The House of Rothschild (101 page)

That phrase was well chosen if it was intended to suggest a comparison with Natty’s grandfather, who had pulled off his most celebrated (and mythologised) coup in the previous world war almost exactly a century before. Natty had been no Nathan. It was symptomatic of the increasingly sclerotic condition of the bank at the time of his death that Joseph Nauheim, one of the bank’s senior clerks, could argue
against
the introduction of double-entry book-keeping when this was proposed by a committee set up “to enquire into the system of accounts ... to consider what steps, if any, could be adopted to expedite the preparation of the Balance Sheet, and whether any improvements could be introduced into the system of account-keeping with a view to mak[ing] it more efficient and up to date.” It is quite astonishing that a firm with the resources of N. M. Rothschild was still using the single-entry system in 1915. Yet Nauheim opposed the committee’s recommendations—which ranged from the rationalisation of the system of classifying accounts to the abolition of knife erasers and the standardisation of book sizes—on the ground that the changes would be too time-consuming. The committee’s report is unusual for another reason: it is one of the earliest Rothschild documents to have been typed rather than handwritten. In fact, there was only one typewriter at New Court in 1915.

The real problem, however, lay with the next generation. Writing in the 1870s, Walter Bagehot had foreseen the problem when he asked how long the “large private banks” would be able to hold their own against the joint-stock banks:

It certainly appeared to be the history of the fifth generation of Rothschilds. In 1901 Clinton Dawkins put it bluntly: “The coming generation of the Rothschilds
est faire pleurer.”

Natty’s eldest son Walter had begun collecting animals, stuffed and live, at the age of six and was already a knowledgeable zoologist when he went to study natural science at the University of Bonn and then at Cambridge. In this, he had the more or less unqualified encouragement of his parents; as a twenty-first birthday present his father built him a museum at Tring to house his collection. But the expectation persisted that he would follow in his forefathers’ footsteps and enter the bank, a notion abandoned only in 1908 when it was discovered that “poor fat Walter” had been speculating wildly and disastrously on the stock exchange.
¹
The sin of financial incompetence was compounded when it emerged that he was vainly trying to pay off a former mistress who had been blackmailing him—one of several scandalous liaisons which belied his awkward manner and bear-like appearance. Although an indefatigable scientist who described 5,000 previously unclassified species in over a thousand publications, Walter was the last person capable of leading the family firm through the storms which loomed ahead, as much out of place in a bank as his zebras were when he drove them as a four-in-hand down Piccadilly. Even as an MP, he contrived to antagonise both Arthur Balfour and Herbert Gladstone in a single speech.

His brother Charles was better able to accept the burdens of City life and dutifully prepared to inherit a partnership at New Court; it was he who chaired the committee on the modernisation of the bank’s accounting system. But Charles too was a scientist at heart.
²
A dedicated amateur botanist and entomologist who published 150 papers and described 500 new species of flea, he was also one of the country’s first modern conservationists who delighted in the woodland around Ashton Wold, where he built himself a picturesque retreat.
³
After Natty’s death, it was decided that Charles should succeed his father as senior partner; but two years later he succumbed to the Spanish influenza which swept Europe in 1917-19, contracted encephalitis lethargica (a neurological condition caused by the virus) and after a long, debilitating illness took his own life in 1923.
⁴

This reorientation of intellectual ability away from business and into science (or the arts, in a case such as Aby Warburg) was a common phenomenon among business families of the
fin de siècle,
and especially Jewish families, reflecting the great widening of educational opportunities for Jews of that class and generation. In the cases of Walter and Charles, it is tempting to suggest a further genetic explanation. Throughout the nineteenth century, numerous members of the Rothschild family had evinced predispositions towards collecting and gardening. In Walter and Charles, these tendencies fused to produce an exceptional aptitude for zoological and botanical classification. Their cousin Lionel, Leo’s eldest son, had similar inclinations, devoting much of his life to horticulture (though he also had a fondness for fast cars and boats). His younger brother Anthony was also academically inclined, in a quite different direction: at Cambridge he secured a Double First in history (despite reputedly hunting five days out of seven) and it was often said of him in later years that he would have been happier as a don than as a banker.

The French house suffered similar problems as the old generation made way for the new. Edmond’s son Jimmy had settled and married in England before the war; he showed no interest in banking, dividing his time between helping his father with his Palestinian schemes, the untaxing duties of a backbench Liberal MP and the Turf. An even less likely prospect—as it then seemed—was Edmond’s second son Maurice who at the age of twenty-six had inherited an immense fortune, including the château at Pregny, from his second cousin Julie (Adolph’s widow). He appeared content to devote his wealth to collecting works of modern art by the likes of Picasso, Braque and Chagall—an investment strategy much underrated at the time. There was therefore a certain piquancy about Jimmy’s decision in 1913 to commission (for his London dining room) a series of panels by Diaghilev’s set-designer Léon Bakst on the theme of
The Sleeping Beauty.
A number of family members acted as models for these, including Jimmy’s wife Dorothy, his sister Miriam, Edouard’s wife Germaine, Robert’s wife Nelly and Edmond’s wife Adelheid—as well as the Marquess of Crewe and his wife, Hannah Rosebery’s daughter Peggy. Was the choice of subject mere whimsy? It is tempting to suggest that it was an appropriate one; for, in the eyes of many contemporaries, the Rothschilds themselves seemed to be lapsing into a deep slumber.

The other branch of the family which had settled in France—the descendants of the English-born Nat—ceased altogether to play a part in the bank. Although still formally a partner, Nat’s grandson Henri was another of the fifth generation’s scientists. A qualified if misanthropic doctor, he had his own private laboratory, published extensively on the subject of infant nutrition and took an interest in the Curies“ work on the medical use of radium. He also dabbled in the theatre, as a sponsor of the famous 1909 tour by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, and as an amateur playwright using the
nom
de plume ”André Pascal.“ With his Parisian château de la Muette, his mock-Tudor villa at Deauville and a yacht suggestively called
Eros,
Henri lived not to make money, but to spend it. His various attempts at entrepre neurship (he tried at various times to manufacture cars, mustard, soap and canned pheasant) were commercial failures.

This meant that most of the responsibility for the running of de Rothschild Frères after 1905 devolved on Alphonse’s only son, Edouard. He, however, was scarcely swashbuckling in his approach to business. Fastidious and ostentatiously old-fashioned—he still wore a frock coat at the Nord line’s annual general meeting—he argued against offering investment advice to clients: “If they make a profit, they’ll consider it their due; if they lose money, they’ll say that they were ruined by the Rothschilds.” Edouard also had his share of extra-mural distractions, though they were rather more conventional than Henri’s: bridge when in town, shooting at Ferrières and horse-racing at Longchamp.

In Vienna too, the Rothschilds of the fifth generation tended to neglect the “counting house” for high culture or high life. After the death of Albert in 1911, control of the bank passed almost entirely to his second son Louis, despite the fact that he was not yet thirty; rather as Anselm before had handed power to Albert, effectively sidelining his other two sons. It has been said that Louis brought a modernising spirit to the Vienna house, involving it in such unfamiliar fields of activity as the New York Interborough Rapid Transit Company. But he was no slave to work: the archetypal playboy bachelor (he married in his sixties), he was an accomplished rider and mountaineer who also found time to dabble in anatomy, botany and art. Freed almost entirely from business responsibility, his brothers were in a position to indulge their enthusiasms still more. The elder, Alphonse, trained as a lawyer but after the war settled down to the life of a gentleman scholar, specialising in classical literature; the younger brother Eugène’s most notable achievement was to write a monograph on Titian.

Was any European family unaffected by the First World War? It seems doubtful. Not even the continent’s richest could avoid sacrificing blood, time and money in the great slaughter of those years.

On the face of it, the Rothschilds were swept along by the patriotic fervour which historians usually see as the typical “mood” of 1914. Although they were all in their thirties when the war broke out, all three of Leo’s sons (as officers in the Bucks Yeomanry) itched to fight for their country. The second son, Evelyn, saw action early on the Western Front and was invalided home in November 1915. Within a matter of months, he was back in the trenches and in March 1916 was mentioned in despatches. He was then sent to Palestine, where he met his younger brother Anthony, who had earlier been wounded at Gallipoli and ended the war as a major with the General Staff. To his frustration, Lionel was obliged to remain at New Court, where he sought an outlet for his bellicose urges in organising Jewish recruitment in the City. At least four of the French Rothschilds ended up in uniform. Jimmy was seconded to the British 3rd Army as an interpreter and, like his English relations, served in Palestine towards the end of the war. Henri concealed his chronic albuminuria and became an officer in the medical corps, but was invalided out by the effects of a typhus vaccination. His elder brother James served as a pilot in the Balkan theatre and Gustave’s son Robert acted as interpreter on the Western Front. Of the Austrians, Alphonse and Eugène served as officers in the 6th Dragoons on the Italian front. In practice, therefore, Rothschild did not fight against Rothschild: the English and French Rothschilds who fought were active only on the Western Front and in the Middle East, though James might conceivably have found himself flying over his Austrian cousins had he been deployed further west. Only one Rothschild was killed—Leo’s son Evelyn in November 1917, from wounds sustained in a cavalry charge against Turkish positions at El Mughar—though the war claimed two other close relatives: Hannah Rosebery’s son Neil Primrose, who was also killed in Palestine,
⁵
and the son of Charles’s Hungarian sister-in-law.

Even for members of the family who were far from the Front, the war was a traumatic experience. Alfred and his cousins Constance and Annie—the last of Nathan’s grandchildren—lived in terror of German air raids. At his insistence, the Dividend Office gallery at New Court was packed with sandbags to protect the Bullion Room below and a personal shelter was built for his use in the corner of the Drawn Bond Department. A special system was also designed to relay official air-raid warnings from the Royal Mint refinery (temporarily converted to munitions production) to New Court, and Alfred even had a wire net erected above the roof of his own house in the hope of intercepting falling bombs. Constance’s war-time letters to her sister are full of anxious references to the same danger. “I hope if there are Zeppelins about,” she wrote in January 1915, “that the airmen may be blinded and frozen [by the snow] ... The Subway is ready for us ... I always wear my pearls (as I do not want to lose them in a
débâcle
) and at night have a fur cloak at the foot of the bed, a shawl and warm slippers, and next to me, candles and matches.” Even when she was out of London she was “full of nervous forebodings ... one thinks that one hears Zepps. at all hours of the evening and night, and there are constant explosions and gun-firing out at sea.”
⁶
These fears were, of course, somewhat exaggerated as aerial bombardment was as yet in its infancy. Alfred died naturally—a month after the war had ended. Constance lived until 1931.

Nevertheless, those who remained at home endeavoured to do their “bit” for the war effort. As early as September 1914, Constance made her house at Aston Clinton available to Belgian refugees (whom she lectured on the wickedness of German war aims and the virtue of Temperance), and helped to run a small hospital for the Red Cross. “The servants have all conformed to some necessities of this economising time,” she boasted, apparently oblivious to the irony of delegating sacrifice to the domestics. “Lester has no men-servants under him. A bright, neat pretty little parlour-maid has taken their place ... My Iron-room a canteen! ... Cricket pavilion much used and liked as billiard-and reading-room—Tennis pavilion used as library for the village.” With slightly more self-awareness, she even welcomed the introduction of food rationing in 1917. “I fancy there will be some difficulty in large establishments and in public places like restaurants, etc.,” she reflected, “but in small (!!) households like mine, the experiment will be
quite
interesting. Oh! dear, what strange experiences we are having!”