While viewing the Palatial Chateau Ferrilres outside Paris, Wilhelm I commented, “Kings couldn’t afford this. It could only belong to a Rothschild!” The anecdote illustrates the wealth of the family whose coffers surpass that of royalty. In a move that shocked her milieu, one of the dynasty’s daughters turned her back on her rarified life seduced by a siren song.

        The Rothschild family traversed the spectrum from ghetto dwellers to Europe’s power elite when their banks financed monarchs and governments. The dynasty’s coat of arms is an eagle whose talons clutch five golden arrows, representative of each of founder Mayer’s sons who established branches in Frankfurt, London, Paris, Vienna, and Naples. Nathaniel Charles Rothschild, known by his middle name, was a nineteenth-century British heir who married Baroness Rozsika Edie von Wertheimstein, daughter of a Transylvanian baron. Their home, Tring Park (now Waddesdon Manor) was the crown jewel of half a dozen ostentatious country estates. Charles worked in his London bank where he felt as attached to his work as Sisyphus did to his rock. Although he did not have to pursue gainful employment and would have much rather indulged his obsession with insects, he subscribed to the Rothschild motto: Concordia, integritas, industria: Unity, integrity, industry. Rozsika enjoyed her role as chatelaine of the grand estate and as mother to children Nathaniel Mayer Victor (Victor), Miriam Louisa, Elizabeth Charlotte (nicknamed Liberty), and their youngest, Pannonica. Although she claimed her name derived from a species of butterfly, Charles had christened her after a rare Hungarian moth. In either contingency, she was known as Nica.

          In the hallowed walls of the Rothschild manor, footmen carried cherry trees to the table so that the family might have fruit straight from the branch, and an army of servants catered to their every whim. If the walls could have talked, they would have bespoken its owner’s eccentricities; on its endless acres, emus, giant tortoises, and kangaroos roamed. Charles’s brother Victor liked to water-ski in a Schiaparelli silk dressing gown; another brother, Walter, drove a team of six zebras.

      Life in Tring Park was not all wine, roses, and cherry trees. Charles suffered from a mood disorder and alternated from not speaking for days to being unable to stop talking. In 1923, he locked himself in a bathroom and slit his throat. Liberty shared his psychological demons and lived under a cloud of schizophrenia. Nica became the wild child and sneaked friends into Tring’s attic where they indulged in wine-soaked revels. Rozsika sent her daughter to a Parisian finishing school to tame her wild ways, but it did not have the desired result. The teen claimed lascivious “wig-wearing lesbian sisters” ran the place.

       Nica did find something to her liking when a London musician piqued her interest in flying; by age twenty-one, she had her pilot’s license and her own plane. Despite her non-conformity, she agreed to a debutante party- an event attended by Winston Churchill- where the beautiful heiress dazzled in strings of emeralds and diamonds. Restless, Nica felt she existed in a gilded cage, a waiting room for her future as a society matron and mother. 

          Three years later Nica met Baron Jules de Koenigswarter, a French-Jewish diplomat, at Le Touquet airfield in France. He was smitten as he watched her alight from her plane that she had flown across the English Chanel. On their first date, he took her straight from lunch for a flight in his Leopard Moth aircraft. At thirty-one, he was a decade older, a widower with a son, but they bonded over their mutual love of aviation. Although the Koenigswarters were not in the same stratosphere as the Rothschilds, (who was?) he possessed enough credentials-one his ability to put up with Nica-and her family approved the match. Three months later, they were married in New York City, and immediately after the ceremony, the bride headed to Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. The couple took up residence in Chateau d’Abondant, a seventeenth-century chateau, where they raised their children, Patrick and Janka, who were mainly left in the care of nannies. The Baron was controlling, but Nica was used to that from her parents. She transformed into the prototype of a dynastic matriarch with days filled with choosing daily menus, managing her extensive staff, and acting as hostess to distinguished guests.

        Life continued in this metronome fashion until the Nazis were on the verge of goose-stepping into France, prompting Jules to join de Gaulle’s Free French forces in the Congo.  Although a prime target as a Jew and a Rothschild, Nica refused to leave until 1940 when she took the last train out of Paris. The move most likely saved her life as the Baron’s mother, extended family, and Rozsika’s Hungarian relatives perished in the Holocaust. Nica was drawn to the war effort, and after depositing her children with the Guggenheim family on Long Island, she took passage on a Norwegian freighter and joined her husband in the Resistance.

      With the defeat of Germany, the Baron entered the French diplomatic service, and they lived first in Norway and then Mexico. The couple had three more children: Berit, Shaun, and Kari, but without the romance and adrenalin of war, the marriage floundered. She did not fit comfortably into the role of the ambassador’s wife and was often absent or late for official dinners. The Baron retaliated by smashing her records, and the children were lulled to sleep by the sound of smashing vinyl and servants gossiping about the goings on. In the hope absence makes the heart grow fonder, Nica left for a vacation in Manhattan, a city for which she felt a kinship.

       The Baroness was on the way to the airport to return to Mexico when she paid a visit to her brother’s music tutor, jazz pianist Teddy Wilson. He inadvertently altered her destiny when he played a recording of Thelonious Monk, the high priest of bebop. For Nica, the music illuminated the darkness; it spoke of freedom. Enthralled, she played the record twenty times and missed her flight. Instead of catching another, she rented a suite at the Stanhope Hotel on 5^th Avenue where, to management’s dismay, she kept an open house for impoverished African-American musicians, social pariahs, a situation that did not sit well with its segregationist policies. However, her illustrious name, blue-blood title, and bottomless pockets made them turn a deaf ear. Never one for slumming, Nica bought a blue Bentley, sported a leopard-skin coat, and drank Chivas Regal from a flask. She became a fixture in Greenwich Village nightclubs where alcohol and cigarettes were acceptable; what was not acceptable was Jazz and jazz musicians. In 1954, discovering Monk was in Paris, she flew to meet her idol and declared he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen.

          Nica became the patron of the struggling musicians and raised eyebrows as she broke the time-honored taboos of race, religion, and class. The highest raised eyebrow of all was from Jules who was infuriated with Nica’s lifestyle that he considered not seemly for a mother, diplomat’s wife, or for a Rothschild. Nevertheless, anxious to avoid a scandal, and as his wife was an heiress, he fumed in silence until an event forced his hand.

      In 1955, saxophone genius and heroin junkie Charlie “Bird” Parker arrived at Nica’s suite, desperately ill, with no other place to go. Although she understood the impropriety of letting him stay, as a Jewish refugee from Hitler, she did not consider sending him away. While watching a variety show on television, he died on her sofa. Although there had been no foul play or romantic involvement, in the 1950s the fact that a black, jazz musician had died in a blueblood residence sent the press into a feeding frenzy. One headline ran: Bird in the Baroness’s Boudoir. The Rothschilds were aghast and, metaphorically, aimed the five golden arrows in her direction. Koenigswarter filed for divorce, and in a classic understatement said, “Jazz didn’t do my marriage any good.” He received custody of the children, a fact Nica did not contest. After hearing Monk’s recording, she realized she had to break with her former “bullshit” life. The incident also severed ties with the Stanhope, and she relocated to the Algonquin. When that hotel likewise did not prove a love connection, she bought a house in New Jersey with a fabulous view of the Manhattan skyline, the former residence of Marlene Dietrich’s husband, film director Josef von Sternberg. Her home, Cathouse, was so-called because of “the jazz cats” that flopped on her couches and the residency of 306 felines, all named after musicians. Many had been strays who Nica had rescued by scooping them up in The Behop Bentley; she had also used it in a drag race with Miles Davis down Seventh Avenue. With her typical humor, Nica described Catville as “the only house on the block without a For Sale sign.”

       As the patron saint of jazz musicians and because of her relationship with Thelonious-whose parents had christened him after a Benedictine monk- Nica became renowned as the bebop baroness. And, just as her father had been obsessed with insects, the unstable Monk became the great project of her life. She paid his bills and put up with his drug addictions and schizophrenia. In appreciation, he immortalized her in his songs, ones that were slated to define their era. However, on the way to a performance in Delaware proved to be the true measure of her devotion. In 1955, the spectacle of a white woman and a black man in the South, driving in a Bentley, caught the eye of a trooper who pulled them over. During a search of the car, the officer discovered marijuana in the trunk, and in the ensuing fracas, the police treated Thelonious as a punching bag. Although the contraband belonged to Monk, Nica, aware a conviction would mean the loss of his cabaret card that allowed him to perform, served as the scapegoat, claiming it was hers. She spent the night in jail and received a three-year sentence that the court dismissed on a technicality.

       For twenty-eight years, Nica catered to the musician’s eccentricities, breakdowns, and unstintingly used her wealth on his behalf. In his last years, his psychological health deteriorated, exacerbated by marijuana and heroin, and he took up full-time residence in Nica’s Jersey home, one that had a Steinway piano, a gift from his patroness. She remained his pillar until his 1982 death; at his funeral, Nica and Monk’s widow, Nellie, sat side-by-side and mourners paid their respect to each of them as if they were both widows. They had shared a triangular relationship, implicitly understanding the larger than life Monk was too much for any one woman. The Baroness said of her idol, “He could make you see the music inside the music.”

     One of the lingering questions that remains about the enigmatic Baroness was if she and Monk had been lovers or had it remained a platonic relationship. On that topic, Nica was for once circumspect. Monk, when asked about this issue, stated his wife was his “black bitch” and Nica was his “white bitch.”

     Long estranged from her relatives, Nica’s great-niece, Hannah Rothschild, became intrigued with the woman the Rothschilds had expunged from the family tree. Hannah phoned her great-Aunt and requested a meeting. “Wild,” was Nica’s response, “Come to the club downtown after midnight.” The seventy-one-year-old Baroness adorned with a pearl necklace and magnificent fur coat-symbols of the life she had left behind- held court, a ravaged version of her former beauty. She was smoking a cigarette in a long, black filter and drinking whiskey from a chipped china cup. In answer to Hannah’s question of Why, Nica, swaying to the music replied, “Remember, there is only one life.”    

      During the heyday of bebop, Nica had produced a volume entitled Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats, a collection of photographs compiled of the musicians in their off-hours. Alongside the snapshots were the responses to the Baroness’s question: “If you were given three wishes to be instantly granted, what would they be?” Miles Davis’s, “To be white!” Pianist Sonny Clark’s, “All the bitches in the world,” Thelonious Monk’s, “To have a crazy friend like you.”  If Nica had included her own portrait, she would not have needed to pen her wish-her life was the fulfillment of her dream. The rebel Rothschild remains a mysterious figure, as hauntingly elusive as the bebop ballads she worshipped. 

        Pannonica Rothschild passed away in 1988 from a heart attack, and her final request was for her ashes to be scattered over Catville. She specified the ceremony be held at the time-also the name of the recording that had changed her life-“Around Midnight.”