The Jazz Baroness

On the night of 15 October, 1958, a vintage Bentley was pulled over by the Delaware State Police. Suspicions had been raised by the sight of a white woman driving with two black male passengers, one of whom had danced his way into a motel along the road in search of a glass of water. This man was Thelonious Monk and the other man was Charlie Rouse. Monk refused the officers’ request to leave the car and they beat his fingers with blackjacks. When the driver screamed that Monk was a pianist, they beat him harder. Minutes later, the officers found marijuana in a suitcase which the driver, Nica, claimed was hers. Had Monk been busted he’d have lost his cabaret card and the right to perform in New York for up to seven years.
Pannonica de Koenigswarter, or Nica, was a Rothschild by birth. Born in 1913 at Tring, a Rothschild house in Hertfordshire, Nica enjoyed a luxurious and cosseted upbringing. According to her sister Miriam, the internationally renowned naturalist, the only expectation upon Charles and Rozsika Rothschild’s daughters was to marry and breed and, although their brother Victor was sent to school and university, Nica and Miriam received little formal education.
Though music didn’t play a significant part in her upbringing, Nica claimed her first love was swing and she preferred bandleaders such as Jack Harris, a violinist who played at ‘coming out’ parties in the 1930s to traditional debs’ delights. Her unconventional taste in music was an early indication of a life to come of total nonconformity. For a time, however, it seemed as if she might settle down; she married Jules de Koenigswarter, an older, sophisticated, French baron who lived life to a strict schedule, unlike his wife who had a total disregard for timekeeping. They lived at a chateau outside Paris where two of their five children were born. Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.