The House Of Rothschild Part 6

When this generation duly married, male children continued to be at a premium. Indeed, the pressure to produce sons was if anything rather greater. "What do you think of my new little girl?" Anselm asked Anthony, following the birth of his second daughter Hannah Mathilde in 1832. "A boy would have been more acceptable." (His wife Charlotte's first child had been a boy, but he had died in infancy in 1828.) When Lionel too was presented with a daughter, Leonora, one of the senior clerks in Paris wrote to console him: "I actually compliment you that it is a daughter which our dear lady has given you-for you know it is necessary that the first child in our family is of that s.e.x . . . it is a superst.i.tion, but that's the way it is." "You may have wished for a son," he added, "but he will come-in two years you will announce him." But when, at the appointed date, another girl was born, Anthony could not disguise his disappointment: "Congratulations to you & your good lady. In these affairs one must take what one can get." He too had to rest content with two daughters; his brother Mayer with just one. Carl's sons Mayer Carl and Wilhelm Carl had no fewer than ten girls between them, but no sons. It was not until 1840 that the third generation produced a boy (Lionel's son Nathaniel, followed by Alfred two years later); and when news broke that Nat's wife was pregnant, there was hope of a winning streak. "Nat has determined not to be outdone by the Rest of the family & intends next year to present you to his son & heir-that is the great news of the day," enthused Anthony. "It is quite [certain] & if he intends keeping par with his eldest brother a pretty lot of little ones will be in the family & the more the happier." It was another girl, and she died before her first birthday.

It would be wrong to infer from such remarks a crude "s.e.xism," however. They were more indicative of an anxiety-which lasted for some years-that the third generation would fail to produce male heirs altogether. In the eyes of Nathan's wife Hannah, as she put it in 1832, it was "of no consequence to our gratification whether a boy or a girl, so [I] have no pity for any who choose to grumble." Nor was this just the female point of view. Once his wife had produced a son, Anselm lost his preference for male children, as he revealed when she became pregnant again: If Carlo Dolee [apparently a nickname for Nat, whose wife was also pregnant] has fabricated a little girl or boy my offspring will . . . be very acceptable as for a husband or for a wife . . . The Public will not say the Rothschild family has been idle that year. I hope Billy will soon follow the good example, if he goes to [the spa at] Ems, he may be sure of success.

So far, so conventional. But Anselm's light-hearted letter also touches on what was perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Rothschilds' history as a family. For the princ.i.p.al reason daughters were not regarded as much less desirable than sons was that the family practised a remarkably sustained strategy of endogamy.

Before 1824 Rothschilds had tended to marry members of other, similar Jewish families, often those with whom they did business. That was true of the wives of all but one of Mayer Amschel's sons-who married, respectively, Eva Hanau, Caroline Stern, Hannah Cohen and Adelheid Herz-as well as of his daughters' husbands-Messrs Worms, Sichel, Montefiore and the two Beyfuses. This was not unusual by nineteenth-century standards. As we have seen, the Stattigkeit imposed on the Frankfurt Jews had more or less made intermarriage within the small community of the Judenga.s.se compulsory. Even without that compulsion, however, most people-and not only Jews-tended to marry within their own religious community, seeking out an equivalent community (as Nathan did in London) if they happened to leave their home town. After 1824, however, Rothschilds tended to marry Rothschilds. Of twenty-one marriages involving descendants of Mayer Amschel between 1824 and 1877, no fewer than fifteen were between his direct descendants. Although marriage between cousins was far from uncommon in the nineteenth century-especially among German-Jewish business dynasties-this was an extraordinary amount of intermarriage. "These Rothschilds harmonise with one another in the most remarkable fas.h.i.+on," declared Heine. "Strangely enough, they even choose marriage partners from among themselves and the strands of relations.h.i.+p between them form complicated knots which future historians will find difficult to unravel." It is only too true; not even the royal families of Europe were as closely inbred, though self-conscious references to "our royal family" suggest that the Rothschilds regarded them as a kind of model. This was one of the other things the Rothschilds had in common with the Saxe-Coburgs.

It began in July 1824 when James married his own niece, his brother Salomon's daughter Betty. (Because he was so much younger than Salomon, the gap in age was not impossibly large: he was thirty-two, she nineteen.) Two years later Salomon's son Anselm married Nathan's eldest daughter Charlotte. There was then a ten-year lull, until the marriage of Nathan's eldest son Lionel to Carl's eldest daughter Charlotte-at a decisive turning point in the history of the family, as we shall see. Six years after that, Nat married James's daughter Charlotte (the limited range of names adds to the genealogical complexity); and Carl's son Mayer Carl married Nathan's third daughter Louise. Although their wives did not have the surname "Rothschild," Nathan's other sons Anthony and Mayer also married first cousins: Louisa Montefiore (in 1840) and Juliana Cohen (in 1850). (The former was also a descendant of Mayer Amschel as her mother was Nathan's sister Henrietta; the latter was Hannah's niece.) And so it went on, into the fourth generation. In 1849 Carl's third son Wilhelm Carl married Hannah Mathilde, Anselm's second daughter; a year later his brother Adolph married her sister Caroline Julie. In 1857 James's son Alphonse married Lionel's daughter Leonora; in 1862 his brother Salomon James married Adele, Mayer Carl's daughter; and in 1877 James's youngest son Edmond married Adelheid, Wilhelm Carl's second daughter. Anselm's sons Ferdinand and Salomon both married fellow Rothschilds: Lionel's second daughter Evelina (in 1865) and Alphonse's first daughter Bettina (in 1876). Finally, Lionel's eldest son Nathaniel-usually known as "Natty"-married Mayer Carl's daughter Emma Louise (in 1867); and Nat's son James Edouard married her sister Laura Therese (in 1871).

Why did they do it? Romantic love, the conventional modern rationale for marriage, was plainly a minor consideration in the eyes of the older generation, who drew a distinction between a "marriage of convenience" and a "marriage of affection"-Carl's typology when scouring Germany for a suitable wife for himself. "I am not in love," he a.s.sured his brothers, when justifying his choice of Adelheid Herz. "On the contrary. If I knew [of] another, I would marry her." Nor did Amschel marry Eva Hanau for love; according to one contemporary account, he openly acknowledged that "the one creature that I ever really loved I have never been able to call mine"; and his nephew Anselm regarded their golden wedding anniversary as marking "fifty years of matrimonial struggle." Caroline and Salomon were less ill suited to one another; but we have already seen how little time they spent together in the years 1812-15, when he was constantly on the move as business-or rather as Nathan-dictated. Five years later not much had changed: Caroline (in Frankfurt) was urging Salomon (in Vienna) not to go to St Petersburg merely because "your Nathan wants you to": That is really incomprehensible; is there anywhere you aren't expected to go? Please, dear Salomon, do not let yourself be talked into it talked into it, [resist it] with all your strength and your considerable intelligence. Moreover, I do not understand your letter very clearly. For there are places in it which seem to suggest that you are going to have to go to Paris or even London. I am usually willing to accept your Nathan's arguments for the above-mentioned business. But I cannot see the justification for this . . . Your Nathan cannot simply ignore the views of all of you . . . In any event, dear Salomon, you are not not going to London without my knowing the reason why. Understood, my dear husband? You are going to London without my knowing the reason why. Understood, my dear husband? You are not not doing it. doing it.9 If there ever had been a romantic relations.h.i.+p between these two, there was not much left of it by the time Salomon finally ended his years of nomadism and settled in Vienna. She never joined him there, and the son of one of Salomon's senior clerks recalled that by the 1840s he had developed a somewhat reckless enthusiasm for young girls.

To be sure, love could and did develop within such marriages. Nathan's relations.h.i.+p with Hannah ill.u.s.trates this well: her letters to her "dear Rothschild" suggest a genuine affinity, albeit one based in large part on a shared enthusiasm for making money.10 But such affinities were supposed to follow rather than precede marriage; they were not elective. As for James, he evidently treated his niece and wife, beautiful and intelligent though she was, primarily as a useful social a.s.set. "To deprive oneself of one's wife is difficult," he confided in Nathan after just months of marriage. "I could not deprive myself of mine. She is an essential piece of furniture." The James fictionalised as Nucingen by Balzac was respectful of his wife-indeed, treated her as an equal-but went to a succession of mistresses to satisfy his s.e.xual needs and fell in love only once: with a courtesan. But such affinities were supposed to follow rather than precede marriage; they were not elective. As for James, he evidently treated his niece and wife, beautiful and intelligent though she was, primarily as a useful social a.s.set. "To deprive oneself of one's wife is difficult," he confided in Nathan after just months of marriage. "I could not deprive myself of mine. She is an essential piece of furniture." The James fictionalised as Nucingen by Balzac was respectful of his wife-indeed, treated her as an equal-but went to a succession of mistresses to satisfy his s.e.xual needs and fell in love only once: with a courtesan.

The next generation might have been expected to be less hard-nosed in their att.i.tudes towards marriage, following the trend we a.s.sociate with the reign of Victoria (who successfully converted her own arranged marriage into a pa.s.sionate romance). There is some evidence to suggest such a softening. Lionel's letters from Paris to his cousin Charlotte, before their wedding in Frankfurt in 1836, seem to indicate a genuine pa.s.sion. "Now that I am separated," he effused on January 7, "I only know the meaning of the word and am only able to judge of my love, of my entirely and devoted love for you Dear Charlotte, & wish I were able to express it in words. But I cannot, even in endeavouring to do so my pen has fallen from my hand and more than an hour has pa.s.sed thinking of you, without taking it up-" Her reply spurred him on: I had pa.s.sed several long days anxiously and tediously without hearing one word from you Dearest Charlotte, when I received your few lines and was then, for the first time since I have left, rendered happy for a few minutes, but I am now again in my melancholy state, your letter I have read over and over, and each time have regretted more and more the great distance that now separates us. I was also grieved to see that you still have such an indifferent opinion of me; you talk of Amus.e.m.e.nts, Occupations etc. Do you think I can have any that I do not enjoy with you Dear Charlotte? I have been invited everywhere, been entreated to join in some parties of amus.e.m.e.nt with old friends, but have declined. The only manner of pa.s.sing my time without being annoyed is when I am alone at my Hotel, thinking and only thinking of you Dearest Charlotte . . .

A week later, his tone was was even more desperately romantic: It is a little gratification in obliging you to occupy yourself with and to think of, if only for a few minutes, an absent friend, whose thoughts have never strayed for you, since his departure. Is it the case with others or am I different to the world in large? I have so much to say to you and feel so much the want of conversing with you Dearest Charlotte, that my ideas are confused. I begin with the same and end with the same, and then find myself in the same place; if I cannot have the happiness of telling you so verbally within a short time, I shall go mad.

Yet Lionel rather spoiled the effect of his love-letters when he added: "How happy [my parents] are to see me so attached to you and so fortunate as to have obtained the favours of a person of whom every person speaks in such high terms, and whose acquaintance they are so anxious to make." And only months before, while still on business in Madrid, he had expressed altogether less pa.s.sionate sentiments in a letter to his brother Anthony: I will do whatever my parents and uncles think best about staying or returning. If Uncle Charles [Carl] is gone to Naples, it will not be necessary for me to go soon to Frankfurt. Everything will therefore depend upon the family plans, as I think it makes very little difference for me to go to Frankfurt a few months earlier or later as I have no particular fancy to get married just immediately, a few weeks earlier or later makes no difference without our good parents' wish to go to Frankfurt.

Moreover, it seems that Charlotte (as Lionel evidently realised) was still less excited at the prospect of marrying her cousin. His letters to her in fact suggest a combination of cribbing from fas.h.i.+onable novels and determined auto-suggestion-which, to give Lionel his due, seems to have achieved its object. By the time they were married, as his brothers discerned with some surprise, he really did seem to love her, even if the feeling was not yet reciprocated.

In truth, then, Rothschild-to-Rothschild marriages of the third generation were no more the products of spontaneous attraction than their parents' had been, even if one or both partners managed to summon up more than affection for their chosen spouse. "They want to make some arrangement with Aunt Henrietta about Billy [Anthony] and Louisa [Montefiore]," reported Lionel to his brothers on the eve of his own wedding, rather as if reporting the performance of stocks on the Frankfurt bourse. "Joe [Joseph Montefiore] does not find much favour in H[annah] M[ayer]'s good graces. He runs after Louise who takes no notice of him. Of young Charles [Mayer Carl] and Lou [Louise] there is nothing going on; they have only spoken but a few words with each other." Immediately after the wedding, he was able to provide an update: "H[annah] M[ayer] and J[oseph Montefiore] do not take much notice of each other. The latter runs after L[ouise] who is also courted by another cousin [Mayer Carl] who has taken a fancy to her. Please G.o.d, it will be a match and he will be doubly my Brother in Law." His mother was watching the marriage market equally closely. Mayer Carl, she reported, "is more agreeable & communicative than I expected and very capable if he pleases to make an impression on a young lady's heart. I fancy him now to be more manly than our other young beau; there is no alteration in Mayer, no flirtation between him and the other Charlotte Rothschild, therefore whoever is to be the happy man at a future period, will have no cause for jealousy." Six years later she married her daughter Louise off to the said Mayer Carl, while the "other Charlotte"-who had been barely eleven years old when she first discussed her prospects-married her son Nat.

The typically Victorian corollary of this system of arranged marriages was that male Rothschilds were allowed to "sow wild oats": the personal letters which Nathan's sons, nephews and their friends exchanged hint at a number of premarital liaisons. These were tolerated by the older generation provided nothing took place which might impede or damage the system of intermarriage. In 1829, for example, Anthony-who was evidently the playboy of the generation-overstepped the mark by forming too serious an attachment with an unidentified (but unsuitable) girl in Frankfurt. His father angrily summoned him home, accusing Amschel of having failed in his avuncular duties.

The first and most important reason for the strategy of intermarriage was precisely to prevent the five houses drifting apart. Related to this was a desire to ensure that outsiders did not acquire a share in the five brothers' immense fortune. Like most arranged matches of the period, each marriage was therefore accompanied by detailed legal agreements governing the property of the two contracting parties. When James married Betty, she acquired no right to his property, but her dowry of 1.5 million francs (60,000) remained part of her own distinct property and, had he predeceased her without issue, she would have recouped not only the dowry but a further 2,250,000 francs. When Anselm married Charlotte a year later, she received not only a dowry of 12,000 (in British stocks) from her father, but a further 8,000 from her uncle and new father-in-law "for her separate use," and 1,000 from Anselm as a kind of pre-nuptial down-payment; while Anselm got 100,000 from his father and 50,000 from Nathan. Such large dowries were easily given when the money was staying in the family.

But, mercenary considerations aside, there was also a genuine social difficulty in finding suitable partners outside the family. By the mid-1820s the Rothschilds were so immensely rich that they had left other families with similar origins far behind. Even as early as 1814 the brothers had found it hard to find a suitable husband for their youngest sister Henrietta, only deciding on Abraham Montefiore (to whom Nathan was already related through his sister-in-law) after much agonising. Their original choice, a man named Hollander, had seemed unsuitable to Carl not because Henrietta did not love him-that was neither here nor there-but because, as he put it, "There seems a horrible crowd connected with the Hollanders . . . [T]o tell the truth young men of good cla.s.s are very rare these days." On the other hand, the man she loved, Kaufmann, was "a crook." A decade later, when the brothers' eldest sister Schonche (also known as Jeannette or Nettche) was persuaded by Amschel and Salomon to remarry following the death of her husband Benedikt Worms, her younger brothers disapproved. As James complained to Nathan, her new husband was merely an impecunious stockbroker from the Judenga.s.se: She has nothing to live on and she told my wife that she doesn't have any bread in the house. The man is a scoundrel. He gambled her dowry away. Today he went to the Bourse again and perhaps he will earn again what he lost. However I don't believe that he will. Tell me, what is your opinion? Do we want to make something for her every year? In the meantime I personally gave her a present of several thousand francs.

By this time only a Rothschild would really do for a Rothschild.

Nothing ill.u.s.trates better the exclusiveness of both the partners.h.i.+p system and the intermarriage policy than the experience of Joseph Montefiore in August 1836. Though his mother Henrietta was born a Rothschild, his suggestion (in the wake of her brother Nathan's death) that he might be "taken as one of the partners in the Firm" elicited an icy response from Lionel. "He was averse to this," Montefiore told his uncle Moses, "alleging that there were already too many [partners] and that it would be a bad precedent, however that I might ask my Uncles at Frankfort, and that he should vote with the majority, observing that if I became a partner I must change my name to that of Rothschild." This was plainly calculated to kill the idea, and it had the desired effect: Montefiore "most decidedly did not like this condition" and indeed "approved of it so little that [he] resolved not even to speak about it to [his] Uncles." As the next best thing, this thick-skinned young man then suggested that he might join the London house without the status of a partner but with the possibility of marrying Lionel's sister Hannah Mayer. But this proposal too was rejected, as we shall see.

There was a danger in the policy of intermarriage, however, which the Rothschilds can scarcely have realised. Prohibitions on cousin marriage had been widespread within Christian culture since the sixth century, when Pope Gregory ruled that "the faithful should only marry relations three or four times removed." In nineteenth-century America, eight states pa.s.sed laws criminalising cousin marriage and a further thirty made it a civil offence. William Cobbett even cited the fact that "Rothschild married his own niece" as an argument against Jewish emanc.i.p.ation. But Jewish law had no such restrictions, while the enforced exclusiveness of the ghetto in a town like Frankfurt positively encouraged cousin marriage. It was not until later in the nineteenth century that the scientific study of heredity began, and only in the second half of the twentieth century that a real understanding of the effects of cousin marriage and other forms of group endogamy has been reached by geneticists. It is now known, for example, that the high incidence among Ashken.a.z.i Jews of Tay-Sachs disease-a condition which fatally damages the brain-is the legacy of centuries of marriage between relatively closely related individuals. Marrying a cousin-especially when the family had spent centuries in the Frankfurt ghetto-was from a strictly medical point of view risky, no matter what the financial rationale. If either Mayer Amschel or Gutle had carried a single copy of a harmful recessive gene, then every time two of their grandchildren married (and it happened four times), there would have been a one in sixteen chance of both both partners inheriting a copy of the damaged gene; in which case their children would have had a one in four chance of receiving two copies of it and hence suffering from the disease in question. partners inheriting a copy of the damaged gene; in which case their children would have had a one in four chance of receiving two copies of it and hence suffering from the disease in question.

The Rothschilds were fortunate not to fall victim to the kind of recessive gene which spread haemophilia through the ranks of nineteenth-century royalty. The only indication of poor health in the next generation is the fact that, of Mayer Amschel's forty-four great-grandchildren, six died before the age of five. By modern standards that is a high level of infant mortality (13.6 per cent compared with 0.8 per cent today); on the other hand, around 25 per cent of all children died before their fifth birthday in Western Europe in the 1840s. Of course, the alternative possibility exists that there was a Rothschild "gene for financial ac.u.men," which intermarriage somehow helped to perpetuate. Perhaps it was that which made the Rothschilds truly exceptional. But that cannot easily be demonstrated, it seems unlikely, and, even if it was the case, those concerned knew nothing of it.

SEVEN.

Barons.

When [Rothschild] obtained the . . . t.i.tle [of baron], it was said,"Montmorency est le premier Baron Chretien, et Rothschild est le premier Baron Juif."

-THOMAS RAIKES

Amschel's garden in the Bockenheimer Landstra.s.se was a symbol of emanc.i.p.ation from the ghetto. However, it would be wrong to suggest that his brothers and their descendants were motivated solely by the same yearnings as Amschel in their decisions to purchase property. As Carl's counter-proposal for a more imposing town house suggests, considerations of economic utility and social prestige also required more s.p.a.cious residences-a place where members of the political elite could be wined and dined in comfort. Two possibilities were discussed at the same time that Amschel was buying his garden: the purchase of more elegant town houses; and the purchase of country estates.

Carl got his way in Frankfurt with the purchase in 1818 of the relatively modest house at 33 Neue Mainzer Stra.s.se. In Nathan's case, the need for a town house separate from New Court was, of course, even more pressing: by 1817 he and Hannah had no fewer than five children-all under ten-and another on the way. (As yet, all his brothers apart from Salomon were still childless, and Salomon had only Anselm and Betty, who lived in relative comfort with their mother in the Schaferga.s.se house in Frankfurt.) In June 1817 Nathan therefore offered the stockbroker James Cazenove 15,750 "payable in cash immediately" for Grosvenor House. Characteristically, however, Nathan refused to pay more than he thought an investment was worth: when Cazenove demanded 19,000 the deal fell through. In fact, it was not until 1825-by which time there were seven children-that Nathan finally acquired the lease on 107 Piccadilly from a member of the Coutts family. At the same time, Moses Montefiore, his brother-in-law and neighbour in St Swithin's Lane, also moved west to Green Street, off Park Lane.

James, of all the brothers the most aesthetically and socially ambitious, was quicker off the mark. In 1816 or 1817 he moved from his original quarters in the rue Le Peletier to the rue de Provence in the Chaussee d'Antin (Paris's main financial centre, in the 9th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt). This did not satisfy him, however, for in December 1818 he bought the hotel at 19 rue d'Artois (renamed rue Laffitte in 1830) which had been built for the banker Laborde before the Revolution, and occupied during the Empire by Hortense, the daughter of Josephine, and Napoleon's Police Minister Fouche. Twelve years later, his brother Salomon bought the house next door (17 Rue Laffitte), though it was not until the mid-1830s that the work of renovation and redecoration of both houses was complete.1 Only in Vienna did it prove impossible to purchase a town house in this period: Salomon continued to rent the Hotel zum Romischen Kaiser in the Rennga.s.se until in 1842 he finally secured an exemption from the rule barring Jews from owning property in the imperial capital. Only in Vienna did it prove impossible to purchase a town house in this period: Salomon continued to rent the Hotel zum Romischen Kaiser in the Rennga.s.se until in 1842 he finally secured an exemption from the rule barring Jews from owning property in the imperial capital.

Nathan, Salomon and James also lost no time in acquiring places in the country-though it should be remembered that in those days, before the growth of London and Paris and the development of railways, it was neither feasible nor necessary to travel far in search of a rural retreat; "suburban retreat" might be a more accurate description. Nathan's first step in this direction was taken in 1816, when he purchased what his sister Henrietta called "a beautiful country estate"-in fact an eight-acre property on the road between Newington and Stamford Hill in the Parish of St John at Hackney. It was there, rather than in New Court, that he and his family thenceforth lived-in contrast to James, who continued to live "over the shop," just a short distance away from the bourse and the Banque de France. It was not until nearly twenty years later that Nathan moved westwards (and upwards), buying the larger and more distinguished Gunnersbury Park near Acton. Built in 1802 for George III's youngest daughter Amelia, Gunnersbury was a large Italianate villa with extensive gardens including a small ornamental lake and a neo-cla.s.sical "temple." Nathan commissioned the architect Sydney Smirke to enlarge the building, adding an orangerie and a dining room, and to enliven the austere facade with some fake marble decoration; he also consulted the landscape specialist John Claudius Loudon about the park.

Nathan himself remained at heart an urban creature: country life-even at Stamford Hill-did not really suit him. "One of my neighbours," he told Buxton a year before the move to Gunnersbury, "is a very ill-tempered man; he tries to vex me, and has built a great place for swine, close to my walk. So, when I go out, I hear first grunt, grunt, squeak, squeak." Though he was quick to insist that "this does me no harm, I am always in good humour," it is hard to miss the confirmed city-dweller's unease with the alien world of agriculture. It may just have been the smell, of course, but Nathan may also have suspected that his neighbour's choice of livestock had an anti-Jewish connotation. Nor-in marked contrast to James and his own sons-did he have the slightest desire to ride, hunt or watch horses race.2 In this pa.s.sage from In this pa.s.sage from Endymion Endymion, Disraeli evidently had Nathan (here "Neuchatel") and Gunnersbury ("Hainault House") in mind: [Neuchatel] was always preparing for his posterity. Governed by this pa.s.sion, although he himself would have been content to live forever in Bishopsgate Street . . . he had become possessed of a vast princ.i.p.ality, and which, strange to say, with every advantage of splendour and natural beauty, was not an hour's drive from Whitechapel.Hainault House had been raised by a British peer in the days when n.o.bles were fond of building Palladian palaces . . . [I]n its style, its beauty, and almost in its dimensions, [it] was a rival of Stowe or Wanstead. It stood in a deer park, and was surrounded by a royal forest. The family that had raised it wore out in the earlier part of this century. It was supposed that the place must be destroyed and dismantled . . . Neuchatel stepped in and purchased the whole affair-palace, and park, and deer, and pictures, and halls, and galleries of statue and bust, and furniture, and even wines, and all the farms that remained, and all the seigneurial rights in the royal forest. But he never lived there. Though he spared nothing in the maintenance and the improvement of the domain, except on a Sunday he never visited it, and was never known to sleep under its roof. "It will be ready for those who come after me," he would remark, with a modest smile.

Although we know that Nathan did sometimes stay there during the week as well, there seems little doubt that he bought Gunnersbury primarily for the sake of his children; and it was not until two years after his death that the house was used for large-scale entertainment.

In France, James and Salomon both bought houses outside Paris, beginning in 1817 when James acquired what was in effect a summer house with a three acre garden at Boulogne-sur-Seine. Nine years later Salomon bought the rather grander house across the river at Suresnes built for the duc de Chaulnes in the eighteenth century. With its ten acres situated on the banks of the Seine (near what is now the rue de Verdun), it played a similar role to Gunnersbury as a country residence within convenient distance of the city. James waited until 1829 before buying the much bigger hunting estate at Ferrieres, with its dilapidated chateau and 1,200 acres some twenty miles to the east of Paris. Unlike Nathan, James genuinely seems to have enjoyed country life. He looked forward to sleeping at Ferrieres as soon as he had bought it and when Hannah Mayer visited him and Betty there in 1833, she found them happily "superintending a little farm."

For the Rothschilds based in Frankfurt and Vienna, however, the purchase of rural estates had to wait. Amschel himself observed that "the first question anyone asks in Germany is: 'Do you have a country estate?' " But he and Carl agreed that it would be a mistake to rise to this socially alluring bait. The owners.h.i.+p of an estate implied a claim to aristocratic status which the owners.h.i.+p of a mere garden did not, and they evidently feared that evincing such delusions of grandeur would fuel the anti-Jewish backlash of the post-war period. At the same time, they doubted the economic rationality of buying agricultural land. What did they know about farming? "Often these estates bring in not more than two per cent," warned Carl-indicating that the brothers were still inclined to regard land as just another form of investment. Such att.i.tudes persisted: Rothschild purchases of land in the next generation were always based on calculations of future yield; and the family managed its immovable a.s.sets as carefully as the more liquid components of its portfolio.

Society.

The original and most frequently cited justification for acquiring these properties had been typically instrumental: each of the brothers needed a large and respectable house in which to entertain the ministers and diplomats who were their most important clients. The acid test of this strategy was whether the sort of figures the Rothschilds wished to entertain would accept their invitations. It was an uphill struggle.

In December 1815 Buderus-the brothers' trusted partner in their dealings with Wilhelm of Hesse-Ka.s.sel-threw a ball. "Bethmann, Gontard, and all the ministers and merchants are invited," complained Amschel bitterly. "We lent the silver. [But] the Finanzrate Finanzrate Rothschild are again left out and not invited." Carl's theory was that Buderus was embarra.s.sed by his former intimacy with them: "He thinks we do not feel the proper respect for him, and that he therefore could not appear before us in such a dignified state. For you ought to know that honours and profits do not go hand in hand." There was a similar snub three months later, when Amschel was bluntly informed that, had he been invited, "rumours would have gone round that we had paid for the ball." At around the same time, Amschel complained that Gontard refused to see him too frequently on business lest his friends "start to treat him as a Jew." Their exclusion as Jews from the Frankfurt Casino (gentlemen's club) also rankled. Rothschild are again left out and not invited." Carl's theory was that Buderus was embarra.s.sed by his former intimacy with them: "He thinks we do not feel the proper respect for him, and that he therefore could not appear before us in such a dignified state. For you ought to know that honours and profits do not go hand in hand." There was a similar snub three months later, when Amschel was bluntly informed that, had he been invited, "rumours would have gone round that we had paid for the ball." At around the same time, Amschel complained that Gontard refused to see him too frequently on business lest his friends "start to treat him as a Jew." Their exclusion as Jews from the Frankfurt Casino (gentlemen's club) also rankled.

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 a.s.sure 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, princ.i.p.ally 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 Burgermeister and one other invitee declined to attend.

The speed of this s.h.i.+ft in att.i.tudes astonished the Bremen Burgermeister Smidt, one of the most determined opponents of Jewish emanc.i.p.ation 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 amba.s.sadors.

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 a.n.a.logous 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 t.i.tle, 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 pa.s.s 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 Romischen Kaiser. The Metternichs did so in January 1836, along with Princess Marie Esterhazy 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 amba.s.sadors 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 Esterhazys were regular guests. Prince Puckler'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 emanc.i.p.ation 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 a.s.sume 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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, "b.a.l.l.s 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 a deux a deux. But he too encountered resistance. Despite the social upheavals of the Revolutionary and Napeolonic eras, the French capital was far from free of sn.o.bbery and prejudice, and he was treated to an especially flagrant snub from his rivals Baring and Labouchere 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 hotel. 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 other than as I have heard for more than ten days-I do not exaggerate-from people of every age and cla.s.s: 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 amba.s.sador described a sumptuous meal chez chez "M. de Rothschild" attended not only by the other amba.s.sadors of the great powers, but also by Metternich, the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, the Russian Prince Razumovski and a small galaxy of French aristocrats: the duc and d.u.c.h.esse de Maille, 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 marechal de Castellane dined with James, he encountered the English and Russian amba.s.sadors, 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. "M. de Rothschild" attended not only by the other amba.s.sadors of the great powers, but also by Metternich, the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re, the Russian Prince Razumovski and a small galaxy of French aristocrats: the duc and d.u.c.h.esse de Maille, 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 marechal de Castellane dined with James, he encountered the English and Russian amba.s.sadors, 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 Careme, 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 visite de digestion eight days later than usual. eight days later than usual.

In many ways, Careme's elaborate cuisine was James's princ.i.p.al 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 . . . Careme deserves a laurel wreath for perfecting an art form by which modern civilisation is measured." The coup de theatre coup de theatre 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 Careme 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 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 Careme 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 Endymion of "delicate dishes which [guests] looked at with wonder, and tasted with timidity" gives an idea of its crucial social function. of "delicate dishes which [guests] looked at with wonder, and tasted with timidity" gives an idea of its crucial social function.

Sn.o.bbery.

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 coa.r.s.e to the point of downright rudeness in manner. Prince Puckler 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 Puckler 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 Puckler knew only too well.

In his novel Tancred 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 gla.s.s 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 two chairs." (One of many variants has the visitor indignantly announcing himself as the Prince of Thurn chairs." (One of many variants has the visitor indignantly announcing himself as the Prince of Thurn und und Taxis; Rothschild implicitly offers each a chair.) 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 Judenga.s.se. When Prince Puckler 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'etait sans doute tres 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 amba.s.sador 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 Major 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 ba.n.a.l 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."

When a guest at the same dinner expressed the hope "that your children are not too fond of money and business, to the exclusion of more important things. I am sure you would not wish that," Nathan retorted bluntly: "I am sure I should wish that."

Nathan struck some who encountered him as a tight-fisted philistine. The ornithologist Audubon recalled failing to persuade Nathan to subscribe to his lavishly ill.u.s.trated Birds of America Birds of America, instead sending him the work in advance of payment. But when Nathan was presented with the bill he "looked at it with amazement and cried out, 'What, a hundred pounds for birds! Why sir I will give you five pounds, and not a farthing more!' " A frequently repeated anecdote has Nathan telling the composer Louis Spohr: "I understand nothing of music. This"-patting his pocket and making his money rattle and jingle-"is my music; we understand that on 'Change." In another he responds irritably to a request for a charitable contribution: "Here! Write a cheque; I have made one [d.a.m.ned] fool of myself!" Buxton was shocked by Nathan's somewhat cra.s.s att.i.tude towards philanthropy. "Sometimes," he explained, "to amuse myself, I give a beggar a guinea. He thinks it is a mistake, and for fear I shall find it out, off he runs as hard as he can. I advise you to give a beggar a guinea sometimes; it is very amusing." It was entirely in character for him to point out to his own dinner guests that a particular service had cost 100.

The notion that an ill-educated Jew could behave this way in polite society and get away with it purely on account of his newly acquired and largely paper wealth variously fascinated and appalled contemporaries, depending on their social position and philosophical attachment to the traditional hierarchical order. Prince Puckler, for example, did not apparently resent the way Nathan teased him when he first presented himself at New Court with his credit note. On the contrary, he summed him up as "a man who one cannot deny has geniality and even a kind of great character . . . really un tres bon enfant un tres bon enfant and generous, more than others of his cla.s.s-as long, that is, as he is sure he is not risking anything himself, which one can in no way hold against him . . . This man is really a complete original." As we have seen, Humboldt was also condescendingly amused by the combination of bad manners, sharp wit and lack of deference which Nathan brought to polite society. and generous, more than others of his cla.s.s-as long, that is, as he is sure he is not risking anything himself, which one can in no way hold against him . . . This man is really a complete original." As we have seen, Humboldt was also condescendingly amused by the combination of bad manners, sharp wit and lack of deference which Nathan brought to polite society.

In the Paris of the Bourbon Restoration, by contrast, James's many faux pas faux pas-his unprompted introduction of his own wife to the duc d'Orleans, for example, or his use of Count Potocki's Christian name Stanislas-were viewed with distaste. Like so many of James's socially superior guests, the marechal de Castellane did not much care for his host even as he accepted his hospitality: "His wife . . . is pretty enough and very well-mannered. She sang well, though rather tremulously; her German accent is disagreeable. James . . . is small, ugly, arrogant, but he gives banquets and dinners; the grand seigneurs make fun of him and yet are no less delighted to go to his house, where he brings together the best company in Paris."

According to Moritz Goldschmidt's son Hermann, whose memoir is one of the few detailed first-hand descriptions we have, Salomon was even more lacking in social graces. "Why should I eat badly at your place, why don't you come and eat well at mine," he was once heard to reply to a dinner invitation from the Russian amba.s.sador. Another "highly placed personality" who asked for a loan received a blunt negative: "Because I don't want to." Salomon therefore "seldom went into high society, [because] he felt that because of his lack of education he would have to play a difficult and uncomfortable role," and preferred to leave "intercourse with the beau monde" to Goldschmidt's father. On the rare occasions when he did have the Metternichs to dine with him, he could not resist vulgar displays of wealth, showing them the contents of his safe as a post-prandial treat. Even in his own more familiar (that is, Jewish) circle, he cut a coa.r.s.e figure. If his barber was late in the morning-and Salomon habitually rose at 3 a.m.-he would be reviled as "an a.s.s." If someone came into the office smelling slightly, Salomon would press his handkerchief to his nose, open the window, and shout: "Throw him out, the man stinks." He dined unsociably early at 6.30 p.m. and habitually drank two bottles of wine before going for a stroll in the park with "blindly loyal toadies and hangers-on." When he visited the Goldschmidts at their house in Dobling on Sundays he flirted with the prettier girls present "in a manner which was not always proper or polite." This included cracking crude jokes if any women present were pregnant.

It is not that all these stories are wholly misleading; no doubt Nathan and his brothers did seem to many who met them like the incarnation of "new money," with all its rough edges. Nothing makes the point more explicit than the 1848 cartoon (produced as the first of a series of "Pictures from Frankfurt") which cruelly juxtaposed Moritz von Bethmann and Amschel, the former elegant on his coach and four, the latter slouched atop a money box (see ill.u.s.tration 7.i).Yet such judgements are not the best kinds of historical evidence. Firstly, they tell us only how the Rothschilds seemed seemed to others. Secondly, because "new money" has been the object of scorn for more than 2,000 years, there are tropes which tend to be repeated no matter how little the to others. Secondly, because "new money" has been the object of scorn for more than 2,000 years, there are tropes which tend to be repeated no matter how little the nouveau riche nouveau riche individual in question actually conforms to the stereotype. The brothers' own letters tell a very different story. individual in question actually conforms to the stereotype. The brothers' own letters tell a very different story.

In fact, the brothers themselves disliked intensely the great majority of social functions they gave. Amschel "thanked G.o.d" when his dinners were over, and Carl thought them expensive "humbug"-"it was very nice, but the money was nicer," he commented when the chef they had hired presented his bill. "However," he con-ceded, "it is as good as bribes": it is noteworthy that at least five of the guests at the 1817 dinner also received parcels of the new city of Paris loan. In Berlin too, where he had relatively little difficulty in securing prestigious invitations from Hardenberg and the British and Austrian amba.s.sadors, Carl retained his scepticism about the value of such socialising: "I don't really care, because I find we always do better business with those who do not invite us." Nathan was as much out of his natural element in the ballroom or the salon as in the countryside. As Amschel said of him in 1817, if Nathan gave a mere tea party, he felt his morning had been "stolen." Even his daughter Charlotte expressed a utilitarian view in 1829 when she hoped that "the Season will be very lively as this is always, I think, an encouragement for trade."

7.i: Ernst Schalk and Philipp Herrlich, Baron Moritz von Bethmann and Baron Amschel von Rothschild, Bilder aus Frankfurt, Baron Moritz von Bethmann and Baron Amschel von Rothschild, Bilder aus Frankfurt, Nr. 1 (1848). Nr. 1 (1848).

James shed light on his brother's fundamentally anti-social temperament when, contemplating yet another ball, he said: "I now feel exactly as you do. I would gladly stay at home and don't want to drive myself crazy with all the rubbish." He too was much less enamoured of such occasions than his condescending guests generally a.s.sumed. From the outset, he took much the same functional view of socialising. "I think of nothing else but business," he a.s.sured Nathan. "If I attend a society party, I go there to become acquainted with people who might be useful for the business." To prove the point, early social contacts like Richelieu's secretary were pumped for useful information. Privately, James admitted to being weary of his lavish b.a.l.l.s; he continued to give them, he confessed to Nathan in January 1825, only lest people think he could no longer afford to. "My dear Nathan," he wrote wearily, I am obliged to give a ball because the world claims that I am broke, for the people who have become accustomed to my giving three to four b.a.l.l.s, as I did during the previous winter, will otherwise set their tongues wagging, and quite honestly the French are evil people. Well, the carnival takes place next week and I wish it were already over. I give you my word that my heart is not in it but one must do everything to put on a show for the world.

Six years later, in the wake of the revolutionary crisis of 1830, Charlotte discerned the same link between her uncle's economic performance and his sociability: although Betty felt too "fatigued" to give "her customary b.a.l.l.s," "the rentes still [continue] to rise so rapidly [that] James would be disposed to give them." As we shall see, throwing b.a.l.l.s was one of the vital ways in which James signalled to the Parisian beau monde that he had survived the financial and political storm of 1830.

The Honours "Racket"

It was not only by giving parties that the Rothschilds sought to transcend the traditional social barriers which confronted Jews, no matter how wealthy, in Restoration Europe. In a social world still dominated by a hierarchy of ranks and orders, they hastened to acquire formal marks of stat