The House of Rothschild (74 page)

Part of the family in fact never ceased to be Liberal. To the end of their lives, both Mayer and Anthony remained firm if ideologically unsophisticated Liberals. Mayer relished defending his Hythe seat against the Tory squirearchy, drumming up votes from the Folkestone fishermen, while Anthony continued to lean to the Cobdenite wing of the party. It was Anthony who was heard to declare in September 1866: “The sooner we are rid of the colonies, the better for England”—a surprising sentiment, it might be thought, for a Rothschild of this period, and an expression of uncompromising economic liberalism. Nor should it be forgotten that Anthony’s daughters Constance and Annie remained firmly attached to the Liberal party throughout their lives and that Mayer’s daughter married the man who would succeed Gladstone as Liberal Prime Minister.

Even Lionel’s sons began their political careers as avowed Liberals; and when their cousin Leo took to the hustings for the first time in 1865, he explicitly asked voters “whether you would rather be ruled by Palmerston, Russell and Gladstone or Derby, Disraeli and Malmesbury”; the former grouping plainly had his support. Standing as a Liberal for Aylesbury in the same year, Natty “drove over to Missenden and [was] met by a large party who promenaded me through the town and over the hills and far away like a tame bear.” Asked by Non-conformist voters if he would support the abolition of Church rates, he gave a categorical “yes.” This was a position which recalled the doctrinaire liberalism he had evinced as an undergraduate at Cambridge.

It is also important to note that there continued to be frequent contacts between members of the family and Gladstone right up until the end of his political career. His accession to the premiership for the first time in December 1868 did not change a pattern of intercourse which had begun in the 1850s. Lord Granville relayed Rothschild views about the 1868 election to Gladstone when he stayed at Mentmore the following year, while Gladstone himself dined with Lionel and Charlotte at 148 Piccadilly in 1869 and 1870. There were also frequent “business” meetings with Lionel. In April 1869, for example, the two men met to discuss the budget and, as we have seen, Gladstone had several important interviews with members of the family during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. He also called on Lionel at New Court in July 1874 and again a year later (though his diary does not reveal why). It was only after the Suez share controversy that these meetings apparently ceased—though Lionel still passed on the occasional bit of gossip via Granville.

Even after Suez, Gladstone maintained a more than merely social acquaintance with Lionel’s wife Charlotte. In 1874 he sent her his portrait and a year later recorded in his dairy a conversation with her “on the state of belief.” This led to an exchange of letters lasting until August the following year in which Charlotte sent Gladstone a succession of scriptural commentaries by Jewish authors, evidently to assist him in his theological researches. Charlotte appears to have declined mentally after her husband’s death; but Gladstone continued to call on her at Gunnersbury—visits her son described as “almost the last pleasure my dear mother enjoyed before her illness” and death in 1884. Despite their political differences, he and Natty dined together in 1884 and 1885, and met on a number of other occasions (principally to discuss Egyptian matters) during Gladstone’s third ministry. Out of office, the Grand Old Man was just as welcome to dinner, and visited Tring in February 1891.

Nor did Gladstone feel any inhibitions about resuming with Natty’s wife Emma the scholarly correspondence he had earlier conducted with her mother-in-law. In August 1888, for example, he wrote to her asking for her help in tracing “a popular but able account of the Mosaic law compared with other contemporary or ancient systems in its moral and social aspect on a number of points—the comparison being greatly in its favour.” Emma was no theologian (she preferred to discuss English and German literature) but she was evidently pleased to be addressed by such an eminent figure and did her best to assist him and to find common ground. Thanking him for a signed copy of one of his scriptural works, she observed “that though our needs differ on so many points, the Christians and the Jews agree in their fidelity to those Holy Scriptures of which you say ‘they arm us with the means of neutralising and repelling the assaults of toil in and from ourselves!’ ” A shared enthusiasm for Goethe provided further matter for correspondence. Gladstone also socialised with Ferdinand and his sister Alice as well as with Constance and her husband Cyril Flower, to whom he offered a peerage and the Governorship of New South Wales during his fourth and final ministry. In 1893, Annie too had the pleasure of seeing “the G.O.M.” (“Grand Old Man”); in a letter to her sister, she described gleefully how “his old face lights up with vehemence and fire when he talks of the vile Turks.” Much to the consternation of the radical press, Gladstone accepted an invitation to Tring in the same year, despite the extent of his political differences with Natty by this time. A reciprocal visit by Natty and Emma to Hawarden in 1896 suggests, however, that the subject of politics was now being avoided. When Emma and Gladstone corresponded after this visit it was on the subject of the maximum circumference of a birch tree. It seems that “Mr G.” and her husband had finally found a shared enthusiasm—for trees.
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Yet these continuing personal contacts cannot disguise the Rothschilds’ unmistakable drift away from Gladstone’s politics. Plainly, this had much to do with the uniquely intimate relationship between the Rothschilds and Disraeli. In his early years, as we have already seen, he had romanticised them in his novels, had cultivated them socially and had turned to Lionel on occasion for tips on French railway share speculations. These were unsuccessful, and Disraeli’s finances—a tangled mess of debts and usurious interest payments—reached their nadir at the end of the 1850s. It should be stressed that, contrary to contemporary rumour, the Rothschilds did not bail him out.
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In 1862-63 a wealthy Yorkshire landowner named Andrew Montagu offered his assistance, and an arrangement was reached whereby he bought up all Disraeli’s debts in return for a £57,000 mortgage at 3 per cent on Hughenden, considerably reducing Disraeli’s annual expenditure. Not long afterwards, he inherited £30,000 from Mrs Brydges Williams, one of those devoted elderly ladies whose affections he excelled at winning, and he also made around £20,000 from his novels. It was claimed after Disraeli’s death that the Rothschilds paid off the mortgage on Hughenden before his nephew Coningsby inherited it, but there was no obvious need for them to do this.

In the early days, familiarity with Disraeli had bred a degree of contempt, not least because of his idiosyncratic attitude towards his father’s faith. By the 1860s, however, his political standing was sufficiently high for disrespect to give way to admiration. Charlotte’s letters during the Reform Bill period repeatedly pay tribute to his political abilities. “Mr Disraeli” was “delightfully agreeable,” she wrote typically in 1866: “[W]e listened to him with intense admiration, dear Papa and I ... It was a great treat to hear him, and even Mrs. Disraeli’s presence was unable to mar the pleasure.” Lionel too perceptibly warmed to Disraeli as he neared the top of the greasy pole. During the Reform debates of 1867, the two were notably close, dining together regularly after the House rose and exchanging political confidences. The tone of these letters suggests an almost complete absence of party-political friction: Disraeli definitely did not treat Lionel as a Chancellor of the Exchequer would be expected to treat an Opposition MP, while Lionel’s political commentary in his surviving letters is so neutral that it would be hard to infer his party allegiance in the absence of other evidence. Only occasionally did Disraeli prove evasive. In August 1867, for example, he “called after the Cabinet on Saturday but,” as Charlotte noted with disappointment, “Papa’s utmost endeavours could not penetrate through the great man’s official reserve;—he would not tell Papa a word, and the fate of the Reform Bill is in the clouds.” Mayer too was impressed by Disraeli’s bold leadership in this period, as was his nephew Natty.

When Disraeli finally secured the cherished premiership, Mary Anne confided in the Rothschilds at once, and the French Rothschilds wrote to express their delight at the success of the “extraordinary man.” Though realistic about the minority administration’s chances of survival, Lionel was critical of Delane for attacking the new Prime Minister in
The Times.
Disraeli for his part was remarkably candid with Lionel about his intentions with regard to the composition of the Cabinet, though he continued to keep him guessing about his legislative programme. On the Irish Church question, Lionel remarked in March 1868, “I fancy he has no fixed ideas and, like the Reform Bill, will be guided by circumstances.” “[T]here is no knowing,” he added two days later, “what Dis will do to keep on the top of the tree.” It seems that Lionel was now actively assisting Disraeli in his efforts by “leaking” information about Opposition intentions. “Yesterday the Diz’s were our only visitors,” he told his wife on March 9. “[H]e did not tell me much and wanted to know all the reports. When I told him that they [his Liberal sources] said many of his supporters would go against him in this Irish Question, he said that whatever he brought forward would be supported on his side by everyone. I recommended him to give some good evening parties.” When Disraeli was defeated in the 1868 election, Lionel remained supportive. “[I]n that great parliamentary struggle in which you play so prominent a part,” he wrote in March the following year, “if the tide has turned for a moment, it will only be an opportunity for you to display additional power of eloquence, and talent, and you will allow me to say that we shall always rejoice in your success, and feel personally grateful for the friendly feelings, which on every occasion you have evinced towards us.” Symbolically, he named a racehorse after a character in Disraeli’s novel
Lothair,
dashed off in the wake of defeat, while Anthony provided “a battalion of pheasants, and some hares.”

Their relationship continued on the same footing while Disraeli was in Opposition. Disraeli was invited to 148 Piccadilly at least three times in 1870 and there were all kinds of other social contacts. He offered critical thoughts on one of Constance’s books, while Alfred offered him rooms in London when his own were unavailable. “[P]ray consent to spend some time under this roof,” wrote Charlotte from Gunnersbury in September 1873. “The sooner you come and the later you stay after the 1 st of October which is our great fast & day of atonement, the better we shall all be pleased and the more grateful we shall feel.” In addition to hospitality, Lionel could always offer valuable news from the other side of the political lines: inside information about the contents of a Liberal bill for example, or the editorial line Delane was planning to take in
The Times.
“Baron Rothschild ... is a Liberal,” Disraeli explained to Lord Bradford in a revealing aside, “and ... knows everything.” Small wonder the Liberals feared that Disraeli would pre-empt them by giving Lionel a peerage when he returned to power in 1874.

The closeness of the friendship between Disraeli and the Rothschilds in these years can hardly be exaggerated; it is tempting (though not quite accurate) to say that he was treated as one of the family, especially after his wife Mary Anne’s death in 1872. It was Disraeli who gave Hannah away when she married Rosebery in 1878; and when the Prime Minister made his will that December, he nominated Natty as one his executors along with his lawyer Sir Philip Rose. Following Lionel’s death the following June, his sons replied to Disraeli’s condolences by telling him that their father “looked upon you as his ‘dearest friend.’” It is hard to think of anyone who was closer to him in these later years.

Lionel’s sons continued their father’s gravitation towards “Beaconsfieldism,” though like him they continued to sit on the Liberal side of the Commons. By the time Disraeli’s “jingo” policy on the Eastern Question was being put to the vote in the Commons in 1878, the Liberal leadership had more or less written Natty off. Gladstone’s loyal lieutenant Sir William Harcourt suggested that, in common with many other “commercial men ... who find their pecuniary interests greatly damaged by the present state of things,” the Rothschilds had “gone Tory altogether.” Much as William Harcourt expected, Natty defied the official party line of abstention when the government sought emergency credits in February, and again two months later when Sir Wilfrid Lawson pressed an amendment opposing the calling out of the reserves in April, voting with the government on both occasions. He also opposed Lord Hartington’s two resolutions on the movement of Indian troops (May 23) and the Treaty of Berlin (August 2). This, it has sometimes been argued, was the political crossroads for the Rothschilds and other wealthy Jews, the moment at which their loyalty to Liberalism, forged in the prolonged campaign for Jewish emancipation, finally yielded to the appeal of Disraelian imperialism. It would be more accurate to see it as the first overt step away from Gladstonian Liberalism by a largely aristocratic or county-based Whig group numbering around forty.

As Disraeli’s government crumbled in 1879-80 under Gladstone’s fierce onslaught on “Beaconsfieldism” (remembered in the history books as the Midloth ian campaign after the Scottish county seat which Gladstone was persuaded to contest at the election), Natty increasingly acted as a Tory in Liberal clothing. On one occasion, as he told Monty Corry in obvious embarrassment, he “got into the House just as the division was taking place & as I did not receive a hint from anyone found that I had voted in the majority wh was a censure on the Govt. I write this to you although you know I wd sooner have cut off both my hands than do such a thing.” He made amends in March 1879 when he warned Disraeli that Sir Charles Dilke intended moving a Liberal vote of censure over the government’s South African policy in the wake of the Zulu victory at Isandhlwana and that “a good many conservatives would abstain from voting.” This sort of information—gathered, as Natty put it, “from conversations in West End clubs and in the City”—may seem trivial now; but it was really the only way for a Victorian Prime Minister “to hear the opinions of the public” (meaning the political elite). By December 1879 Natty was obliquely affirming his new political allegiance by referring to the Liberal leader as “that archfiend Gladstone,” ending his New Year greetings to Disraeli with the wish “that he [Gladstone] will do you good and himself harm.” Ferdinand echoed this sentiment when he told Rosebery: “I wish your Mr G. at the bottom of the sea.”