The House of Rothschild (118 page)

12
According to Mayer Carl, he and Hansemann “first applied for the concession in 1867”; Oppenheim became involved only ”after all the work has been done by Mr Hansemann and myself.“

1
It is worth asking whom Gustave referred to when he used the pronoun ”on.“ The answer would seem to be that this was not just bourse gossip but a Rothschild version of ”sources close to the government,“ if not the government itself.

2
It cannot be entirely coincidental that three days later Lionel sent Gladstone two tickets for the Derby via Granville.

3
The London Rothschilds also intimated to the Prussian ambassador Bernstorff that war would be ”inevitable“ if Leopold accepted. By the 11th, Gustave was writing to Bleichröder ”as if the war between France and Prussia had already broken out.“

4
Lionel told Disraeli that ”the cabinet had been completely taken by surprise: none of them knew anything of foreign affairs except Granville: and Gladstone really believed Cobden’s theory that men were growing to civilised for war.“

5
It is worth noting, on the other hand, that Gustave had himself mentioned the possibility of French designs on Belgium less than two weeks before.

6
”[Disraeli] gives me the Rothshild view of the war: his friends fear it will be long... they think the Prussians well armed and well prepared; and that neither is a decisive result to be expected for the present, nor can either party acquiesce in a defeat which is not decisive.“

7
It was a sign of Gladstone’s growing wariness towards the Rothschilds that in March 1871 he declined to provide them with ”inside information“ about the international conference then being held in London to discuss this old question.

8
The reparations imposed on France in 1815 had been 700 million francs, in the region of 7 per cent of gross national product. The figure of 5,000 million demanded by Germany in 1871 represented around 19 per cent of GNP.

9
At this stage, communications were so poor that it was impossible to involve the Frankfurt and Vienna houses—that at least was Alphonse’s excuse for not doing so.

10
Unlike the later payments, this was not an especially profitable transaction for the banks; Alphonse felt compelled by the circumstances to charge a low commission of just 0.5 per cent and grumbled that he was only acting under duress.

11
The interest amounted in the end to 301 million francs, slightly less than the value of the railways (325 million), so the final total paid was in fact 4,976 million.

12
Bismarck himself had proposed ”the phased withdrawal from the occupied territory in proportion to the sums paid.“

13
The Prussians agreed to accept gold, silver, banknotes from the central banks of England, Prussia, Holland and Belgium, cheques on the same banks and immediately payable first-class bills of exchange on London, Amsterdam, Berlin or Brussels. In May it was also agreed to accept a further 125 million in French banknotes. From the outset Bismarck and the German bankers opposed the idea of accepting French rentes.

14
At Alphonse’s initiative, and with an eye to ”public opinion,“ the Banque had reduced the interest it charged the government from 6 per cent to 3 per cent.

15
There was never any serious discussion of other possibilities such as amortisable bonds or a lottery loan; rentes were what investors in London and Paris expected from a French government.

16
The main obstacle to this was the existence of an alternative monarchist party around the Bourbon claimant, the duc de Chambord. To draw another Weimar parallel, Alphonse was, on balance, a ”Ver nunftsrepublikaner“; he spoke disparagingly of crypto-monarchists he had to deal with on the Seine et Marne council.

17
This raises the possibility that he never intended to allow Bleichröder or Hansemann into the underwriting syndicate and that the negotiations described by Landes were a sham. That would certainly explain the numerous garbled telegrams. Alternatively, the Berlin bankers wanted their rentes at too low a price.

18
The underwriting syndicate in London was simply a duopoly of Rothschild and Baring and I have assumed that they shared the total of 325 million francs equally; in Paris, the underwriting shares were distributed as follows: de Rothschild Frères 248 million;
haute banque
(twelve houses, including Fould, Mallet Frères, Hottinguer and Pillet-Will) 362 million; Société Générale 60 million; other joint-stock banks 65 million. The Société Générale was given preferential treatment because of the French Rothschilds’ common railway interests with Talabot.

19
This should be regarded as an upper limit; it seems unlikely that the Rothschilds acted in quite this optimal way. By way of comparison, the Crédit Lyonnais made only 5.7 million francs from the 1871 operation.

20
The desire to minimise the influx of bills on London reflected fears of pressure on the thaler. It is worth noting that Mayer Carl failed to persuade the Seehandlung to entrust the London house with the remittance of money from London to Berlin.

21
In January 1872 the Banque de Paris merged with the Amsterdam-based Banque de Credit et de Depots des Pays Bas to form the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas, usually known as ”Paribas“ for short.

22
Bleichröder was convinced that Hansemann was conspiring against him with Harry von Arnim, the Prussian ambassador in Paris. Bismarck certainly disliked Arnim (as did the Rothschilds) and used Bleichröder to communicate indirectly with Thiers via the French ambassador in Berlin, Gontaut-Biron; but the financial significance of this was minimal.

23
The rejection of Hamburg bills reflected the pressure within Berlin to put Germany on to a new gold currency; the Hamburg ”marc banco“ was silver-based.

1
A fourth son, Anselm Alexander, had died in 1854 at the age of eighteen; scarcely anything is known about him.

2
Disraeli remembered him fondly as ”a thoro[ugh]ly good hearted fellow, the most genial being I ever knew, the most kind-hearted, and the most generous.“

3
Delane, who had retired in 1877, also died in 1879, though it is possible that he wrote Lionel’s obituary while still working: as today, obituaries were often written well in advance of an eminent figures death.

4
Bleichröder’s son Hans noted sourly that ”few people genuinely mourned because Lionel did not know how to make himself liked and did next to nothing for the poor.“ This is not borne out by the obituary in the
Middlesex County Times,
June 7, 1879: I am grateful to Lionel de Rothschild for this reference.

5
Carriages were also sent by the Duke of Wellington, Disraeli (now the Earl of Beaconsfield), the Duke of Manchester, the Duke of St Albans and the Duchess of Somerset, to say nothing of numerous ambassadors.

6
To speak of ”generations“ presents problems because of the extent to which the Rothschild generations overlapped: in the period 1827 to 1884 when the fourth generation was born, six members of the third were also born and ten members of the fifth. I am grateful to Lionel de Rothschild for his assistance on this and related points.

7
These premature male deaths were somewhat ”counterbalanced“ by the premature deaths of six Rothschild women: Clementine in 1865 (aged twenty); Evelina in 1866 (aged twenty-seven); Georgine in 1869 (seventeen); Hannah in 1878 (thirty-nine); Bettina in 1892 (thirty-four); and Bertha in 1896 (twenty-six).

8
She continued to comment adversely on his shyness even when he was in his twenties.

9
History was his strong suit. Disraeli once remarked: ”If I want to know a date in history, I ask Natty.“

10
Honours in the ”Little Go“ required knowledge of one of the Gospels in Greek, prescribed Latin and Greek texts, William Paley’s anti-Deist
Evidences of Christianity,
the first three books of Euclid and arirh metic as well as the fourth and sixth books of Euclid, elementary algebra and mechanics.

11
It has been claimed that Alfred was obliged to decline re-election in 1890 after taking the illicit liberty of looking at the account of someone from whom the National Gallery was considering buying a painting; the difference between what the seller was asking and what he had originally paid he considered ”out of all proportion to convention and decency“ His interest supposedly stemmed from his role as trustee of the National Gallery However, the Bank of England archives do not corroborate this. In fact, Alfred seems to have retired because of ill health despite an attempt by the Governor to persuade him to stay on.

12
Though Flower later married a Rothschild, he appears to have been a homosexual and the intimacy of his friendship with Leo evidently perturbed Charlotte.

13
Leo was elected to the Jockey Club in 1891 and was one of the founders of a motoring club which later became the Royal Automobile Association.

14
To judge by her descriptions of his parents’ intense grief, Salomon was something of a favourite. Natty and Alfred ”found the whole deeply afflicted family awfully calm, with the exception of poor Uncle James, who burst into tears when he saw the travellers, and sobbed convulsively; it was quite dreadful to hear him.—Addy’s intense sorrow is quite alarming, she is so fearfully quiet, and utterly unable to shed a single tear—she speaks—never a word of herself—only of her husband’s qualities; she thinks he was too good to live... Aunt Betty thought he might be in a trance, and would not hear of the last mournful ceremony taking place...“

15
Its extent is usually said to have been 15,000 acres in this period, but a figure of 30,000 seems more likely. In fact, Ferdinand had initially tried to persuade his father to buy him an estate in Northampton shire, but Anselm dismissed the idea, making the very Rothschildian point that the yield of English agricultural land was 1.5 per cent lower than that of Austrian. It was only after his father’s death that he was able to buy Waddesdon (for £220,000 from the 7th Duke of Marlborough).

16
The others were: Charlotte (Nat’s widow)’s medieval abbey des Vaux-de-Cernay at Auffargis, restored for her by Félix Langlais; Gustave’s château de Laversine at Saint-Maximin (Seine-et-Oise), designed by Alfred-Philibert Aldrophe after 1882; James Edouard’s château des Fontaines (Oise), again by Langlais (1878-92); his widow Thérèse’s maison Normande built there by Girard in 1892; as well as a new seaside villa at Cannes (for Betty). Mention should also be made of château de Vallvère à Mortefontaine (Oise), built by Aldrophe for the duc and duchesse de Gramont (Mayer Carl’s daughter Margaretha) in 1890.

17
Leo’s at 5 Hamilton Place, designed by William Rogers of William Cubitt & Co. in the French style; Alfred’s at 1 Seamore Place, purchased from the courtier Christopher Sykes; Ferdinand’s at 143 Piccadilly ; Edmond’s at 41 rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, reconstructed by Langlais after 1878; baronne Salomon James’s at 11 rue Berryer, designed by Léon Ohnet in 1872-8; Nathaniel’s Vienna ”hôtel“ at 14-16 Theresianumgasse; and Albert’s at 24-26 Heugasse (later Prinz Eugen-Strasse), the latter built by Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur in 1876.

18
The architect Franz von Hoven took a number of liberties with the original house, moving it back several feet, replacing the old slate front with more picturesque oak timbers and effectively merging what had originally been two very narrow houses, though the interiors were more faithful to the early part of the century. It has been suggested that it was a conscious effort to imitate the Goethe house in Grosser Hirschgraben, which had been renovated in 1863 and had become Frankfurt’s main tourist attraction. In 1890 Von Hoven was also asked to alter and extend the Bockenheimer Landstrasse house, once Amschel’s.

19
A different version of the tea story runs: ”When the curtains were drawn, a powdered footman entered the room, followed by an underling with a tea trolley, and would query politely: ’Tea, coffee or a fresh peach, Sir?‘—’Tea, please.‘—’China, Indian or Ceylon, Sir?‘—’China, if you please.‘—’With lemon, milk or cream, Sir?‘—’Milk, please.‘—’Jersey, Hereford or Shorthorn, Sir?‘ “

20
Ferdinand to Rosebery, undated,
c.
Sept. 1878: ”[M]y heart is so full that I must pour out some of its contents into your hearing.—Ill as I have been during the whole of my stay with you I assure you to have never felt more happy. I have so often told you that I am devoted to and fond of you that I will not repeat these expressions from fear of annoying and wearying you; but you will allow me to add, that since I have lived under your roof I have learnt to estimate your character more highly still than I did and that I am more devoted to and fonder of you than I ever was ... Pray don’t, as you threatened, withhold your trust from me in the future.—I assure you I am worthy of It.—I have had very few friends in my life, hardly any true ones, and it would grieve me beyond anything if I thought that when we meet there was no longer the free exchange of thought and feeling between us which has existed and on which I pride myself.—I am a lonely, suffering and occasionally a very miserable individual despite the gilded and marble rooms in which I live.—There is but one thing in the world, that I care for; and that is the sympathy and the confidence of the few persons whom I love. Believe me that I am neither low nor morbid nor even sentimental at this moment...“ See also same to same, Feb. 17, 1881: ”You know I love you more than any man in the world“; Nov. 7, 1882: ”I wish Parliament, the Cabinet and Politics at the bottom of the sea, as they have estranged you from me“; May 7, 1884: ”That I am ‘yours’ entirely you are aware of and if I am occasionally ’peculiar’ put it down to my nervous system and not to any other cause.“