The House Of Rothschild Part 11

In due course, James's confidence was amply vindicated. "I am pleased to note, my dear Anthony, that you are so in love," he was able to write approvingly in November 1839; a few days later came the announcement of his engagement to Louisa Montefiore; by February they were married and the recipients of pointedly warm congratulations. Three years later-as planned-Mayer Carl married his cousin Louise in London. In August of the same year Nat married another cousin, James's daughter Charlotte. The contrast between this last, exuberant occasion and the miserable weddings of 1836 and 1839 could not have been more complete: The ceremony was performed [at Ferrieres] in a little temple erected for that purpose in the garden, the road to it strewn with rose-leaves. After the ceremony some went back to Paris, but the greater part remained, with whist, billiards, walking in the garden etc. . . . Billy & I had a bottle of champagne. At 7 we dined in the orangery, which was beautifully arranged. Lots of toasts were drunk. Your Uncle James proposed the King's health in a very good speech.

A pattern had been established-or rather, re-established-which would be continued into the 1870s.

It is a moot point how far such arranged, endogamous marriages were happy. James's marriage to Betty seemed to many contemporaries to have paired beauty with the beast: "She handsome-he vulgar," was how the British diplomat Lord William Russell summed it up in 1843; others were struck by Betty's more refined manners and cultural sophistication. (This was roughly the way Heinrich Heine saw the couple, though he never underrated James's intellect; and it is not too far removed from the portrayal of Nucingen and his wife by Balzac-though he never underrated Madame. Nucingen's fundamental toughness.) Yet Betty's letters suggest a genuine and deep affection for her husband and there is no evidence whatever of marital strife.

In London, Lionel and his cousin Charlotte, who were married in 1836, also seemed ill matched to some outsiders. He was an industrious, conscientious man, dedicated to his father's firm and to the cause of Jewish emanc.i.p.ation, but not pa.s.sionate in his personal relations, nor sophisticated in his cultural tastes. When Disraeli says of Sidonia, "he was susceptible of deep emotions, but not for individuals," we are perhaps not far from the true Lionel. She, by contrast, was not only very good-looking, but one of the most intellectually gifted Rothschilds of her generation. It is hard to believe, judging from the frequently mordant, not to say downright malicious tone of her voluminous letters and diaries-with their troubling subtext of frustrated boredom-that she was wholly fulfilled as "Baroness de Rothschild," wife, mother, hostess and do-gooder. "Ever since I became your wife," she wrote to her husband in a rare outburst, "I have had to do what others want, never what I would like to do. Pray that I shall be compensated in Heaven." Disraeli gives some hints of this in his fictionalised relations.h.i.+p between the Neuchatels in Endymion Endymion: Adrian had married, when very young, a lady selected by his father. The selection seemed a good one. She was the daughter of a most eminent banker, and had herself, though that was of slight importance, a large portion. She was a woman of abilities, highly cultivated . . . And yet Mrs. Neuchatel was not a contented spirit; and though she appreciated the great qualities of her husband and viewed him even with reverence as well as affection, she scarcely contributed to his happiness as much as became her. And for this reason . . . Mrs Neuchatel had imbibed not merely a contempt for money, but an absolute hatred of it . . . In one respect the alliance between Adrian and his wife was not an unfortunate one . . . Adrian . . . was so absorbed by his own great affairs, was a man at the same time of so serene a temper and so supreme a will, that the over-refined fantasies of his wife produced not the slightest effect on the course of his life.

Yet no matter what private miseries were inflicted as a consequence of the intermarriage strategy-and we can rarely do more than guess at them-all concerned felt or came to feel precisely the sense of clannish collective ident.i.ty which it had been the intention of their elders to foster. Nothing ill.u.s.trates this better than the subtly retributive way Hannah Mayer was subsequently treated by the rest of the family, and not least by Charlotte herself.

Hannah Mayer was not ostracised forever. By 1848, if not before, she and her husband were on good enough terms with her eldest brother to receive presents from him for their children, Arthur and Blanche, and to invite him to visit them at their house at Garboldisham. More surprisingly, Betty reported to her son in 1849 that she had "made my peace with HM" by "invit[ing] her to my place" when the Fitzroys visited Paris. But within the family circle Hannah Mayer was always regarded with that disdain generally reserved by the Victorians for "fallen women"; and, like good Victorians, her sister Louise and her cousin and sister-in-law Charlotte could not resist interpreting every misfortune that befell her as a kind of divine punishment. In 1852 they registered with grim satisfaction Hannah Mayer's "fury" when her husband was pa.s.sed over by Lord Aberdeen for the post of Secretary at the Admiralty. When the Fitzroys' son Arthur died six years later (the victim of a fall from a pony), even their niece Constance-then just fifteen-could "not help thinking that all the misfortune and distress which have overwhelmed poor Aunt Hannah Mayer have been a punishment for having deserted the faith of the fathers and for having married without her mother's consent. All the grief that she caused to that mother she now feels doubly herself." The death of Henry Fitzroy himself the following year made the portrait of nemesis all but complete. All that was now lacking was a suitably wretched end for his widow and their daughter Blanche. Neither was long in coming-or so it seemed to Charlotte de Rothschild, whose letters to her youngest son Leopold chronicled with outward sympathy and inward relish each step of the Fitzroys' decline and fall.

From February 1864 onwards, Hannah Mayer was seriously ill: Charlotte reported that she had "an enormous swelling on her back, like a hump of a camel" and "looked perfectly awful-her face white and shrunk, and furrowed with deep lines expressive of intense suffering. It made one's heart break to see her in such pain. The swelling on her back is perfectly enormous, and quite hot. Yet s.h.i.+vering and trembling with pain, she would talk of nothing but parties . . . Her ideas are constantly running upon marriage." Hannah Mayer's sole preoccupation henceforth was to find a suitable husband for her daughter. As her Rothschild relatives could hardly fail to notice, all the "candidates" considered were Christians; moreover, there was an obvious discrepancy between her ideal-"she would not hear of" Lords Loughborough, Sefton and Coventry though the Marquess of Blandford was considered acceptable-and the realistic contenders. Blanche might be pretty and artistically talented but, cut off from her Rothschild relations and low in the Fitzroy pecking-order, she was no prize catch.

The successful suitor proved to be the artist and architect Sir Coutts Lindsay, a prosperous but Bohemian figure twice her age with a Scottish estate, ten thousand a year, a suspiciously close friends.h.i.+p with Lady Virginia Somers and a shady retinue of plebeian mistresses and b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. When Charlotte paid one of her numerous half-patronising, half-prurient visits to her sister-in-law's house in Upper Grosvenor Square-ostensibly to offer her congratulations-she: found her very ill and completely overcome by her conflicting feelings; she had been crying and sobbing almost shrieking, and is indeed so much to be pitied that the congratulations died on my lips. The marriage itself, ceci entre nous ceci entre nous, does not satisfy her completely, for the bridegroom elect is forty, and has grey locks, and perhaps her ambition would have soared higher, and selected a n.o.bleman with a grand t.i.tle for her daughter.

With poetic justice, Blanche had followed Hannah Mayer's own example, set twenty-five years before, by choosing a husband for love and in spite of her mother's wishes. Though the latter sought to make the best of a bad job-Sir Coutts, she insisted, was "the most fascinating person I ever met"-Charlotte omitted no defect in her back-handed descriptions of the bridegroom (he was "picturesque," "one-sided," his gifts to his fiancee were miserly, and so on).

Nor was this the end of Hannah Mayer's "punishment." From the moment of her engagement, Blanche appeared to distance herself from her ailing mother, and cut herself off almost completely from the Rothschilds. According to Charlotte-who poured pity over her sister-in-law while simultaneously kindling antipathy towards the new "Lady Lindsay"-she visited her mother's bedside as infrequently as possible. She was (variously) "utterly heartless," "the heartless bride," "a heartless serpent," "quite affected and namby pamby," "an icicle," "a horrible humbug and heartless hypocrite," "that heartless, incomprehensible woman," "the unnatural daughter" and "that horrible Blanche." The object of this torrent of vituperation was "immensely happy at being Lady Lindsay, and far too much so, to feel deep anxiety for her suffering and perhaps dying mother." When Charlotte paid a call on her, she found "the heartless staring creature giggling and grinning and simpering while she asked after her dying mother as if the poor sufferer had had a mere cold."

By mid-November the end was in sight. "Poor Aunt H.M.'s married life and widowed existence have become one chain of such uninterrupted sorrow and suffering," she told her son, "that, for her sake, one can hardly wish to see her days prolonged. As for Blanche-no one need waste a moment's pity upon her.-She is either a monster or an enigma. It is less disagreeable to look upon her in the light of the latter, and not to un-riddle her character." "I feel very sad," she added the next day, "when I think of such a life of torture, and of a deathbed so lonely. Blanche arrives at 5 o'clock in the evening, stays five minutes, and then departs. Do not mention this heartless behaviour as it is a perfect disgrace to our family, and must shock the domestics from whom constant fidelity is expected." And so it went on. "Upon the plea that the invalid is too weak to bear even her adored presence beyond five or six minutes in the course of the day, [she] never puts her foot into the house before 5 o'clock in the evening, viz not before the shades of evening put an end to her drawing, in Sir C. Lindsay's studio; then she arrives novel in hand, while her unfortunate mother carries on the unequal battle with disease and death."

On the night of December 1, 1864, Hannah Mayer finally expired. Her life had been, Charlotte reflected, using carefully chosen words, "a long martyrdom"; indeed, in her last weeks she had sometimes looked "like one of the lovely martyrs so much admired in Italian picture-galleries and churches." But Charlotte, like her uncle James, did not interpret Hannah Mayer's downfall in purely religious terms: it irked her that her sister-in-law's will had omitted to dispose of 7,000 in a savings account, money which pa.s.sed by default to the Lindsays. The idea of Rothschild money pa.s.sing into other hands still rankled, a quarter of a century after Hannah Mayer's initial lapse from grace. Retribution even followed her to the grave and beyond, for Charlotte missed no transgression on the part of Blanche Lindsay, notably her absence from her mother's funeral (where "the Duke of Grafton, Lord Charles Fitzroy and Lord Southampton, who had known and seen the deceased so little . . . never alluded to her but talked of railroads, horses etc.") and her attempt to sell the portraits she had inherited of her Rothschild grandparents ("To sell her grandmother and her grandfather; it is not to be believed"). Everything-her louche Pre-Raphaelite dresses, her widening girth, her deteriorating eyesight-could be construed as a consequence of her mother's peculiar form of original sin. And when her marriage foundered on the rocks of Lindsay's habitual infidelity, Anselm's son Ferdinand could not resist predicting that she would "repent . . . in the long run" her decision to "leave the conjugal room." Even as late as 1882, it seems, Hannah Mayer's crime, though punished, had not been forgiven.

City and Country.

Nothing tells us more about the nineteenth-century Rothschilds' exceptionally acute sense of kins.h.i.+p than their treatment of Hannah Mayer. The paradox is that her persecution coincided with an acceleration in the pace of the family's social and cultural a.s.similation. By not only marrying a Christian but converting to Christianity, she had crossed one of the few barriers which remained between the Rothschilds and the European social elite, and perhaps the only one which the Rothschilds themselves wished to preserve.

In his satirical "Book of Sn.o.bs," published in Punch Punch in 1846-7, Thackeray cited "the Scharlachschild family at Paris, Naples, Frankfort &c." as the archetypes of the "Banking Sn.o.b," who "receives all the world into his circle," dispensing "princely hospitalities" and "entertain[ing] all the world, even the poor, at their fetes." This was not far wide of the mark. In the decade after Nathan's death, the Rothschilds greatly increased the amount of time and energy they devoted to social and cultural pursuits, with James in the vanguard. To begin with, their residences grew grander and more numerous in both town and country. In 1836 James commissioned the architect, designer and theatre producer Charles-Edmond Duponchel to reconstruct and redecorate his rue Laffitte hotel, with money no object. The result was the quintessential millionaire's palace, combining extravagant historicist decoration with the latest modern comforts. Among Duponchel's more spectacular touches was a wood-panelled salon in the Renaissance style which was dominated by Joseph-Nicholas Robert-Fleury's series of Renaissance scenes (including Charles V in Spain, Luther preaching and Henry VIII hunting), but which also subtly juxtaposed the Rothschild arms with those of the Medici. (There was also a billiard room with a Pom peii-style mural by Francois-Edouard Picot.) But this was historicism with all mod cons. Central heating was provided for the ground floor salons and dining room by four brick ovens in the cellars, and all floors had running water from tanks on the top floor. There were also four large closed tanks for waste in the cellar, to say nothing of gas lighting in the form of moustached statuettes holding mock torches. Salomon's house next door was given similar treatment, as was the new hotel Talleyrand which James acquired in 1838 in the more fas.h.i.+onable rue Saint-Florentin in the 8th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. in 1846-7, Thackeray cited "the Scharlachschild family at Paris, Naples, Frankfort &c." as the archetypes of the "Banking Sn.o.b," who "receives all the world into his circle," dispensing "princely hospitalities" and "entertain[ing] all the world, even the poor, at their fetes." This was not far wide of the mark. In the decade after Nathan's death, the Rothschilds greatly increased the amount of time and energy they devoted to social and cultural pursuits, with James in the vanguard. To begin with, their residences grew grander and more numerous in both town and country. In 1836 James commissioned the architect, designer and theatre producer Charles-Edmond Duponchel to reconstruct and redecorate his rue Laffitte hotel, with money no object. The result was the quintessential millionaire's palace, combining extravagant historicist decoration with the latest modern comforts. Among Duponchel's more spectacular touches was a wood-panelled salon in the Renaissance style which was dominated by Joseph-Nicholas Robert-Fleury's series of Renaissance scenes (including Charles V in Spain, Luther preaching and Henry VIII hunting), but which also subtly juxtaposed the Rothschild arms with those of the Medici. (There was also a billiard room with a Pom peii-style mural by Francois-Edouard Picot.) But this was historicism with all mod cons. Central heating was provided for the ground floor salons and dining room by four brick ovens in the cellars, and all floors had running water from tanks on the top floor. There were also four large closed tanks for waste in the cellar, to say nothing of gas lighting in the form of moustached statuettes holding mock torches. Salomon's house next door was given similar treatment, as was the new hotel Talleyrand which James acquired in 1838 in the more fas.h.i.+onable rue Saint-Florentin in the 8th arrondiss.e.m.e.nt.

The effect was evidently imposing. In 1836, after a post-theatre ball given by James to show off the redecorated rue Laffitte house, Heine admiringly described what he called "the Versailles of the absolute reign of money": Here everything comes together which the spirit of the sixteenth century could invent and the money of the nineteenth century could pay for; here the genius of the visual arts competes with the genius of Rothschild. The palace and its decorations have been continuously worked on for two years and the sums expended on them are said to be enormous. M. de Rothschild smiles when someone questions him about this . . . One must, however, admire the flair with which everything has been done, as much as the costliness.

A Parisian journal, the Bon Ton Bon Ton, was even more impressed: the two adjacent houses "appeared to realise the tales of the thousand and one nights. Such luxury is awesome to those who do not have at their command the bourses of Naples, Paris and London." "The mantels are covered in gold-fringed velvet," observed the vicomte de Launay admiringly. "The armchairs have lace antimaca.s.sars; the walls are concealed under marvellous embroidered, brocaded, spangled fabrics of such thickness and strength they could stand alone and, if needed, actually support what they cover, should the walls give way. The curtains are fabulously beautiful; they are hung double, triple, and all over the place . . . Every piece of furniture is gilded; the walls too are gilded." The Austrian diplomat Apponyi, who attended the same ball as Heine, was less easily impressed: he found the Renaissance style of the new interiors "unsuitable for a hotel in Paris; I would prefer it in a chateau." But even he had to admit that it was "impossible to see a better imitation:"

The paintings are on a gold base, executed by excellent artists, the fireplaces are admirably carved. The chairs are of ormolu bronze, with very high backs, surmounted by figures holding the arms of the house of Rothschild in enamel. The carpets, the candelabras, the chandeliers, the material of the draperies with heavy ta.s.sels of gold and silver-in short, everything is in the same style; there are clocks inlaid and enamelled on azure base, solid gold vases encrusted with precious stones and fine pearls. In a word, it is a luxury which surpa.s.ses all imagination.

This was what became known as le style Rothschild le style Rothschild-a style, in the words of a later critic, "which combined all the richest elements of those which had preceded it . . . The heavy golden cornices, the damask hung walls, the fringed and ta.s.selled curtains of Genoese velvet, the marble and the parquet . . . Nothing in [it] . . . was new save the gasoliers."

To a twentieth-century eye, all that gas-lit gilt is oppressive; at the time it was all the rage. "It is infinitely superior to the house of his daughter-in-law [sic]," reported the d.u.c.h.esse de Dino, after seeing Salomon's "temple," "because the proportions are more elevated and larger; the luxury of it beggars belief, but it is tasteful, pure Renaissance, without any admixture of other styles . . . In the main salon, the armchairs instead of being made of gilt wood are of gilt bronze and cost a thousand francs apiece." The young Disraeli concurred. "Above all spectacles," he reported to his sister Sarah from Paris in 1843, "was the ball at B[aron] Salomon de Rothschild ['s]-an hotel in decoration surpa.s.sing all the palaces of Munich-a greater retinue of servants & liveries more gorgeous than the Thuilleries [sic]-& pineapples plentiful as blackberries. The taste of this unrivalled palace is equal to the splendour and richness of its decorations." He later paid a fictionalised tribute to the Rothschild hotels in Coningsby, Coningsby, in a pa.s.sage describing Sidonia's Paris residence, which in a pa.s.sage describing Sidonia's Paris residence, which had received at his hands such extensive alterations, that nothing of the original decoration . . . remained . . . A flight of marble steps, ascending from a vast court, led into a hall of great dimensions, which was at the same time an orangery and a gallery of sculpture. It was illumined by a distinct, yet soft and subdued light, which harmonised with the beautiful repose of the surrounding forms, and with the exotic perfume that was wafted about. A gallery led from this hall to an inner hall of quite different character; fantastic, glittering, variegated; full of strange shapes and dazzling objects.The roof was carved and gilt in the honeycomb style prevalent in the Saracenic buildings; the walls were hung with leather stamped in rich and vivid patterns; the floor was a flood of mosaic; about were statues of negroes of human size with faces of wild expression, and holding in their outstretched hands silver torches that blazed with an almost painful brilliancy.From this inner hall a double staircase of white marble led to the grand suite of apartments.These saloons, lofty, s.p.a.cious, and numerous, had been decorated princ.i.p.ally in encaustic by the most celebrated artists of Munich. The three princ.i.p.al rooms were only separated from each other by columns, covered with rich hangings, on this night drawn aside. The decoration of each chamber was appropriate to its purpose. On the walls of the ball room nymphs and heroes move in measure in Sicilian landscapes, or on the azure sh.o.r.es of the Aegean waters. From the ceiling beautiful divinities threw garlands on the guests . . . A large saloon abounded in ottomans and easy chairs . . .

James also spent substantial sums on his chateau house outside Paris at Ferrieres, turning it into a state-of-the art gentleman's country retreat. Here the theme was English. A laundry was built by the architect Joseph-Antoine Froelicher in the mock-Tudor style and in 1840 James added a model farm, sending the estate manager to England to pick up tips. He later added an English-style dairy as well as a brick-kiln and British-made machinery to make water pipes for the estate. There were also stables, a riding school and riding track, not to mention an orangerie and a new garden laid out by Placide Ma.s.sey. When his sister-in-law Hannah visited Ferrieres in 1842 she found it "most imposing." Once again, aristocratic guests like Apponyi and Princess Lieven, who came to stay two years later, were less easy to impress. According to Apponyi-though a hint of aristocratic irony is detectable here-the Princess was much impressed by "the superb laundry" James and Betty had built in the grounds, "a veritable chef-d'oeuvre of the genre, picturesque and very convenient." However, when shown to her room-once reserved for the late duc d'Orleans-the Princess complained that the mattresses were "hard and damp," so that they had to be "changed, dried, beaten, placed and replaced." Apponyi himself ridiculed the stables James had built, "a superb and totally pompous construction in the style of Louis XIII." "Perhaps it is a little too beautiful," he mused, "as this palace somewhat overwhelms the chateau itself." The supercilious diplomat also found fault with the pond, which he thought "too near the house," and the absence of formal gardens and flowerbeds. "Park and garden are not separated," he observed disapprovingly, "so that the game can come right into the court of the chateau." Yet even this most discerning of guests had to concede that the interiors "left nothing to be desired": Everything is in good taste and is very magnificent. There are some beautiful pictures and an infinity of beautiful things of all descriptions, suits of armour, statuettes, ewers in silver gilt, ivory or gold, enriched by pearls and precious stones, consoles in bronze, iron, silver, in old lacquer, then vases of every kind, decorated with precious stones, then antique cabinets encrusted with ivory and silver, and Florentine mosaics. The guests' rooms are comfortably furnished, without excessive luxury, but with good carpets, good settees, armchairs, mirrors, excellent beds, wash-hand basins with plenty of towels . . .

Guests could also be taken to see the gardens at the Rothschilds' other chateaux at Boulogne and Suresnes. At the former, the gardens were steadily enlarged and the dining room combined with an orangerie for summer dining. James also added a mock farm with cows, chickens and exotic breeds of sheep. Despite the fact that he spent little time there, Salomon lavished money on Suresnes. The chateau was enlarged and redecorated, acquiring elaborate gla.s.s galleries round its sides. Like his younger brother, Salomon also played at farming, building a dairy and acc.u.mulating a large stock of wildfowl; but his real love was the garden, which he extended throughout his life, later adding greenhouses and a system of irrigation. As Lord William Russell reported when he visited Suresnes in 1843, "nature is made to yield to money, & produce the fruits & flowers of summer in the spring." Two years later James was said to be "transplanting a great number of very large full-grown yew-trees" from Melun to Suresnes, presumably as a gift to Salomon. "Each tree," marvelled The Times The Times, "is a sufficient load to require 11 horses to draw it. It was thus that Louis XIV planted the grounds at Versailles." The parallel, as we have seen, had already occurred to Heine, and was one to which he and others would return.

The English Rothschilds also invested in their residences in both country and town, though on a less Bourbon scale. When Disraeli attended a fete given by Nathan's widow Hannah at Gunnersbury in 1843, it impressed him as "a most beautiful park and a villa worthy of an Italian Prince, though decorated with a taste and splendour which a French financier in the olden times could alone have rivalled . . . [with] beautiful grounds, temples and illuminated walks." If the interior of Sidonia's country house in Tancred Tancred (1847) was partly modelled on Gunnersbury, as seems likely, there were nevertheless points of contrast with the French Rothschilds' residences: (1847) was partly modelled on Gunnersbury, as seems likely, there were nevertheless points of contrast with the French Rothschilds' residences: Pa.s.sing through a marble antechamber, Tancred was ushered into an apartment half saloon and half library; the choicely-bound volumes, which were not too numerous, were ranged on shelves inlaid in the walls, so that they ornamented, without diminis.h.i.+ng, the apartment. These walls were painted in encaustic, corresponding with the coved ceiling, which was richly adorned in the same fas.h.i.+on. A curtain of violet velvet covering if necessary the large window, which looked upon a balcony full of flowers, and the umbrageous Park; an Axminster carpet, manufactured both in colour and design with the rest of the chamber; a profusion of luxurious seats; a large table of ivory marquetry, bearing a carved silver bell which once belonged to a pope; a Naiad, whose golden urn served as an inkstand; some daggers that acted as paper cutters, and some French books just arrived; a group of beautiful vases recently released from an Egyptian tomb and ranged on a tripod of malachite; the portrait of a statesman, and the bust of an emperor, and a sparkling fire, were all circ.u.mstances which made the room both interesting and comfortable . . .

If this was rather more cosy than the mock-Renaissance, five-star splendour of Paris, it was meant to be. To English eyes, the rue Laffitte hotels seemed almost too grand. "When finished," Louise told her father in 1830 (after a visit to the house at number 17 which Salomon had just bought), "I think it will be most magnificent, it is immense and could hold almost three families." Lionel felt the same ambivalence when he took a similar house in Paris shortly before his marriage: the ground floor would, he told his bride-to-be, "rival . . . any palace; at Paris, a rich man whether Banker or Prince can act in the same way, but in every other place, such an establishment would appear ridiculous. The first floor, the daily habitation, is nearly as splendid, so much gold that for the first few days one is quite dazzled." "The houses here are splendid," Nat wrote to Lionel two years later, "you know about them. [Aunt] Betty's rooms are very nice, indeed rather too fine."

There were differences too between the English and French residences in the country. For most of his life James stuck close to Paris: neither Ferrieres nor Boulogne was very far from the city. His English nephews, by contrast, began looking within five years of their father's death for some more authentically rural seat than semi-suburban Gunnersbury. It still sufficed for certain social functions, and the family remained fond of it: Hannah added 33 acres to the 76 she inherited from her husband and Lionel extended the estate to no less than 620 acres between 1840 and 1873. But, as Disraeli said of its fictional a.n.a.logue Hainault House (in Endymion Endymion), it was not "fas.h.i.+onable." Above all, it was too close to the city for its owners to indulge in that favourite pastime of Victorian England: hunting. No sooner had they added to the Gunnersbury property than they began looking further afield, perhaps encouraged by their mother's glowing descriptions of the Devons.h.i.+re and Fitzwilliam estates in Derbys.h.i.+re. Of course, it would have been quite impracticable for "City men" to have bought land so far from London; but Buckinghams.h.i.+re seemed to offer all the advantages of genuine country life at a manageable distance. The first step in this direction came when Nathan rented Tring house in 1833 for the summer. Three years later Hannah bought some land near Mentmore, north-east of Aylesbury, and in 1842, alerted by a newspaper advertis.e.m.e.nt, Mayer bought a small group of farms in the parishes of Mentmore and Wing, laying the foundation of what would rapidly become a substantial Rothschild enclave in the county. Absent on duty in Paris, his elder brother Anthony was envious: "It is no harm to have your money in Land. I wish I knew of a nice place, I would do the same & I hope one of these days to have it."

Contrary to what has sometimes been a.s.sumed, the purchase of rural land by the Rothschilds did not symbolise some kind of dilution of their capitalist "spirit" or compromise with the "feudal" old regime. Lionel was singularly unimpressed by the vast piles of the n.o.bility when he visited them: Castle Howard he thought "rather a nice place but nothing wonderful. It is in fact just the same as Blenheim, only much smaller . . . altogether a place not worth putting oneself out to go to see." What he and his brothers were doing in the 1840s was buying farmland, and it would have been uncharacteristic if they had not regarded their purchases at least partly as straightforward investments. There is no doubt that Lionel drove a hard bargain when the family sought to acquire another property at Creslow. "I should not mind having it," he told his brothers in 1844, "as a 33 per cent purchase would pay me 3 per cent, and there are so many little places round it which might be bought worth the money, that the whole together might be made to pay a fair rate of interest." Indeed, the estates he and his brother Anthony subsequently bought to the south of Mentmore following the bankruptcy of the Duke of Buckingham in 1848 and the death of Sir John Dashwood the following year, were typical Rothschild acquisitions: bought at the bottom of the market. There was also, as we shall see, a secondary and equally pragmatic rationale for buying several estates in one county: the British system of local government and parliamentary representation made such a concentration of land a useful source of political influence. (According to one account, this was why their land agents Horwood and James advised buying land in one area only.) It was not until the 1850s that the brothers began to indulge themselves by building their own "stately homes."

Outside France and England, as we have seen, there were limits on how much property the Rothschilds, as Jews, could acquire. After 1830 these restrictions began to crumble. In 1841 Carl bought himself the Villa Pignatelli near Naples, which his daughter fondly remembered as "a paradise upon earth, with a view over the bay and the islands, over the celebrated Mount Vesuvius, the most animated street and the Villa Reale, the Neapolitan Kensington Gardens." It was more difficult in Vienna, however, where Salomon continued to live in the rented Hotel zum Romischen Kaiser in the Rennga.s.se. Of course, he owned property elsewhere, in Paris as well as in Frankfurt. But there was a principle at stake-or so Salomon argued in a "special appeal" he addressed to Metternich in January 1837 concerning "the destiny of my co-religionists . . . the hopes of so many fathers of families and the highest aspirations of thousands of human beings." When the government once again refused to grant any general relaxation of discrimination-lest "the public . . . suddenly draw the conclusion that full emanc.i.p.ation of the Jews is contemplated"-Salomon faced a dilemma; for Metternich intimated that the Emperor was willing, at his own discretion and as a special privilege, to grant individual individual Jews permission to own houses in Vienna. This was the old story of the prince and the Jews permission to own houses in Vienna. This was the old story of the prince and the Hofjude Hofjude, whereby the state "bought off " the Jewish banker on whom it was dependent with special exemptions. Salomon did not rush to take advantage of this offer; but in 1842-five years later-he succ.u.mbed. His request to own real estate in the city was speedily granted, allowing him finally to buy the Rennga.s.se hotel as well as the adjoining house, which he demolished and rebuilt. As he acknowledged, this-along with the grant of honorary citizens.h.i.+p which went with it-made him "a privileged exception in the midst of my fellow believers, who . . . [ought to] have the right to enjoy the same rights as those who belong to other religious confessions."

It might be thought that this compromise ran counter to the stance taken on questions of Jewish civil rights by other members of the family; but, like Mayer Amschel before them, most Rothschilds seem to have seen general rights and individual privileges as complementary rather than dichotomous: if the former could not be had, the latter should be accepted. Salomon was not criticised for his decision to accept Metternich's offer. Indeed, even before he did, one of his English nephews was urging him "to get permission from Prince Metternich to purchase an estate in Bohemia." In 1843 Salomon took his advice, though it was in fact in neighbouring Moravia that he sought the Emperor's permission not only to buy an estate but also to pa.s.s it on to his heirs. Once again he was obliged to adopt the tones of the humble but deserving court Jew, listing his various financial contributions to the Empire as "adequate proof of his unshakeable devotion to the Austrian monarchy" and expressing his "most ardent desire to own property in a country whose rulers have shown him so many signal marks of their favour." Again the pet.i.tion was granted, despite the reservations of the Moravian estates. As one official put it, Salomon's "position in society is so exceptional that he has been entirely removed from the ordinary circ.u.mstances of his co-religionists; his remarkable qualities and rare intelligence make it entirely inappropriate to apply strictly in his case the regulations in force with regard to other Israelites." The Lord Chancellor Count Inzaghy was rather more candid: it was, he argued, highly desirable that Baron Rothschild should be more closely bound to the Imperial State of Austria by the investment of his money in real property in this country; and . . . it would create a very strange impression abroad if his particular wish to settle permanently in that country, where he has been so actively engaged for a long period of years, and has been a.s.sociated with the Government in more extensive and important transactions than has ever been the case before with a private individual, were to be refused after the special distinctions that have been conferred upon him.

In addition to the estate Salomon duly purchased at Koritschau in Moravia-which together with his property in Vienna gave him real estate in the Empire worth 2 million gulden-he also acquired property in Prussia, buying the castle of Schillersdorf in 1842. It was a dispute relating to the rights attached to this estate which prompted Heine's warning in 1846 that "Prussian aristocrats would like to use the paw of the plebeian to stir up public opinion against the exceptional family exceptional family (for that term is the one constantly used to describe the house of Rothschild in proceedings regarding the right of patronage over Schillersdorf and Hultschin)." (for that term is the one constantly used to describe the house of Rothschild in proceedings regarding the right of patronage over Schillersdorf and Hultschin)."

Surprisingly, in view of the protracted efforts of the town authorities to return the Jewish community to the ghetto in the years after 1814, "the exceptional family" encountered less of this sort of hostility when they sought to buy new properties in Frankfurt-a reflection perhaps of the changed political climate in the town after 1830. In 1831, after much hesitation, Amschel finally commissioned the Paris-trained Friedrich Rumpf to redesign and expand the house in his beloved garden on the Bockenheimer Landstra.s.se. Rumpf transformed the original and quite modest cube-shaped house into the central pavilion of a larger neo-cla.s.sical villa, adding two wings with Corinthian three-quarter columns and remodelling the garden itself along strictly symmetrical lines. This melange of Baroque and Renaissance styles was fairly typical of the houses favoured by the town's Gentile elite in this period, suggesting a new self-confidence on Amschel's part-in marked contrast to the mood of insecurity when he had first acquired the property. In the succeeding years, his attachment to it showed no sign of waning: during a visit to her married daughters Charlotte and Louise in 1844, Hannah was able to report that "a handsome and very large orangery and some magnificent trees of many sorts" had been added to the garden.

An even clearer signal of a.s.sumed equality with the Bethmanns and Gontards came in 1834, when Amschel bought the large, four-storey town house at number 34 on the prestigious street known as the Zeil. In the same year Anselm bought a similar "palais" (indeed, by the same architect) in the nearby Neue Mainzer Stra.s.se (number 45), a much grander residence than the building at number 33 acquired by Carl in 1818 and made even more grand by Rumpf, who was commissioned to add a new facade in the Renaissance style. It was also Rumpf whom Mayer Carl commissioned to expand the house he bought on the banks of the Main in 1846; but by this time mere imitation was no longer the Rothschild objective. Untermainkai 15-which today houses the Frankfurt Jewish Museum-had been built in 1821 at the end of an elegant row of neo-cla.s.sical houses for the banker Joseph Isaak Speyer, and was already distinguished from its neighbours by its Italian Renaissance style. Rumpf made it stand out even more. Although he preserved some original features, notably the polygonal vestibule projecting from the side wall, he doubled its length and added some distinctly Oriental features (notably two new oriels with Moorish corner pillars and arabesque bal.u.s.trades). The effect was to dominate, albeit subtly, the rest of the street-a symbol of the Rothschilds' now well-established dominance of the city's economic life.

The Rothschilds also acquired rural retreats in the vicinity of Frankfurt during this period. In 1835 Amschel bought a country Schloss Schloss at Gruneburg and two years later Carl acquired a similar property, the Gunthersburg. In fact, the literal translation ("castle") somewhat exaggerates the size of the original houses, and at 150 acres or so their grounds were relatively modest. In one respect, however, the Frankfurt Rothschilds were more ambitious than their relatives, for they were the first members of the family to build their own country houses rather than merely renovate the existing buildings. This gave rise to an aesthetic debate within the family, in which the English (represented at Frankfurt by Anselm's wife Charlotte and Mayer Carl's wife Louise) emphatically lost. at Gruneburg and two years later Carl acquired a similar property, the Gunthersburg. In fact, the literal translation ("castle") somewhat exaggerates the size of the original houses, and at 150 acres or so their grounds were relatively modest. In one respect, however, the Frankfurt Rothschilds were more ambitious than their relatives, for they were the first members of the family to build their own country houses rather than merely renovate the existing buildings. This gave rise to an aesthetic debate within the family, in which the English (represented at Frankfurt by Anselm's wife Charlotte and Mayer Carl's wife Louise) emphatically lost.

In 1840 Mayer Carl commissioned Rumpf to build a new "country residence" at Gunthersburg. The design was not dissimilar to that of the Untermainkai house, with Doric pilasters across the ground and first floors and Corinthian ones on the upper floors of the two side projections. "The house is large and when finished will be a magnificent residence," reported his mother-in-law Hannah, "but the grounds and garden do not accord with English taste." Her son shared her opinion: it would be "a most magnificent house, large enough to hold us all" and the garden would be "pretty," "but it is a pity that such a large house is not in the middle of 10,000 acres about ten miles from the town."1 The argument continued when Anselm resolved to build a new "garden house" on the Gruneburg estate. The argument continued when Anselm resolved to build a new "garden house" on the Gruneburg estate.2 Doubtless remembering her childhood at Gunnersbury, his wife Charlotte insisted that the new house be "perfectly English" in style, and asked her brothers to supply designs from London. "I am hesitating between the Elizabethan and the cottage style," she told her mother. "She wants some of the Gothic, Elizabethan and all sorts," reported Lionel somewhat dismissively. "Not a palace but a good sized House." But she was evidently overruled. The design she and her husband eventually agreed on was for a long rectangular house in the style of a Loire chateau. With its tower-like projections at the corners, its layers of sandstone on the ground floor, its bal.u.s.trades, obelisks, volutes and chimneys, it was an eclectic edifice. The only concession to Charlotte was a tall neo-Gothic brick tower at the northern end of the park-a conspicuously English touch. Doubtless remembering her childhood at Gunnersbury, his wife Charlotte insisted that the new house be "perfectly English" in style, and asked her brothers to supply designs from London. "I am hesitating between the Elizabethan and the cottage style," she told her mother. "She wants some of the Gothic, Elizabethan and all sorts," reported Lionel somewhat dismissively. "Not a palace but a good sized House." But she was evidently overruled. The design she and her husband eventually agreed on was for a long rectangular house in the style of a Loire chateau. With its tower-like projections at the corners, its layers of sandstone on the ground floor, its bal.u.s.trades, obelisks, volutes and chimneys, it was an eclectic edifice. The only concession to Charlotte was a tall neo-Gothic brick tower at the northern end of the park-a conspicuously English touch.

Elite Pursuits.

Such arguments about architectural style are indicative of an important sea-change in Rothschild att.i.tudes in the period which followed Nathan's death. Before 1836, as we have seen, he and his brothers had tended to regard the acquisition of more s.p.a.cious residences in an essentially functional light: apart from simply being more comfortable, they provided settings where the great and the good could be wined and dined-and pumped for useful news or lucrative business. After 1836, the endless round of dinner parties and b.a.l.l.s continued. The ball in March 1836 which James threw to show off his refurbished hotel was probably not untypical: "As at all Rothschild soirees," Heine reported, the guests were "a strictly selected set of aristocratic ill.u.s.trations, able to make an impression by reason of great name or high rank or (in the case of the ladies) beauty and finery." Contemporaries generally agreed on this: whereas before 1830 there had been one or two Restoration grandees who had continued to decline James's invitations, after the advent of the "bourgeois monarchy" the faubourg Saint-Germain had less cause to remain aloof. "The company all the elite of Paris," was Disraeli's succinct summary of the guests invited to the ball he attended at Salomon's in 1843. The guest lists of dinners given by James tell much the same story.

In London too Rothschild hospitality became more lavish, more modish. In July 1838 Lionel hosted an extravagant summer ball at Gunnersbury to which he invited over 500 people, among them the dukes of Cambridge, Suss.e.x, Somerset and Wellington. After a concert by leading musicians and singers, dinner was served followed by (according to Moses Montefiore) "a grand ball . . . in a magnificent tent erected for the purpose." The Cambridges dined at Gunnersbury again that September; and five years later they were in attendance at another ball there, along with the d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester and Ernst I of Saxe Coburg, Prince Albert's father-an impressive trio of royal relations. Even in Frankfurt the last social constraints seemed to fall away. In 1846, for example, Lionel's sister Charlotte gave "a magnificent ball" there. Among the Frankfurt Rothschilds' dinner guests in this period were the King of Wurttemberg, Prince Loewenstein and Prince Wittgenstein. Disraeli is once again apposite (this time fictionalising in Endymion Endymion): In a very short time it was not merely the wives of amba.s.sadors and ministers of state that were found at the garden fetes of Hainault, or the b.a.l.l.s, and banquets, and concerts of Portland Place, but the fitful and capricious realm of fas.h.i.+on surrendered like a fair country conquered as it were by surprise. To visit the Neuchatels became the mode; all solicited to be their guests, and some solicited in vain.

As the frequency of such descriptions suggests, the scale and ostentation of Rothschild hospitality never ceased to fascinate contemporaries-especially socially ambitious men of letters like Disraeli. In Tancred Tancred, there is an exquisite dinner at Sidonia's, "served on Sevres porcelain of Rose du Barry, raised on airy golden stands of arabesque workmans.h.i.+p; a mule bore your panniers of salt, or a sea-nymph proffered it you on a sh.e.l.l just fresh from the ocean, or you found it in a bird's nest; by every guest a different pattern . . . The appearance of the table changed as if by the waving of a wand, and as silently as a dream." In Endymion Endymion, the same author caricatures what is unmistakably a weekend party at Gunnersbury. "Sunday was a great day at Hainault, the Royal and the Stock Exchanges were both of them always fully represented; and then they often had an opportunity, which they highly appreciated, of seeing and conferring with some public characters, MPs of note or promise, and occasionally a secretary of the Treasury, or a privy councillor." At dinner a sycophantic writer named St Barbe-a caricature of Thackeray-holds forth in praise of his hosts: "What a family this is!" he said; "I had no idea of wealth before! Did you observe the silver plates? I could not hold mine with one hand, it was so heavy. I do not suppose there are such plates in all the world . . . But they deserve their wealth," he added; "n.o.body grudges it to them. I declare when I was eating that truffle, I felt a glow about my heart that, if it were not indigestion, I think must have been grat.i.tude . . . He is a wonderful man, that Neuchatel. If I had only known him a year ago! I would have dedicated my novel to him. He is a sort of man who would have given you a cheque immediately . . . If you had dedicated it to a lord, the most he would have done would have been to ask you to dinner, and then perhaps cut up your work in one of the Quality reviews." "What a family this is!" he said; "I had no idea of wealth before! Did you observe the silver plates? I could not hold mine with one hand, it was so heavy. I do not suppose there are such plates in all the world . . . But they deserve their wealth," he added; "n.o.body grudges it to them. I declare when I was eating that truffle, I felt a glow about my heart that, if it were not indigestion, I think must have been grat.i.tude . . . He is a wonderful man, that Neuchatel. If I had only known him a year ago! I would have dedicated my novel to him. He is a sort of man who would have given you a cheque immediately . . . If you had dedicated it to a lord, the most he would have done would have been to ask you to dinner, and then perhaps cut up your work in one of the Quality reviews."3 In truth, for the Rothschilds themselves these occasions continued to be more a duty-an early form of corporate hospitality-than a pleasure. "Here we have stinking b.a.l.l.s night after night," complained Nat to his brothers in 1843; "you have no idea how sweaty the old French ladies smell after a long waltz." Nor were the nightly dinners for diplomats and politicians much more enjoyable: on April 30, 1847, when the guests included the Prince of Holstein-Glucksburg, the Duke of Devons.h.i.+re and Lord and Lady Holland, Apponyi could not help noticing the "affreuses douleurs nevralgiques a la tete" from which Nat's wife was all too plainly suffering. As for the incessant games of whist which were such a characteristic feature of nineteenth-century elite socialising-and which seem to have been the main form of entertainment at Naples-these too palled after a time. Most members of the family also had decidedly mixed feelings about the time they spent each year "taking the waters" at spas like Aix, Gastein, Wildbad and Kissingen, a practice first adopted by James in the early 1830s. Though this was the "done" thing, James rarely enthused about taking a Kur Kur; indeed, he appears to have regarded it primarily as a medical necessity and often took the waters after illnesses or periods of intense and exhausting work. As he grew older, he tended to spend longer and longer periods of the summer recuperating in this way, but he generally continued to bombard his nephews or sons in Paris with peremptory letters, and insisted on being kept informed of any business developments. Salomon enthused about "the air and the mountains, the waterfalls [and] the good bath water" at Gastein in 1841, and Anthony joked that the waters were good for James's libido; but Mayer's reaction to Wildbad was more typical. "You have no idea," he complained to Lionel in 1846, "how dull this place is and if I had not determined on taking the number of baths prescribed, how soon I would bolt."

The image of bolting, however, was a hint at more enjoyable pastimes which, by the 1830s, James and his nephews were discovering. Of these, hunting was an early favourite. It is necessary to distinguish here between three separate, though related activities, all of which were to become staple Rothschild hobbies. Firstly, there was shooting, mainly of pheasants, which James was doing at Ferrieres by the early 1830s. Secondly, there was stag-hunting, which was one of the things which attracted his English nephews to Buckinghams.h.i.+re in the 1840s. Finally, there was horse-racing, an enthusiasm related to hunting, though requiring more carefully bred and trained horses-not to mention professional jockeys.

Of these pastimes, shooting was the most closely related to the pattern of social activity established in the 1820s. In September 1832, with the aftershocks of the July Revolution still reverberating, Lionel "accompanied Montalivet & Apponyi out shooting which in any other times than the present would be very amusing, but now one goes with these great personages to hear what is going on more than for the sake of the amus.e.m.e.nt." That instrumental approach continued to inform his uncle James's att.i.tude throughout the decade, most obviously in 1835, when he staged an immense slaughter of 506 partridges, 359 hares and 110 pheasants in honour of the duc d'Orleans. This was corporate hospitality at its most grotesque, with the unfortunate birds and beasts being bought in specially for the occasion, and each of the eminent guests being provided with a servant, a dog and a gun. Inevitably, more discerning huntsmen looked askance at such carnage. Capefigue is quite vehement on the subject of the sport at Ferrieres: "Bad kennels, bad hounds, horses dead-beat after the first gallop, greedy gamekeeper, game sold off, venison scrawny, servants scoffing and lacking in intelligence." And even James's own nephews were conscious that there was room for improvement. In 1843, in an ambitious bid to re-educate their uncle, they invited him to shoot grouse with them in Scotland. "The shooting is different to what we are accustomed to see and particularly to that which our good Uncle has at Ferrieres where all the game is driven to him and he has but to fire away," Lionel observed acerbically.

Here we have to walk after the dogs and to seek for the game, which is a much greater excitement and at the same time more fatiguing. In the beginning the Baron was very eager and followed the dogs very well, and was rather lucky in killing about 15, but he soon got tired, when I was then able to shoot a little and killed about as many . . . [T]he walking is a little fatiguing, as the heath in most places is nearly up to one's knees.

The younger generation evidently relished the discomfiture of "the Baron": both Nat and Anselm gleefully visualised James returning to Paris clad "as a real highlander, in a tartan dress, the claymore in his hand and exhibiting a flouris.h.i.+ng view of stout legs and calves."

The hunting preferred by James's English nephews was stag-hunting on horseback with hounds. Probably at Mayer's instigation, they began hunting with a pack of staghounds in the Vale of Aylesbury in 1839, renting stables and kennels at Tring Park. It was this new enthusiasm, more than anything else, which prompted the purchase of Mentmore three years later. By 1840, "turning out the stag" was a recreation attracting not only the male Rothschilds but their wives to Buckinghams.h.i.+re, though it was not until five years later that they felt ready to hold a public hunt. The most pa.s.sionate Rothschild testaments to the pleasures of the chase come, poignantly, from Nat, the exile in Paris, whose early letters abound with allusions to hunting. "What magic there is in a pair of leather breeches," he wrote home in 1842. "I have half a mind to put a pair on and gallop round the bois de Boulogne-old Tup [Mayer] would exclaim, "Go it, you c.o.c.kney!" Write more about hunting & whether old Tup manages to tumble into the dirty black ditches, how H. Fitzroy was induced to go out with the staghounds-everything is of interest to us poor fellows who can only hunt through the columns of Bell's Life." And in the same year: "We are going to Lady Ailesbury's tonight. I'd sooner have a run for 40 minutes across the vale than look at her ugly face without a veil." In 1841 Sir Francis Grant was commissioned to paint all four brothers at full tilt on their hunters, resplendent in matching scarlet coats and top hats. In fact, it was seldom that all four were able to ride to hounds together.

It is tempting to conclude from such evidence that the fad for stag-hunting was nothing more than the hedonism of wealthy youth, the stuff which would later be immortalised by Surtees and Siegfried Sa.s.soon. Yet there is a phrase of Nat's which hints at something more. "Ride like trumps," he exhorted his brothers in 1840, "and do not let the Queen's people fancy we are all tailors." As in Paris, hunting inevitably had a social significance: it meant mixing with members of the aristocracy, including courtiers, men who would tend to be accomplished riders. It mattered to the sons of the textile merchant Nathan Rothschild to prove that they were not "all tailors" by acquitting themselves well over the hedges and gates of Buckinghams.h.i.+re. And of course it was good exercise: something which their grandfather, confined in the Judenga.s.se, had been denied and their father had scorned. It is not inconceivable that the older Rothschilds' very sedentary lifestyles made them susceptible to the kind of ailment which killed Nathan. On the other hand, the fact that Nat suffered a serious injury as a result of a riding accident bore out his father's warnings many years before about the incompatibility of bankers and horses.

The same was true of the brothers' first forays into horse-racing. We know from Buxton that Nathan had whetted his sons' appet.i.tes for Arab horses, and Lionel was self-confessedly "extravagant" in his expenditure on horses while serving his apprentices.h.i.+p in Paris. It was not until around 1840, however, that Anthony began to own and compete racehorses: in that year one of his horses won the Champs de Mars in Paris. This was in some ways the height of Rothschild social pretension in the period, as the pre-eminent owner of the day in Paris was none other than the duc d'Orleans. His death in a carriage accident in July 1842 left the field to some extent open: as Disraeli wrote that October, "Anthony succeeds the Duke of Orleans in his patronage of the turf & gives costly cups to the course wh[ich] his horses always win." Nat, still fondly dreaming of the Vale, was disapproving, and warned his youngest brother: "Race horses are ticklish things, very pleasant to have a lot when they win, quite the contrary when they lose . . . Dear Tupus stick to the scarlet coat, instead of the silk jacket, it is more beneficial to the health and less expensive." But Mayer, evidently inspired by Anthony's success, shortly afterwards established a racing stable at Newmarket; it was he who in 1843 (after toying with the more garish combination of amber, lilac and red) registered the Rothschild colours as dark blue and yellow.

Investing in Art.

The pleasures of the field were not the only ones discovered by James and his nephews after 1830. An even more important new source of enjoyment-and prestige-was patronage of the arts; and here we see clearly that Rothschilds were doing much more than merely "aping" aristocratic mores.

Of course, there were those who erroneously took James de Rothschild for a philistine. "If only I had Rothschild's money!" exclaims Gumpelino in a draft of "The Baths of Lucca" written by Heine in around 1828, three years before he left Germany for Paris: But what use is it to him? He lacks culture and understands as much about music as an unborn calf, about painting as a cat, about poetry as Apollo-that's the name of my dog. When men like that lose their money, they cease to exist. What is money? Money is round and rolls away, but education endures . . . But if I-G.o.d forbid-were to lose my money, I would still remain a great connoisseur of art, painting, music and poetry.

Fifteen years later, by which he time he knew James pretty well, he took a rather different view, though the compliments were-as so often with Heine-strictly back- handed. James, he now admitted, had the capacity of finding (if not always of judging) the leading pract.i.tioners in every other sphere of activity. Because of this gift he has been compared with Louis XIV; and it is true that in contrast to his colleagues here in Paris, who like to surround themselves with mediocrities, Herr James von Rothschild always appears in a.s.sociation with the notabilities of any subject; even if he knew nothing about it himself, he still always knew who most excelled in it. He does not, perhaps, understand a single note of music; but Rossini was always a friend of the family. Ary Scheffer is his court painter . . . Herr von Rothschild knows not a word of Greek; but the h.e.l.lenist Letronne is the scholar he favours most . . . Poetry, whether French or German, is also very eminently represented in Herr von Rothschild's affections; although it seems to me as if . . . the Herr Baron is not as wildly enthusiastic about the poets of our own day as he is for the great poets of the past, for example, Homer, Sophocles, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Goethe-pure, dead poets, enlightened geniuses, who are free from all earthly dross, removed from all wordly needs, and do not ask him for shares in the Northern Railway.

As we shall see, this last remark was a pointed allusion to Heine's own relations.h.i.+p with James; but leaving that aside-and making due allowance for Heine's satirical hyperbole-it is obvious that the above pa.s.sage (published in 1843 in the Augsburger Zeitung Augsburger Zeitung) could hardly have been written of a man with no interest in the arts. Even if James himself was no expert, he admired expertise-and that is a very different thing from being a philistine. When another ambitious young man of letters (also, like Heine, a converted Jew) first met James at a dinner in Paris the year before, he hit the nail on the head. "I found him," Benjamin Disraeli told his sister, "a happy mixture of the French Dandy & the orange boy. He spoke to me with[ou]t ceremony with 'I believe you know my nephew nephew.' " The "orange boy" in James was most strongly evident in the strong Frankfurt accent with which he spoke French, and in the peremptory manner which he shared with his brother in London; but the "French Dandy" was the man within, who always enjoyed the company of artists, musicians and writers. An English visitor to Paris in the 1850s noticed this too, when she called on "Mme. de Roth . . . whose poetic abode has more the air of the palace of a wealthy artist than the hotel of a millionaire." For all his rough manners, James was, in his heart, something of an aesthete-even a Bohemian-though he indulged this trait vicariously, surrounding himself with beautiful objects and introducing one or two of their more entertaining creators into his otherwise stuffy social round. Something similar could be said of his English nephews, whose love of hunting was only one facet of their wide-ranging activity beyond the walls of the counting house.

It was on other walls that the "acculturation" of the Rothschilds was perhaps most immediately obvious-specifically, on the walls of their houses, which gradually became covered with paintings of the very highest quality. The first picture of note bought by a Rothschild was French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze's The Milkmaid The Milkmaid -a typically rustic-romantic work of the late rococo-which James acquired as early as 1818. Greuze was a favourite Rothschild artist: James bought another of his paintings- -a typically rustic-romantic work of the late rococo-which James acquired as early as 1818. Greuze was a favourite Rothschild artist: James bought another of his paintings-Little Girl with Bouquet-from the auction of Cardinal Fesch's estate in 1845, and his nephew Lionel began his collection by buying his Virtue Faltering Virtue Faltering at Phillips' auctioneers in 1831; he later acquired four other works by the same artist, among them at Phillips' auctioneers in 1831; he later acquired four other works by the same artist, among them The Parting Kiss The Parting Kiss. His brother Anthony owned another two, including The Nursery The Nursery. Such pictures complemented the numerous items of ancien regime ancien regime furniture and ornamentation acquired by the family, like the Marie Antoinette secretaires