Less than a year before Jeffrey Epstein was arrested in 2019, I attended a dinner party hosted by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, an American who married into the de Rothschild family and is credited with introducing the then Prince Andrew to Epstein. I’ve told a bit of this story before, focusing on Henry Kissinger, the guest of honor. Now I want to turn the spotlight from Kissinger to the hostess and the other guests. This account was first published at Substack with extra links.
I’ve been thinking about women connected with Epstein: the grown women, not teenagers, who enabled him and relied on him, not just his assistants, but his “friends.” He was, for example, a “personal confidant as well as a day business adviser” to the head of the French de Rothschild company, Baroness Ariane de Rothschild, who also married into the Rothschild family and took over management of the French Rothschild business.
The literal grooming (massages and haircuts arranged and paid for by Epstein) of Kathy Ruemmler, later general counsel at Goldman Sachs, was not intended to use her sexually but as yet another way into the highest level of global finance. (Ruemmler helped Baroness de Rothschild get a desirable settlement with the US Department of Justice3—a mere $45 million, which gives you a sense of the money involved in these machinations.)
Henry Kissinger speaking at an event in New York at about the same time.
Thanks to the journalists who’ve combed through thousands of emails, we’ve been able to get a sense of Epstein’s communication style. It surprised me. He sounds like a best girlfriend. His emails are warm, comforting, supportive. With Larry Sommers, economist and former Harvard president, he sounds like one of the adjacent women who typically have to keep up the spirits and confidence of a public man.
Conversation between powerful men is often competitive and self-aggrandizing. Epstein instead offers a seductive blend of contacts, advice, and emotional assurance, as well as free accommodation, parties, and young young women. In fact, I wonder if his “harem” of teenagers was collected to satisfy his own sexual desires or if he’d simply discovered how attractive young and powerless women were to the kind of men he wanted to rope in. The desire that rich and powerful men feel, it seems, for underprivileged and powerless women merits attention. I keep coming back to the question, How much is enough?
2018: Dinner with the Rothschilds
Big raindrops slapped the windshield and lightning flickered over Park Avenue. We were going to Lady Rothschild’s dinner, I learned, as I buckled my seatbelt in the back of the black town car. Kai-Fu Lee’s assistant started reading out guest biographies: “Princess Beatrice of York.” “Henry Kissinger, you all know.” “Leon Black.” “Stephen Schwarzman.” “Paul Singer, not much about him.”
Oh fuck. I looked down at my thrift-shop cotton dress and the flat shoes I’d mended with Gorilla Glue. I’d rushed to the train to get to New York for Kai-Lu Lee’s book event and only heard at the last minute that I was invited to a dinner afterwards. A local restaurant, I’d assumed.
Yes, jumping out of the car at a stop light was an option. But as I looked around at the glittering Manhattan night, I felt the lift of adrenaline. In for a penny, in for a pound—and why not? When I was young, newly arrived in London, I was instructed in social decorum by a countess’s daughter.
It was an old-fashioned upper-east-side mansion block and the driver swung into the apartment building’s circular drive like he was coming home. “Dr Kissinger lives here, too,” he said, “I drive him sometimes.”
Our foursome crowded into the foyer with other guests. I hung about demurely in the background as hullos were exchanged. Nonetheless, the financier Leon Black greeted me warmly. Not exactly a group of old, close friends, I realized.
Lady Rothschild hovered over Dr Kissinger, offering him what she called “his chair.” Her blond hair hung loose like mine, and she too was wearing a sleeveless black dress. Hers, however, was an elegant black silk sheath with a big diamond brooch perched on her shoulder. Lights were dim; I figured the men wouldn’t notice my dress and I didn’t talk to any of the women.
Waiters circulated with champagne in finely ridged glasses, polenta and truffle bits, and a stacked thing that looked dangerous to eat. I was introduced to Sir Evelyn Rothschild, tall and appropriately patrician. We talked about Brexit and what his friend Prince Philip had said about it. I asked what he did. “Run the bank,” he muttered. “What bank?” I asked.
Are you a lawyer?” I asked Paul Singer of Elliott Management after he said he went to law school in Massachusetts. [“As of the first quarter of 2015, Elliott’s portfolio is worth over $8 billion.”] We talked about gay rights and the Supreme Court, and about the Train Campaign. Like other rich men I’d met, he found my little project amusing. None of them seem to realize I’m hoping for a few hundred million for my train line. Singer, sadly, seems to prefer to spend his money on right-wing Republican candidates.
As we went into the dining room, lightning was flashing while Singer and Steve Schwarzman of Blackstone exchanged lugubrious memories of their fathers’ last days. I was struck anew by the way so many Wall Street billionaires have common look: they are small, homely men with a fierce, anxious air. (Leon Black, who is apparently even richer, was different—tall and lumbering.)
The huge dining table nearly filled the room, and was covered with objects: tiered porcelain, silver elephants, and many vases of Peruvian lilies (such a dull choice, I thought, how about some orchids). There were fine linen napkins and boring food, but that hardly mattered because I didn’t get much chance to eat once Kissinger started talking.
The purported guest of honor was Kai-Fu Lee, author of AI Super-Powers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order, but Lady Rothschild’s bait that evening was obviously Henry Kissinger.
I took this photo in 2016 at another NYC event.
Kissinger was an old man—95 at that point—and had been enticed to dinner in order to entertain a bunch of billionaires. In addition to writing a good deal about China (I recommend On China), he had coauthored The Age of AI: And Our Human Future. Like many old men today, he apparently thought that claiming expertise on AI was essential to maintain status. When he was young, it was dating actresses.4 Because I was seated directly across from Kissinger, I was the only person he could see. He needed an audience, and I was it. I nodded thoughtfully and kept my gaze on him.
It was not a normal dinner party where one talks to nearby guests, but instead a kind of salon, moderated by Lady Rothschild. Kai-Fu Lee spoke, a few people made comments, but mostly it was Dr Kissinger who spoke, and spoke, the poor man sinking in the medieval-dining-hall chair. The table was large and crowded, the room was dim and weirdly noisy with old-fashioned air-conditioners going on and off, waiters coming and going, and thunder breaking. There was a murmur afloat about not being able to hear. And it was evident that interest in China or AI was not universal.
After dinner we were crowded together in the hallway and a few cards were exchanged. I thanked my hostess for letting me crash her party. “Not at all,” she said, “We loved having you.” Dr Kissinger smiled at me and said, “Good to see you again.”
Postscript
When Leon Black resigned from Apollo Global in 2019, after reports of his connection with Jeffrey Epstein, I remembered that his wife had been silent at his side throughout our meal. Paul Singer was in the news, too, as one of the conservative financiers who paid for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas’s vacations. More recently, the widowed Lady Rothschild has been in the news in the UK. Sir Evelyn left her the whole of his estate, leaving nothing to his three children. But the Daily Mail says the estate amounts to only $600 million, which isn’t much compared to the wealth of her dinner guests that evening in 2018. I wonder if there might be a billionaire on the horizon?
I am left with many other questions. What inspired the effort to host an intellectual book discussion? (Perhaps Lady Rothschild longs for something more meaningful than millions.) Why was the presence of Henry Kissinger enough to draw the billionaires out on a rainy evening? How would affect your sense of self to know that you were always being referred to in terms of your net worth?
Finally, it’s worth considering the seductiveness of a Jeffrey Epstein, especially in terms of politics. Economist Paul Krugman had this to say about Epstein’s appeal to intellectuals and academics: “I’m speculating here, but I believe that a lot of his reach came from his skill at seducing people by providing them with a sense of exclusivity and privilege. To be associated with Epstein meant receiving invitations to participate in fancy dinners or to stay at one of his many luxurious residences in all the best places, including his private island. If you were chums with Jeffrey Epstein, you felt that you were a member of a glittering set of insiders. And that was enough to make you look away when the young woman pouring your drink looked just a little bit too much like your teenage daughter.”
