Word: corti
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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THIS book by Mr. Ravage in which he recounts the story of the House of Rothschild cannot but evoke immediate comparison with the recent work of Egon Caesar, Count Corti dealing with the same subject. There is evident, indeed, in these two works the difference between two methods of biographical or semi-biographical exposition. Mr. Ravage is essentially the popularizer leaving out of the picture much that goes to make a complete panorama of the times and relations in which his central characters find themselves; Count Corti is essentially the historian, realizing the important part which character and heredity play...
...Author. Count Egon Caesar Corti, descendant of a noble Lombard house, a former officer in the Austrian cavalry, was the biographer of Leopold I of Belgium and Maximilian of Mexico. In his researches, the name of Rothschild recurred. Intrigued, he assembled more than 20,000 documents for use in this book, began preparations for a second volume...
...years Europe believed that Nathan himself posted from Waterloo to London, took his accustomed place by a pillar on the Exchange and stood there, a picture of dejection and despair, while his agents bought what the world sold in frenzy, creating the Fortune in a single morning. Count Corti does not trouble to disprove the story; the Fortune was established long before Waterloo, and weathered the Napoleonic cyclone with its turbulent aftermath...
...integrity was obviously the best policy. Metternich made the brothers Barons; they bought and fawned their way into the society of five capitals. But they remained shrewd moneylenders, with the noses and eyes of hawks, speaking and writing an uncouth jargon of many dialects of French, German, Yiddish. Count Corti quotes one contemporary comment upon a Rothschild: "King of Jews and Jew of Kings." Another, better, he omits: "Princes in the parlor and pawnbrokers in the kitchen...
Bankers, reading Count Corti's colorful record, will think of other mighty houses: Torlonias (Italy); Aguados (Spain); Fuggers (Germany); Morgans (U. S.). Scholars may recall the tablets found on the lower reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates telling of the Egibi firm, financiers B.C. Cosmopolitans will write notes of congratulation to living Rothschilds: Zoologist Lionel Walter, Bankers Anthony Gustay and Lionel Nathan, Soldier James A. (London); Physician-Yachtsman Henri (Paris...