THE RICH MEN FROM THE EAST
Specific instances of the fusion with native elements of the owners of
foreign wealth, especially in the case of the Jews. Growth in England
from early days of Hebrew plutocracy. Different views as to number of
Jew families, the names of these as preserved by Jewish writers.
Westminster Abbey under Richard III. and Henry VII. completed with Jew
money. Later settlements of Jews in England date from Charles II.
Under George III. the prosperity of the Goldsmids foreshadows the
future power of the Rothschilds. Early beginnings of the Rothschilds,
on the Continent and in England. Rothschild and Waterloo; Rothschild
and the Bank of England. Services of the family to the English State.
Their method of using their wealth under Baron Lionel and his
successors. Their example to others of their race and their work
amongst their own people.
The close assimilation of the newer elements of English life to the older;
the gradual but unchecked identification in pursuits, habits, culture and
tastes of the aristocracy of wealth with that of birth have been already
mentioned. More detailed illustration of these distinctive movements of
the Victorian era are necessary to enable us to form an adequate idea of
the personal and enduring influence exercised upon the society of England
by those who since their national dispersion, have in all countries
illustrated in themselves the chief developments and agencies of wealth.
From the popular expressions sometimes employed about the Jews in England
to-day, one might suppose they had become considerable among us only
during the Victorian epoch. Few people, as they look at Westminster Abbey,
remember that this monument of the national Christianity which the piety
of Edward the Confessor began was completed under Richard III. and Henry
VII. with money levied from the Jews.[13] Under Henry III. the sufferings
of the chosen race in England had been severe. Thereafter, a gradual but
progressive improvement in their position took place. But so late as 1633,
according to a Hebrew authority named Haham, quoted in the _Anglia
Judaica_, astounding though the statement sounds, there were only twelve
Jewish families in this country. The distinction of re-establishing the
race on British soil has been claimed for the protectorate of Cromwell. It
really belongs to Charles II., and actually occurred during the first few
years after the Restoration. One of the comparatively few Anglo-Jewish
conversions to Christianity took place about this time. Close to the
Abbey, which his ancestors' wealth had completed, in the church of St
Margaret's, Westminster, an Israelite physician, Speranza Collins, abjured
the faith of his fathers, and was formally received into the Anglican
Communion by Dr Warmester, Dean of Westminster. By the time that the house
of Brunswick was established on the throne, the fabric of Anglo-Jewish
plutocracy had well nigh built itself up. The great natural philosopher
Emmanuel Da Costa, whom the Italian Jews of the eighteenth century
furnished to England, compiled a list by name of all his countrymen living
under the sovereignty of George III. In this list there are no
Rothschilds. The patronymics of most frequent occurrence are Rodrigues,
and Goldsmid. This latter seems to have been the Semitic family which,
under the third George, occupied the position most closely analogous to
that filled by the house of Rothschild under Queen Victoria. The country
houses in the Sheen and Richmond district with their deer parks and
vineries owned by Abraham and Jacob Goldsmid, foreshadowed distinctly the
later beauties in the same region of Gunnersbury, if not of the more
distant Mentmore.
At the close of the eighteenth century, the Frankfort Rothschilds, the
friends and bankers of the Prince of Hesse-Cassell, were a power in
Germany only second to that of the Empire. The capital on the Main had
from the days of Charlemagne been a trading centre. During the sixteenth
century, its fairs caused the place to be the market of the world, and
three hundred years later may have given to the Prince Consort[14] the
first idea of the great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Long before Mayer Amschel
Rothschild, the founder of the firm died, the prices of Frankfort were
being studied as closely as those of Antwerp or Rotterdam. The third
brother of Anselm Mayer, who controlled till 1855 the Frankfort branch,
was evidently the first great financial genius of his family. His
enterprise and judgment made him the Croesus of Europe. They also at a
critical point in his career prompted him to save from ruin more than one
Paris bank reeling under the effects of North American insolvencies. At
the close of the last century, the English business of the Rothschilds was
transacted by the firm of Van Notten. A dispute with a Lancashire
manufacturer on whom Germany and Austria depended for their cotton goods,
sent Nathan Mayer Rothschild from Frankfort to England. In this way the
English house came into existence, and the necessity for foreign agents
outside the family ceased. The Napoleonic wars, as is well known, largely
contributed in their successive incidents to the earlier fortunes of the
family. Already the first Rothschild had speculated largely in the bills
on the English Government given by the Duke of Wellington for the support
of the British troops. Settled in London he provided the channels for the
regular transmission of funds to the forces in the Peninsula. Early in
1800, he was the first man on the London Stock Exchange. His agents
followed in the train of every regiment. His couriers in their specially
chartered ships were on every sea. Rothschild himself, unseen by others,
watched the Battle of Waterloo. He crossed the Channel in a fishing boat,
and arrived in London, to find it full of rumours of the English defeat.
Casually appearing on the Stock Exchange, he received the condolences of
the City on his ruin. Only he himself knew what his investments were.
Instead of being ruined, he had added a million to the family wealth. Such
at least is the conventional account. The foregoing details are in
substance taken from an entertaining volume by John Reeves on _The
Rothschilds_, published by Messrs Sampson Low.
The present writer has, however, some reason to question the accuracy of
the tradition of a Rothschild secretly watching the great battle. The
account that Baron Lionel's friends generally gave is as follows. During
the great Corsican's usurpation of the First Magistrateship in the French
State, the lawful possessor of the Throne, Louis XVIII. was living in
retirement in Belgium.[15] The Rothschilds, on the early morrow of the
decisive battle, sent a courier to the King's villa near Ghent, to gather
from the reception of the news by His Majesty how the fortune of the day
had gone. The King's sitting room was on the ground floor with windows
looking on the garden. In that enclosure the Rothschild emissary took up
his station, so that, himself unseen, he could observe what passed on the
other side of the windows. Presently a rider, fresh from his horse, still
booted, spurred, and mud splashed, entered the chamber, made a low
obeisance to its dethroned occupant, who, on his part, graciously extended
his fingers which the messenger gently touched with his lips. Hence the
outside spectator inferred Napoleon's defeat, and proceeded at once to his
principals in London. As an English financier this is the Rothschild who
popularized foreign stocks and loans in this country by causing the
interest and dividends to be paid in London, instead of, as heretofore,
abroad. Four years after Waterloo, he first identified himself closely
with the English Government by undertaking a loan of twelve millions. His
profit on the transaction was one hundred and fifty thousand pounds. With
this sum he bought Gunnersbury, formerly the home of Amelia, aunt of
George III., which had since passed into the hands of a private citizen
named Copland. The Rothschilds naturally and honourably took their place
among the lords of the soil in their adopted country. He who is now spoken
of encountered, perhaps provoked, much opposition from rival financiers,
and more than once measured swords with the Bank of England which had
hesitated about technicalities of discount. Shortly after this the New
Court potentate called at the Bank bringing with him a sum of twenty-one
thousand pounds in L5 notes,[16] each deposited in a separate bag. Seven
hours were occupied in changing this paper into gold. For the time the
general business of the establishment was arrested. The strategy succeeded
completely. The next day it was announced that in future the Rothschild
bills would be taken as the Banks'.
In the July of 1836 a pigeon fluttered in through the open window of the
New Court counting house. The bird had travelled from Frankfort; it
brought the news of the death in his native town of the great head of the
firm. Many religious ceremonies of the Hebrew race have, during these
last few years, been converted into great functions of modish society. The
ceremonial series began when the body of the first great Rothschild known
to England, in the presence of the whole Corps Diplomatique attached to
the Court of St James's, was committed to the earth in the East End
cemetery of his race. With that event the latter day history of the
Rothschilds begins. Henceforward the business was to be conducted by
Nathaniel Mayer Rothschild's four sons in England, together with their
uncles abroad. Of these sons Nathaniel settled in France, Lionel, Nathan
Mayer and Anthony managed the English firm. Under the regime of Baron
Lionel Rothschild whom many now living remember well, the first great act
of association with the English Government was in 1847 the Irish Famine
Loan, supplemented as it was by munificent subscriptions for the relief of
the distress which the failure of the potato crop had caused. Seven years
later Baron Lionel carried out the sixteen millions loan for the English
Government. The transaction for which the Lionel administration is best
remembered by the present generation is the advance for the purchase of
the Suez Canal shares in 1876. The announcement of that negotiation by the
Prime Minister of the day in conjunction with his compatriots in the City,
came as a surprise to the English people at large. It has, however, on the
highest authority since transpired that when in 1874 Mr Disraeli took
office, he had already decided upon acquiring for England a preponderating
interest in the international waterway. Nor is it impertinent to assume
that during the Sunday visits which the statesman, as Mr Disraeli and as
Lord Beaconsfield, paid to the suburban home of Baron Lionel, this scheme
may sometimes have been discussed. Four millions was the sum advanced by
New Court, one hundred thousand pounds represented the total of the
Rothschild 2-1/2 per cent. profit.
By this time Baron Lionel had been in possession of a seat in the House of
Commons some ten years, won though that seat had been only after a
prolonged struggle. At the beginning of the century no Jew magistrate or
sheriff existed. In 1837, Sir David Salomons became sheriff of London and
Middlesex, but the true faith of a Christian test prevented him from
serving. Eventually, to oblige the City, Lord Chancellor Campbell
introduced a Bill removing this disability. Parliament, however, was still
closed against the Jew. Ten years later Lionel Rothschild, with Lord John
Russell, was elected M.P. for London. The Jewish Parliamentary Relief
Bill, supported by Mr Disraeli as well as Mr Gladstone, passed the House
of Commons, to be thrown out in the Lords. In 1850 another measure shared
the same fate. The sixth decade of this century had come before the first
Rothschild took his place on the green leather benches. Mr Disraeli's last
novel, _Endymion_, as rich as any of its predecessors in personal
portraits, contains in the character of Mr Neuchatel, the banker, the most
graphic pen and ink sketch of the financier now mentioned. In the grounds
of Gunnersbury, statesmen of both parties, diplomatists from every Court,
foreigners of every grade of distinction met each other. Here Mr Disraeli
chatted amicably with Lord Palmerston, the turbulence of whose foreign
policy he was fresh from denouncing in the House of Commons. Hither Louis
Napoleon, when an exile in London, drove in his friend Count Alfred
D'Orsay's cabriolet. Here the veteran Lord Lyndhurst instructed in habits
of English thought his aptest pupil, then a showy but still obscure
politician soon to become the pillar of the Tory party. It was by Baron
Lionel that the Rothschild hospitalities were begun on the scale on which
they have since continued. First came the marriage of Baron Lionel's
eldest daughter, Leonora, to her relative, Alphonse Rothschild. Persigny,
then French Ambassador in London, made a speech which the Paris Academy
recognized as classical in its perfection. Mr Disraeli, always
pre-eminently happy on these occasions, delighted host, hostess, and
guests by a coruscation of glittering antitheses, and flashing epigrams in
affectionate honour of the bride and bridegroom. The ex-Lord Chancellor,
Lord Lyndhurst himself, in whose honour the Baroness Mayer had given a
fete a few days earlier at Mentmore, said a few words so happy in their
arrangement, so dignified in their cadence that they were subsequently set
to candidates for the Newcastle medal at Eton to translate into Attic
prose.
Not twenty years have passed since, on Baron Lionel's death in 1879, the
fortunes of the house have been controlled by the Lord Rothschild of
to-day with his brothers Alfred and Leopold as his partners. The loans for
the Hungarian, Brazilian, and Chilian Governments are only a portion of
the New Court enterprises since 1879. In the eyes of England and of
Europe, their most important undertaking has been in relation with Egypt.
In 1885, at the moment that the Western powers were at diplomatic feud
with each other about the land of the Pharoahs, Egypt itself drew more and
more near to complete bankruptcy. The calamity was only averted by monthly
advances from the Messrs Rothschild upon no legal security, but on the
strength of a private note from the late Foreign Secretary, Lord
Granville. This is the testimony of Sir Michael Hicks-Beach speaking as
Chancellor of the Exchequer after he had succeeded Mr Gladstone in 1885.
The nine millions loan issued in that year was, of course, highly
successful for its negotiators. But this good fortune had been preceded by
an anxious season of protracted risk encountered with unfailing public
spirit.
The Semitic capitalists of the century have been compared to a foreign
garrison quartered in every European country, never completely fused with
the native population, always separated from the national life, and
potentially hostile to the domestic interests of the land which it
occupies. In the case of the financial family whose connection with
Victorian England has now been summarized this description is not borne
out by the facts. Their activity as financiers and generosity as citizens
during calamitous seasons like the Irish famine, are only specimens of the
services rendered by the Rothschilds to their adopted country. No
exceptional distress comes upon any portion of the United Kingdom without
eliciting a letter of womanly sympathy from the Queen, and the opening of
a subscription list in the City. At the head of this list the name of the
New Court firm is tolerably sure to be seen. Members of a race whose
history is like that of the Jews one of razzias, confiscations,
disqualifications, patiently borne and slowly overcome, can scarcely be
expected to betray no consciousness of these antecedents in their habit
and speech. The bearing of the Jew, whatever pinnacle of greatness he may
have climbed, is traditionally the bearing of a man on the defensive,
prepared, if he sees an opening, to anticipate the necessity of resentment
by showing his ability to repel offence. Those who, whether by individual
experience or by ethnic tradition, have been schooled in experiences like
these, are not likely to show morbid delicacy in their deportment towards
others. The mart and the bourse to which the Jews have been driven are
defective schools of social culture. Asiatic plutocrats are sure,
therefore, wherever they may be settled, to provoke enemies in the very
act of creating clients and dependents. The English Rothschilds of every
generation have found opportunities of performing private not less than
public kindnesses. In spite of, or rather perhaps because of this, they
have wounded many susceptibilities, for there may be an insolence of
neediness not less than of wealth. Fairness, however, requires the
admission that the successive representatives of the great Semitic house
in respect of the performance of the duties of citizenship as well as in
the wise, not less than the beneficent use of wealth, have set an example
to the fellow countrymen of their adoption in general, and to their
financial rivals in particular. The employment of great wealth in
accordance with the principles of magnificence and of taste was esteemed
so highly by the cultivated Greeks of old as to receive from Aristotle a
concrete illustration in his category of virtuous characters. The same
tradition was preserved and exemplified in those republics of mediaeval
Italy that wore the closest resemblances to the older democracies of
Hellas which history records. It was not unknown in England at that period
when London was to the Englishman what Florence had been to the Florentine
under the Medici, or, at an earlier age, what the City of the Violet Crown
had been to the contemporary of Pericles. A similar sense of the public
usefulness and patriotic obligations of great wealth animated the citizens
of London under our own Edwards, and had previously found many modes of
effective expression under Elizabeth. Those were 'the gorgeous days' in
which the trader of one of the great chartered companies in the Indies or
across the Atlantic, having made some exceptionally successful venture, on
returning safely to his native land, and to the township which had been
his cradle, was wont to testify his gratitude to Providence by
embellishing the place of his birth with buildings or gardens, with
galleries or terraces, many of which, as in the case of the gifts of Sir
Thomas Gresham, the first of the great loan negotiators, endure to this
day, not only in the college which bears his name, but in the Royal
Exchange. By no family, not of English birth; by few Englishmen
themselves, either under Queen Victoria or her predecessors, have the
public and national responsibilities imposed by financial success, or by
hereditary millions, on their possessors been recognized so frankly, or
been illustrated with so happy and impressive a blend of splendour and
propriety, as by the descendents of the bankers of the Princes of
Hesse-Cassel who in the first days of this century issuing from their
natal judengasse at Frankfort established themselves in England, and at
the same time, or shortly thereafter, fixed their emporia in the great
Continental capitals as well.
Whatever their natural pride in the creative power of their wealth, no one
can lay it to the charge of the Rothschilds that in the use of this
instrument they have lost sight of their duties to the land of their
adoption. In any faithfully written chronicle of English art or sport
since both were organized among us on their present plan, the name of this
family must fill no small space. Their services to the breed of horses may
be surmised from the popularity of Baron Lionel Rothschild's success in
the race for the Derby with Favonius in 1871, as well as from the
popularity which his son has since won in the same pastime. Their private
houses are museums of art which have encouraged English not less than
Continental talent, and which are open to every visitor who is interested
in their contents. Since the Rothschilds were settled in Piccadilly and
Mayfair, many others of their race have made a position in the polite life
of the capital and of the country. That each of these, to mention only
Murrietas, Oppenheims, Bischoffsheims, have fixed the ends and regulated
the scale of their expenditure with a regard for refinement as well as
pomp, and that the more prominent members of a no longer despised race
have been incorporated thoroughly into the ranks of the native gentry, is
due largely to the personal initiative and influence of the New Court
dynasty. Nor is it merely their wealth and the influence which money has
brought that have placed the Rothschilds at the head of Semitic settlers
in England. Their loyalty to their nation has never been eclipsed by other
interests. They have not only endowed hospitals and built synagogues. They
have always exerted a pacific and unifying influence upon the various and
sometimes mutually conflicting Hebraic factions; at one time they have
reconciled to each other different schools of Teutonic Judaism. At another
they have performed the same good office for Israelite communities outside
their own Teutonic pale.