RICH LEGACY OF THE ROTHSCHILD WOMEN
The Women Of Rothschild Natalie Livingstone John Murray £25 ★★★★★
The fabulously wealthy Rothschild dynasty has been written about many times, but always with the emphasis on the men. All those Carls, Lionels and Nathans not only ran the hugely profitable banks that bore their name, but were active behind the scenes as generous philanthropists who gave away millions and as wise counsellors to presidents and prime ministers on the benefits of keeping international peace.
But what of the women? In this scintillating family saga, Natalie Livingstone reveals that the
Rothschild ladies were, if anything, even more extraordinary than their fathers, brothers and husbands. The banking clan might have been enlightened in some ways, but it was also deeply patriarchal. No female relative was allowed to work for the firm. Instead these spirited and clever women were obliged to forge their own paths to fulfilment.
One of the most intriguing of these was Blanche Fitzroy, who accepted a proposal from the bohemian Scottish soldier turned artist Sir Coutts Lindsay. Together they set up the avant-garde Grosvenor Gallery in 1870 as an alternative to the stuffier Royal Academy and championed the ‘modern’ art of painters such as Whistler.
Blanche knew her own mind too when it came to marriage. Coutts refused to give up his string of mistresses, so Blanche left, taking her two daughters with her. Luckily her Rothschild relatives included several leading barristers who managed to protect her vast dowry and even leave the opportunistic Coutts worse off than when he had first set eyes on her and her bank balance.
In other ways, the single life was the making of her. She became an artist in her own right, invited to set up her studio in the home of Edward BurneJones, the leading painter of the day. She was also a published poet.
The women of the later Rothschild generations were equally feisty. Miriam (above), who was born at the beginning of the 20th Century, went on to become a code-breaker at Bletchley and a leading entomologist. Fearless on matters of morality, bisexual Miriam was happy to give evidence to the Wolfenden Committee, which eventually decriminalised homosexuality in the 1960s. Then there was Miriam’s sister Nica, who ditched her aristocratic husband to go to live in America, where she became a patroness, and possibly lover, of leading jazz musicians including Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker. Nica’s Rothschild relatives disinherited ‘Baroness Be-bop’, as she was known, but it bothered her not a jot. She turned her New York home into a place where musicians could jam and take drugs, before she drove them to their gigs in her battered Bentley.
No amount of larky stories, though, can diminish the prejudice that all the Rothschilds faced. Antisemitism was endemic and frequently turned murderous. Several of the women in this book played a key part in helping families escape from Hitler’s Holocaust. Later, some of them contributed to the setting up of Israel. With consummate skill, Livingstone weaves together all these threads, the dark as well as the light, and the result is both thrilling and moving.