{"id":1053,"date":"2013-02-26T05:59:24","date_gmt":"2013-02-26T05:59:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2013-02-27T07:20:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-27T07:20:47","slug":"the-baroness-by-hannah-rothschild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=1053","title":{"rendered":"The Baroness by Hannah Rothschild"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The search for Nica, the rebellious Rothschild <\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Virago\u00a07 March 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

320pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Charlotte Moore<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pannonica (Nica) Rothschild was born, in 1913, into the richest and most secretive of families, then at the height of its power.\u00a0 ‘I was moved from one great country house to another in the germless community of reserved Pullman coaches while being guarded night and day by a regiment of nurses, governesses, tutors, footmen, valets, chauffeurs and grooms,’ she recalled.\u00a0 74 years later she died in her shabby New York home, surrounded by hundreds of cats, all but written out of Rothschild family history.<\/p>\n

The great houses of Nica\u2019s childhood were crammed with priceless works of art.\u00a0 Inside, the children played amongst racks holding thousands of stuffed animals; outside, giant tortoises, kangaroos and emus roamed the grounds.\u00a0 Nica met no children apart from siblings and cousins.\u00a0 Her father Charles \u2013 depressive, eventually suicidal \u2013 had met her mother while hunting for rare fleas in the Carpathians; the couple named Pannonica, their third, not much wanted daughter, after a moth.<\/p>\n

The founding father of the dynasty had decreed that Rothschild women could take no part in running the bank.\u00a0 Nica was denied a proper education or a real career \u2013 small wonder that as a beautiful, under-stimulated debutante she should fall into marriage with Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, a glamorous widower who whisked her away in his Leopard Moth on their first date.\u00a0 Nica called him ‘the commander-in-chief’.<\/p>\n

Five children and an adventurous war later, Nica, sick of being commanded, began her startling new life in the New York jazz world.\u00a0 She would leave her pale blue Bentley parked outside the basement clubs in which, as a white woman, she was usually in a minority of one.<\/p>\n

Nica exchanged white for black, day for night, luxury for squalor.\u00a0 She lost a good deal \u2013 her looks, her social circle, the custody of her children.\u00a0 Certainly, her ‘vulgar’ behaviour lost her the approval of her family, though some contact continued.\u00a0 But she found a millieu in which, at last, she felt at home.\u00a0 Above all, she found the love of her life, the jazz genius Thelonius Monk.\u00a0 Accepted by Monk\u2019s long-suffering wife, Nica supported Monk financially, emotionally and \u2013 as his health deteriorated \u2013 physically.\u00a0 She even went to court in his place, telling the police that his drugs were hers.\u00a0 Her generosity extended to many; Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker, the distinguished saxophonist in thrall to heroin, died in her hotel suite because no one else would take him in.<\/p>\n

Hannah Rothschild is Nica\u2019s great-niece.\u00a0 Like Nica, she knew the pressure of ‘failing to\u00a0 live up to the expectations … of my distinguished family.\u00a0 Rothschild opinion is a force to be reckoned with \u2013 it took Hannah years to negotiate family opposition and write the story of Nica the black sheep.\u00a0 She vividly contrasts the ‘jewel-encrusted cage’ of Nica\u2019s early life with the bare light bulb and empty fridge of the New York years.\u00a0 Thelonius Monk seems a pitiable monster of cruelty and selfishness, and Hannah Rothschild is unable to convey any sense of his attractiveness, but her passionate attachment to Nica, or to the idea of Nica, results in a rich and engaging narrative of an extraordinary life.<\/p>\n

Why was Nica so powerfully drawn to Monk and his world? Partly, her great- niece suggests, because she knew racial intolerance first-hand. The Rothschild millions were only a flimsy defence against the anti-Semitism that was rife throughout Europe during the first half of the century. Nica\u2019s father, while at Harrow, was ‘regularly released like a fox and told to run for his life while his fellow students, baying like hounds, tried to catch him.’ To Nica\u2019s credit,\u00a0 her experience of intolerance led not to bitterness but to an enlargement of sympathy. As for the unresponsive Monk himself, whose ‘first language was silence’, Nica tried to recreate and improve upon her relationship with her (possibly) schizophrenic father which had been cut short by his suicide.In Monk she found a parallel; a man of great talent unable to get through life without tireless and uncritical support. And Monk did, at least, reward her with the many songs he wrote in her honour.<\/p>\n

Hannah Rothschild can\u2019t quite decide whether she wants to tell the story like a novelist or like a historian. The result is somewhat jumpy and at times gushing, but never less than heartfelt.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now available in paperback<\/p>\n

The great houses of Nica\u2019s childhood were crammed with priceless works of art. Inside, the children played amongst racks holding thousands of stuffed animals; outside, giant tortoises, kangaroos and emus roamed the grounds. Nica met no children apart from siblings and cousins. Her father Charles \u2013 depressive, eventually suicidal \u2013 had met her mother while hunting for rare fleas in the Carpathians; the couple named Pannonica, their third, not much wanted daughter, after a moth. […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1067,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}