted company Nathan could seem a boor: witness the Liberal MP Thomas Fowell Buxton’s account of Nathan’s table talk at a dinner they both attended at Ham House in 1834. Here, it seems, is the self-made millionaire at his self-satisfied worst, proffering pat explanations for his own success and banal advice to others:

  “I have seen . . . many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but fate is against them; they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me? . . .

  “To give . . . mind, and soul, and heart, and body, and everything to business; that is the way to be happy. I required a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune; and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it. If I were to listen to all the projects proposed to me, I should ruin myself very soon. Stick to one business, young man . . . stick to your brewery, and you may be the great brewer of London. Be a brewer, and a banker, and a merchant, and a manufacturer, and you will soon be in the Gazette.”