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Pride & Principle. For the Rothschilds, who still retained some of their Yiddish accents and ghetto ways, money also bought culture, fame and a degree of acceptance. They were celebrated in the writings of Byron and Thackeray; artists such as Ingres painted their women; Balzac and Browning sought out their sumptuous but always kosher tables; Rossini composed music for their parties; Bismarck and British royalty attended them. From Buckinghamshire to Bohemia, the Rothschilds put up marble palaces, acquired vineyards and stables. Breathed Lady Eastlake: "The Medicis were never lodged so in the height of their glory."
For all their wealth and power, the prideful Rothschilds never forgot—or were allowed long to forget—their origins. After King Louis XVIII refused to receive Jakob's wife at court because she was not Christian, Jakob withdrew his support of the Bourbons; he was lucky to get out just before the revolution of 1830 toppled them. Because of Russia's pogroms, the Rothschilds refused to grant loans to the czars. In many ways governments began to feel respect for, or fear of, the Rothschilds. Amschel became treasurer of the German Confederation, and Jakob the Austrian consul in Paris. Nathan's son Lionel was elected to the British House of Commons four times, but four times Parliament refused to seat him because he would not swear a Christian oath. Parliament finally gave in, and Lionel sat from 1858 to 1874.
When the khedive of Egypt in 1875 put his Suez Canal shares on the market, Britain needed $19 million to outbid other countries. Lionel de Rothschild, sucking on a grape, casually agreed to get the money for his friend Dizzy (Disraeli)—at only 3% interest. The Rothschilds helped to bankroll the empire-building exploits of Cecil Rhodes, and took home a large bundle of stock in the De Beers diamond and gold trust.
The Sterile Years. World War I, and the era of nervous money and raging nationalism that followed, brought the end to an expansive time for the Rothschilds. Stringent national tax systems ended their practice of keeping a single set of books, and the various branches drifted apart. Death duties sucked millions from their British fortune, and publicly owned banks grew up everywhere to sap their power. In France, the Rothschilds' railroads were taken over by the government. The German and Italian branches of the family had already died out for lack of male heirs. The tired old Rothschilds conspicuously failed to exploit opportunities in the U.S., and thereby missed the greatest industrial expansion in history.