The House of Rothschild (10 page)

The issue raised by Lionel’s election divided the British political elite along fascinating and far from predictable lines. Not the least unexpected development was that Russell’s bill to remove parliamentary disabilities attracted support not only from his own side of the House, but also from both factions of the divided Tories. When he introduced the bill in December 1847, the arch-Peelite Gladstone and the Protectionist leaders Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli all spoke in favour. Of these, Disraeli was the most personally interested, though his motivations and conduct were more complicated than might be imagined.

Disraeli had by now known the Rothschilds for nearly a decade. His earliest recorded social encounters with the family had been in 1838, and the acquaintance had become good enough to guarantee Disraeli a friendly reception when he visited Paris in 1842. By 1844-5, he and his wife Mary Anne were dining with the Rothschilds frequently: in May 1844, twice in June 1845 and again later that summer at Brighton. By 1846, Lionel was helping Disraeli speculate in French railways and later assisted him with his tangle of debts (in excess of £5,000 at this time). There was more to this friendship than his appreciation of their money and their appreciation of his wit, however. This was Disraeli’s most creative period as a novelist:
Coningsby,
or, The New
Generation
was published in 1844,
Sybil, or, The Two Nations
in 1845 and
Tancred,
or,
The New Crusade
in 1847. The contribution to these works made by his relationships with the Rothschilds is widely acknowledged, but still underestimated.

Having been baptised in large part because his father Isaac had fallen out with his synagogue and fancied himself as a country gentlemen, Disraeli remained fascinated by Judaism all his life. His enemies sought to use his origins against him; but Disraeli boldly turned what others saw as a weakness into a strength. Particularly in the fiction of the 1840s, he set out to reconcile what he regarded as his “racial” Jewishness with his Christian beliefs, arguing in effect that he enjoyed the best of both worlds. There is no question that contact with the Rothschilds had a substantial influence on his characterisation of Judaism. Lionel and Charlotte were unquestionably an attractive couple, he rich and influential, she intelligent and beautiful; but it was their Jewishness which most fascinated Disraeli—and indeed his wife. What made them doubly attractive to the childless Disraelis was their brood of five. They were, Disraeli wrote (inviting them to Grosvenor Gate to watch a parade in Hyde Park in June 1845), “beauteous children.”

Three months later, the family had a bizarre visit from a hysterical Mary Anne, who flung herself into Charlotte’s arms. After a preamble to the effect that she and Disraeli were in a state of exhaustion (“I have been so busy correcting proofsheets, the publishers are so tiresome ... poor Dis’ has been sitting up the whole night writing”) and were therefore about to depart for Paris, Mary Anne astonished Charlotte by announcing that she wished to make her six-year-old daughter Evelina the sole beneficiary of her will:

When Charlotte gently told her that she “could not accept such a great responsibility,” Mary Anne opened the paper and read it aloud: “‘In the event of my beloved Husband preceding me to the grave, I leave and bequeath to Evelina de Rothschild all my personal property.’ ... ‘I love the Jews [she went on]—I have attached myself to your children and she is my favourite, she shall, she must wear the butterfly [one of Mary Anne’s jewels].’”

The will was returned the next morning after “a scene, a very disagreeble one,” presumably between Disraeli and his wife. Yet the couple’s interest in the family showed no sign of waning. When Leo was born in 1845, Disraeli expressed the hope (in a letter from Paris) that “he will prove worthy of his pure and sacred race, and of his beautiful brothers and sisters.” “My dear,” exclaimed Mary Anne on seeing the child, “that beautiful baby may be the future Messiah whom we are led to expect—who knows? And you will be the most favoured of women.”

There was always an undertone of frustrated attraction in Charlotte’s relationship with Disraeli, as well as a jealous impatience with his wife Mary Anne. It was an attraction Disraeli did not deny. “Amid the struggles of my life,” he told her in March 1867, “the sympathy of those we love is balm, and there is no one I love more than you.” There is some reason to think that this was more than Disraelian hyperbole. On one occasion when Charlotte called on the Disraelis, there was evidently some kind of scene involving Mary Anne; Disraeli hastened to apologise (writing “in Cabinet”):

The oddity about all this was Mary Anne’s highly demonstrative affection for Charlotte—perhaps a way of over-compensating for any jealousy she may have felt. When Mrs Disraeli was ill in 1869, “She murmured to me to write to you,” Disraeli scribbled in a note to Charlotte. The Rothschilds responded by sending the invalid delicacies from the Piccadilly kitchens. (After Mary Anne’s death, however, it was Charlotte’s turn to feel jealous as Disraeli spent increasing amounts of time “at the feet of Lady B [radford].” She responded by sending him “six large baskets of English strawberries, 200 head of gigantic Parisian
asperges,
and the largest and finest Strasburg
foie
gras that ever was seen,” a none too subtle reminder that her resources would always exceed those of the “wealthy old lady.”)

But perhaps the most singular aspect of their relationship is its religious ambiguity. As Charlotte recalled, Disraeli’s attitude to his own Jewish roots was always ambivalent. “Never shall I forget,” she wrote in 1866, “Mr. Disraeli’s look of blank astonishment when I ventured to assert that through the Montefiores, Mocattas and Lindos, Lady [Louisa] de R[othschild] had the great and delightful honor of being his cousin; but heaven descended is what Mr. Disraeli affects to be, though London is full of his relations, whose existence he completely ignores.” Yet the two found a good deal of common ground when they discussed religious questions. In 1863 he sent her a copy of Ernest Renan’s newly published and hugely contentious Life of Jesus. She found Renan’s attempt to demythologise Christ “delightful,” though she had reservations about its portrayal of his Jewish background:

Ten years later, Disraeli thanked her for sending him a copy of her Addresses. “I have read your little volume with sympathy and admiration,” he wrote, “the tone of tenderness which pervades the Addresses and their devout and elevated feelings must touch the hearts of all of every creed. I had the gratification to read one aloud last evening (on the holiness of the Sabbath). Its piety & eloquence deeply touched my auditors ...”

Disraeli’s novels need to be read in the light of all this. In
Coningsby,
the character of Sidonia is, as Lord Blake has said, a cross between Lionel and Disraeli himself. To be more precise, he has Lionel’s background, profession, religion, temperament and perhaps even looks (“pale, with an impressive brow, and dark eyes of great intelligence”), though his political and philosophical views are Disraeli’s. Thus we are told that his father had made money in the Peninsular War, then “resolved to emigrate to England, with which he had in the course of years, formed considerable commercial connections. He arrived here after the peace of Paris, with his large capital. He staked all on the Waterloo loan; and the event made him one of the greatest capitalists in Europe.” After the war, he and his brothers lent their money to the European states—“France wanted some; Austria more; Prussia a little; Russia a few millions”—and he “became lord and master of the money-market of the world.” The younger Sidonia has all the skills of a banker: he is an accomplished mathematician and “possessed a complete mastery over the principal European languages,” skills honed by travels to Germany, Paris and Naples. He is formidably dispassionate, a quality detailed at considerable length (for example, “he shrank from sensibility, and often took refuge in sarcasm”). We are even told that “his devotion to field-sports ... was the safety valve of his energy,” and are treated to a detailed description of what can only be one of the Rothschild hotels in Paris. Interestingly, Sidonia is also the hero’s rival in love: he wrongly suspects his beloved Edith of being the object of Sidonia’s desires, though it transpires that the cold-hearted Sidonia is himself the object of another’s unrequited love.

In this context, the most intriguing passages in
Coningsby
are those which deal with Sidonia’s religion. We are told early on that he is “of that faith that the Apostles professed before they followed their master” and later that he is “as firm in his adherence to the code of the great Legislator as if the trumpet still sounded on Sinai.” He was “proud of his origin, and confident in the future of his kind.” In one important respect, Sidonia is more Disraeli than Lionel, as he is said to be descended from Spanish Marranos—Sephardic Jews who had outwardly conformed as Catholics while remaining Jews in secret—and Disraeli liked to fantasise that his own family were Sephardi. But much of the rest is manifestly Rothschild-inspired. Thus as a young man Sidonia is “shut out from universities and schools, those universities and schools which were indebted for their first knowledge of ancient philosophy to the learning and enterprise of his ancestors.” In addition, “his religion walled him out from the pursuits of a citizen.” Yet “no earthly considerations would ever induce him to impair that purity of race on which he prides himself” by marrying a Gentile. It is only when Sidonia’s views on his “race” are expounded that Disraeli takes over from Lionel:

Yet even here the Rothschild influence is detectable. When Disraeli seeks to illustrate his point about the extent of Jewish influence, he draws with extraordinary directness from recent Rothschild history when he has Sidonia say: