Hannah Rothschild - The Baroness: The Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild

Nica, photographed in Mexico, 1947, age thirty-four ()

This Is a Borzoi Book
Published by Alfred A. Knopf

Copyright 2012 by Hannah Rothschild
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by
Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Originally published, in slightly different form, in hardcover in the United Kingdom by Virago Press, an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group, an Hachette UK Company, London, in 2012.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rothschild, Hannah, [date]
The baroness: the search for Nica, the rebellious Rothschild / by Hannah Rothschild.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references
eISBN: 978-0-307-96199-0
1. Koenigswarter, Pannonica de. 2. Rothschild family. 3. Women music patronsGreat BritainBiography. 4. Music patronsGreat BritainBiography. I. Title.
ML 429 .K 72 R 68 2013
781.65092dc23
[ B ] 2012036881

Jacket illustration by Vivienne Flesher
Jacket lettering by Ward Schumaker
Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson

v3.1

For Jacob and for Serena

My grandfather Victor was the first person to mention her. He was trying to teach me a simple twelve-bar blues chord but my eleven-year-old hands were leaden and too small.

Youre like my sister, he said. You love jazz but cant be arsed to learn to play it.

Which sister? Miriam or Liberty? I asked, trying to ignore the barb.

No, the other one.

What other one?

Later that day I found her in the Rothschild family tree: Pannonica.

Who is Pannonica? I asked my father, Jacob, her nephew.

She is always called Nica but beyond that I dont really know, he said. No one ever talks about her. Our family is so large and scattered that he did not seem surprised to have mislaid a near relation.

I was not put off. I pestered another great-aunt, Nicas sister Miriam, the renowned scientist, who divulged, She lives in New York, but would not offer any further information. Another relation told me, Shes a great patron, the Peggy Guggenheim or Medici of jazz.

Then there were the whispers:

Shes known as the Jazz Baroness. She lives with a black man, a pianist. She flew Lancaster bombers in the war. That junkie saxophonist Charlie Parker died in her apartment. She had five children and lived with 306cats. The family cut her off (no they didnt, someone countered). Twenty songs were written for her (no, it was twenty-four). She raced Miles Davis down Fifth Avenue. Did you hear about the drugs? She went to prison so he wouldnt have to. Whos he? Thelonious Monk. It was a true love story, one of the greatest.

So what is Nica like? I asked Miriam again.

Vulgar. She is vulgar, Miriam said crossly.

What does that mean? I persisted.

Miriam would not elaborate but she did give me her sisters number. When I went to New York for the first time in 1984 I rang Nica within hours of arriving.

Would you like to meet up? I asked nervously.

Wild, she answered in a decidedly un-great-aunt, un-seventy-one-year-old way. Come to the club downtown after midnight.

This area had yet to be gentrified and was known for its crack dens and muggings.

How will I find it? I asked.

Nica laughed. Look out for the car, and hung up.

The car was impossible to miss. The large, pale-blue Bentley was badly parked and inside it two drunks lolled around on the leather seats.

Its good theyre in thereit means no one will steal the car, she explained later.

Set back from the street was a small door leading down to a basement. I knocked loudly. Minutes later a hatch opened in the upper door and a dark face appeared behind a grille.

What? he said.

Im looking for Pannonica, I said.

Who?

Pannonica! I repeated in slightly desperate English tones. They call her Nica.

You mean the Baroness! Why didnt you say so? The door swung open to reveal a tiny basement room, shabby, smoky and cramped, where several people sat listening to a pianist.

Shes at her table.

Nica, the only white person, was easy to spot, sitting nearest the stage.

She hardly resembled the woman I had studied in our family photograph albums. That Nica was a ravishing debutante, her raven hair tamed and dressed, her eyebrows plucked into fashionable arches and her mouth painted to form a perfect bee-stung pout. In another portrait, a less soigne Nica, her hair loose and face free of make-up, seemed more like a Hollywood version of a Second World War double agent. The Nica before me looked nothing like her younger self; her astonishing beauty had since waned and now those once-delicate features bordered on the masculine. Her voice will always stay with me, a voice that had been pummelled like a shoreline by waves of whisky, cigarettes and late nights, a voice that was part rumble, part growl, and was frequently punctuated by wheezy bursts of laughter.

Nica in 1942 ()

Smoking a cigarette in a long black filter, her fur coat draped over the back of a spindly chair, Nica gestured to an empty seat and, picking up a teapot from the table, poured something into two chipped china cups. We toasted each other silently. Id been expecting tea. Whisky bit into my throat; I choked and my eyes watered. Nica threw back her head and laughed.

Thanks, I croaked.

She put her finger to her lips and, nodding at the stage, said, Sssh, just listen to the music, Hannah, just listen.

At the time, I was twenty-two and failing to live up to the expectations, real or imagined, of my distinguished family. I felt inadequate, incapable of making it in my own right, yet unable to make the most of the privilege and opportunity available to me. Like Nica, I was barred from working in the family bank; the founding father N. M. Rothschild had decreed that Rothschild women were only allowed to act as bookkeepers or archivists. Caught in a holding pattern between university and employment, I was keen to work at the BBC but I managed only to collect letters of rejection. Although my father, who had followed in the family tradition of banking, found me jobs through various contacts, I was hopeless at running a bookshop, property development or cataloguing artworks. Depressed and disheartened, I was not trying to find a role model, but I was looking for options. At the heart of my search was a question. Is it possible to escape from ones past or are we forever trapped in layers of inherited attitudes and ancient expectation?