Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 1

by H. Sutherland Edwards

Baron Nathan de Rothschild, brother of the preceding, was born at Frankfort in 1777, and died there in 1836. His father, the founder of the family, had sent him as early as 1798 to England, where, after passing some years at Manchester, he established himself in London in 1806. After the death of his father he remained at the head of the London house, and played a considerable part in the great financial operations undertaken by the five brothers in common. In 1813 he lent large sums to the English Government, as well as to England’s allies, and, after the peace, was, like his four brothers, appointed consul-general for Austria, and created baron. Nathan, who, by the way, never made use of his title, died at Frankfort in 1836, and was succeeded in the direction of the London house by Baron Lionel de Rothschild. Baron Charles de Rothschild, the fourth of the five brothers, was born at Frankfort in 1788, and died at Naples in 1855. He directed the Naples bank from its first establishment until his death. He reconstructed the finances of Piedmont and Tuscany, and, in association with his brothers, borrowed for the Roman Government between 1831 and 1856 some 200,000,000 francs.

Baron James de Rothschild, the last of the brothers, born at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1792, died at Paris in 1868. It is with him we have chiefly to do, since it was he who in the year 1812, immediately after the death of his father, established at Paris the great banking house which now forms one of the most striking features of the Rue Laffitte. The post of consul-general for Austria was given to him in 1822. Under the Restoration, in December, 1823, Baron James subscribed for a loan of nearly five hundred millions, and, in association with {339} his brothers, he undertook nearly all the important loans issued in Portugal, Prussia, Austria, France, Italy, and Belgium. He rendered important financial aid to the French Government under the reign of Louis Philippe, and during the Second Empire. It was Baron James de Rothschild, moreover, who furnished the brothers Pereire with the sums necessary for the construction of the first railways in France.

Falsely accused of having speculated in corn during the dearth of 1847, he had reason to fear, at least for a time, after the Revolution of 1848, that he could no longer live safely at Paris. His house was pillaged and burnt, and he was indeed on the point of quitting France, when the Prefect of Police, Caussidière, persuaded him to stay, and placed at his disposal a picket of the Republican Guard, which was stationed in the courtyard of his mansion night and day. The baron gave 50,000 francs towards the relief of the wounded of February, illuminated his house to show that he was not hostile to Republican institutions, and tranquilly continued his operations at the bank. When Caussidière, obliged to leave France, decided to set up as a wine merchant in London, Baron James, mindful of the service he had rendered him, did not, it is true, offer him a present of money, which might have been refused, but in the handsomest manner ordered such large annual consignments of wine from him, that Caussidière could thenceforth have lived comfortably without selling a drop of his stuff to any other customer. The baron never boasted of this action, but the wine merchant took delight in telling the story of his patron’s delicate gratitude. Thanks to his state loans, to his banking and exchange transactions, and to the great commercial enterprises which he had created or protected, the financier had amassed enormous wealth. He richly endowed or founded all kinds of Jewish institutions, notably a vast hospital in the Rue Picpus, and the synagogue of the Rue Notre-Dame de Nazareth. Every year he sent to Judæa large sums of money, which the Rabbis distributed to the poor; and the Jews of the East attributed to him the project of redeeming Jerusalem from the government of the Turks.

His château at Ferrières, in the department of Seine-et-Marne, is a sumptuous palace; and besides this and his two other residences in the Rue Laffitte and the Bois de Boulogne, he possessed innumerable houses in Paris. In nearly all the great cities and towns of Europe, moreover, he owned valuable properties—at Rome, for instance, Naples, and Turin, where some of the finest palaces and mansions were his. To the end of his life the great financier displayed a most prodigious activity. He was quick, hot-tempered, peevish, and surly to approach. But if he has been often reproached with brutality to underlings, he, on the other hand, treated the great with none too much ceremony. One day the Count de Morny entered the baron’s office at a moment when he was busily engaged. “Take a chair,” said the financier, without looking at him. “Pardon me,” said the injured visitor; “you cannot have heard my name. I am the Count de Morny.” “Take two chairs,” replied Baron James, without lifting his eyes off the papers before him. This prince of millionaires never carried more than fifty francs in his pocket; and he himself declared that by means of this aid to economy he had saved half a million francs in the course of his life. At the club of the Rue Royale, where he was accustomed to play whist after dinner, much amusement was caused by the extraordinary purse he always carried. It was fitted with a lock, and the key to this lock hung as a pendant to the baron’s watchchain. To pay a debt of ten sous he had first to get hold of the key and then open the lock; nor even when he had done so was there always enough in the purse to discharge his liability. At his club he was called simply “The Baron”—his compeers were all barons of something or other; and for this title he had always a punctilious regard. He was a great lover of art, and had formed a magnificent collection in the château at Ferrières. By his marriage with his niece, daughter of Baron Solomon de Rothschild, he left four sons—Edmond, Gustave, Alphonse, and Nathaniel, of whom the first-named became naturalised in France, and assumed on his father’s death the direction of the Paris house. During the siege of the capital in January, 1871, he, in association with his brothers, expended 300,000 francs on the relief of the necessitous; and in 1872 subscribed for a sum of 2,750,000,000 francs towards the loan required to buy the foe out of the country.

The three houses in the Rue Laffitte occupied by the Rothschilds are numbered 17, 19, and 21. At 21 is the banking establishment, now presided over by Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, third son of the late Baron James. Baron Alphonse is a painter of the highest distinction, in token of which he has been elected a member of the Academy of Fine Arts. No. 19 is the residence of the Dowager Baroness James de Rothschild; {340} while No 17 is occupied by various administrative offices. Close by is the mansion which, under the First Empire, was inhabited by the Queen of Holland. In one of the rooms overlooking the garden was born, April 20th, 1808, Napoleon Louis, the future Emperor of the French.

In the middle of the Rue de la Victoire stands the finest of the three synagogues of Paris, built by the architect Aldrophe in the Roman style.

The perspective of the Rue Laffitte terminates at the frontispiece of the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. The plan of this edifice is that of an ancient Roman basilica, and its aspect that of an Italian church. The interior is very richly adorned with works from the chisels of half a dozen famous sculptors, and from the brushes of a still greater number of distinguished painters. This church, situated in the midst of those quarters where literature, art, and the drama have made their home, is marked by an elegance which approaches the mundane.

Passing northwards through the Rue Laffitte, the visitor sees, rising before him, the hill of Montmartre, which overlooks the church. The windmills which five-and-twenty years ago waved their arms on the summit of this eminence have given way to the imposing church of the Sacred Heart, a massive structure suggestive of a fortress.

The Butte Montmartre, to give the hill its French name, figures on almost every page of the annals of Paris. It is supposed, with a certain degree of probability, that temples to Mars and Mercury were raised there in the Roman era. Three different etymologies have been given to the Butte Montmartre, namely, Mons Martis, or Mount of Mars; Mons Mercurii, or Mount of Mercury; and finally Mons Martyrum, or Mount of the Martyrs. The last-named derivation is justified by the martyrdom of St. Denis, first Archbishop of Paris, who in the third century perished upon this spot. The hill bears a reservoir of water, artistically decorated; and close to it an obelisk erected in 1736 to serve as a point of view by which, from the opposite or southern side of Paris, {342} the city could be surveyed and measured. Our illustration shows, to the right of this edifice, the Observatory of Montmartre, and to the left the Moulin de la Galette, or Muffin Mill.