My grandfather Frank Goldsmith looked English, felt English and spent the
first half of his adult life working hard at being English. He wanted it
more than anything in the world. Remarkably quickly he found acceptance,
success and status, and then it all went wrong. His is a tale of unrequited
patriotism, identity and belonging, which raises issues as relevant today as
100 years ago.
My father disliked nostalgia and tended not to keep any remnants from the past
that were likely to inspire it: no photos, diaries, scrapbooks. In his
bathroom at our home in Richmond there was just one yellowed photo of his
father, Frank – a dapper, serious-looking man in uniform leading a squadron
on horseback through the streets of his home town, Bury St Edmunds, three
days before the outbreak of the first world war.
Until recently I knew very little about my grandfather. He was born a century
before me, in 1878. He was an English Jew. An English gent.
A decent man. A major who fought for Britain from 1914 to 1918, a husband to a
much younger French woman, Marcelle, also long since deceased. And, late in
life, a father, “Popski”, to two sons, my father, Jimmy, and my Uncle Teddy.
That’s about it.
I came across Frank’s old books in my Uncle Teddy’s library. Mostly they were
the books you might find on the shelves of any educated Englishman: Dickens,
the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Pepys’s diary, empire stuff as well as some
battered Jewish prayer books and a few French classics. Inside a number of
his books, the name Goldschmidt had been neatly rubbed out and amended to
Goldsmith. Underneath the name, Frankfurt had also been erased and was only
just decipherable. Frank wasn’t born an Englishman. He was from Germany,
where he lived until the age of 16. I knew that 500 years of Jewish
ancestors could be traced back to the Frankfurt ghetto, but I had not
realised my father was just one generation from Germany. Frank’s German
birth and upbringing had been noted in two biographies written about my
father, but I had not read them (owing to the same inherited aversion) and I
don’t remember my grandfather’s birth ever being discussed. When Frank was
alive, apparently, it never was.
Frank was the opposite of his youngest son, my father. Every detail of his
life from 1895 onwards is meticulously recorded in his scrapbooks: royal
invitations, letters, menus from dinners he attended, inconsequential bills
and receipts and even such irrelevances as an inventory of the furniture
that he took over from the previous occupant of his room at Oxford
University. Everything that testified to his Englishness was carefully
pasted in, except for his naturalisation papers, which were not. There were
other omissions too – nothing at all from the first 16 years of his life in
Germany.
Then Frank’s assiduous attention to his scrapbook ended abruptly and
inexplicably in 1914 when he was 36. It was only resumed 20 years later by
his wife, my grandmother.
I decided to speak to Uncle Teddy, custodian of ancestral anecdotes, to try to
discover as much as possible about my grandfather. Apart from being
intrigued, I had the notion that it might shed light on aspects of my
father’s personality that I’d not fully understood. Why, for example, his
insistence that “I am totally uninterested in gaining acceptance – I am a
free man with all the advantages and disadvantages of that”.
Why the attraction to and identification with “other misfits, rebels and
eccentrics”? Why the sense that it was him against the rest? Why the
disproportionate reaction to the infamous libel by Private Eye? And why the
anger, alienation and profound despair when he won? Why the obsession with
protecting his family name and reputation? Why the drive to conquer and the
need to make billions?
He told a biographer: “I think motivation comes from… disequilibrium in the
personality. Perhaps my disequilibrium comes from the very fact that I’m a
foreigner. I’m a Jew to Catholics and a Catholic to Jews, an Englishman to
the French and a Frenchman to the English. I’ve never been neither one thing
nor the other – which can be a very unsettling thing to be.” He was always
at pains to stress that he didn’t belong. He was proudly, assertively, a
misfit.
Jews are used to being treated as foreigners everywhere, and to an extent
every Goldsmith had felt like an outsider right back to the early 1500s when
Moses Goldschmidt of Frankfurt was compelled to wear a red peaked cap and a
yellow ring on his coat to identify him as a Jew. Like many Jewish families
in late-19th-century Germany, Frank’s parents, Adolph and Alice Goldschmidt,
were unnerved by the increasing anti-semitism. They decided to close the
family bank, B H Goldschmidt, in 1893 and move abroad. Alice had been born
in Birmingham, so they decided to settle in her native country in 1895. By
then, Frank was 17, the youngest of their four children. His older sister,
Nellie, remained in Germany with her German-Jewish husband, Ernst von Marx.
Carl, the oldest son, became a gambling addict and spent his life in the
casinos of Europe. He was also an amateur chemist who, it is claimed,
invented formaldehyde. He only ate boiled eggs, as he was sure the king of
Belgium was trying to poison him, and he would test home-made purgatives on
his house guests and staff. He eventually died in a Swiss sanatorium. Frank
and his brother Edward settled in England with their parents.
Adolph Goldschmidt was determined his sons would become English gentlemen. The
first step was to buy a house in Mayfair, at 16 South Street. The next
purchase was a 2,500-acre estate in Suffolk on which Adolph built a manor
house, Cavenham Hall. He was extremely proud of it and there are several
photos of the house in the family albums, depicting a big property, not
particularly beautiful but opulent, with a conservatory, sweeping central
staircase, stately wood-panelled entertaining rooms, landscaped lawns, a
lake and Italianate gardens. With the land came ownership of the local
village, Cavenham – after which my father later named his first successful
business – as well as the title of squire.
The photographs are of quaintly English scenes: cricket and croquet on the
front lawn, garden parties, riding, tennis, fine carriages in the drive and
even one of the first electric cars. There are pictures of uniformed
servants, pedigree dogs and an impressive art collection.
The German-Jewish Adolph, now in his mid-fifties, is pictured in a three-piece
tweed suit, matching cap, wing collar and cravat, with an ornamental walking
cane. In others he has a cricket bat, golf club, croquet mallet or gun in
his hand. He was so keen to appear English that he even took up polo.
Likewise, his sons are pictured engaged in all of the usual country pursuits:
hunting, fishing, shooting. Within a couple of years, to all intents and
purposes Frank and his brother were indeed quintessential English gentlemen:
impeccably dressed, their hair parted down the middle in the style of the
day, with perfect English accents, manners and tastes. Frank wore Huntsman
suits and became a member of all the smartest English clubs – and his
favourite thing in the world was bread-and-butter pudding.
Frankfurter Deutsch, their first language and the dialect of the ghetto, was
only spoken when there were no guests. At one dinner party at Cavenham Hall,
Adolph even insisted that a visiting grandson stay in his room lest his
German accent trouble the guests. Eventually Frank and Edward gave up
speaking the language of their childhood altogether. It was only in his last
dying months, decades later, that Frank reverted to speaking Frankfurter
Deutsch.
Despite the hostility shown to Jews even in England at that time, the
Goldsmiths of Cavenham Hall were integrated and happy in their adopted
homeland. Until 1871 neither Oxford nor Cambridge had accepted Jewish
undergraduates, but now they were open to Jews. After a spell at a crammer,
Frank won a place to study law at Magdalen College, Oxford, in May 1897 – an
achievement at that time for the son of a recent Jewish immigrant, albeit a
wealthy one.
Frank was handsome, clever and popular and had enough money to enjoy himself.
He left Oxford with a good second in jurisprudence. He was called to the bar
of the Inner Temple in 1901. In his first week there, he hung up his gown
and went for dinner. When he returned he found that his gown had been
stolen. He was infuriated, apparently demanding to know if “this is a place
for people who defend criminals or for the criminals themselves”.
He resigned and never went back. Instead he turned his attention to public
service. In Frankfurt no Jew had been allowed to get involved in politics,
but in Britain there were a number of Jewish MPs. Frank decided to pursue a
political career. At the age of 25, in November 1903, he was elected as an
independent municipal reform candidate for Westminster city council. This
brought him into contact with all the leading political figures of the day.
The following year, he stood for the St Pancras South ward in the London
county council elections. His opponent was the playwright George Bernard
Shaw. Again he won the seat easily from the better-known Shaw, who remarked
afterwards that “thanks to the paradoxical in politics, beauty has beaten
brains”.
Over the next few years, Frank took on as many official roles as possible and
belonged to a remarkable variety of committees. He joined the board of the
Royal Free hospital, the council of the Passmore Edwards Settlement, became
vice-president of the King’s Cross Philanthropic Society, chairman of the
Building Acts Committee, and served on various education committees
including the Blind and Deaf Children’s After-care Committee, and even a
charity that benefited “aged or distressed members of the cab trade”.
Although keen to airbrush his German origins, he seems to have felt no
embarrassment about his Jewishness. He was also involved in several Jewish
charities, as noted by The Jewish World, assisting the organisations
involved in the emigration of the Jews from the Russian empire, and was a
member of the emigration committee of the Jewish Board of Guardians The
young Frank took every opportunity to become a part of the English
establishment. His scrapbook is full of his speeches and debates. He hosted
regular “smoking concerts”, presided over countless charity dinners and,
unusually for a Jew at that time, even became a freemason. Aside from his
political career, Frank had also decided to pledge his loyalty to his
country by becoming a British Army officer, joining the Duke of York’s Own
Loyal Suffolk Hussars.
In 1910, Frank’s efforts culminated in his election as the Conservative MP for
Stowmarket, a seat conveniently close to Cavenham Hall. There are pictures
in his scrapbook of him being carried triumphantly on men’s shoulders
through the streets of his constituency.
At the age of 30, just 13 years after he had arrived in England speaking the
language badly, a German Jew in a country noted for its suspicion of
foreigners, Frank entered parliament. As well as being an MP, a councillor
and a freemason, he had become a justice of the peace, a county alderman and
a member of the prestigious Tattersalls Committee, which adjudicates on
betting disputes in horse-racing. His integration into British society, it
seemed, was complete.
Frank soon developed a reputation for being an eloquent, personable and
promising young politician. He was also well connected. One of his close
friends was Winston Churchill, who was only four years his senior and had
recently been appointed first lord of the Admiralty.
When Frank spoke in the chamber, it was usually with a liberal bias on the
subjects of education, the poor, the old, the disabled and those on the
fringes of society. He moved an amendment whereby a convicted person should
be permitted to keep whatever money he had left on him after paying his
fine. And he seconded an amendment to curtail the power of magistrates to
send young people to borstal. While the new member for Stowmarket certainly
had a social conscience, he was no radical. He opposed home rule for
Ireland, and supported the veto powers of the House of Lords. As a wealthy
and well-regarded young MP of centrist inclinations, the future looked
promising. Even a place in a future cabinet must have seemed a distinct
possibility.
But then came the outbreak of war in 1914. In four years, among the millions
of lives shattered was Frank’s. Patriotism had quickly turned anti-German
resentment into hysteria. Suddenly, being German was as much a stigma as
being Jewish had been in Frankfurt. There was hatred and suspicion for
everything German. People with German-sounding names were attacked, shops
owned by people with German names were looted, old people who’d forgotten to
take out their naturalisation papers found themselves threatened with
internment. Even dachshunds were kicked in the streets and german shepherd
dogs had to be rebranded alsatians. King George V was persuaded to change
his Germanic surname of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the more Anglo-Saxon
Windsor. Two statesmen with German links, Lord Haldane and Prince Louis of
Battenberg, were both forced to resign.
Frank Goldsmith, fervently patriotic, joined his regiment and prepared to
fight. The old photograph, my father’s sole memento, showed Frank ready to
lead the men of his district to war against the enemy. They were unaware he
had been born a German and there was no reason why his past should ever have
become public.But in the first few weeks of war, a telegram addressed to
Frank arrived at the local post office in Bury St Edmunds. It came from his
brother-in-law, Ernst von Marx, who was by now a respected senior civil
servant in Germany. It was sent by ordinary mail, not through diplomatic
channels, and the contents were read by everyone at the post office. “How
can you consider fighting for anyone other than your fatherland?” Ernst
asked. Within hours the news had spread throughout the constituency.
Although Frank had never considered fighting for anyone other than Britain,
and despite the fact that he had spent 10 years as a volunteer officer in
his local regiment and was now a major, his constituents turned on him in a
frenzy of spy mania. There were violent riots in Stowmarket. Protesters
demanded that he be stripped of his commission and his parliamentary seat.
In the villages around Cavenham, there were clashes between his supporters
and his opponents. A bemused Frank found himself paying the hospital bills
of the local men who had defended his house when protesters arrived with
torches to burn it down.
In the sophisticated London clubs where he had spent so much time over the
past decade, he was shunned, and old parliamentary colleagues turned their
backs on him. Churchill and another old friend, Lord Bessborough, were two
who remained loyal, and with their help he was able to keep his army
commission.
Frank was devastated. The humiliation of being considered pro-German and the
reaction from his constituents and old colleagues was too great to bear. The
scrapbooks and albums came to an end. The days of country squiredom, of the
Cavenham estate, of the aspiring politician, ended in an instant. Frank
became an outcast in the country he loved and which he was about to risk his
life for. He was still, however, resolved to fight. He requested the first
posting abroad that the War Office could arrange. By all accounts he went on
to fight bravely at Gallipoli and later in Palestine. But from his desert
post at Dabaa he wrote to the chairman of the local Conservative party
saying he would not be seeking re-election.
According to Teddy, his political ambition had died with the Stowmarket riots.
By the time of the armistice in November 1918, Frank was 40 years old and
preparing to leave England for good. Adolph had died in April that year and
when his mother died a few years later, Cavenham Hall and South Street were
sold, together with their contents and all Adolph’s pictures. All ties with
England were severed.
Teddy told me that his father never recovered from the blow he suffered in
1914. He was a sensitive man. He was deeply hurt. Staying in England was
impossible for him.
Frank, or Monsieur le Major, as he became known, moved to France and started a
new life. He threw his energy into the hotel business and within 10 years
had established himself as “probably the leading figure in the French hotel
industry in the interwar years and certainly the most popular”, according to
his obituary in The Times. The company he founded, Hôtels Réunis, controlled
48 of the finest hotels in France. He also managed the Hôtel de Paris and
the Hermitage in Monte Carlo. In 1926 he had become director of the Savoy
group of hotels, which included Claridge’s and the Berkeley. He was also one
of the founders of the King David hotel in Jerusalem.
Frank had never married while in England, though there had been girlfriends
and rumours of an illegitimate child. In 1917 he fell deeply in love with a
French girl, Jacqueline Franc, with whom he lived for 10 years. She died of
an embolism during an operation to unblock her fallopian tubes to enable
them to have a baby together. Frank’s tragedy foreshadowed that of my father
30 years later, whose first love also died attempting to have a child.
Then, on a trip to Cannes in the autumn of 1927, he met a pretty, vivacious
23-year-old blonde, Marcelle Mouiller. She was one of five sisters from a
Catholic family from Vichy in the Auvergne, and was 27 years younger than
Frank. He was travelling back to Paris on le Train Bleu and she asked to be
shown round prior to its departure. Wearing only a light blue summer dress
over her swimming costume, she never got off the train. Their first child,
Edward, known as Teddy, was born in a Paris clinic in November 1928. Frank
and Marcelle married five years later when she was pregnant with my father,
Jimmy, who was born on February 26, 1933.
Frank lived and worked in France for the rest of his life with his French wife
and French-born children. He was even made chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur
but he always considered himself English and he continued to live in the
style of an Edwardian gentleman.
When the second world war broke out, Major Frank, ever the British patriot,
tried to re-enlist in the British Army. He was refused on account of his
age: he was 61. He appealed to his old friends Bessborough and Churchill.
But it was impossible. When he finally accepted that he could be of no use
to the British Army, he decided to spend the rest of the war in the Bahamas.
Frank died in 1967, aged 88. But not before attempting to secure the place in
British society for his sons that had eluded him.
He sent Teddy to his old college, Magdalen at Oxford, and Jimmy to Eton. Both
Frank’s sons were close to their father and had grown up acutely aware of
his humiliation, though they rarely discussed it. I believe that underlying
everything my father did, from his business ventures to his personal
battles, was a desire to re-establish his father’s reputation. Conformity
and belonging had led to painful rejection for his father. Jimmy delighted
in his own refusal to conform, from his first running race at school when,
aged nine, he walked the entire way, despite being booed and pelted with
fruit. He defiantly refused to belong. Bi-national and bi-cultural, with
multiple homes and families, he was careful always to hedge his bets. He was
also sensitive to slights about his origins. When his future father-in-law,
the Bolivian tin magnate Antenor Patiño, told him, “We come from an old
Catholic family. It is not our habit to marry Jews,” he retorted: “We come
from an old Jewish family. It is not our habit to marry Red Indians.” He
then eloped with Patiño’s daughter Isabel. When David Mellor, in a petulant
speech following my father’s defeat in Putney at the 1997 general election,
urged my father (a rival candidate) to “get off back to Mexico”, he reacted
by slow-clapping and jeering him with maniacal and excruciating glee.
Jimmy’s actions were often viewed, especially in England, as ill-judged and
extreme. His response to the libel by Private Eye, in particular, was seen
by many as a demented and bullying overreaction. He was incensed, intent on
forcing the magazine to close and sending its editor to jail, after it
claimed falsely that he had been complicit in Lord Lucan’s disappearance.
The battle went on for over a year and became increasingly personal. The Eye’s
then editor, Richard Ingrams, denied that his vendetta was partly inspired
by anti-semitism, insisting he disliked my father “not because he’s a Jew
but because he’s a German”. Indeed, Private Eye referred to him as
“Goldshidt”, and the magazine gave away a record with a spoof of my father
ranting in a heavy German accent. He later said that the reason he pursued
the case with such ferocity was that he could not let his children’s legacy
be soiled by innuendo and smear. “I was determined not to pass on to my
children a soiled name. Can there be anything more important than what you
hand on?”
As a child I remember my father telling me that Frank had said to him: “My
father handed on a respectable name to me. I hope you, Jimmy, will be able
to do the same for your children.” He won the legal battle with Private Eye,
but the press and public opinion turned against him and it damaged his
reputation irreparably. He told my mother he wouldn’t have anything more to
do with Britain. Like his father, he left England and never lived there
permanently again.
In many ways, the conundrum that my grandfather faced during his lifetime
about the importance of identity and belonging has become the leitmotif of
my family. At 21, I married a Pakistani politician and I lived in Pakistan
for almost a decade. Like my grandfather I reinvented myself: I wore a
shalwar kameez, changed religion, learnt Urdu, lived in a traditional
extended-family household, involved myself in all aspects of Pakistani life
and extolled the virtues (ad nauseam) of a new and radically different
culture. Part Jewish, with a recognisably Jewish maiden name, and British,
like the former colonisers I was initially treated with suspicion. The
Islamic Republic of Pakistan does not recognise Israel, and its people often
fail to differentiate between Zionism and Jewishness. Six months after
moving there, during the 1997 election campaign, I was accused of being part
of a Zionist conspiracy. I received death threats, there were protests and
there were calls for my citizenship to be revoked. I did what Frank had done
a century before. In my eagerness to be accepted (and to my regret), I
resorted to playing down my Jewish background. I criticised British culture.
And I over-conformed. What I’ve come to understand in retrospect is that
belonging and acceptance are often as much, if not more, about what you deny
as what you choose. Today my own children, half Pakistani, half British,
Muslims with Jewish, Muslim and Christian grandparents, are growing up in
secular Britain. They have cousins here who go to discos and cousins there
who wear the hijab and live in purdah. Will they feel the need to negate or
suppress an essential part of themselves? Will they eventually have to
choose between being Muslim and being British in order to feel that they
belong? I passionately hope not.
My father chose not to choose; not to belong. He rejected Britain as
vigorously as it had rejected his father. Nonetheless it was his own father
Frank’s Britishness that had saved both of their lives when they had to flee
from the Nazi invasion of France. In December 1939, Frank, Marcelle and
their two young sons found themselves at the port of Bayonne among thousands
of refugees also attempting to escape France. There were no boats and hardly
any food available. When a Dutch freighter that had been requisitioned by
the British Army berthed at the port of Bayonne, Teddy remembers the English
captain announcing that he would only take British-born subjects – which
none of them were. “My father pushed forward – the only time I ever saw him
do so in his life – and told the captain he’d been a British MP and a major
in the British Army. He also had a British passport. And the captain let us
on board.” Frank, Marcelle, Teddy and Jimmy boarded the last ship to leave
Bayonne before the German army arrived. It was the last free ship to leave
France.
Theirs were not the only lives saved by Frank’s British ties. As the Nazi
persecution of the Jews gathered pace, Frank wrote to the authorities in
London, pleading for his German relatives to be given refuge. He received a
sympathetic letter from Lord Lloyd, secretary of state for the colonies and
leader of the House of Lords, saying: “The regulations are very strict but I
will find out what can be done.” The appeal was successful and Frank’s
relatives found safety in England, a country that Frank himself no longer
felt able to live in. One of them was Ernst von Marx, the same man whose
telegram decades earlier, demanding Frank’s loyalty to the German
fatherland, had destroyed his career and changed the course of his life.
The search for my secret uncle
While researching the story of my grandfather, I discovered an uncle that none
of us knew about – Frank’s illegitimate child. My Uncle Teddy said
Grandfather Frank had a girlfriend before the first world war who, unbeknown to
him at the time, he shared with two other men. One was a duke, the other a
famous jockey. The lady in question became pregnant. The three men were
informed. They met, presumably got out their diaries and concluded that
Frank was the most likely father. The child was born and Frank looked after
it financially. At some point, the woman got married and her new husband
adopted the child and brought it up as his own. Frank had no more contact
with either the child or the mother.
Years later, Uncle Teddy told me that a man came to see him in his house in
Kew. He was from a well-known old English family dating back to William the
Conqueror and he was, he said, from Stowmarket in Suffolk, where Frank had
been MP.
‘As soon as I saw him I recognised him as my half-brother,’ my uncle told me.
‘It couldn’t be anyone else. It was so obvious.
He had a beard just like mine. And he had the same flat back to his head and a
cleft in the middle of his chin, which we all have – my father and your
father; the same hands, even, and the same way of talking.
When he told me where he came from, I was convinced he was my brother.’
They became friends, as they shared a passion for conservation – the man was a
leading expert on composting. Wherever they went, people mistook them for
one another. But my uncle resolved never to tell him he believed they were
half-brothers. Eventually they drifted apart and lost touch.
I set out to find out if my unknown uncle was still alive – unlikely, as he
would now be over 100 years old. He had died in 1991, but I tracked down two
of his daughters. I thought I was on to something when the first daughter I
spoke to told me there was a history of eccentricity and clinical madness in
her family, especially among the men. ‘Must be,’ I thought. We exchanged
photos. The likeness was uncanny. My uncle and her father really were
indistinguishable.
But the second daughter I spoke to proved the dates didn’t work. Her
grandmother had become pregnant on her honeymoon and had never lived in
Suffolk. It was just a coincidental likeness. But someone born in Suffolk
around 1910 almost certainly is my uncle.
A tycoon’s tale
1933 James Goldsmith was born in Paris, where he and his brother, Edward
(standing), were raised.
1949 Dropped out of Eton and started gambling, incurring huge debts, paid off
by his father. Worked as a hotel cook.
1951 Joined the army. Left to start a business based on pharmaceuticals.
1954 Married the Bolivian heiress Maria Isabel Patiño; she died from a brain
haemorrhage while pregnant. Goldsmith’s second wife, Ginette Lery, bore him
a son, Manes, and a daughter, Alix.
1960s Launched Cavenham Foods (below, at one of the company’s shops in 1965).
Gained a reputation as an asset-stripper.
1970s Became involved in the finance company Slater Walker. Was a key member
of the Clermont Set, which included Lord Lucan.
1975 Slater Walker rescued by the Bank of England; Goldsmith cherry-picked its
assets.
1976 Controversially knighted by Harold Wilson. The start of his attacks on
the media, including actions against Private Eye.
1978 Married his mistress Annabel Birley. They had three children: Jemima, Zac
and Ben. A later affair with Laure Boulay de la Meurthe produced two more
children.
1980s Embarked on a series of takeovers of US timber firms. Made $90m taking
over Goodyear.
1987 Officially retired. Moved to Mexico, but remained active as a corporate
raider.
1990s Began private-equity investment operations and moved into ownership of
foreign media. Became more involved in right-wing politics.
1997 Founded the Referendum party but was humiliated at the polls; his
heckling of David Mellor, his opponent in Putney, was televised. Died from
cancer later that year.
