Blue-blood Jew who truly got the blues
FAMILIES who enjoy immense wealth and privilege are not immune to black sheep. When film-maker Hannah Rothschild was 11, she discovered that her beautiful great-aunt Pannonica de Koenigswarter (Nica) had escaped marriage to a controlling French diplomat to live in New York with jazz genius Thelonious Monk. It has taken Hannah nearly 40 years to research and write her gripping book about the affair. Unsurprisingly, her family discouraged her from digging into Nica’s fascinating story.
Why did Nica exchange her luxurious life for a ropey existence hanging out in jazz bars acting as patroness and chauffeur to penurious jazz musicians? On the surface, she had little in common with Monk and his friends but their relationship lasted 30 years.
Hannah believes that, in addition to their love of jazz, they shared an understandingof mentalillness.Nica’sfather Charles had committed suicide when she was six and Thelonious had experienced similar psychological upheaval.
Their childhoods couldn’t have been more different. Thelonious’s mother scrubbed floors; Nica and her siblings grew up surrounded by servants on the Rothschild estate at what is now Waddesdon Manor. By 1913, the year of Nica’s birth, the Rothschilds had, in five generations, risen from poverty in Frankfurt’s “Jews Lane” to the financing of wars and governments.
Not unlike the moths collected by her insect-mad father, the girls were pinned down by tight bodices under starched white cotton dresses and forbidden to run around lest they dirty them. In contrast, her uncle’s exotic menagerie of emus, kangaroos, giant tortoises and zebras roamed unchecked.
Nica’s first love was Jack Harris, an American band-leader, but following her presentation at court she reverted to convention and married a widowed French diplomat. Having produced five children, the hedonistic Nica rebelled on a trip to New York in 1948 after hearing the jazz tune, Round Midnight, Thelonious Monk’s first hit. Captivated, she played it 20 times in a row, missed her plane and searched the city’s jazz dives for its composer.
She devoted herself to looking after Thelonious for the rest of his life and ferrying musicians and instruments around in her elegant blue Bentley, wearing her trademark pearls and fur coat. Monk and others adoringly dedicated songs to her.
In 1955, Nica was caught up in scandal when Charlie Parker choked and died in her room. Three years later, she narrowly escaped prison after she took the blame when marijuana was found by police in her car, as she thought prison would kill the increasingly fragile Thelonious.
Rothschild’s book is enjoyable but leaves one worried about how being abandoned affected Nica’s five children.
Rebecca Wallersteiner is a freelance writer