NICAThe Story of BY A.B. Spellman In postwar New York City, the British-born baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter was a prominent denizen of the jazz world and a patron of the music’s practitioners. She was also the subject of scandal and caricature in the popular press. A new book offers a more generous portrait. 38 November / December 2011 Nica de Koenigswarter with tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins. NICA’S DREAM: The Life and Legend of the Jazz Baroness DAVID KASTIN W. W. Norton & Company 229 pp. NICA ISBN: 978-0-393-06949-2 remember the Rolls. Granted, this was the late ’50s and ’60s; and my memory of the period, like everyone else’s, is smoky, so it might have been the silver Bentley. But in my mind it was the classic Rolls, the one with the headlights mounted above the bumpers, parked in front of the Five Spot. It announced that the Baroness Kathleen Annie Pannonica (“Nica”) de Koenigswarter, née Rothschild, had come to hear Thelonious Monk. She sat quietly at a corner table, usually Isurrounded by jazz musicians who were her deep friends, a lush mink coat on her shoulders, a long cigarette holder between her fingers, a silver flask filled with Chivas Regal in her purse. Nica had a mythic quality about her: for those of us who did not know her, there was mystery in her carriage; her legend was large, and her reputation far more controversial than she had earned. A more enlightened press would have praised her for the actions that instead caused enormous scandal. And then she was a Rothschild. How often did one encounter one of those in a smoky Bowery jazz room with sawdust on the floor? David Kastin has set out her story in this well-told, if less-than-definitive 39 book. But there may never be a definitive biography of Nica, because of the Rothschild family’s Victorian reticence (the only time’s one’s name should appear in the papers is at birth and in death). She was called a patron of jazz artists, and she was that, but the phrase inadequately describes the deep involvement that she maintained with the musicians in her life. Tring Park, in Hertsfordshire, England, is one of the Rothschild homes where Nica lived as a child. Kastin’s chapter on the Rothschilds’ his­ Foraging emus—native to Australia—can be seen in the foreground. tory understandably is concentrated on the family’s attempts to lift its social status to Palestine and the creation of the state of being guarded day and night by a regiment the level of its financial influence, but I do Israel. The first president of Israel called her of nurses, governesses, tutors, valets, chauf­ think that there should have been more the “most remarkable” of the Rothschilds. feurs and grooms.” about its role in the creation of the modern She had four children for Charles (as Nat­ banking system, particularly the legendary haniel was known): Pannonica, born in 1913, efore you conclude that this Nathan the First’s part in establishing the was the youngest. is just another Poor Little government bond as a pillar of investment. Rozsika kept the depressive Charles Rich Girl story and that you The Rothschild house hold environment is whole, or nearly. He hated the family business, would trade your abject effectively presented in the neurotic, contra­ yet accepted his duty and became senior childhood for a taste of such dictory context of Victorian British society, with partner of the bank. He nearly died in the a luxe life, consider that the the men possessing volumes of quirky 1918–20 influenza pandemic, which is esti­ emotional thermostat of the household was eccentricity along with widely respected mated to have killed upwards of fifty million Bset permanently on cold. The Rothschild kids intellectual accomplishment. Not that the people. In recovery he was much dimin­ saw no other children, and Rozsika ran a women were slouches: there were brilliant ished; he committed suicide in 1923. tightly controlled home of strict schedules artists and intellectuals among them as well; Young Nica was locked into an oddball and unyielding discipline. No wonder, then, but their lives were strictly circumscribed, extended family household. Some of the that Nica would migrate to the jazz world, following the mores of the time. adults had screaming eccentricities. The the antipodes of that lifestyle. Like his father, Nathaniel Charles scandalous Lord Rothschild, Uncle Walter, In the 1930s, Nica’s brother Victor intro­ Rothschild (born 1877) divided his energy an inept banker but a noted naturalist, kept duced her to the music. Teddy Wilson was in between banking and entomology. He was the largest private zoo in the world. He loved to London with the Benny Goodman Trio; and one of the world’s leading experts on fleas, ride the giant tortoises of the collection, and Victor, himself a competent pianist, paid of all things, and collected an astonishing once showed up at Buckingham Palace in a Wilson five dollars each for jazz lessons. 30,000 species of them, of which a few hun­ coach that was pulled by trained zebras. Wilson apparently took a liking to the bright dred were original discoveries. He met The family owned many estates but teenage sister. He played for Nica and gave Rozsika Edle von Wertheimstein in Hungary, mostly lived together in an enormous her some jazz records, which she treasured. where he also found a rare and beautiful Hertfordshire mansion at Tring Park, where When she came out to the jazz life in 1951, moth. The formidable Rozsika was a member they held a salon for the intellectuals of Teddy Wilson was her guide. of the first European Jewish family to be European Jewry—a steady stream of artists, As a young woman, Nica loved fast cars, ennobled. She was brilliant and beautiful and, philosophers, musicians, scientists and other an addiction that she never lost. A British as the national women’s tennis champion, prominent leaders passed through. Yet it was a jazz saxophonist named Bob Wise intro­ was the first woman anywhere to master stifling environment for a child. While the duced her to flying, and after a Channel hop the overhead stroke (well, I thought that Rothschild boys were sent to Harrow and on to Paris in 1935 she met Jules de fact was interesting). Rozsika also was said to Trinity College, the girls were educated at Koenigswarter, also a flyer. Jules, a French­ to be a major, if anonymous, force in the home. Said Nica: “I was moved from one man, was a member of an aristocratic drafting of the Balfour Declaration of 1917, great country house to another in the germ­ Austro­Hungarian Jewish family whose which was a crucial act in the partition of less immunity of Pullman coaches, while banking history resembled the Rothschilds’. 40 November / December 2011 Ten years older, Jules soon proposed, and when Jules entered the foreign service. The weeks. Soon the de Koenigswarters separated, Nica responded by splitting for New York. polyglot, sophisticated baroness was a skilled and Nica was in the jazz life. “Jazz,” she once He followed, pressing hard. She consented. diplomat’s wife, but she could not happily said, “didn’t do my marriage any good.” The couple went on a six­month honey­ suppress the independence that the war moon, which they spent mostly on planes. had given her. She was suffocating in the usically, it was an They crash­landed in the Gobi Desert and had restricted environment of embassy affairs. exciting time to enter to hitch a ride on camels. Jules bought sex While with Jules on assignment in Mexico, the bebop demi­ toys in Yokohama; in Paris, Nica learned that Nica began to visit a male friend (unnamed monde, but heroin she was pregnant. She went home to London in the book) who would play modern jazz polluted the scene. to have the child and then returned to the for her; Jules liked swing, but couldn’t abide Many, if not most, of Chateau d’Abondant, a historic villa outside bebop. Worse, he was becoming a control the masters of the style were addicts. This Paris, to settle in with her husband and the freak who nearly equaled Rozsika: he insisted Mput them and their families in difficult baby. She would bear Jules four more children. on punctuality, and each time the chronically straits, and Nica was always helpful to them. In September, 1939, Jules, a lieutenant tardy Nica was late for a meal, he would The pianist Hampton Hawes wrote that she in the French reserves, was called up in break one of her records. was an angel of last resort. If someone was anticipation of a German invasion. He gave This friend unwittingly subverted Nica’s stranded somewhere too sick or loaded to Nica a map and explicit instructions: if the marriage by playing Duke Ellington’s Black get home, she had “a number you could call Germans advance to a certain point, grab Brown and Beige Suite for her; the experi­ from anywhere and get a private cab . the children and run home to England. Before ence was numinous. “I got a call,” she said, She’d give money to anyone who was broke, long, the German army flanked the Maginot “a message…that I belonged where that music bring a bag of groceries to their families . line; and Nica, along with a maid, a nanny, was…that I was …supposed to be involved in help them get a cabaret card.” and three children, caught the last refugee some way.” She frequently would escape to The cabaret card returns throughout this train out of Paris.