Rothschild family

“ The father, Solomon de Worms, was son of Benedict de Worms of Frankfort-on-the-Maine, by his wife Jeanette, eldest daughter of Meyer Amschel Rothschild of the same city, and sister of Nathan Meyer Rothschild [q. v.] , the first of the Rothschild family to settle in England. Solomon de Worms and his two brothers came to England in 1815 and formed a banking and colonial business in London. Becoming interested in coffee-planting in Ceylon, they did much to further the economic development of the island (Sir J. Emerson Tennent, Ceylon, 5th edit. ii. p. 250) . ”

“ The Rue Laffitte may well be regarded as the headquarters of finance, for, in addition to the banking-house of Laffitte, the French branch of the Rothschilds has here for more than half a century been domiciled. The Rothschilds of Paris, like those of London, Frankfort, Vienna, and Naples, are descendants of the Mayer-Rothschilds who founded the first of the Rothschild banking-houses at Frankfort a century ago. Born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1743, Mayer Anselm Rothschild belonged to a Jewish family of small means. ”

“ Nathan Mayer Rothschild.
Who indeed is there who has not heard of the Rothschilds? But how few there are who know much of them save that they are the richest bankers in the whole world. The subject of this sketch was the richest and most noted of five brothers. The father, Mayer Anselm Rothschild, sprung from a poor Jewish family, and was a clerk in Hanover before establishing himself at Frankfort. At Hanover it is claimed that his integrity and ability became so marked in every position to which he was called that the attention of the Government was called thereto. ”

“ They were bankers by prenatal tendency and by education. So strong was the banking instinct in the family that three of the girls married men who afterward became bankers, probably being led into the financial way they should walk through marital influences. And so they were duly absorbed into the great House of Rothschild. In order to facilitate the business of the Landgrave, who had considerable property in Hanover, Rothschild sent his third son, Nathan, there and established a bank. This boy Nathan was the financial genius of the family. ”

“ This dispersion of forces confirmed and increased the family's influence and prosperity. By his dying instructions the elder Rothschild enjoined his children to live at peace with one another, and to act strictly in concert in all business transactions. The sons and their descendants not only faithfully obeyed those injunctions, but strengthened their union by repeatedly intermarrying among themselves. The Naples house was closed in 1861, after the creation of the kingdom of Italy, but the four other firms continue their influential careers at London, Paris, Vienna, and Frankfurt. ”

“ My good uncle, on the other hand, the late Major Pendennis, who kept naturally but a very small account with Hobsons’, would walk into the parlour and salute the two magnates who governed there with the ease and gravity of a Rothschild. “My good fellow,” the kind old gentleman would say to his nephew and pupil, “il faut se faire valoir. I tell you, sir, your bankers like to keep every gentleman’s account. And it’s a mistake to suppose they are only civil to their great moneyed clients. ”

“ To assume, however, that there were not numerous{183} demands upon Lincoln for what money could procure, would be far from the fact. A kind husband and indulgent father, it distressed him to refuse his family anything. All their reasonable wants he did, in truth, cheerfully provide for, as she who knew him best bore affectionate testimony. And once, when he was contrasted in her presence with a certain well-favored rival, the little wife retorted: “Mr. Lincoln may not be as handsome a figure, but the people are perhaps not aware that his heart is as large as his arms are long.” ”

“ The poverty of the frontier, it has been said, is no poverty; but the Lincolns were poor almost to a proverb. Their condition appears to have been extreme, even for the primitive Kentucky settlement{4} at Elizabethtown where they made their first home. The young husband was a carpenter by trade, but his new neighbors, with the self-reliance of pioneers, managed to do for themselves most of the work wherewith he had hoped to support his family. ”

“ Abe had, it is true, learned something of storekeeping during the old Gentryville days, in the grocery of his friend William Jones; and a small stock of goods purchased there, when the Lincoln family moved from Indiana to Illinois, had been profitably peddled, on the way. Moreover, those trading trips to New Orleans had doubtless contributed somewhat to his commercial training; but no amount of experience could make a successful business man of one so lacking, as was Tom Lincoln’s son, in aptitude for hiving the nimble sixpence. ”

“ His eyes were sad and earnest, a curl of raven hair fell forwards on his high brow; his clothing was shabby and darned in places by his own hand. Beyond accepting the gift of education at the hands of dead men he would take no help. On several distinct occasions, the magic name, Rothschild, was appealed to on his behalf by well-wishers, and through its avenue of almoners it responded with its eternal quenchless unquestioning generosity to students. But Joseph Strelitski always quietly sent back these bounties. He made enough to exist upon by touting for a cigar-firm in the evenings. ”

“ I know several who think themselves so deucedly safe, and comfortable, and secure, and all the rest of it, that they would not take a share in Rothschild’s, if it were offered to them for an old song. ”

“ The amount that prodigal man must spend every year would drive Rothschild into the work-house. Nothing is too good or too common, too expensive or too cheap, for him. One moment he will buy a silver candelabra, the next a silver thimble. In the morning he will add a hundred-guinea dressing-case to his enormous property, and in the afternoon amuse himself by bidding a shilling for a little trumpery pen-knife. ”

“ He remembered now how he had stood on this same spot, and stared with fascinated gaze at this quadrangle of dull houses, and pondered upon what it must feel like to be a Rothschild—and that was only a little over a year ago!
There was no sense of fascination whatever in his present gaze. He found himself regarding instead, with a kind of detached curiosity, the little knot of men in frock-coats and silk-hats who stood talking in the doorway. It was barely ten o'clock, yet clearly business was proceeding within. One of these persons whom he beheld might be a Rothschild, for aught he knew ”

“ If I were Rothschild, I 'd revel in this sentiment; it places one so immeasurably above that busy ant-hill where one sees the creatures hurrying, hastening, and fagging “till their hearts are broken.” One feels himself a superior intelligence,—a being above the wants and cares of the work-a-day world around him.
“Any room here?” cried a merry voice, breaking in upon my musing; and at the same instant a young fellow, in a gray travelling-suit and a wideawake, flung a dressing-bag and a wrapper carelessly into the carriage, and so recklessly as to come tumbling over me. ”

“ Attention is called to the slight variations in the language as reported by these several writers.
[i-12] In the Little Pigeon Creek cabin were Abraham, his sister Sarah, and cousin Dennis Hanks, sometimes called Dennis Friend, whom luckless chance had made a member of the Lincoln family. The Johnston children comprised John D., Sarah, and Matilda.
[i-13] Thomas Lincoln and Sarah Bush Johnston were married on December 2, 1819. The episode of the debts is related{325} in Barrett (New) , i, 17; Herndon, i, 26; Lamon, 29; Coffin, 31; McClure’s Stories, 272-74; Tarbell’s Early Life, 52. ”

“ Believe me, gentlemen, the man who can satisfy all his wishes has no more enjoyment. Keep to the course you have entered on, I advise you. Rothschild's celebrity will expire on the day of his death. Immortality can be earned, not bought. Here are before us the effigies of men who have gloriously cultivated liberal arts; their busts I have met with in every part of Europe; but nowhere have I found a statue erected to the honour of a man who has devoted his life to making money. ”

“ Even in this world, riches cannot purchase happiness. Any pecuniary loss was enough to drive Rothschild to despair. His existence was further embittered by the dread of assassination—no uncommon symptom, when the mind is rarely at ease ”

“ The first of the house of Rothschild to make a name for141 herself as an authoress was Lady Charlotte Rothschild, in London, one of the noblest women of our time, who, standing in the glare of prosperity, did not disdain to take up the cudgels in defense of her people, to go Sabbath after Sabbath to her poor, unfortunate sisters in faith, and expound to them, in the school established by her generosity, the nature and duties of a moral, religious life, in lectures pervaded by the spirit of truth and faith. ”

“ All they knew was that Mayer Anselm had come to them and asked them as a great favor, as a friend, to carry this belt and give it to his dear son Nathan, in England. Of course Rothschild's confidence was not misplaced. A few years later this was the Rothschild method of transporting treasure all over Europe—to dispatch, say, a hundred poor Jews at different times, and mixed up among them was the treasure. Honest men can safely trust others—honest men, as a rule, are safe even with rogues. ”

“ Mayer Anselm Rothschild was born in Frankfort in the year 1743, and died here in 1812."
"Then he was six years older than Goethe," commented Paul.
"Yes, they were great men in their different lines, and were contemporaries; that is, they lived at the same time."
"But it must have been tiresome to stay in a bank and count money," remarked Franz. "I would rather be a forester and live in the woods. My father says that healthy blood and sound limbs are better than money."
"Yes, but a rich man can live where he chooses," quoth Fritz. ”

“ Rothschild very nearly lost there ten or fifteen millions; but God came to his rescue a few weeks later: the people felt, as they say, in high spirits; all was alive upon the highest bench; the bathing brooms were dancing over their backs, and they all at once gave him a clean gain of one hundred and fifty million roubles.
Nearly all the inhabitants of Parasiteville are, may it be no evil omen to you, nothing but poor people and quite destitute. But the truth must be told, they are merry beggars, joyful mendicants, possessed of unbounded hope. ”

“ Certain it is, that Rothschild was not the man; and yet Rothschild, in his day, commanded as much homage as the novelist has claimed for Sidonia. Great is the power of money! Princes feasted with him; ambassadors attended him to the tomb; and yet, for all we can learn, he was not equal, in moral worth, to the meanest pauper in the workhouse. He would at times give a guinea to a street beggar, not for the object of relieving his wants, but to enjoy the joke of seeing him run away, under the apprehension that the donor had been mistaken in the coin! ”

“ The Member for London is his eldest son. Everywhere in Europe the Rothschilds are regarded as exemplars of the commercial character in its loftiest phase, in an advanced stage of civilisation. Their honour is proverbial, like the word of a king, or the gage of a soldier; their intellectual range is wide; their faculties are keen and sound; and their charities are in proportion to their wealth. Such are the results of a German boy having left the priestly calling to be “engaged in trade.”
The romance of the vocation has not vanished from society with the progress of civilisation. ”

“ But seats a nation or upsets a throne.
Besides floating foreign loans, Rothschild dealt in all existing stocks, and often purchased largely of securities which appeared to be unsaleable. He was often employed, too, in converting stocks bearing a high rate of interest into those bearing a lower rate, and he operated extensively and with singular judgment in bullion and foreign exchanges. In 1824 he took a leading part in the formation of the Alliance Insurance Company, but he generally avoided connection with joint-stock companies. ”

“ Why did people in general hinder each other from living? What losses were due to it! what terrible losses! If it were not for hatred and malice people would get immense benefit from one another.
In the evening and the night he had visions of the baby, of the willow, of fish, of slaughtered geese, and Marfa looking in profile like a bird that wants to drink, and the pale, pitiful face of Rothschild, and faces moved down from all sides and muttered of losses. He tossed from side to side, and got out of bed five times to play the fiddle. ”

“ Let a native American, be suddenly bereft of these privileges, and loaded with the disabilities of an alien, and what to the foreigner would be a light matter, to him, would be the severity of rigor. The recent condition of the Jews and Catholics in England, is another illustration. Rothschild, the late banker, though the richest private citizen in the world, and perhaps master of scores of English servants, who sued for the smallest crumbs of his favor, was, as a subject of the government, inferior to the lowest among them. ”

“ Rothchild was a traveling salesman representing a jewelry house in which his father was financially interested and he himself being slated for partnership, and that they would be married in some out of the way place out west and that by changing one figure in the marriage certificate, it would make it appear that they had been married immediately upon the young girl leaving home, which would have given legitimate birth to the child, to which Bessie Moore was about to become a mother. ”