The First Lady of Fleet Street E-Book

Eilat Negev

• Herausgeber: The Robson Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

In the late nineteenth century, at a time when women were still denied the vote, Rachel Beer defied convention to take the helm first of The Observer, and then the Sunday Times, becoming the first woman ever to edit a national newspaper. It was to be over eighty years before Fleet Street would see the like again. Barred from the London Clubs and the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, Rachel nevertheless managed to make her formidable voice heard on both national and international political issues - including the notorious Dreyfus Affair. In public she was a rebel and a pioneer, yet behind the closed door of her study, Rachel's life was marked by strife. Her family, the Sassoons, had made their fortune in Indian opium and cotton and Rachel's marriage to Frederick Beer should have brought together two wealthy dynasties. Instead, it resulted in a deep family rift and years of heartbreak. Drawing on a wealth of original material, The First Lady of Fleet Street not only provides an important history of two venerable families, their origins and their rise to eminence, it also paints a vivid picture of a remarkable woman and of the times in which she lived.

Leseprobe

The FIRST LADY OF FLEET STREET

The Life, Fortune and Tragedy of Rachel Beer

EILAT NEGEV AND YEHUDA KOREN

Contents

Title Page

Prologue

ONE: Portraits and Personalities

TWO: Flight from Baghdad

THREE: Opium and Further Expansion

FOUR: Their Dual Identity

FIVE: Gaining a Foothold

SIX: Candidly and Constantly

SEVEN: Fatherless

EIGHT: A Court Jew

NINE: A German in London

TEN: A Girdle Round the Earth

ELEVEN: 170 Strand

TWELVE: Five Funerals

THIRTEEN: The Marriage Market

FOURTEEN: A Newspaper Heir

FIFTEEN: Rien sans Peine

SIXTEEN: A Newspaper of Her Own

SEVENTEEN: 46 Fleet Street

EIGHTEEN: A New Woman

NINETEEN: Rivals

TWENTY: Double Burden

TWENTY-ONE: All of Paris in a Fever

TWENTY-TWO: An Encounter in London

TWENTY-THREE: Hoisting the Flag at Pretoria

TWENTY-FOUR: And the Tears in Her Eyes Grew Large on Their Ledge

TWENTY-FIVE: Breakdown

TWENTY-SIX: After the Storm

Afterword

Acknowledgments

Notes

Sources

Index

Plates

About the Author

Copyright

Prologue

Late May 1903. Earl’s Court, a two-story stone mansion in Tunbridge Wells.

A slight woman sits erect in her chair, nearly swallowed by her weighty crepe mourning dress. Heavily framed mirrors, priceless paintings, dim-gilt Chinese cabinets, and fresh lilies and orchids adorn every inch of the spacious drawing room.

She is almost numb in the presence of the seventy-three-year-old barrister sitting opposite her. Though he is a Master in Lunacy, summoned by the court to certify her mental state, Thomas H. Fisher is not a physician, and has not been schooled in psychiatry. This woman’s fate lies in his hands—if he signs a document certifying that she is of “unsound mind,” she will be stripped of many of her rights, won’t control the considerable inheritance due to her from her wealthy husband, and will be consigned to the outside “government of herself, her manors, messuages, lands, goods and chattels.”

That he is there is not surprising. Three physicians have already examined this woman and filed their reports, all at the request of her own family. One of them, Dr. George Henry Savage, is a leading expert in the field of lunacy. Though in his book On Soundness of Mind and Insanity, published that very year, Dr. Savage admitted that “what is sane in one man is insane in the conduct of another, and what may be sane at one period of our lives would be insane at another,” his assessment of this woman allowed for no such ambiguity. He pronounced her of unsound mind after one short interview.

Still, she might have filed legal documents. She could have tried to refute the judgments on her sanity. She has not, and she will not. She sits passively, instead, sensing that these matters are a fait accompli—the verdict has already been reached, and the forces allied against her are too strong to be defeated.

ONE MIGHT ASSUME that Rachel Beer, the woman in question, was just another pampered English lady, either too proud or too ill-prepared by a life in which her every need was met by others to do anything but surrender meekly to outside judgments. In truth, she was anything but that stereotypical Victorian lady. She achieved a more stunning kind of success than can be measured in bank accounts or stock portfolios.

In the late nineteenth century, women were denied the vote and were not given equal access to education. It was actually believed that too much intellectual activity would cause them nervous breakdowns. It was at this time that Rachel Beer owned and edited the Sunday Times and, eventually, The Observer. She was the first and only woman to edit two national newspapers, over eighty years before another woman was to take the helm of a Fleet Street paper. When one considers that many of her women contemporaries hardly had access to a newspaper, her accomplishments are all the more remarkable.

The few women who managed to crack the leaded glass ceiling in journalism and in most other careers in Rachel Beer’s time provoked extreme antagonism, and their assertiveness was perceived as a threat. Female journalists were often restricted to the so-called “Women’s Sphere,” reporting on the latest frocks, frills and society gossip. Politics were considered out of bounds for them, and they weren’t welcome in the Press Gallery of the House of Commons. Though she was deprived of the tips and connections to which male journalists had ready access, Rachel Beer adamantly refused to limit herself to “feminine” topics. She fearlessly raised her voice on foreign and domestic matters throughout her time at both the Sunday Times and The Observer.

As an editor, Rachel Beer championed causes like the Public Amusements Bill, an innovative means of reducing crime and reforming morals through ratepayer-funded free educational and entertainment functions for the lower and middle classes. A working woman herself, she also stood for various women’s causes. At the Women’s International Congress, she made a memorable statement: “It was Victor Hugo who said that the nineteenth century is the woman’s century. At the root of the whole question lies the demand for the right—no, not to vote—but to labour, and to receive adequate pay for work done.” She even took on traditional male bastions, calling for the resignation of the commander-in-chief and the elimination of his wasteful and expensive position.

She and her husband, Frederick Beer, who inherited The Observer from his father, were leading London socialites—exhibitions, musical soirées, and theatre and opera performances were held at their opulent Mayfair mansion, and they were frequently featured in the society pages. Their collection of paintings was coveted by museums, and—as Rachel was a gifted pianist and composer—they also owned a wide array of the finest musical instruments. But though the Beers were fortunate enough to have been born into wealth, and didn’t deny themselves luxuries, they clearly understood the obligations that came with that privilege. Their philanthropic efforts were impressive in their breadth and the level of their generosity.

Rachel was evidently a woman in love with life, the possessor of a vigorous and adventurous soul. Why, then, at forty-five, did she submit so passively to those questioning her sanity and her ability to care for herself? Why did she allow herself to be torn from her active life and her prestigious position in society?

In seeking answers to these questions, we must look not only at Rachel’s astounding life and career but at the meteoric rise to riches of two prominent Jewish immigrant families. Rachel Beer (née Sassoon) was the daughter of S. D. Sassoon, the grandson of the family’s patriarch, Sheikh Sason ben Saleh. The Sassoons’ ascent to power and wealth spread their considerable influence from Baghdad to Bombay and beyond, eventually leading them to prominence in London, the great commercial centre of the world. Her husband’s family had its roots in the harsh Frankfurt ghetto. His father, Julius Beer, relocated to London and made his fortune through investing in the emerging technologies of the time—railroads and submarine telegraphy. When Rachel and Frederick married, they united the wealth and histories of their grand families.

Taken together, the couple’s life history encompasses vaulting ambition, familial discord, tragic early death, overwhelming grief, the evolving role of women in society and in journalism, and the role of the press in social reformation. Theirs is a story of the painful decisions made by people in their struggle to reconcile career and family, love and duty, individual happiness and social welfare. So, though they lived in Victorian England, Rachel and Frederick’s story transcends the particularities of that time and place.

TheFIRST LADY OF FLEET STREET

CHAPTER ONE

Portraits and Personalities

In August 1893, the fashionable photographer Harry Bedford-Lemere spent several days at Rachel and Frederick Beer’s mansion in Mayfair. Bedford-Lemere had made a name for himself photographing the opulent homes of the era. His work was commissioned by wealthy homeowners, architects, decorators and property agents, and it often appeared in society and lifestyle magazines. Through his still-existing photographs, it’s possible to take a virtual tour of the Beers’ home and to get a vivid sense of the life they shared together.

A water fountain gurgled in the marble-lined hall of 7 Chesterfield Gardens, and on a tall pedestal stood La Guerre, a statue created by the famous French sculptor Antoine Louis Barye. It was a small-scale reproduction of one of four figurative works carved in stone on the pavilion façades of the new Louvre in Paris. Frozen in bronze, a soldier sat on a crouched horse, about to unsheath his sword, as a young boy next to him raised a horn to his lips. Though impressive in its scale and execution, La Guerre hardly presented a pastoral image of welcome—instead, it created an undercurrent of unease. The Beers had eagerly acquired the statue just a few months earlier in Paris, shortly after it was cast and put on sale. Owning a piece by the most celebrated French sculptor of the Third Republic was both a statement of wealth and a projection of their sophisticated artistic taste.

Like the statue that graced their doorstep, the Beers’ choice of architect was somewhat eccentric. The job went to the renowned C. J. Phipps, who had designed dozens of theatres all over Britain. Looking to the eighteenth century for inspiration, Phipps and Rachel cluttered the entertainment rooms of the house with mixed gilt French revival furniture in the Louis XVI style, colorful marbles, bronzes, crystal chandeliers, velvet drapes and Persian carpets. Heavy brocades and damasks upholstered the furniture and hung from the walls, nearly muting all sounds. Phipps’s theatrical taste was clearly manifest in the house, and some of the rooms closely resembled stage settings. There was a “Moor-esque” smoking room for gentleman visitors, which suggested a harem with its draperies, poufs, hexagonal tables and hookahs.

All of Rachel and Frederick’s possessions projected the image that they were widely travelled, interested in foreign affairs and world issues, and very fashionable. Their home, in all its extravagance, was the ultimate blending of Rachel’s Eastern background, Frederick’s adventures abroad and Victorian Englishness.

Rachel’s nephew, the poet Siegfried Sassoon, spent many hours in his aunt’s lavish home. He recalled sitting in the drawing room, where he and his family would wait for the chronically late Mrs. Beer. Siegfried and his brothers were dumbfounded not only by the splendour of their aunt and uncle’s home, but also by the ceremonial rules by which the couple conducted their lives. Passing through the massive portico and the doors with their grille of gilded metalwork, they were “bowed to by the solemn but delighted butler.” It must have felt very much like they were entering the domain of royalty, and they felt obliged to “converse in undertones.”

Finally, Aunt Rachel would come bustling in, smelling of violets, fashionably dressed, with an enormous feathered hat on her head. Her ears would sparkle with sapphire earrings and her hands with diamond rings. Rather than hug or caress the boys, she would instead offer her cold, ivory cheek to each of them in turn. Responding to the beat of a gong, they would move into the dining room, which was reachable through a narrow passageway with mirrored walls and bamboo handrails down each side, suggesting a gently sloping bridge. Crowned with a metal-domed ceiling, the room was decorated in the oriental style, with blackened bamboo flooring, asymmetrical bamboo chairs, and objects from the Far East, including swords with ivory handles and a sentimental painting of two Japanese geishas.

Of all the unique decorative elements in Chesterfield Gardens, what young Siegfried remembered best was this mirrored passageway: “We always stopped to marvel at our multiplied and diminishing reflections, which couldn’t be counted … ‘I can see simply hundreds of myself!’ my younger brother would exclaim. And I would outdo him with, ‘I can see thousands and millions and trillions of myself, getting tinier and tinier all the time, like ancestors!’” he later wrote.

Rachel never tried to conceal her Eastern ancestry. The frequent costume balls she attended (and sometimes held) gave her a welcome opportunity to play up her exotic features by dressing as an oriental lady. These were also occasions to display a fraction of her treasure trove of diamonds, rubies and precious jewels. When she dressed in this style, she would wear several strings of pearls in various lengths, Indian-style, hanging nearly to her waist, a rope of pink coral criss-crossing her thighs, and several Indian gold and carved coral bracelets hugging her bare arms from the shoulder down.

Rachel loved this outfit and the image it projected so much that she displayed a photo of herself wearing it on the mantelpiece of her home. She also gave a copy to Theresa Sassoon, Siegfried’s mother, who set it on her own mantelpiece next to a photo of Frederick Beer, his face adorned with a moustache and small whiskers, wearing a tweed tailcoat and a brown billycock, holding a stick, resting his foot on a rustic seat.

But while she was proud of her exotic roots, Rachel felt thoroughly English and wanted to be perceived as such. Having one’s portrait painted by a leading artist was one way of acquiring an English provenance, and to this end, the Beers commissioned Henry Jones Thaddeus to paint separate portraits of each of them. Jones Thaddeus was well known in fashionable London circles and he charged exorbitant rates for his work. For her sittings, the thirty-one-year-old Rachel wore a dress of deep golden silk with a low décolletage—le dernier cri—and the newly fashionable high shoulder line. Her dark curly hair was worn “drawn simply back, revealing the ears, into a French pleat,” and she chose to adorn herself with none of her exquisite jewels; instead, her only accessory was an ostrich feather fan on a tortoiseshell stick. The background chosen for the portrait was the verdant English countryside; it depicted this Bombay-born London dweller as if she were a member of the landed gentry.

Normally, portraitists tend to idealize their sitter’s appearance, but the painting of Rachel reveals a lack of symmetry in her face. “It certainly shows a concern for veracity and ‘likeness,’” said Dr. Brendan Rooney, Jones Thaddeus’s biographer. Far more subjective, Siegfried Sassoon thought that the portrait reflected his aunt’s “dark loveliness and the faintly smiling sweetness of her un-departed youth.” After Rachel’s death, her devoted nurse and personal assistant, Miss Ross, bought the painting. She later sold it to Siegfried, who hung it over the large fireplace in his library.

Bedford-Lemere was allowed unlimited access to the Beers’ home. The photographer even placed his tripod in Rachel’s bedroom and study, capturing its silk-covered walls and ceiling. The French secretaire, where Rachel did most of her writing, was positioned close to her dressing table, and both faced the huge Jones Thaddeus portrait of Frederick, which loomed over the fireplace. Over the course of years, the painting has disappeared, and its image lives on only in Bedford-Lemere’s photograph.

For two people who were individually characterized as being shy and introverted, the Beers spent a great deal of time out in society and hosting events in their home. Much of Frederick’s time was spent enjoying his favourite pastimes of racquets, golf and billiards, or in the pursuit of favourable connections. Often, these activities crossed paths. To keep in good physical condition, he enrolled at the Prince’s Club, where he could not only enjoy the use of several indoor croquet courts and a tennis court, but also move among other illustrious members of the club, such as the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge. For political discourse, Frederick joined the Devonshire Club, which was Liberal, and for conversation concerning travel and foreign countries, he went to the St. James’s Club, much favoured by diplomats. As a philanthropist, he supported the Newspaper Press Fund, and he was also a member of the Royal Institution, which was devoted to scientific education and research.

For her part, Rachel was active in various nurses’ welfare charities and was a member of the Association of Women Pioneer Lecturers, which sent female speakers to address audiences throughout England, “instructing the people to become useful citizens, and also give the congenial employment to hundreds of highly educated women.”

Society columnists, meanwhile, recorded Rachel’s visits to concert halls and the theatre. The Sporting Times made note of “the oriental aristocratic features and magnificent diamond tiara of Mrs. Beer,” and The John Bull complimented her “pale, blue satin, trimmed with handsome embroidered gauze, and pink roses at the rouche at the hem.” Owning newspapers was the couple’s entrée to London’s most prestigious events, where they met “royalties, the aristocracy of birth and genius, ‘the salt of the earth.’” They were also invited to the most notable weddings, including that of Henry Morton Stanley in Westminster Abbey. The Beers’ gift to the African explorer was a silver reading glass.

The couple attained true social eminence, however, when they hosted the Prince of Wales, his sister Princess Helena, and her husband and two daughters at a special theatrical event held at their home. For three successive evenings at the end of February 1891, a procession of princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, arrived at the Beers’ residence for the sold-out, “long anticipated Tableaux Vivant.” This upper-class amusement consisted of groups of costumed actors posing in various frozen compositions. The Beers went to great expense and trouble to perfect the show, and the famous Mrs. Bancroft, who had retired from acting six years earlier, agreed to direct and perform in the event. The show consisted of fourteen specially selected scenes with elaborate lighting effects, breathtaking costumes and props.

The cast of thirty actors and models, as well as musicians, singers and an army of stagehands, produced a spectacle worthy of commercial theatre. The classical scenes of beauty, romance and death, situated in royal courts, were inspired by well-known works of art. The merry French monarch Charles II sat on his throne surrounded by his many mistresses; one court beauty in pink satin and silver lace was sitting at his feet, “and another had a black and tan spaniel on her lap.” Of the five Dene sisters, all of whom were famous models, three took part in the show. Dorothy, the model for Leighton’s Flaming June and the inspiration for Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle, was Queen Katharine of Aragon, in scenes from her divorce, trial and death. For what seemed like an eternity, the performers had to keep motionless with upturned eyes, “until the curtain went down after several encores,” recalled Lady Glover, who played the role of Marie Antoinette and whose little daughter was an angel in a flowing white gown with wings.

None of Rachel’s Jewish relatives attended the performances, and if they had, they would certainly have recoiled upon hearing Gounod’sAve Maria accompanying the next tableau: a group of nuns in the cloisters who “were all chosen for their good looks.” When the lights were turned back on, “there was not a dissentient voice as to the brilliant success of the whole performance.” The proceeds were given to the Royal School of Art Needlework and the Home of Rest for Nurses.

While Rachel was hosting, organising and attending these society functions at night, by day she was using her opinion pieces in the Sunday Times to promote many of the same causes the evening events supported—the arts, women’s advancement and the plight of the indigent. In a sense, she led two public lives—one as an active member of high society and another as a socially conscious journalist. She managed to seamlessly merge these two selves; but sadly, she was unable to truly have it all.

CHAPTER TWO

Flight from Baghdad

Less than a minyan—the quorum of ten male Jewish adults required for public prayer—remains today in Iraq, the last remnants of one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Jews first arrived there when Nebuchadnezzar, the King of Babylon, exiled them from the Holy Land into the area more than 2,500 years ago. Prior to the founding of Israel in 1948, and just before reprisals against Jews in the Arab world accelerated, there were 130,000 Jews in all of Iraq. An estimated 120,000 of them fled the country between 1950 and 1951.

The first documented member of Rachel’s family is Sheikh Sason ben Saleh, her great-grandfather, who was born in Baghdad in 1750. None of the sheikh’s early ancestors are known to have held any official posts, though this search is complicated by the fact that neither Baghdadi Jews nor the Arabs they lived among had surnames; instead, a person was identified as the son or daughter of their father. It was only when the family settled into British-ruled India in the 1830s that they converted the first name of their progenitor, Sason, meaning “joy” in Hebrew, into a surname, modifying it to the presumably more genteel-sounding Sassoon.

For four decades, Sheikh Sason ben Saleh held a double post: Sarraf Bashi, the chief treasurer of the Baghdadi pasha, and Nasi, president of the local Jewish community. His main task was to collect taxes that were levied on the community, and he had the power to punish his subjects with fines or lashings, even when the law forbade such treatment.

Traditionally, the role of Nasi in Baghdad was filled by a descendant of King David, and in ancient times, when the Nasi rode about town dressed in a gown woven with threads of gold and silver, passersby would stop and proclaim, “Give honour, ye nations, to the seed of David.” This explains the legend that the House of Sassoon sprang from the biblical king; however, that lineage cannot be verified. Nor can the claim that the Sassoons’ ancestors were forced to flee the Holy Land in 586 B.C., following the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonians. The story goes that fifty years later, when Jews were encouraged to return to the Holy Land, the Sassoons chose to stay in Mesopotamia.

A different historical trail also has the Sassoons leaving the Holy Land by force, but at a different time: according to this version, they were among the exiles when the rebuilt Temple was destroyed, again, in A.D. 70. Allegedly, they were taken into captivity in Rome, from where they migrated to Spain centuries later. In 1492, refusing to convert to Christianity, they were expelled with the rest of the Jews by the Catholic monarchs and were among those who continued east-ward, landing in Turkey and eventually settling in Baghdad. In later years, when the family became anglicised, they designed a coat of arms, choosing a golden lion holding a scepter over a majestic blue background—the symbol of the Kingdom of David.

During Rachel’s great-grandfather’s reign as Nasi, in the late eighteenth century, ten thousand of the eighty thousand inhabitants of Baghdad were Jews. While they resided in their own quarter in the northwestern part of the city, it was not a ghetto, and they suffered no humiliating restrictions. At the time, the Jewish quarter of Baghdad existed as a community heavily influenced by its Arab neighbours: the Jews there spoke Arabic, used it in their religious services, and wrote Arab words and phrases in Hebrew characters. Their manner of dress was similar to that of their compatriots, and though they observed the Jewish dietary laws their cuisine was, nevertheless, Arabic. They were liberal minded, candid and very inquiring. “The fine race of Jews at this place strikes every traveller, but their chief object is gain, and to be fruitful, and to multiply,” reported the Christian missionary Reverend Joseph Wolf, who visited the city in 1824.

If their chief desire was indeed to be fruitful and multiply, Baghdad was ideally suited to their needs. As the gateway to the vast market of India through Basra, a thriving commercial enterprise existed within the city. Prominent among the merchant princes was Sheikh Sason ben Saleh, who made his fortune in the bazaars through commerce, money changing and banking. The sheikh was able to improve his prospects by marrying well—at the age of twenty-six, he married Amam, the daughter of a reputable local family and the niece of a Nasi. Whether it was simply by dint of his own hard work or the result of his newly acquired family connections—most likely some combination of the two—the sheikh assumed the positions of Sarraf Bashi and Nasi just five years after his wedding. This began an impressive run of good political fortune for the Sassoons. Years later, they would hold titles, gain admittance to Queen Victoria’s court, and belong to the intimate circle of the Prince of Wales.

SHEIKH SASON SURVIVED the rise and fall of eight pashas. The fact that he served under so many governors is an impressive feat, but it is also indicative of the turbulent political arena in which he operated. The court was wrought with intrigue and conspiracy, and mortal danger was never more than a few missteps away. But with the promise of great power and immense profits, these risks were well worth the taking. The sheikh was also eager to use his position to benefit his community—he saw himself as benefactor, patron and protector of his people against the greedy pashas and the hostility of the Muslims.

The biblical command to procreate—pruurvu—was of paramount importance in the Jewish faith, since producing male offspring would safeguard the future of the dynasty. As a result, men were allowed to take a second wife if their first one did not bear sons after nine years of marriage. The sheikh and Amam were not able to produce a child within that time frame, but he chose not to take a second wife. He was rewarded for his loyalty when, fourteen years into their marriage, he and Amam were blessed with their first child, a boy. Six more sons and one daughter would follow in swift succession.

Sheikh Sason and his family lived exceedingly well. In the early nineteenth century, Baghdad had “a very rude appearance,” and only the houses of the rich were finely painted. By comparison, the sheikh’s mansion was an imposing brick-clad building; the one remaining photo could not capture its enormity. Even so, what it does show—carved wooden pillars and railings, capacious balconies, and arched corridors that were nearly ten meters high—rivals the lavishness of Rachel and Frederick Beer’s mansion in Mayfair. The ground floor was used for the sheikh’s considerable business operations, while the entire clan—parents, offspring and their families—lived on the floors above. One of its main luxuries, coveted by others, was its natural cooling system—brick caves were built into the house with pits containing water.

It was into this family that Rachel’s grandfather, the sheikh’s second son, David, was born in 1792. Family lore holds that he was the brightest of all the children. From a young age, the sheikh guided David through the labyrinthine world of commerce and banking, and he showed a flair for finance. Though he had only religious schooling, David was fluent in four languages: he prayed in Hebrew, conversed with his neighbours in Arabic, spoke Turkish with the government officials, and conducted international business in Persian. His linguistic abilities saw him in good stead, since the family firm now imported and exported silk, cotton, sheepskins, horses, dates, pearls and metalware from around the region.

A suitable bride was found for David in Hannah, the daughter of Abdullah Joseph Faraj, a leading merchant and a prominent public figure from Basra. At the time of their marriage, David was only fifteen and Hannah thirteen. The young couple had difficulty conceiving, and their first daughter wasn’t born until after eight years of marriage. They must have felt relieved when two years later a son (and heir) followed, then two other children—a boy and a girl. But all four young Sassoons were left motherless when Hannah died at the young age of thirty-two.

Traditionally, a widower was introduced to a new partner soon after the year of mourning was complete, often from within the deceased wife’s family to avoid friction and to maintain continuity. At a time when boys became husbands at the age of fifteen and girls were married off between the ages of eight and twelve, preliminary talks of betrothal had already been conducted with other families for the sixteen-year-old Farha.

But Farha was the niece of David’s deceased wife—a fact that sealed her fate. Her new husband was thirty-six, and she was merely four years older than his eldest daughter.

As the sheikh advanced in years, David served as his right hand not only in the family business but also in his public duties. The posts of treasurer and president of the Jewish community were regarded as semi-hereditary, and David had good reason to believe he would be taking over from his father. In 1817, though, a new pasha was appointed and the sheikh was overthrown from office—a rival merchant, Ezra Gabbai, bribed his way in and took over as Nasi.

Daud Pasha was a former slave, who was said to have learned his tyrannical and brutal methods of ruling from his past masters. His avarice was not sated by the heavy taxes he imposed on the Jewish community, so he invented malicious new methods of extortion in order to keep his coffers filled to his satisfaction. For those unfortunates who could not pay their taxes or meet the other monetary demands made of them, there was but one fate: they were whipped to their bones.

Indicative of his duplicity and cunning, Daud Pasha connived to establish his own independent kingdom and sever his connections with the Turkish Empire. To secure his position, he set about crushing all possible resistance, and, suspecting that David Sassoon was informing on him to the Sultan in Constantinople and agitating for his dismissal, Daud Pasha locked the younger Sassoon behind bars. Justifiably paranoid, the pasha feared that even those that he had promoted might turn against him, and as a result, he had Gabbai arrested as well. As much as the Sassoons might have rejoiced at their archenemy’s ill fortune, David was horrified when Gabbai was strangled in his cell under the pasha’s order. This act of senseless savagery did not bode well for his own future.

Daud Pasha had already refused an imperial demand to release David Sassoon; nevertheless, he agreed to meet with the man’s father. It’s unclear how the sheikh succeeded in having his son released—and at what price—but the pasha’s condition was that the prisoner would be banished from his native city and sent to Basra, three hundred miles away. This southernmost port town in the Persian Gulf was still under his jurisdiction, so though David would be out of sight, he would not be out of reach.

Father and son knew they could not trust the fickle-minded pasha and that time was of the essence. They hurried to the anchorage on the bank of the Tigris River, and were frustrated to learn that the next sailboat to Basra would not be leaving until the following week. With no real alternative, they paid an exorbitant price to the captain of a cargo vessel, who agreed to set sail immediately, no questions asked. To ensure his safety, David had his servants rush home to retrieve the clothes and provisions he would need for his escape. He had no time to bid farewell to his wife and children.

David’s father warned him not to tarry in Basra, but to leave at once for Bushire, in Persia, in defiance of Daud Pasha’s decree. All of their precautions and their sense of imminent danger proved prescient. Even as David’s boat was sailing down the Tigris, Daud Pasha renounced his previous decree and ordered the prisoner’s return. An urgent messenger was sent by boat to arrest him, and a furious chase ensued. Upon arriving in Basra, David quickly chartered another vessel and sailed that very evening to Bushire, as far from the pasha’s grasp as he could get under the circumstances.

The pasha’s messenger found the captain of David’s escape boat, who confirmed that his Jewish passenger was already gone. Returning empty-handed to Baghdad, the messenger paid for his failure with his life.

BUSHIRE WAS MORE than just a potential safe haven. The long tendrils of the East India Company had reached this fishing village and were in the process of transforming it into its centre of operations. Despite the company’s influence, however, it was still “a miserable place,” according to the traveller David d’Beth Hillel, who happened to pass through there at the time of David Sassoon’s escape. Two hundred Jews resided in Bushire, many of them goldsmiths, and d’Beth Hillel received the impression that most of them were poor and ill-treated by their neighbours.

Obviously this was a rather small-scale playing field for someone with the skills David Sassoon possessed, but it was an ideal place to begin again. To his advantage, David had business experience and expertise, fluency in Persian, and a network of connections with local traders, many of whom had made use of the Sassoon countinghouse and credit facilities in Baghdad. Not knowing when or if his family would join him, or whether he would ever be able to return home, he started a modest export-import business.

It was his good fortune that just a year later, in 1829, his wife and four children were able to escape Baghdad; Daud Pasha was too preoccupied with his own troubles to harass them. Though he was eighty years old at the time, and the journey would be rough for him, Sheikh Sason chose to join them, leaving the rest of his children and grandchildren behind. Still hoping for a change of government, they had decided to remain in Baghdad.

In later years, succeeding generations of the Sassoons hushed up the story of the sheikh’s removal from his post as the pasha’s treasurer and rewrote their history to say that he had retired due to old age. No words were spoken about his son David’s time in prison, and the flight from Baghdad was described as a business venture—David had taken the journey on his own initiative, primarily out of a desire to put an end to the unbearable extortion that marked life in Baghdad under Daud Pasha. Understandably, the mighty Sassoons were embarrassed to be associated with a dismissal and, worse yet, an imprisonment and an unlawful escape from the authorities, even though David had committed no crime. Only in 1942—by which time the Sassoon empire had shrunk considerably—did the family reveal the truth about David’s imprisonment and his flight to Bushire; however, they still remained stubbornly silent about the ousting of the patriarch.

A few months after arriving in Bushire, Sheikh Sason passed away and was buried in exile. By that time, swords were being brandished in Baghdad. After Daud Pasha declared independence from the Ottoman Empire, a special envoy was sent from Istanbul, demanding his surrender. He replied by killing the messenger—evidently, the least enviable of jobs in that time and place—and the Ottoman army besieged the city. Even nature showed no mercy for the miserable Baghdadis: the Tigris flooded the streets, demolishing large parts of the city, and bubonic plague ran rampant among the flood victims. Within a month thirty thousand people had lost their lives, and the rest took flight. Daud Pasha lost most of his soldiers and, in the summer of 1831, the Sultan’s army marched in and took Baghdad, bringing an end to the upheaval.

David Sassoon followed the news from afar. Though the end of the conflict offered great relief to Baghdad’s Jews and he could now safely return to his hometown, which desperately needed people of his calibre to revive and restore it, he had already decided what his future held.

After spending so many years at the mercy of Muslim governors, David and many others viewed the British presence in the East as a kind of salvation, and were attracted by the limitless commercial prospects it created in international trade. David had traded with British-controlled Bombay while he was still in Baghdad, so he had some experience in dealing with British and Indian merchants. Now he was ready to take the next step and to make the move to Bombay.

David made a preliminary trip and was overwhelmed by the thriving city. He met with some associates and officials, and paid a visit to the small community of former Baghdadis who had settled there. Only a few of the thirty Jewish families had achieved the Indian dream and were flourishing personally and commercially, but David was not daunted. He made some business arrangements and found a house that could serve him as both an office and a home for his family.

For the second time in four years, David Sassoon took hold of his destiny. He was forty years old—an advanced age at a time when the average life expectancy did not extend much past thirty-five—but he refused to turn back or to settle for his and his family’s present circumstances. The fact that his young wife was expecting their first child together only hastened his decision to replant his family and his business interests in new soil.

Starting out in Bombay, David’s main resource was not inherited wealth but his business ingenuity. The high cost of the bribes that had eased his escape from Daud Pasha, and the division of the Sassoon property and funds among all of his siblings when he and his father left Baghdad, meant that David had only a modest amount of money to bring into this new venture. The timing of his move was fortunate, since a few months after his arrival the East India Company was weakened by a series of British government acts that deprived it of its trading monopoly, opening the gates for private entrepreneurs like David. Still, he was extremely cautious—he began by entering tried and tested markets, learning from his competitors’ failures. He also made good use of the personal contacts he had in Persia and in Baghdad, where his brother-in-law, who had been in jail with him, was now president of the Jewish community.

Starting with a small countinghouse and warehouse, David was soon buying up wharfages. Eventually he began importing and exporting all manner of merchandise, including silver and gold, silks, gums and spices, cotton, wool and wheat. “Whatever moves over sea or land, feels the hand or bears the mark of Sassoon and Co.,” noted one of their contemporaries. He also acted as a banker to small traders in need of funds, while buying and selling cargo for others on commission.

On July 19, 1832, shortly after the Sassoons settled in 9 Tamarind Lane, Farha gave birth to her first child, who was named Sassoon David (S.D.). Over the next twenty-three years, she’d mother nine more children—five boys and four girls. Altogether, there would be fourteen children in the Sassoon clan from David’s two wives, and these children would be the foundation of the family business. Like the Rothschilds, their counterparts in Germany, the Sassoons’ success was attributable to the loyalty, dedication and discipline enforced in their close-knit, patriarchal family. “He trained them to be chorus masters with himself as conductor,” wrote Stanley Jackson, the biographer of the family. In contrast to traditional immigration patterns, David’s brothers stayed on in Baghdad and did not follow him to his new business empire. They remained small traders, and he sent them regular handouts.

Wishing to give his children the opportunity to benefit from their family heritage, David sent his eldest son, Abdullah—later, Sir Albert Sassoon—to Baghdad to receive an education and to gain business experience. His other sons would follow. In general, the Sassoons continued to rely greatly on their heritage. They used the unique Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic dialect among themselves and in their business correspondence, maintaining it as a secret code against commercial espionage. In addition to their religious schooling in Baghdad, the children were taught mathematics, English and French by private tutors. One by one, as the boys reached the age of bar mitzvah, they were harnessed to the plow that was David Sassoon & Co.

As an indication of their international enterprises and cross-cultural horizons, the company’s letterhead stationery was printed in three languages—English, Hebrew and Arabic. The Hebrew text is slightly different from the others—it reads, “David Sassoon and Friends,” with an additional religious saying—“God keep them and save them”—beneath it. In fact, there were no friends, no partners or associates involved in the managing of the business at this point—just David Sassoon and his sons.

When the house in Bombay became too small for the growing family and expanding operations, the offices and the dwelling shifted to the much larger premises at 4 Forbes Street, near the port.

CHAPTER THREE

Opium and Further Expansion

Given the burgeoning international markets and the variety of goods that were being moved back and forth across the waters, David Sassoon could not be content in dealing with just the Turkish and Persian empires for long. A vast market of 400 million people was waiting just around the corner.

But the problem with trading with China was that while it offered foreign merchants tea and silk, the traditional mode of life there and the emperor’s edicts made it impossible to sell the Chinese Western goods. Since barter was not an option, any imports from China had to be paid for in hard currency, like silver. What’s more, the Chinese were extremely suspicious of outsiders—they felt superior to the foreigners, whom they described as foul-smelling barbarians, and nicknamed them “big noses” or “hairy ones.” Foreign merchants could not operate directly inside of China, and they were at the mercy of the Chinese guilds that had a monopoly over foreign trade. The guild authorities set the volume of trade, dictated the prices and charged customs duties. The foreign merchants swallowed their pride, but it was much harder to swallow the negative trade balance.

Only one of the products that were processed in India could tip the scales. Opium. It was the sole painkilling and tranquilizing drug available at the time, and it was also used for reducing fever and for treating diarrhea, rheumatism and bronchitis. Though the Chinese emperor restricted the import of opium for any but therapeutic use, eager merchants and corrupt Chinese officials schemed to keep the flow of drugs for illicit use moving. Gradually the recreational use of opium spread across the country, and millions became addicted. In 1820, five thousand chests of opium were exported to China yearly; ten years later, that figure had risen to twenty thousand. Great care was taken to ensure that the drug was manufactured specifically to suit the tastes of the Chinese.

There is an eternal fascination with the idea of striking it rich instantly, and history is filled with stories of lucky souls who possessed “the Midas touch.” One tale attributes David Sassoon’s meteoric rise to riches to his habit of picking up his own mail at the post office. Waiting in line, the story goes, he noted that his chief competitor was receiving large amounts of mail from China. He made some hurried inquiries and learned about the new prospects of the opium trade. And the rest is history.

As is true of most legends, tales and myths, it is difficult to accept these details as literal truths. In a tightly hierarchal family business, it is highly unlikely that the patriarch would trouble himself to pick up the company’s mail. More credit should be given to David’s familiarity with current affairs and his economic status than to clandestine observations made at the post office. Most of the opium trade at the time was in the hands of Jardine, Matheson and Co., and their records show that David Sassoon was already shipping the drug to Canton in 1834, two years after his arrival in Bombay. It would be later, though, that it would make him his fortune.

The Chinese objected to the import of opium on more than just moral grounds. They demanded silver bullion in exchange for their tea and silk, but foreign merchants began to pay them in opium instead—a practice that destabilized the Chinese economy. The Chinese appealed to Queen Victoria to stop flooding China with the “source of evil.” But opium was legal in Britain and, in the words of Hamilton Lindsay, a former officer of the East India Company in China, “the injury to health and morals inflicted by the use of gin in England, surpasses those of opium in China.” With this prevailing mind-set, it’s no wonder that the demands of the Chinese fell on deaf ears. In return, the Chinese set twenty thousand chests of opium on fire and threatened to execute any foreign merchant caught in the trade.

Britain could not acquiesce to the Chinese threats, because they needed the immense profits they were earning from the sale of opium. The money covered much of the expense of the British governance of India, in addition to other imperial projects and colonial wars in the area, and it was also being invested in the production of cotton in India.

In June 1840, waving the flag of Free Trade, Britain launched a military operation known as the First Opium War. It ended two years later with the Treaty of Nanking, which forced the Chinese to open five ports for foreign trade and to pay $21 million in reparations for the opium they had destroyed. The Chinese refused to lift their ban on the sale and use of the narcotic; however, since the new ports were declared exterritorial, foreign merchants enjoyed immunity and could not be prosecuted for handling opium.

It was at this point that David Sassoon adroitly decided to scale up his operations. In 1843, David Sassoon & Co. opened its first international branches for all commerce, including opium, in Canton and Hong Kong. David entrusted them to his second son, Elias, who added a third base, in Shanghai, in 1845. With the opening of these new branches of the family business, each male in the House of Sassoon would be sent to serve time in China, like mandatory military service. Much of the success of these branches can be attributed to the Sassoons’ group mentality—loyalty, trust and the ability to think alike.

The Sassoons became so well established in the opium trade that they began to operate their own small fleet of sailing vessels for the purpose of shipping the drug, one of which was the well-armed opium clipper Henry Ellis, named after the famed Irish explorer. In good weather, the journey from Calcutta to Canton and back took about three months; in bad weather, much longer. But the clippers were not just subject to the strong headwinds of the winter monsoons; they also had to weather the fierce Chinese pirates who swarmed the waters.

On April 19, 1850, David Sassoon and a few fellow merchants published a letter in The Times, thanking Her Majesty’s navy “for the zeal, perseverance and courage” that the patrolling war ships had exhibited as they “so effectually destroyed the enemy’s forces.” One of these attacks was waged against sixty-four boats with three thousand pirates who were armed with over one thousand guns.

Great Britain’s opium revenues, which amounted to several million pounds sterling a year, were reported in the House of Commons, and updates on the state of the opium trade were a standard item in the financial pages of its newspapers. In August 1851, there was concern over the soaring prices—from $210 per chest of Malawa opium, to $725. “The rise was quite unlooked for,” remarked The Times, adding that the market was eagerly awaiting the arrival of one of the Sassoon family’s ships, carrying 1,075 chests, which might suppress “the upward tendency of prices.”

Nearly four million Chinese became habitual opium users following the Opium War, especially in the major cities. For example, 55 percent of all men in Shanghai were considered addicts. The Chinese newspaper Nanhui xian zhi (Nanhui County Gazetteer) reported in 1878 that “the amount of money spent on it exceeds that spent on rice.” The flow of yang yan, “foreign smoke,” gradually spread inland, and reached even the remotest villages. The “flower-smoke shops” had become notorious as dens “for secret adultery,” complained the newspaper.

Given the hefty profits they were raking in, it was easy for officials in London to brush aside the moral issue. “A matter of race … as the Aryan races preferred alcoholic drinks, so the Turanian consumed opium,” said George Campbell, Secretary of State for India, in a parliamentary debate. The Thistle and the Jade, a book celebrating 150 years of the Jardine, Matheson & Co. trading company, provides a mealymouthed Western raison d’être for the opium trade:

In India, it was the ordinary poor man’s comfort and restorative. Rajput camel drivers fortified themselves with it, as Calcutta rickshaw wallahs would do some day. If then the Chinese took it too, why, what was the harm in that? Or if harm there was, it was perhaps because instead of drinking it in a normal decent, medicinal manner, they chose to smoke it.

In later years, the Sassoons would—understandably—try to downplay their role in the opium trade, which had in actuality provided a considerable increase in their fortune. Those who did refer to it were quick to point out that “exporting it would have been considered no different from exporting tea or coffee today.”

The House of Sassoon had made a decided turn in the economic and geographic direction of their business. It was as if the magnetic lure of hard currency was urging them forward, onward to their next destination.

CHAPTER FOUR

Their Dual Identity

David Sassoon was a great benefactor of his adoptive city, and he donated vast sums of money to public welfare in Bombay. Even so, he never considered himself an Indian Jew. Though he would never set foot in Baghdad again, he would always identify himself with his home country—and he made sure that the rest of his family held the same respect as he did for Baghdadi traditions.

The Sassoons were part of a very insular community. Of the quarter of a million citizens of Bombay in the 1830s, only 2,250 were Jews, and just 350 of them were from Baghdad. They did not mingle with other Jews; they established separate communities and observed their home traditions in their own synagogues. The Baghdadi rabbis continued to govern their spiritual lives, though it took two months for a question on religious matters to travel to Baghdad and back.

As Orthodox Jews, the Sassoons began each day with early prayers at the synagogue, and twice during the day all activity in their offices would be paused for communal prayers. Every Friday afternoon, business operations were shut down until Monday, and no work was done on Jewish holidays.

The patriarch still looked very much the part of a noble Baghdadi Jew, and he ensured that his sons also adhered to the Jewish-Baghdadi code of dress. His long, groomed, snowy beard and his oriental garments added much to his dignified aura, and Sir Richard Temple, the Governor of Bombay, admired his “rich turban and flowing robes [that] made up a picture worth beholding.” The Sassoons’ way of dressing presented another barrier to their assimilation into life in Bombay, but it suited their small Orthodox community, which disapproved of Western dress. David d’Beth Hillel discovered this when he strolled through Bombay with a beard and English dress—he suffered much harassment from other Jews on suspicion that he was “proselytised to Christianity.”

By adhering to their Baghdadi style of life, the Sassoons were a minority within a minority; they were outsiders among the Parsee, Hindu, Muslims and Mongols. Isolated as they were, they befriended India’s British colonial rulers out of necessity, and gradually they became “imagined Britons,” in the words of the author Dr. Chiara Betta. In addition to Jewish holidays, the Sassoons began to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday and the year of her accession to the throne, and they proudly flew the Union Jack over all of their institutions.

David and his sons trod a very fine line between familial and racial insularity and their position as imagined Britons—with both efforts being rewarded. Combined with their Eastern background, the Sassoons’ familiarity with British culture and customs helped to ensure their commercial success. Their comprehension of the British code of commerce and their ability to blend in with government officials gave them an edge over local competitors. Equally, while their European rivals found it difficult to accustom themselves to the oriental way of doing business, the Sassoons were in their element, making deals solely with a handshake.

David’s cooperation with the British would eventually pay off in another way. For Eastern businessmen and merchants like the Sassoons, becoming a British subject was a passport to privilege. In September 1853, twenty years after settling in Bombay, David was issued a passport of British citizenship as a token of appreciation for promoting British interests in the region. His signature on the document—in Hebrew—misled researchers, who concluded that he was illiterate in English; an existing photo of David Sassoon, signed by him in both languages, suggests otherwise. Signing in Hebrew may have been his way of declaring that his newly acquired British citizenship had no bearing on his inner identity as a proud Orthodox Jew.

The patriarch was also appointed Justice of the Peace by the Government of India, “so that the settlements of petty differences among the Jews rest with him.” The London Illustrated News commended the fact “that a beggar of his tribe is rarely or ever seen asking alms in the streets, as they know they have only to seek relief at the hands of Mr. Sassoon to find it.” But the Sassoons extended their philanthropy to all castes and creeds, starting a European-style general hospital in Poona that remains in operation to this day, 150 years after it opened. In Bombay they set up a reformatory and industrial training centre for juvenile offenders, a mechanic’s institute (today the David Sassoon Library) and an asylum for the relief of destitute invalids.

They also established a Jewish school that not only taught English, Hindustani, Arabic and Hebrew, but also geography, arithmetic, bookkeeping and European business management. Tuition was free. Opting for a modern curriculum did not imperil the traditional lifestyle; students at the Sassoon school were also taught ritual slaughtering so they could prepare kosher meat when they were sent to places without established Jewish communities. In keeping with the Sassoons’ proud support of Bombay’s British community, the pupils were taught the British National Anthem in Hebrew and English. The bilingual primer Reshit Hallimud (“First Reader”), which David Sassoon commissioned from the German-Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider, promised “to inspire the pupils in the pious respect for the early sources and the oldest customs of our faith and literature, with a regard for the land of our fathers, with patriotism and loyalty for the country and government to which they now belong.” Almost all of the Sassoons’ employees were Baghdadi Jews, the top graduates of this school. Stationed at the outposts of the Sassoon business empire, they could intuitively sense and execute the Bombay headquarters’ strategy without waiting for the post, which took weeks to arrive.

The Sassoons could well afford their civic largesse. The patriarch’s fabulous mansion, Sans Souci (“Carefree”), built in the mid-1850s in the elite Malabar Hill section of Bombay, could rival “some of the most noted ducal palaces in Italy.” It was the scene of many legendary banquets, where its lavish gardens could accommodate as many as 1,400 guests. Today, the building houses the Masina Hospital, which is known for its Rehabilitation Centre for drug addicts. One of Sans Souci’s exquisite crystal chandeliers and three of its cherubs can be seen today in the Bombay Opera House.

In order to keep up with the times and advance his family’s interests, David took a bold step. He sent his fifteen-year-old son Abraham to study in London, rather than in Baghdad, where his other sons had been educated. Abraham was well prepared for the journey, as can be seen from the letter he sent his family upon his arrival in London, in late June 1855. In perfect English, he wrote:

It is strange to say that I never felt so sick in my 50 days voyage while crossing oceans and seas, as I did while crossing the Straits of Dover. When I arrived at London, I took a cab for Guild Hall Coffee House and the next morning went to the place of my destination. I thus ended my trip by the Overland Route from Celestial Empire to Old England.

In the following months, Abraham’s subsequent letters were copied and circulated within the family. They all savored his tales of London.

In planning his son’s future, David made another carefully calculated decision. Though there was a large Sephardic Portuguese community in London, and Abraham could have studied with a Sephardic rabbi, David elected to have his son study under an Ashkenazi Jew from Germany. The instructor was Dr. Herman Adler, the son of the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain. Born in Hanover, Herman Adler received rabbinical education in Frankfurt and studied at the University of Leipzig and University College London.

Abraham began to study at the newly established Jewish public day school, “for the sons of our middle ranks,” in Finsbury Square. A year and a half later, he was prepared for entry into University College—an astonishing leap forward. “The classes which he is to attend are the English and Latin language and literature, mathematics, Natural Philosophy and probably Arabic,” reported Dr. Adler back to Bombay. “I am also pleased to state that his moral and religious conduct is very satisfactory.” This advancement was so exceptional that years later Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of Bombay, publicly commended David Sassoon and encouraged other wealthy fathers to follow his example and send their sons “to learn not only what English gentlemen know, but what they feel and think.”

But though Abraham was the first Sassoon to receive an English education and to spend time in London, he would not be the one to break ground for a London branch of the family business. That job would be left to Rachel Beer’s father.

ALL OF DAVID Sassoon’s sons were accustomed to following orders, and S.D. was no exception. Like most of his brothers, he was sent to Baghdad when he was a teenager to receive a Jewish education. All of the way from Bombay, his father supervised the matchmaking between S.D. and a suitable Baghdadi bride—Farha Reuben was a sixteen-year-old descended from the Shindookh family, who were highly regarded leaders of the community.

After the young couple wed in 1850, and before they had time to settle in Bombay and start a family, they were separated. S.D. was instructed to report to Shanghai for a tour of duty at the branch of the family business located there. For more than three years, his wife lived in Bombay with her in-laws, while S.D. returned home only sporadically for brief visits.

By the time Abraham sailed off to London to get his education, S.D. was back from China. Only then, after four years of marriage, could he and Farha finally start a family. They had their first son, Joseph, on December 31, 1855.

More of a scholar than a businessman, in 1855 S.D. added to his daily workload by establishing the biweekly paper Doresh TovLe’amo (“Bears good tidings for his people”), which he published and edited. Written in the Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic, the four-page paper, titled the Hebrew Gazette