TEN
Dizzy was here . . . [O]ur friend [is] in very good spirits and not at all put out on account of the violent attacks in the House. What do you say to the visitor who is now with dear Ma whilst I am writing—this I have just heard, that the famous Mr Gladstone is with her drinking tea and eating bread and butter, I doubt whether he will come to see me.
LIONEL TO LEO AND LEONORA, MARCH 1876
There is no question that the debates over Egypt and Turkey in the 1870s did much to alienate the Rothschilds from Gladstone. It would be wrong, however, to suggest that there was an outright break with the Liberal party or an unqualified acceptance of Conservatism. There is a nice symbolism in the fact that Disraeli could call on Lionel on the same day in 1876 that Gladstone had tea with Charlotte. Nor was that an isolated coincidence. Four years later, Ferdinand wrote a letter to his friend and relation by marriage the Earl of Rosebery, describing a similar occasion: “Lord B[eacons] field1 is staying with [Alfred]—the other day he had to be sent to dinner with Natty, as Gladstone came to dinner to meet the Duke of Cambridge. (Private.)” Until 1905 there was always something of a “revolving door” quality to Rothschild politics: although members of the family (in particular Natty) became more and more closely identified with Conservatism—or rather with Liberal Unionism—channels of communication to the Gladstonians were never closed. Nor were relations with the Conservative leadership after Disraeli always completely harmonious. The politicisation of the Jewish immigration issue after 1900 provided a salutary reminder of why the family had become Liberals in the first place.
Undeniably, the Rothschilds of the fourth generation thought about politics in more ideological terms than their parents and grandparents—most obviously over Ireland, but also over the “social question” (or questions) posed as European cities grew ever more crowded. These were the issues which did most to divide them from Gladstone. However, it was not until after the turn of the century that Natty gave up on the Liberals entirely. Like his father and grandfather before him, he continued to believe that, on matters of finance and diplomacy, the Rothschilds should be heeded no matter which party was in power. This partly explains the rather similar relationships he had with politicians as different in political orientation as Rosebery, Lord Randolph Churchill and Arthur Balfour. In the intimate world of late Victorian politics, the Rothschilds met such men frequently: in the City (to talk finance over lunch at New Court) and in the West End (to talk politics over dinner in the clubs and houses of Piccadilly). They and numerous other members of the political elite, Liberals and Tories alike, were regular guests at the Rothschild country houses (especially Tring, Waddesdon and Halton). It was in this milieu that many of the most important political decisions of the period were taken. And when the Rothschilds could not speak to their political friends, they wrote to them—luckily for the historian, because Natty’s decision that his own correspondence be destroyed posthumously has left little in the Rothschilds’ own archives. Although the letters from Paris still allow us to infer a good deal about what was going on at New Court, much of what follows is therefore based on the papers of the politicians themselves, leaving the historian to wonder how much of the Rothschilds’ political role remains irrevocably hidden from posterity.
From Gladstone to Disraeli
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.2
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.3 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.”
After the Liberal election victory in 1880, Alfred offered Disraeli a suite of rooms in his house at 1 Seamore Place, while Natty continued to furnish the latest news of Liberal infighting—though one suspects that the aim now was more to cheer an old man than to kindle the fires of effective Opposition. When Endymion was published, containing yet another fictionalised version of the Rothschilds in the form of the “Neuchatels,” Natty was fulsome in his praise (perhaps recognising that one of the differences between Sidonia and Adrian Neuchatel was the difference in social standing between himself and his father):
One of these days “When the flag of St George’s waves over the plains of Rasselas” and Cyprus is a flourishing colony, “those who have failed in literature and arts” will no longer talk of your works as the dreams of a poet or the imagination of a visionary but will acknowledge as I have always done that you are one of the greatest British statesmen.
It was, he declared, a “magnificent addition to British literature.” The venerable author continued to stay with Alfred—“the best and kindest host in the world”—until January 1881, when he moved into the house at 19 Curzon Street which he had bought with the proceeds of Endymion; and Alfred was one of the guests when he entertained there for the first and last time on March 10, 1881. When Disraeli died in the early hours of April 19, it fell to Natty to carry out his last wishes that he be buried alongside his wife at Hughenden and that his funeral “be conducted with the same simplicity as hers.” This meant politely declining the public funeral which Gladstone (through gritted teeth) proposed.
Politics in “Bucks”
Disraeli had been, as Alphonse said, “the best and the truest friend of our Family.” But it was not just this friendship which lured the Rothschilds away from the Liberal party. Of equal importance were ideological differences between Gladstonian Liberals—some of them distinctly Radical—and more conservatively inclined Whigs. These manifested themselves most obviously at elections.
When the Rothschilds had first begun to establish themselves as a political force in Buckinghamshire during the 1850s, elements of the established Whig leadership in and around Aylesbury had been quite hostile. Lord Carrington referred to them caustically as the “Red Sea” while Acton Tindal talked of resisting the “circumcision” of the Aylesbury party. In 1865 Natty was returned unopposed for the seat, but there remained obvious differences with Tindal (for example over the abolition of Church rates). Three years later, however, it was the Rothschilds who all at once seemed to be on the right of the party. The Radical League secretary George Howell was more or less foisted upon them in Aylesbury, ending the cosy arrangement whereby a Rothschild and a Tory had been returned unopposed for the two-member constituency. In the City, Lionel found himself embarrassed by association with the Liberal candidate in Tower Hamlets, a convert from Judaism named Joseph d‘Aguilar Samuda. This may have been one of the reasons that he lost his seat—an unusual defeat in an election which saw an increase in the Liberal vote overall. Six years later, Lionel lost again. This time, however, the reason was the rift which had opened up between him and Gladstone on fiscal policy. As The Times later recalled, Lionel pointed out (“at perhaps the only great election meeting which he attended”),
that Mr Gladstone’s proposal to abolish the Income-tax &c. would deprive the country of £9,000,000 a year and that the surplus would not reach more than half that amount. For the other half there must be more new taxes. When his audience shouted “No” and “Economy,” he replied that economy had not got so far as to save four millions and a half a year. Baron de Rothschild’s opinion was that new taxes must be imposed, and that they must be imposed upon property. He suggested license duties, such as are paid by commercial men in Austria.
That advocating higher taxes can have negative electoral consequences is no modern discovery. Lionel was nevertheless vindicated by Northcote’s budget of 1874, which retained the income tax, albeit with a higher threshold and lower effective rate for incomes below £400 a year.
The party political tensions between the Rothschilds and Gladstone came to a head in 1876, when Disraeli’s elevation to the Lords necessitated a by-election in his Buckinghamshire constituency at the very height of Gladstone’s “atrocitarian” campaign. Gladstone was eager for a Liberal victory and evidently saw the Bulgarian question as a means to that end: he sent the Liberal candidate Rupert Carington “250 little ones” (copies of his pamphlet) and followed the campaign with keen interest. When a friend of Granville’s sounded out Lionel five days before the ballot, he found him
violently in favour of Dizzy, & Derby—but talked as if he was in favour of Carrington [sic] but how impossible it was under the present system of voting to know how votes would go—Gave an instance 3 of his tenants, could not tell whether they would vote with him or the rector. His belief was that F[remantle] [the Tory candidate] would win by 5 or 600.
This proved an accurate forecast.
Two years later, the rift widened still further when the second Aylesbury seat was won by the Liberal candidate George W E. Russell—the nephew of Lord John. In a good example of the anti-Semitic undertone of the campaign against “Beaconsfieldism,” Russell had, as Granville admitted to Gladstone, “attacked Dizzy as a Jew, a Jingo & something else beginning with a J” (the other word was “Juggler”). When this was reported in the local Conservative Buckinghamshire Herald (despite Russell’s attempts to retract the word “Jew”) Natty was furious and took “the first opportunity of throwing dirt” at Russell when he next saw Gladstone. That leading Liberals were willing to act in this way makes it difficult to claim that the Rothschilds’ gravitation toward Disraeli was governed purely by differences with Gladstone over foreign policy.
Diplomatic factors were undoubtedly important in their own right. It was a matter of “regret” in the eyes of the French Rothschilds when the Liberals won in 1880 because they regarded Conservative governments as more likely to “maintain the prestige and the influence of old England”; and “Mr Gladstone’s disregard for foreign policy” was the main reason they fervently wished Salisbury to remain in power at the end of 1885. It is true that, when Ferdinand decided to enter politics in 1885, he insisted that he wished to stand as a Liberal. But he intimated to the radically inclined Dilke that he had qualms about the party’s foreign policy and implied that his political allegiance might be conditional on the Liberals sticking to an imperialist line. This letter deserves to be quoted at length as an illustration of the Rothschilds’ political ambivalence in this period:
I am not as you think by nature a conservative. Conservativism has been the ruin of several foreign countries and liberal politics have been the making of England. To liberalism we—you—owe everything. On no point and in no manner do I incline towards Toryism in any form. On the other hand though I may not be competent to express decided opinions on such matters I deplore for the sake of the country which I have adopted and I love truly the restricted policy of the present Govt. who have sacrificed if not the interests yet the magic powers of the English flag and name to the narrow issues of Parliamentary reforms. I am perhaps “plus catholique que le Pape” but I would cheer the Union Jack planted on every island of the Polynees, on every crag of the Himalayas, on every minaret of the East (this is a metaphor). You (I mean the Govt.) have to come [to] it [imperialism] after all in the long run. Vide the present expedition to Khartoum and augmentations to your colonies ...
If I ever succeed in entering the House of Commons I mean to support the liberal Government of the day ... [But] if I find that after all in the future politics shape themselves in a manner which might be disquieting to my sympathies (I use on purpose a strong expression) I shall give up the game and retire into the usual obscurity of my existence.
The significance of this letter becomes apparent when it is remembered that Ferdinand became a parliamentary candidate for the new single-member constituency of Mid-Buckinghamshire only because his cousin Natty had been made a peer. It has already been suggested that one reason Gladstone chose to elevate Natty at the end of his second ministry was to replace him in the House of Commons at the impending election; and it should by now be intelligible why he might have wished to do so. On October 29, 1884, Hartington’s secretary Reginald Brett wrote a letter on the subject to Lord Richard Grosvenor, the Liberal Chief Whip and patronage secretary, which illuminates this point. Brett began by suggesting “that some special civility should paid by you or Mr Gladstone to Natty Rothschild. He is not a very robust Liberal, but I suppose there is not much object in letting him drift, and still less in driving him over to the Tories.” This was an oblique suggestion that the idea of a Rothschild peerage be resuscitated. But he then went on to warn Grosvenor that replacing Natty in the Commons with Ferdinand would be unlikely to have the effect the Liberal leadership desired:
If it is thought that the Rothschilds can be played off one against the other, and that because Ferdinand may be a more acceptable or more pliant colleague, he can be put forward at Natty’s expense, a very great mistake is made.
The Rothschilds have held together for generations, and discipline in their family is differently understood from what it is in that of the Rus sells. If the Liberal party breaks with Natty, it breaks with the whole clan, and there is I imagine nothing to be gained by such a proceeding.
Ferdinand’s letter to Dilke more than confirmed that diagnosis: if he was to take Natty’s place, the Rothschild line on foreign policy would remain the same. As its recipient sourly commented, “F. Rothschild wants to get into Parliament and I told him that he is a Tory and ought to stand as a Tory ... He will never get in as a Liberal nowadays, I’m sure.” This proved more or less correct: although Ferdinand initially stood as a Liberal (even expressing support for temperance in pursuit of the Non-conformist vote), by 1890 he was describing himself in the House as “a drastic and ardent supporter of the [Salisbury] government.”
The visitors book Ferdinand kept at Waddesdon provides a fascinating insight into the ambiguity of his politics. A survey of the more regular political visitors between 1881 and 1898 gives a slight predominance to the Liberals: Edward Hamilton leads the field with no fewer than fifty-two visits, followed by the Liberal leader Hartington (ten visits), the Liberal Home Secretary and Chancellor Harcourt (nine), Rosebery (nine) and Dilke (two). Other Liberal visitors included Gladstone, Reginald Brett, the historian Lord Acton, his colleague James Bryce (later Chancellor of Duchy of Lancaster and President of Board of Trade), the future leader of the party Herbert Asquith, Lord Carrington (who became Governor of New South Wales) and the Earl of Dalhousie (who became Secretary of State for Scotland). However, two of the most regular visitors were Liberal Unionists: the Attorney General Henry James, who visited seventeen times, and Joseph Chamberlain, who was a guest at Waddesdon on twelve occasions, often accompanied by his son Austen. And there were almost as many Tory visitors as Liberals: Harry Chaplin (President of the Boards of Agriculture and later Local Government) who stayed at Waddesdon twenty-six times; Lord Salisbury’s nephew and successor Arthur Balfour (eight visits); George Curzon, Salisbury’s Assistant Private Secretary and Under-Secretary of State for India (also eight); the President of the Board of Agriculture Walter Long (five); Lord Randolph Churchill (twice); the Under-Secretary of State for War Earl Brownlow (also twice); and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Sir James Fergusson.4
As Ferdinand’s letter to Dilke indicated, it was not just imperial issues which were shifting the Rothschilds away from Liberalism. Of increasing importance was their suspicion of the social policies advocated by radical urban-based Liberals like Chamberlain and Dilke himself. “[I]f I do not call myself a radical,” Ferdinand explained,
it is that I consider it unworthy of great leaders of men like Chamberlain and yourself to court popularity with the masses by advocating such trivial measures as the abolition of the game laws for instance and stimulating an unhealthy desire for social and pecuniary equality the disastrous results of which have been only too well illustrated in France, instead of governing the people on broad principles and leading them into wider issues.5
Even Chamberlain’s talk of compulsory purchases of land by local authorities to provide allotments for the working class alarmed Natty. The Rothschilds’ drift away from Gladstonian Liberalism reflected not only discontent with his lukewarm imperialism, but also mistrust of his party’s domestic political tendencies. One reason why the Irish question came to play such a decisive role in the politics of the 1880s and 1890s was precisely that proposals to improve the lot of Irish tenants awakened fears for the security of landed property in the minds of English landowners like the Rothschilds.
Unionism
Although some contemporaries tended to think of it as the first of England’s colonies, Ireland had been an integral part of the United Kingdom since the seventeenth century, with Irish MPs sitting in the Westminster House of Commons since 1800. It was not a place the Rothschilds knew well. They had no economic interests there; indeed, few members of the family had even set foot there. Anthony holidayed there with his daughters in 1865 and was favourably impressed by the natural beauty of some of the estates he visited. Ferdinand, who went there three years later, was less keen on the “extremely wild” landscape but found the people “most hospitable” —though he was bemused to be mistaken for a Catholic in Dublin. For most Rothschilds, however, it was terra incognita. Writing in 1865, Charlotte made it sound as remote and alien as the furthest-flung colony: a country of endemic “mismanagement,” of uncouth manners, rampant drunkenness and senseless violence. If Natty ever went there, no record of his visit appears to have survived.
Yet Ireland proved to be of all the issues of the period the one which most influenced his political conduct. This was for two reasons. Not only did attempts to strengthen the position of Irish tenants relative to their landlords seem to threaten the rights of all property-owners; the idea of giving Ireland “Home Rule”—that is, some form of devolved legislature and government—also seemed to threaten the integrity of the United Kingdom and to imply a general decentralisation of power throughout the Empire. It was this dual significance of the Irish question which brought together such improbable political allies as the “Young Whig” Natty de Rothschild, the “Tory Democrat” Lord Randolph Churchill and the Radical Liberal Joseph Chamberlain, thereby shattering Gladstonian Liberalism and recasting post-Disraelian Conservatism.
The first sign of a Rothschild revolt on Ireland came in 1880, when Natty joined a group of mainly aristocratic “Young Whigs” in voting against Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill, which sought to compensate tenants who had been ejected by landlords for non-payment of rent. Their objection was the principled one that nothing should infringe the sanctity of contract: as far as Natty was concerned, as he told Disraeli, the measure implied nothing less than “confiscation.” Natty was one of the six most consistent opponents of the Liberal leadership’s policy, voting twice against the Compensation for Disturbance Bill and twice for hostile amendments. This put him in the company of Whig grandees like J. C. Dundas, C. W Fitzwilliam and Albert H. G. Grey (later the 4th Earl Grey). When, in the wake of the December 1885 election (which gave Parnell’s Irish Nationalists the balance of power at Westminster), Gladstone began to consider the more radical solution of Home Rule, it was predictable that Natty would align himself with the scheme’s opponents.
With hindsight, Gladstone’s conception—“the management [by] an Irish legislative body of Irish as distinct from Imperial affairs”—was a sane one, and might conceivably have taken the sting out of Irish nationalism at a time when opposition to “Rome Rule” in Ulster was embryonic. It envisaged an Irish parliament with only very limited powers, leaving defence, foreign policy and customs in the hands of the “Imperial” government, while removing or at least reducing the Irish representation at Westminster. If the Tories had been more far-sighted they might have offered Parnell something similar themselves (as indeed they thought of doing). However, opposition to Home Rule had more to do with the internal dynamics of British party politics than with Irish aspirations; at least, that is the impression given by what has survived of Natty’s correspondence on the subject.
Natty had been dismayed by Gladstone’s renewed ascendancy over the Liberal party, which he had hoped to see led by Hartington (the quintessentially Whig heir to the Duke of Devonshire). In a cryptic letter on November 29, he told Hartington: “Gladstone’s name might well be changed to Ichabod,” enclosing an explanatory note from the Old Testament: “Eli’s grandson was called Ichabod or ‘The glory is departing from Israel’ being born after the defeat of the Israelites by the Philistines. Samuel Chap. IV, Verse 21.” Five days after Gladstone’s son had hinted at his father’s intentions for Ireland (on December 17, 1885), Natty had a meeting with Randolph Churchill at which he briefed him, for Salisbury’s benefit, on the likely Liberal split, explaining “that John Morley and Chamberlain were separated and that the former who had no money and only desired an official salary had definitely signified perfect obedience to the G.O.M.... that Parnell had got Gladstone tight and that the latter had committed himself.” The aim of this meeting was plain enough. Both Churchill and Sir Drummond Wolff (one of the other key figures in Churchill’s would-be “Fourth Party”) were already thinking of “negotiating for a coalition [with the Whigs] through Rothschild,” though Churchill’s ideas for increased political “fusion” or integration of Ireland with the mainland already struck many Whigs as alarmingly radical.
The unanswered questions were which of the Whigs would be willing to desert Gladstone, and what the secessionists’ relationship would be with the Conservatives, who remained in office until January 30. Throughout the crucial months leading up to the decisive defeat of the Home Rule Bill on June 8, the Rothschilds acted as political go-betweens. On January 8, for example, Churchill was able to give Salisbury fresh intelligence from the Liberal camp courtesy of Cyril Flower, who had just heard Gladstone denounce Churchill as “an unprincipled young blackguard or something very analogous thereto”; and from Natty, who had told Brett “that Harcourt and Dilke were ... of the opinion that Mr Gladstone would abandon Home Rule and come round to his colleague’s views.” In order to encourage the dissidents, Alfred informed Hartington that Salisbury would be willing to serve as Foreign Secretary in a coalition led by him; there was, he was able to reassure Churchill, “no truth whatsoever in the respect of Hartington’s surrender; quite the contrary.”
By March attention had switched to the position of Chamberlain, who for some time had been itching to break with Gladstone. At a dinner at Reginald Brett‘s, Balfour met Chamberlain along with two key Whig figures, Albert Grey and Natty. As Balfour told Salisbury, it was “openly assumed” by all present “that Ch[amberlain] was going to leave the Govt,” Gladstone having communicated enough of his Irish scheme “to convince Joe that he at least could not swallow it!” In the course of the discussion, Natty and Grey confirmed that there were plans afoot to hold “a big Anti-Home Rule Meeting in the City,” though neither Natty nor Chamberlain felt this would be helpful. The meeting nevertheless went ahead at the Guildhall on April 2; and at a second meeting at the Westminster Palace Hotel the following month Natty openly declared himself. It was his election on to a Liberal Unionist General Committee at this meeting which marked his final political break with Gladstone. Other prominent Jewish MPs who joined him included his cousin Ferdinand and Francis Goldsmid, but it was not really their Jewishness which was the decisive factor: the City establishment—including George Goschen, Revelstoke and many others—was overwhelmingly Unionist.
As Alphonse suggested, the Rothschild desideratum was in fact “a Hartington-Salisbury ministry”: a coalition, in other words, of Liberal Unionists and Conservatives. However, this proved far from straightforward to achieve. Churchill and Natty were unsuccessful in their efforts to involve Harcourt in their schemes; while at a meeting at Waddesdon on June 13—five days after Home Rule had been defeated in the Commons—Chamberlain told Balfour that he regarded a Liberal Unionist-Conservative coalition as “impossible.” The most he was willing to offer. was “a definite and complete understanding with Hartington, and an adequate though less complete understanding with me” ensuring “a sufficient unity of action by means of consultations behind the Speaker’s Chair.” This was essentially Hartington’s view when Natty approached him three days later.
The common goal of “getting rid of Gladstone” was achieved with a vengeance. The result of the general election of July that year was a “smash” for Gladstone and Home Rule: 316 Conservatives were elected and 78 Liberal Unionists, against just 191 Gladstonians and 85 Irish Nationalists. The defeat was especially heavy in Scotland—“ the old man[‘s] ... dung hill”—where Natty had urged both Churchill and Chamberlain to campaign. The swing away from the G.O.M. was also pronounced in rural constituencies like Ferdinand’s at Aylesbury. But Unionist harmony—captured by Brett’s memorable image of Churchill, Natty and Chamberlain “conduct[ing] the business of the Empire in great measure together”—was short-lived. It was easy to get “a large party of liberal unionists” to shoot together at Mentmore; less easy to get them to work together in government. As early as December, Salisbury, Churchill and Chamberlain were at odds over the government’s County Councils Bill; and Churchill himself resigned as Chancellor over the defence budget that same month. By February the following year, Natty was disillusioned with the government’s policy in Ireland—a combination of coercion and a new Land Act which he considered “most rotten.” “You will find your old colleagues worn out by nocturnal vigils and a growing demand for a strong Government in Ireland,” he reported to Churchill. He predicted that if the government did not “take care, a feeling will spring up that some form of Home Rule is preferable to the present disorder and discontent.”
Natty’s real loyalty at this stage seems to have been to Hartington. What Natty, Churchill and Chamberlain agreed on, Brett told Hartington, was “the maintenance of the [Liberal] Unionist party. And on this account your wishes and opinions seem to be the prime factor in all their calculations ... the essential thing, as Randolph says, is ‘to keep the Gladstone gang out of office.”’ Employing a true landowner’s mixed metaphor, Natty suggested to Churchill in March that the Unionists would be content provided measures were enacted which they initiated or supported:
Hartington is not Little Bo Peep and has not lost his sheep [meaning his supporters], he and Joe support the Govt most enthusiastically and energetically, both in regard to the Crimes Bill and the Great Purchase scheme which is to come at a later period. There are some horses remaining on the Turf whose parentage is doubtful, their dams having been covered by 2 or 3 stallions [that is, some legislative measures with a number of different sponsors in the Commons]. I should say, if I were asked, that the parentage of these . . . measures is dubious, but one of the sires is certainly Joe.
When Edward Hamilton dined with Natty in August, he was told categorically that “Hartington will be Prime Minister very soon, and the Prime Minister of the real ‘Liberal’ party, of which the so called Conservatives are now the proper representatives. Hartington would never again be made to do the dirty work of the Radicals. He had repented ’eating dirt’ out of feelings of party loyalty.” However, Natty also revealed his own growing doubts about Chamberlain, who was still talking as if the old Liberal factions could be reunited:
As to Chamberlain, he would never be a big man. He was a Radical wolf in Tory sheep’s clothing. He was the typical democrat—a spendthrift and a Jingo—a great contrast to R. Churchill who was quite a Peelite about economical and foreign matters. As to Mr. G., he was hopeless—never knew his own mind two years or even two months running; and a continual danger to the State.
Small wonder a loyal Gladstonian like Hamilton bridled at this (though he could not deny Natty’s “wonderful knowledge of what is going on”). But it is intriguing that Hamilton’s next engagement was dinner at Mentmore with Rosebery, whom he now regarded as a future Liberal leader in the Lords, if not more.
What was at issue, in other words, was nothing less than the fate of the Liberal party, with Hartington pulling one way, Chamberlain another, and Rosebery stuck in the middle trying to salvage something from the Gladstonian wreck. Certainly, Natty’s hope of somehow bringing Churchill and Hartington together on a “real” Liberal ticket was doomed by the former’s deteriorating physical and mental health; but at this stage it still seemed possible to avoid an outright takeover of the Liberal Unionists by the Conservatives. Why else did Natty propose to give Hartington money for Liberal Unionist election costs in 1890, and encourage Lord Derby to do the same? Nor was it unrealistic to assume, as Natty did in 1888, that Gladstone had been “ousted from power for good” and that “with Mr G. gone, Home Rule would die a natural death.” Even Gladstone’s political resurrection after the Liberal victory in 1892 proved fleeting; and Rosebery’s succession could be cautiously celebrated in the belief that his commitment to Home Rule and reform of the House of Lords was only skin-deep.
Churchill and Rosebery
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Natty’s role in the complex party politics of the 1880s was its remoteness from his concerns as a banker. For the first time, it might be said, a Rothschild was engaged in politics as a vocation for its own sake, with only the most tenuous connection between the debates over Ireland or social policy and his own interests as a wealthy landowner.
Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that, while all this was going on, Natty continued to spend most of his working day at New Court; and as a banker his primary political concern was with foreign rather than domestic policy. Even as we try to uncover and reconstruct his role in the debates over Home Rule, we should remember that it was the diplomacy of imperialism which mattered more to him. How far were the Rothschilds able to use their political connections to influence foreign policy in this period? One way to approach this question is to consider their relationships with the two politicians of the post-Disraeli era to whom they were probably closest: Randolph Churchill and Rosebery. And here it is necessary to say a brief word about the most important of all Victorian Britain’s imperial possessions: India.
Before 1880 the Rothschilds had not been much interested in India, though they did some business with firms there. When their relatives Gabriel and Maurice Worms had returned from Ceylon in 1865 after an absence of twenty-five years, Charlotte had been appalled not only by their appearance—“old, hideous anglo-caucasian Indians”—but also by their descriptions of life on a tea plantation. With its naked coolies, intense heat, snakes, elephants, porcupines and pearl-eating insects, it might have been another planet; the fact that the Worms had called one of their plantations “Rothschild” was a compliment, not a sign of the family’s financial involvement in the Raj. After 1880, however, that changed. Between 1881 and 1887, Charlotte’s sons were responsible for issuing Indian railway shares worth a total of £6.4 million.
The departure of the Liberals and the appointment of Churchill as Secretary of State for India by Lord Salisbury in the summer of 1885 seemed to herald a blossoming of the Rothschilds’ interest in India. Contradictory as he was throughout his meteoric political career, Churchill now lost no time in establishing precisely the kind of relationship with Natty and his brothers in relation to India which he had earlier accused Gladstone’s government of having with the Barings in relation to Egypt. While planning the issue of a loan for the Indian Midland Railway, Churchill specifically told the Viceroy, Lord Dufferin, “If I am at the office next year ... when the loan is brought out I shall fight a great battle against [Bertram] Currie to place it in the hands of the Rothschilds, whose financial knowledge is as great as that of the Bank of England is small, and whose clientele is enormous.”
Churchill’s biographer Roy Foster suggests that the Rothschilds did indeed help place the new company’s shares. Contemporaries also assumed that Churchill’s decision to annex Burma—announced on New Year’s Day 1886—was linked to his growing intimacy with the Rothschilds. As Edward Hamilton observed sardonically, “Jingoism is ... popular so long as it brings profit.” Certainly, they applied to take over “all Burmese railways and construct lines to the frontier” within a week of the annexation being announced, Churchill assuring Salisbury that they were “as keen as nuts.” The fact seems to speak for itself that in 1889 the Rothschilds were responsible for the immensely successful Burma Ruby Mines share issue—when the throng of would-be subscribers grew so large that Natty reputedly had to climb up a ladder to get into the bank, and the shares went to a 300 per cent premium. Did not Brett tell Hartington in 1886 that “Churchill and Natty Rothschild seem[ed] to conduct the business of the Empire in great measure together, in consultation with Chamberlain”? Did not Hamilton later observe (to Rosebery) that what had got Churchill “into trouble” was his “excessive intimacy” with “a certain financial house”? And did not Lady Salisbury “launch out” in conversation with Herbert von Bismarck and Rosebery “against Randolph who communicated everything to Natty Rothschild” and “hint that people did not give great financial houses political news for nothing”? The evidence of an excessively close relationship seems compelling, especially in view of the precariousness of Churchill’s personal finances. As is now well known—though his earlier biographers suppressed the fact—he died owing the London house “the astonishing sum of £66,902,” though he had also made some money on mining shares by following Rothschild advice.
Yet on closer inspection it seems that Churchill’s stints at the India Office and the Exchequer were of only limited importance to the Rothschilds in their capacity as bankers and, equally, that their importance to Churchill as his bankers only really mattered after he had left office. The Burma Ruby Mines issue was for just £300,000 and it came out four years after Churchill had ended his brief tenure at the India Office. Similarly, it was not until 1896 that the Rothschilds issued £2 million of shares in Burmese railways; their initial approach to the Indian Finance Committee ten years before had been rejected. At the Exchequer in Salisbury’s second government, Churchill sought their advice on financial policy (appointing Natty to a commission to enquire into public expenditure). But it is not easy to represent Churchill’s ultimately self-destructive and ultra-Gladstonian opposition to military expenditure as in any way beneficial to Rothschild interests: indeed, his views on Egypt and monetary policy rapidly diverged from those of Natty. Nor were the Rothschilds involved in his fateful decision to resign in December 1886. When Reginald Brett asked if he could tell Natty the news, Churchill “said no, because he is furious with Alfred Rothschild, who it appears is talking strongly against him. ‘He complains that I did not consult the Rothschilds. After all I am glad to have them as friends, but I am not yet Rivers Wilson and am not yet in their pay.’ ” To Natty, Churchill’s resignation seemed a mere “freak of temper,” though Churchill himself insisted that it was “a simple miscalculation ... that he did not know that Salisbury had ‘the king up his sleeve,’ in other words that he was ready to fill up the vacancy by appointing Goschen.”
As that suggests, it was only after he had left office that he began to borrow large sums from the family: up until 1888 his overdraft was just £900 and it was not until 1891 that it ballooned to £11,000. Although Natty continued to encourage Churchill to believe that he might one day return to office, it is unlikely, in view of the former Chancellor’s increasingly erratic behaviour, that he sincerely believed this himself. As Edward Hamilton put it in August 1888, “R. Churchill turns to N. Rothschild for everything ... but Rothschild, who is R.C.’s chief mentor, is giving R.C. up as a hopeless politician.” Indeed, it seems right to regard Natty’s bankrolling of Churchill after 1886 as primarily an act of friendship as syphilis inexorably took its toll; for politically and financially he was now more a liability than an asset. The loose cannon went off again in 1891 when Churchill returned from a Rothschild-assisted expedition to Mashonaland only to denounce publicly the region’s economic prospects—a gaffe which infuriated Natty, as we shall see. It was less calculation than kindness to the increasingly pathetic Churchill which prompted the Rothschilds to take an interest in the career of his ambitious son, though no doubt they were gratified when young Winston opposed the Aliens Bill in 1904 as Liberal MP for Manchester.
The case of Rosebery could hardly be more different, though similar questions arise about the extent of Rothschild influence. Was it politically significant that the man who was served as Foreign Secretary in Gladstone’s third and fourth ministries and succeeded him as Prime Minister in 1894 was married to a Rothschild? As with Churchill, some contemporaries thought so. “It is not nice at this juncture,” the Liberal periodical Justice commented after Gladstone’s visit to Tring in September 1893, “when the foreign secretary is closely connected by marriage with the same intriguing [sic] financial house, to see Mr Gladstone hobnobbing with Lord Rothschild.”
There is no question that, almost from the moment he married Hannah, the more political members of the family took an interest in Rosebery’s career. In September 1878—just six months after the wedding—Ferdinand revealed to Rosebery the extent of this interest:
Natty as usual talked a good deal about you and endeavoured to pump me about your racing and political doings. He wanted to know amongst other things if you would accept subordinate office in the event of it’s [sic] being offered to you when the liberals come in again. I pleaded ignorance on every score.—Alfred appeared this morning at 11 and seemed very well up on my proceedings ... he already knew that we had been to the play together last night—What a pity that the Inquisition has been abolished. What touts my relations would have been!
In the case of Churchill, private financial ties really came after his time in office; in the case of Rosebery, however, they came before it. In November 1878 Ferdinand suggested to Rosebery: “If you have a few spare thousand pounds (from £9-10) you might invest them in the new ... Egyptian loan which the House brings out next week.” A letter from Natty of 1880 sheds further light on the kind of “good advice about investments” Rosebery was receiving from his in-laws. “I am happy to say,” he wrote archly, “I never know before hearing what the Ministers are going to do. I can only tell you that I bought 100,000 for New Court today and I s[houl]d. advise you to tell Mr May [either Rosebery’s broker or a Rothschild clerk] to pay for yours.”
This might seem to explain why, when Gladstone offered him the post of Commissioner of Works and a seat in the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal in 1884, Rosebery initially refused. Citing the impending decisions to be taken by the government regarding Egyptian finance, he told Granville: “You can guess the extreme delicacy of my relation to that question, for although I am not a member of the House of Rothschild, I am allied to it as closely as possible by kinship and friendship, and I feel therefore strongly the difficulty of entering the Cabinet at the moment . . .” Yet when the murder of General Gordon persuaded Rosebery to accept Gladstone’s offer, neither he nor the Rothschilds made any effort to break off their financial relations. In the fortnight after he joined the government, he saw members of the family on at least four occasions, including two dinners with Natty. And in August 1885, only two months after Gladstone’s resignation had temporarily removed him from office again, Rosebery was allotted £50,000 of the new Egyptian loan issued by the London house. Interestingly, “in accordance with [Rosebery‘s] wishes the Egyptian money [was] paid into the Bank to the credit of Hannah.”
The pattern repeated itself when Rosebery became Foreign Secretary in 1886. This time it was Natty who expressed public reservations, telling Reginald Brett in January that Rosebery was “out of the question” as a possible Liberal Foreign Secretary “owing to his connection with the House of Rothschild.” Over dinner at Gunnersbury in 1887, he baffled Edward Hamilton—who had expected him to “crack Rosebery up [praise him] ... out of a feeling of pride for so near a connection by marriage ”—by running him down: “Rosebery was no platform speaker. His speeches were watery; his reputation as Foreign Secretary had been over-rated—he had indeed ruined it by his despatch about Batoum [Batum] which was a rasping bark with no intention or power to bite; Bismarck was greatly disappointed with him.” But this should not be taken at face value. As before, Rosebery and the Rothschilds remained in close contact on diplomatic questions (notably Afghanistan); and Alfred wrote encouragingly from New Court that “from all sides & even distant climes we hear nothing but great satisfaction at the nomination of the new Minister of Foreign Affairs.” When Rosebery left office once again following the defeat of the Home Rule Bill, it was Natty who encouraged him to keep his political hand in by becoming chairman of the new London County Council. He also discussed industrial relations with Alphonse shortly before returning to government in 1892—discussions which foreshadowed his intervention in the miners’ strike the following year. It also seems unlikely (as the German ambassador claimed) that the Rothschilds discouraged Rosebery from returning to the Foreign Office: such correspondence as remains from this period suggests that they continued to supply him with financial and diplomatic news (for example, about Egypt). The French Rothschilds welcomed his elevation to the premiership following Gladstone’s resignation, and Alfred took the unusual step of acting on the Prime Minister’s behalf in a dispute with the Bank of England over a box of securities allegedly mislaid by the Bank’s former Chief Cashier. (His intercession resulted in an out-of-court compensation payment of no less than £20,000.)6 Natty regretted Rosebery’s subsequent resignation of the premiership, not least because it represented a victory for Harcourt—“more pompous & boisterous than ever and more perfidious”—and his increasingly progressive fiscal policy.
Rosebery had stuck it out alongside the Gladstonians for longer than Natty; but his formation of the imperialist Liberal League in 1902 indicated that his sympathies had never been that far removed from the Unionists; and his political career after he broke with the Liberal party altogether in 1905 closely paralleled Natty’s (both opposed Lloyd George’s budget in 1909, for example, and the Parliament Bill which reduced the power of the House of Lords).
As with Churchill, however, the question remains whether the Rothschilds got anything material out of their relationship with Rosebery. The answer is that by and large they did not. To be sure, the surviving correspondence shows the Rothschilds supplying Rosebery with financial and diplomatic information; but there are few direct requests for ministerial action one way or another, barring some very minor patronage business once Rosebery had honours in his gift. Nor does recent research on Rosebery’s foreign policy indicate anything which could be described as a Rothschild influence. It is therefore tempting to conclude that the fears expressed by more Radical Liberals about Rosebery’s links to the “intriguing” Rothschilds were groundless. Yet there was at least one occasion when Rosebery undoubtedly did give them advance warning of an important diplomatic decision. As Foreign Secretary in January 1893, he used Reginald Brett to communicate to New Court the government’s intention to reinforce the Egyptian garrison. “I saw Natty and Alfred,” reported Brett,
and told them that you were much obliged to them for having given you all the information at their disposal, and therefore wished them to know [of the reinforcement] before reading it in the papers . . . Of course they were delighted and most grateful. Natty wished me to tell you that all the information and any assistance which he can give you is always at your disposal.
It may be that this was an isolated incident; on the other hand, the possibility cannot be discounted that such inside information was more often communicated orally, or in letters which have not survived.
Conservatism in France
There were undoubtedly parallels between the English Rothschilds’ political activity and that of their French cousins. Of course, as Alphonse never tired of noting in his letters, the French Republic was a very different political environment, in which both left and right adopted more extreme positions than in Britain. Moreover, the French Rothschilds had developed a much greater degree of ideological neutrality (or flexibility) as a result of the frequent regime changes they had lived through. At heart, Alphonse and his brothers were, like their mother, Orléanists: there are enough positive references in their letters to the idea of a monarchical restoration to confirm that. But like their father, they were quite prepared to work with republican politicians. The distinction they drew was between moderate or conservative republicans and radical or “red” republicans. They were not sorry to see Thiers replaced as President of the Republic by Marshal MacMahon in 1873 and lamented MacMahon’s fall four years later after the abortive coup of May 16, whereas the Republican victory in the elections which followed revived memories of the Commune in Alphonse’s mind. Only the appointment of their old friend Léon Say as Finance Minister in December reassured Alphonse. Although Say’s readiness to sell the new 3 per cent rentes directly to the public reduced their traditional underwriting commission, the Rothschilds were keen subscribers. They were no less supportive of the government’s loan of mid-1881, subscribing over 100 million francs.7
If “respect” for landed property was the touchstone of conservativism in the eyes of Natty, the French Rothschilds attached a similar importance to the private French railway companies in which they, of course, continued to hold a major stake. In the early 1870s, when there was a spate of new branch-line construction, Alphonse worried that the Nord company was being bypassed in favour of other companies. Later, it was the more serious threat of railway nationalisation—that old objective of 1848—which preyed on his mind. As in England, “socialism” became a shorthand for any threatened state intrusion on hitherto unrestricted property rights.
It is in this light that the Rothschilds’ attitude towards Léon Gambetta, the Republican hero of the war of 1870, becomes intelligible. The Rothschilds were perfectly prepared to encourage Gambetta, despite his reputation dating back to the Belleville programme of 1869 as a fou furieux,provided he concentrated on giving France an imperial policy. There is a famous account of a dinner during Gambetta’s brief premiership (1881-2) at which he and Alphonse were spotted
chatting amiably in a window alcove, the two sovereigns—Gambetta, the actual master of France, and Rothschild ... Gambetta wanted to make a naval demonstration: five gunboats to the port of Tunis, five companies to disembark and say nicely to the Bey: “Accept a protectorate, or hop it.” It was done in a matter of 24 hours ... Alphonse de Rothschild then began to speak, and to speak very knowledgeably about Italian and English politicians. Gambetta listened with mingled admiration and astonishment: he had not suspected Alphonse de Rothschild of possessing such a well-developed and lively intelligence. Between them, the two men considered Depretis, Cairoli, Sella, Disraeli, Gladstone, Crispi, Hartington, Granville ... [When the time for toasts came] Gambetta drank “To a restored France!” Alphonse de Rothschild responded “To the man who will restore her!” The words were vague and could just as well have applied to [General de] Galliffet as to Gambetta. But Gambetta did not hesitate to take them as referring to himself. He searched for some moments for a suitable response, which eluded him, and then replied very simply, “Ah! I would be willing.” If only the electoral committee of Belleville had been there to see their Gambetta in the company of these princes and marquises.
The point of this anecdote was, of course, to suggest that Gambetta had sold out on achieving power. However, the domestic policies which Gambetta was simultaneously pursuing—though far from socialistic—were less palatable to the Rothschilds than the conquest of Tunis. Firstly, Gambetta envisaged a massive conversion operation of some 6 billion francs of 5 per cent rentes. It was a sign of haute banque opposition to this that Say refused to accept the portfolio of Minister of Finance under Gambetta. Indeed, according to police reports, Alphonse told journalists in December 1881: “I want an all-out campaign; it is necessary to demolish Gambetta before he demolishes us.” We have already seen how the collapse of the Union Générale contributed to that demolition. Secondly, Gambetta seemed to intend some kind of railway nationalisation. It was only after his fall that an agreement was reached which granted the companies a further thirty years before the state exercised its right to repurchase the lines. A politician of the left like Gambetta might be almost as ready as a politician of the right to pursue imperialist policies; but the Rothschilds, for primarily domestic political reasons, preferred their imperialism to be conservative. On the other hand, they were wary—with good reason—of the chauvinistic tendencies of the French right. They disliked the agitation in support of General Boulanger following his dismissal as Minister for War in May 1887, which (like Bonapartism before it) combined domestic political radicalism and a foreign aggressiveness which the Rothschilds saw as incommensurate with France’s strength; it was only after the “useless” and “incompetent” General’s fall in 1889 that they began to act as his private bankers.
The rise of trade unions and socialist parties was apparently viewed with more alarm by the French Rothschilds than by the British, though this probably reflected France’s greater historical susceptibility to revolutionary politics. In 1892 Edmond wrote with alarm of the increasingly vocal socialist attacks on the “plutocracy” and warned of impending “anarchy,” while Alphonse predicted that the “socialist epidemic” would be more “dangerous” in France than in England. When he discussed industrial relations with Rosebery in 1892, Alphonse stressed that he was opposed to any intervention by the state in labour disputes. He evidently regarded Rosebery as something of a conundrum, noting wryly after their meeting: “[T]here are no radicals in our country living in grand manors and with a yearly income of £100,000.” “For my part,” Alphonse told the writer Jules Huret in 1897, “I don’t believe in this working-class movement”:
I am sure that, generally speaking, working people are very satisfied with their lot, that they don’t complain at all and that they are not in the least interested in what is called socialism. There are obviously ringleaders who try to make a lot of noise and attract a following but such people have neither hold nor influence over honest reasonable, hard-working labourers. One has to distinguish between good and bad workers. Those who demand the eight hour day are the lazy, incapable ones. The others, the steady serious fathers of families, want to be able to work long enough to provide for themselves and their family. But if they were all compelled to work only eight hours a day do you know what the majority of them would do? Well, they would drink! ... What else would you expect them to do?
It may be that Huret misquoted Alphonse, but his letters to London suggest that this was more or less what he thought: an uncompromising, not to say crass, laissez-faire view of the labour market of the sort routinely expressed by many industrialists of the period. Equally run-of-the-mill was Alphonse’s defence of economic inequality:
I have never understood what is meant by “haute banque.” What does it mean the “haute banque”? There are richer men and poorer men and that’s all there is to it! Some are richer today and will be poorer tomorrow ... Everyone is subject to such variations—everyone without exception! And no one can boast of being able to escape them. As for these agglomerations of capital, it is money which circulates ... [and] bears fruit. It’s the wealth of nations! If you frighten it away, or threaten it, it will disappear. And, on that day, all will be lost. That will be the end of the prosperity of the country. Capital is labour! Apart from some unfortunate exceptions ... each man . . . has that share of the available capital that his intelligence, energy and industry merit.
This complacent apologia spoke volumes for the social and political isolation of the Rothschilds as the new century approached—and with it a new era in which political power would no longer be so easily confined to the dining rooms of clubs and country houses.