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Being of an impatient disposition I made my appearance in this world some little time before I was expected, and by my impetuosity imperilled my Mother's life as well as my own. The French nurse who was to provide me with my first repasts had not yet been summoned from her village, and my Mother being too ill to take her place, I almost perished from inanition. Yet, somehow, I was made to survive until the nurse arrived.

I was born on December 17th, 1839, in Paris at number 17 Rue Laffitte - my Grandfather's house - and in the same room as that in which Napoleon III had first seen the light. After he had become Emperor, Napoleon came to inspect the former residence of Queen Hortense, and was received with much ceremony by my family. A magnificent hotel 'entre cour et jardin', it communicated by a private door with the next house, that of my Grand-Uncle James, which in turn was connected in a similar way with the offices of our Paris firm. After their marriage in 1825 my Parents intended making Paris their home, but circumstances willed otherwise. My paternal Grandfather was then living in Vienna and his elder brother Anselm lived in Frankfort. Anselm had no children, and requiring a strong hand to help him in his business, he summoned my Father to his assistance; and at Frankfort my Father remained.

Much has been written about the early history of our house, but most of the tales which have obtained general credence are either garbled or altogether fictitious. It has been asserted, for instance, that our surname only dates from the Napoleonic invasion of Germany, when the Jewish inhabitants of Frankfort were obliged by the Emperor to assume a surname, a custom they had not hitherto followed. On passing through Frankfort recently, however, my attention was drawn to a sale of rare books, and I was shown some catalogues of old coins dated 1754-5 and signed 'A.M. Rothschild': the Expert’ This disposes of one popular fallacy. Then again, it has been said that we took our surname from the town of Röskilde in Denmark, where my family is supposed to have originally lived. For my part, I should say that my ancestors derived their name from the red shield - in German, Rothschild - which hung over the door of their house in Frankfort. This shield served the office of a sign at a time when houses were not yet numbered, and when Jews, as a rule, had no surnames, and they adopted it as their crest in 1819 when they were ennobled by the Emperor of Austria.

From what I have been told by a trustworthy authority who has studied the tombstones in the local cemetery, I have warrant for assuming that my family had already settled at Frankfort at the beginning of the sixteenth century; but how long they had then been settled there, or whether, and when, they had hailed from Röskilde, or whether, as I am half inclined to believe, they were descended