THE SASSOON DYNASTY By CECIL ROTH LONDON ROBERT HALE LIMITED 102 GREAT RUSSELL STREET W.C.1 MCMXLI THE SASSOON DYNASTY By the same author THE LAST FLORENTINE REPUBLIC (London 1925: Italian trnnsbdon, Florence, 1929) THE CASALE PILGRIM (London, 1929) L 1APOTRE DES MARRANES (Paris, 1930) HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN VENICE (Philadelphia,_ 1930: Italictn translation, Rome, 1933) A JEWISH BOOK OF DAYS (!-,ondon, 1931) HISTORY OF THE MARRANOS (Philadelphia, 1932) LETTERE DI DONATO GIANNOTTI A FIERO VETTORI (In collaboration with R. Ridolfi: Florer ce, 1932) THE NEPHEW OF THE ALMIGHTY (London, 1933) A LIFE OF MENASSEH BEN ISRAEL (Philadelphia, 1934) A SHORT HISTORY OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE (London, 1936) THE SPANISH INQUISITION (London, 1937) THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION TO CIVILISATION (London 1938: Jugoslav translation, Znghrcb, 1939) THE MAGNIFICENT ROTHSCHILDS (London, 1939) etc. SIR PHILlP SASSOON First Published April r94r Reprinted May r94r PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WESTERN PRINTING SERVICES LTD., BRISTOL TO ADOLF HITLER FUEHRER OF THE GERMAN REICH FoR TWO reasons I desire to inscribe your name at the beginning of this book. The first is, that I consider its topic to be a useful object,lesson to the unfortunate people whom you have misled into thinking themselves a pure and superior "race" (whatever that may mean). The most rudi, mentary political commonsense should make it obvious that the absorption of gifted foreign families cannot be other than an advantage for a civilized state. England and English life have in particular been enriched for centuries past by receiving fresh elements from other sources, and there can surely be no reason to regret a liberality that has endowed her with soldiers, philanthro, pists and poets such as the Sassoon family and many like it have produced. Germany under your guidance has deliberately set herself on the path not merely of self,destruction (which while her present temper lasts would be a peculiar boon to humanity at large) but of self,dementation. In the second place, I am happy to have this opportunity to express once again, as publicly as I may, my profound execration and abhorrence, not merely as a Jew and an Englishman but as a human being, of you, your ideals, your ideas, your methods and all that you stand for. Should God punish the sins of the world by allowing you a momentary victory, I trust that this declaration will bring upon me the honour of the most drastic attention of your nauseous tools, for life in such circumstances would not be worth the having. CECIL RoTH ACKNOWLEDGMENTS THE frontispiece and photograph of Port Lympne are reproduced from photographs lent by Mrs Alice Dudeney. The photo, graph of Reginald Sassoon was lent by Mrs Meyer Sassoon. The portrait of David Sassoon is reproduced from an en, graving lent by Mr Alfred Rubens. Per, mission to reproduce the photograph of Mrs Rachel Beer and her husband has been obtained from The Observer. The photograph of the Sassoon Mausoleum is reproduced by permission of the Brighton Evening Argus. 6 CONTENTS Chapter Page PREFACE 11 I. BAGHDAD 17 II. BOMBAY 37 III. THE SECOND GENERATION 70 IV. E. D. SASSOON & COMPANY 95 V. ENGLAND 108 VI. THE RoYAL Box 142 VII. THE THIRD GENERATION 165 VIII. THE SASSOONS OF ASHLEY PARK 190 IX. THE FouRTH GENERATION 207 X. P.S. 232 TABLES Page THE SASSOONS BY GENERATIONS 69 THE HousE OF EuAs DAvrn SAssooN 94 Sm ALBERT SAssooN AND Hrs FAMILY 164 THE SASSOONS OF ASHLEY PARK 189 THE EXTINCTION OF THE HOUSE OF SASSOON 206 THE HousE OF SASSOON folding j,late at end of volume 7 For I am alone, a dweller among men Hunger' d for what my heart shall never say. SIEGFRIED SASSOON ILLUSTRATIONS Sm PHILIP SASSOON Frontispiece Facing page DAVID SASSOON 44 Sm ALBERT SAssooN 88 REUBEN SASSOON 124 THE SASSOON MAUSOLEUM, BRIGHTON 164 SIR EDWARD SASSOON 182 RACHEL BEER AND HER HUSBAND 200 REGINALD SASSOON 220 PORT LYMPNE 246 9 PREFACE Tms volume is the record of a very remarkable family. I am not particularly concerned with the fact that it amassed, and in recent years lost, a great deal of money-a commonplace and (as it seems to me, since I cannot emulate it) somewhat vulgar occupation. But in the course of my inquiries I have been struck by two aspects of its history, apart from its rise to fortune-its astonishing metamorphosis in the course of a single generation from Orientals of the Haroun,al-Raschid period to highly sophisti, cated members of the Marlborough House set in London: and the fidelity with which it presents, in its rise and in its decline, a microcosm of con, temporary social history. It is usual to refer to the Sassoons as the Roth, schilds of the East. They were nothing of the kind. In the first place, the Rothschilds were essentially financiers, whereas the Sassoons were essentially merchants, with subsidiary interests as manu, facturers. In the second, the House of Rothschild, neatly distributed among five different centres, never lost its unity; the Sassoons, untidily scattered about the Levant, did. In the third, the background and progress of the two families were entirely different. The Rothschilds were Europeans, their ancestors having lived in the Occident from time immemorial, whereas the Sassoons had never 11 12 The Sassoon Dynasty strayed from Asia (so far as it is possible to ascer, tain) until they were brought to England in the nineteenth century. But there was a more signifi, cant difference than this. The Rothschilds were of undistinguished origin, the first of the family who emerges into the light of history being an ordinary money,changer of commonplace antecedents who flourished towards the close of the eighteenth cen, tury. At this time the progenitor of the Sassoons was a Prince of the Captivity in Baghdad, as his ancestors had been before him. It is not therefore so remarkable as would appear at first blush that, when the younger generation came to England later on, they were able to take their rank in Society anq at Court as to the manner born. They were not uneasy intruders, as some of their contemporaries were; they were re,entering as it were into their birthright. Nevertheless, it was a far cry from Baghdad to Windsor, from the turban and oriental robes which the family had worn even in India to the top,hat and frock,coat with which they paraded Pall Mall, from the flowing Arabic periods in which they were formerly so adept to the terseness of English prose. Yet the transition was made with extraordinary rapidity, assuredly equalled by no other family in history. David Sassoon, the founder of the House, was an Oriental patriarch, albeit at the same time a good business,man. His sons, most of whom never knew the discomforts of occidental dress until they arrived at manhood, later cut a figure in London society, and were among the most prominent per, sonalities in the Royal Enclosure that rotated about Preface 13 King Edward VII. The next generation entered Parliament and intermarried with the nobility. The next flaunts the most English of contemporary English poets, the most civilized of Commissioners of Public Works, and a steeplechase rider ·whose death was considered an irreparable loss to English sport. It is an amazing record. What family could have been less English in its tastes a century ago ? What family has produced members who are more so to-day? Apart from the historical interest of the subject, I have a faint feeling that it has a scientific value as well. It is not very often that one has the oppor­ tunity of examining the influence of heredity and environment with such precision and in the case of a family that can be traced so exactly. I am think­ ing not only of small matters such as pigmentation, but of mental characteristics as well. As the reader will see, if he has the hardihood to go so far, one . of the children of the founder of the Sassoon family showed in his youth a taste for amateur journalism and in maturity an unanticipated passion for the English countryside. His daughter was the famous Mrs Rachel Beer, the only woman on record who edited two English Sunday papers at the same time, and his grandson Siegfried Sassoon, who has des­ cribed the rural scene in jewelled words more precious by far than his ancestors' gems. Again: while none of the Sassoon clan of the older genera­ tion was conspicuous for artistic sensibility (I am intentionally erring on the side of understatement) intermarriage with the Rothschilds, with their unusually keen perception in this direction, pro- 14 The Sassoon Dynasty duced in Sir Philip Sassoon a man whose excep­ tional artistic taste (whatever may have been the case with his political abilities) was a national asset. It is this amazing metamorphosis that I have endeavoured to describe in these pages. If my account is not more satisfactory, part of the respon­ sibility at least lies in the curious convention by which the members of well~known families neither make use of their records nor allow access to them to others. (This is enough, I trust, to indicate that there is nothing "official" about this volume, in the production of which the Sassoon family has had no part whatsoever. I almost feel inclined to add, in consequence of this, the conventional warning that all the characters in this work are entirely fictional.) Another difficulty in my way has been caused by the disorganization of certain libraries, in which I was certain to find much in­ formation in convenient form, as an indirect con, sequence of the War.