Biography:Love, it appears, is not the only international lingua franca; money also has the ability to make its meaning plain anywhere and everywhere. After Nathan Rothschild's death, in July 1836, a writer in the Observer noted that while the deceased "had never acquired a correct knowledge of the English language, and consequently expressed himself in a strange sort of diction, yet it was impossible to be with him for ten minutes and not to perceive that his understanding was sagacious, clear and sound".
Rothschild had arrived in England from his native Frankfurt in May 1800 speaking nothing but German. Initially he traded in manufactured goods but soon moved into banking and by the time of his death was believed to be the richest man in the world. The wealth he amassed was further incremented by his four sons, Lionel, Anthony, Nathaniel and Mayer, who went on to become pillars of the British establishment, loyal supporters of the crown and friends of the aristocracy, owners of large country estates and superlative art collections, breeders of racehorses and masters of their local hunts. But they would always be outsiders for one reason: their Jewish faith.
Anti-Semitism runs like a leitmotif through George Ireland's collective biography of the four Rothschild brothers. While they were young men, the antipathy could be explicit and was even enshrined in law. Religious requirements meant Jews were unable to obtain a degree from either Oxford or Cambridge (Nathan Rothschild was an early supporter of the non-sectarian University College London which opened in 1828). Jews were forbidden to engage in retail trade within the City of London and until the repeal in 1848 of De Judaismo, a 13th-century statute, "it was arguable that Jews could not even own freehold land".
Sometimes the hostility was made public, as in 1833 when a bill for the emancipation of Jews was debated in the House of Commons and William Cobbett proclaimed "Jew has always been synonymous with sharper, cheat, rogue". Sometimes prejudice was expressed only in private; in February 1830 Charles Greville noted in his diary, "Went to Esterhazy's ball; talked to old Rothschild who was there with his wife and a dandy little Jew son". What other son would the couple have had, if not Jewish?
TO SOME EXTENT their money - and the loans they extended to governments and individuals alike - protected the Rothschilds from explicit displays of bigotry and they appear to have behaved as though anti-Semitism was a concept unknown to them. But eventually they were obliged to face up to its existence owing to an action taken in 1847 by their oldest brother Lionel: he resolved to stand for election as a member of parliament. Lionel Rothschild was duly elected, but long before the first vote had been cast it was evident problems lay ahead. On admission to the House of Commons an MP was required to swear an oath "on the true faith of a Christian". Rothschild, however, was not a Christian and therefore could not take the oath or indeed his seat.
Before the end of the year, a bill was brought before parliament by the prime minister, Lord John Russell, for "the removal of civil and religious disabilities affecting Her Majesty's Jewish subjects" and the debates that took place in both the lower and upper chambers demonstrated that no amount of wealth could overcome prejudice. In the Commons, the vote in favour of the motion was carried despite objections from one MP that Jews were a "separate people", some of whose "very names and titles prove them to be un-English". But the House of Lords still had final say in the matter and their lordships chose to spurn the bill. The Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce, vehemently arguing against the motion, observed that Jews in Britain were "like a people who had been shipwrecked, and who had received shelter and then claimed from those whose hospitality they had enjoyed the full rights of citizenship". It's worth noting that the bishop's father was William Wilberforce, whose own parliamentary battle to abolish slavery is being celebrated this year.
Only in 1858 and after winning several more elections was Lionel Rothschild eventually permitted to take his place in the House of Commons.
His struggle to overcome legislated bigotry forms the centrepiece of Ireland's book, which draws extensively on the Rothschild archives, perhaps too extensively since the author seems unable to resist quoting from every letter discovered, no matter how trivial its contents. And he presumes a great deal on his reader's knowledge of the period, as when casually referring to "Queen Caroline's tumultuous entry to London on her return from Italy". Not everyone, after all, will be familiar with George IV's marital difficulties. But given the prejudices that bedevil our own era, this tale of injustice overcome deserves attention.
Robert O'Byrne is an author and journalist. He is currently writing a history of Dublin's Gaiety Theatre and a biography of the late Desmond Leslie
Plutocrats: A Rothschild Inheritance By George Ireland John Murray, 432pp. £30