The House of Rothschild (8 page)

Perhaps the most marked change in Rothschild attitudes towards charity in this period was James’s. This was probably a reaction to the events of the 1840s, which had revealed two things: the extent of anti-Jewish feeling in French society as a whole, and the extent of his own personal unpopularity among the poor of Paris. Prior to 1848, James had been of all the five sons of Mayer Amschel the least publicly engaged in Jewish communal life. Though he had taken up the cudgels on behalf of the Jews of Damascus during his battle with Thiers in 1840, he had done relatively little for the Jews of Paris. That changed after the revolution. In 1850 James informed the Consistory of Paris of his intention to create a Jewish hospital at 76 rue Picpus to replace the inadequate “Maison centrale de secours pour israélites indigents de Paris” founded in 1841. Two years later, on December 20, 1852, the hospital—a spacious new building designed by Jean-Alexandre Thierry—was formally opened after what the
Univers Israélite
described as “one of the grandest [ceremonies] that Judaism has ever celebrated within our midst,” attended by the Minister of Public Works, the Director of the Department of Religion and the Prefect of the Seine. At around the same time, he also made a substantial contribution to the new Romano-Byzantine synagogue built by Thierry for the Consistory in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth. There were also substantial donations to establish two orphanages in the rue des Rosiers and the rue de Lamblardie (the latter named after Salomon and Caroline).

These benefactions coincided with increased Rothschild involvement in the institutions of French Jewry. In 1850, Alphonse became a member of the Central Consistory; two years later, Gustave was elected to the Paris Consistory and became its president in 1856. After 1858, the Consistory deposited its funds at de Rothschild Frères. It seems rather as if James’s self-conscious status as a political “outsider” under Napoleon III’s regime gave him the confidence to assume the role of lay leader of the Jewish community which his brothers and nephews already played elsewhere. Yet he was also careful to dispense some money without regard to creed, establishing a more or less permanent soup kitchen in the rue de Rivoli.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates the extent of Rothschild efforts on behalf of their poorer brethren than the sheer number and extent of the contributions made by the family to the new hospital in Jerusalem which had at last been established in the 1850s by Albert Cohn. The names of no fewer than eleven Rothschilds appear in a contemporary list of donors to the hospital and to related facilities: Charlotte set up “an industrial training institute” there, to which she sent an annual cheque; Anselm funded a small bank; Betty provided clothing for pregnant women and Alphonse and Gustave funded training in handicrafts for forty youths. The family also paid a total of 122,850 piastres in “voluntary contributions.” The fact that members of all branches of the family appear among the benefactors reminds us that although most of their charitable work went on at a national—or rather urban—level, the Rothschilds continued to feel a responsibility towards a wider, “universal” Jewish community.
¹¹

No history of the Rothschilds would be complete without a discussion of the decisive role played by Lionel in securing practising Jews the right to sit as Members of Parliament in the House of Commons. However, it is important not to consider this particular question in isolation or, for that matter, as a minor episode in the teleological “Whig” history of English constitutional progress. The institutional barrier which prevented Jews who were elected as MPs from taking their seats in the Commons—the Oath of Abjuration containing the words “upon the true faith of a Christian”—was only one of a number which members of the Rothschild family sought to challenge in the 1840s and 1850s.
¹²
Of comparable importance to them were the obstacles to matriculation at Oxford and graduation at Cambridge.

In addition, there were social institutions which, although they did not formally exclude Jews, had never admitted them before: penetrating these was as important as overthrowing formal legal handicaps. Given the structure of British politics in the nineteenth century, a seat in the House of Commons by itself was of only limited value; local political power was just as important and in some ways a prerequisite for parliamentary representation. Moreover, there was an important social difference between local power based on urban votes and that rooted in a rural constituency. For many of the most important political decisions were taken not at Westminster but in “the country”—those complex circuits of aristocratic country houses where the political elite spent such a large proportion of the year. Even in town, Parliament was far from being the sole political forum: an MP who was not also a member of one or more of the London clubs clustered around Piccadilly and Pall Mall led a truncated political existence. And of course gaining access to the House of Commons did not automatically open the doors of the House of Lords to Jews.

Why did the Rothschilds want to improve their access to these institutions of the British establishment? The strictly instrumental interpretation that they wished to increase their political influence in order to maximise their leverage over government will not do. To be sure, many non-Jewish City families were represented in the House of Commons by this time (notably the Barings). But by the 1840s the Rothschilds were firmly established as the pre-eminent private bank in the City; and despite the chilly relations which developed with the Bank of England after Nathan’s death, there was little reason to doubt that, on the rare occasions when the British government required to borrow money, it would turn to New Court. Moreover, once they had gained access to the House of Commons, the Rothschilds appear to have made little use of its facilities—at least as a debating chamber. It is rather more convincing to argue that Lionel, influenced as he was by his mother, wished to win hitherto denied privileges for Jews as a matter of principle. His relatives on the continent never ceased to applaud Lionel’s efforts to secure admission to Parliament: for James, his nephew was fighting a symbolic battle on behalf of
all
Jews, one which stood in lineal succession to the battles fought by Mayer Amschel in Frankfurt forty years before. That said, there is no mistaking the authenticity of Lionel’s liberalism, though at the time most politicians (including Lord John Russell) were more inclined to label him a Whig. It was not just the “Jewish question” which lured him and his brothers away from the Tories, but also the much more important cause célèbre of the 1840s, free trade, which became identified with the Liberal party in the wake of the Tory revolt against Peel in 1846.

Here, then, is one of the great paradoxes of 1848: at a time when the Rothschilds were widely vilified by continental liberals as props of reaction, they were playing a leading role in an archetypal liberal campaign for legal equality in Britain. After all, Jewish emancipation was one of the achievements of the Frankfurt parliament, though it was subsequently rescinded in Frankfurt itself in 1852. Even Betty, that staunch Orléanist opponent of the revolution, had to admit it: “We Jews ought not ... to complain of this great movement and relocation of interests. Everywhere emancipation has brought down the chains of the Middle Ages, and has given back to these pariahs of fanaticism and intolerance the rights of humanity and equality. We should congratulate ourselves on this ...”

Yet here too there is a need for qualification. Firstly, there were elements of the revolutionary movement, as we have seen, which were markedly anti-Jewish; indeed, violence against Jews was one of the phenomena which most disgusted the Rothschilds about the revolutions of 1848—9. Secondly, in some ways what was really at issue was the Rothschilds’ status within the British Jewish community. Rivalry with other members of the Jewish elite—notably David Salomons—was without doubt a strong motivating force. The reality was that for most poor Jews in Britain (and even more so on the continent) the notion of representation in Parliament was as remote as the notion of study at Cambridge. For all the rhetoric of collective struggle for Jewry, the Rothschilds were to some extent pursuing their own interests as a family—specifically, their own claim to be the “royal family” of Judaism.

In the light of subsequent events, it is extraordinary to recall that in 1839 the Allgemeine
Zeitung des Judenthums
had launched a bitter attack against the Rothschilds, accusing them of positively harming the cause of Jewish emancipation:

At the time, however, it did appear that the family had lost sight of the wider interests of European Jewry. It was not a Rothschild but one of their business rivals, David Salomons of the London & Westminster Bank, who in 1835 won an early victory for the cause of Jewish political rights in England by getting himself elected Sheriff of the City of London. In the process, he and his Whig supporters secured the passage of an act which abolished the requirement that an elected Sheriff sign a declaration containing the words “upon the true faith of a Christian.” It was not a Rothschild but Francis Henry Goldsmid who became the first Jew admitted to the Bar. It was not a Rothschild but an in-law, Moses Montefiore, who was knighted and then made a baronet, thus (as James put it) “raising the standing of the Jews in England.” It was not a Rothschild but Isaac Lyon Goldsmid who led the Jewish Association for Obtaining Civil Rights and Privileges.

However, the Rothschilds took a renewed interest in the question of emancipation after the Damascus affair in 1840. The precedent set then of using Rothschild influence to improve conditions for Jews in the less tolerant states of Europe continued throughout the 1840s. In 1842 James went to see Guizot “concerning the Polish Jews,” while Anselm sought to orchestrate press opposition to new anti-Jewish measures proposed in Prussia. In 1844 “execrable” new measures proposed by Nicholas I to reduce still further the Jewish Pale (permitted area) of settlement and to bring the Russian Jews’ schools and communities under direct state control prompted Lionel to seek interviews with Lord Aberdeen and Peel in advance of a visit by the Tsar to London. When Montefiore travelled to Russia to protest at the government’s treatment of the Jews, Lionel again saw Peel to request letters of introduction for him to Count Nesselrode. In the same vein, we have already seen how the Rothschilds sought to use the political crisis in Rome in 1848—9 to extract concessions from the Pope with regard to the city’s Jews.

It was nevertheless in England—hardly a country renowned for its religious intolerance—that the most celebrated campaign for Jewish rights was fought and, eventually, won. The position of Jews in Britain at this time was in many ways anomalous, reflecting the relative smallness of the Jewish community by Central European standards. The total Jewish population of the British Isles had been just 27,000 in 1828; thirty-two years later (after decades of unprecedented demographic growth in the country as a whole) there were still only 40,000 Jews—around 0.2 per cent of the population, more than half of them living in London. By continental standards, and compared with popular attitudes to Catholics (and especially Irish Catholics, hostility to Jews was muted. Yet there remained on the statute books, albeit mainly as dead letters, a variety of disabilities including prohibitions on Jews owning landed property and endowing schools. More important, as we have seen, a variety of public offices, of which the most important was membership of Parliament, required the Christological oath. It was the abolition of this oath which was to become the paramount objective of Rothschild political activity.

Under the influence of his wife Hannah, Nathan had taken up the question of Jewish political rights in 1829-30, in the wake of the successful passage of the Catholic emancipation act. Rothschild disillusionment with the Tory party can be dated from this period, when it became obvious that the Whigs were far more likely to give their support to an equivalent measure for Jews. This political realignment continued after Nathan’s death as a succession of emancipation bills introduced by Robert Grant were thrown out in the Commons in the face of largely Tory opposition. Hitherto overlooked records suggest that Nat played a supporting role in the unsuccessful 1841 campaign to allow Jewish councillors on provincial corporations to swear the same amended oath Salomons had been able to use as Sheriff of London. Tory opposition to this measure in the Lords—which the Rothschilds monitored closely—did nothing to improve relations with the party. In the wake of the Conservative election victory in 1841, the Rothschilds’ old friend Herries warned the new Chancellor Henry Goulburn that he might face opposition from “the Jews and brokers” in the City:

A letter from a party activist confirms that Mayer had indeed been involved in registering voters in the City to boost the Liberal poll.
¹³
When Peel later asked Wellington to drum up support for his government, the Duke was equally pessimistic. “The Rothschilds,” he warned Peel, “are not without their political objects, particularly the old lady [Hannah] and Mr Lionel. They have long been anxious for support to the petitions of the Jews for concessions of political privileges.” Though he was “now more of a Tory than when [he] was in London,” Nat stressed that his support for Peel would be strictly conditional: “I trust he will be liberally inclined . towards us poor Jews & if he emancipates us, he shall have my support.” For Nat, it was the Jewish issue alone which alienated the Rothschilds from Conservatism. As he wrote half-seriously in 1842: