Leading ladies
SARAH CROOK enjoys an introduction to the women of the Rothschild family that reveals how they overcame patriarchal ideas and anti-Semitic attitudes to help secure the family’s future
The Women of Rothschild: The Untold Story of the World’s Most Famous Dynasty by Natalie Livingstone
John Murray, 480 pages, £25
In 1812, Mayer Amschel Rothschild, founding father of the eponymous bank, signed a document that was to shape the experiences, opportunities and challenges that faced his female descendants for the following two centuries. His will set out that the bank belonged exclusively to his sons. His daughters and sons-in-law, and their heirs, were not “entitled to demand sight of business transactions”. The future of the bank lay solely in the hands of his male heirs.
As this gloriously illuminating and deeply absorbing book shows, however, this did not mean that the female Rothschilds had no role in the development of the business or the trajectory of the family. Indeed, the Rothschild women found loopholes that allowed them to play crucial roles in steering the family’s political and economic engagements.
Some women acted as business advisors to their husbands, while others took up “feminine” duties, including hosting parties and dinners, with such skill that they created opportunities to advance their causes. “Theirs is not a story of outright conflict and contention,” Natalie Livingstone explains, “but of delicate and sometimes difficult negotiations – between creativity and conformity, defiance and compromise, between family responsibility and the fulfilment of personal potential.” In so doing, generations of Rothschild women claimed a front-row seat during a period of political and social change in Britain.
Livingstone makes lively use of the Rothschild women’s letters and diaries to demonstrate their business acuity (in 1831, Hannah writes to her husband Nathan from Paris, offering informed projections about the state of the market), but that is far from the sole focus of the book. Love, family and friendship – as well as broader political commitments – are threaded throughout, as generations of
Rothschild women navigated the sometimes onerous expectations imposed on them by society, spouses and, sometimes, one another.
The Rothschild women demonstrated a humour and lightness of touch that transcends the ages. Charlotte (1819–84) described her young, pampered niece as “gay as a lark, plump as a partridge, and as ruddy as a little red-breast”. Livingstone also offers insights into the letters and diaries as projects in themselves. Writing in 1858, the young Constance (1843–1931) described how a potential suitor “did the greatest absurdities running after me and looking up under my petticoats” – only to later cross out “up under my petticoats” and insert “at my feet”.
Of course, Constance and the other Rothschild women were not just navigating the waters of the patriarchy; they were also a Jewish family in a society replete with anti-Semitic attitudes. Livingstone details the female family members’ interest in Jewish emancipation – and the toll taken by the failure of successive bills that sought it – as well as the fight for (male) family members to take their elected seats as members of parliament.
The women’s remarkable talents, and the sheer range of issues with which they were involved – from emancipation to education, from politics to jazz, from the flea to feminism – has given Livingstone a wealth of fascinating material to work with. She has used it to write a warm and expansive book that never loses sight of the delightfully human people at the heart of her story. The Rothschild women have finally been rightfully placed at the centre of the dynasty.
The Rothschild women found loopholes that let them play crucial roles in steering the family’s political engagements