Читать книгу Helena Rubinstein - Michele Fitoussi - Страница 17

Uncle Bernhard refused to let Helena go to Sandford. He would not hear of her working for the old pharmacist, who had immediately agreed to Helena’s suggestion.

But the young woman stood her ground. She wouldn’t stay on in Coleraine another minute, not for all the gold in the world. ‘You’re more stubborn than a bloody sheep!’ shouted Bernhard, changing his whining tone for insults in Yiddish.

Helena glared at him icily and, without another word, she went back to her room to finish packing her things. Bernhard followed her and stood in the doorway, continuing to proffer insults but not daring to actually step in. Without saying a word, Helena went out into the street, dragging her heavy trunk behind her. He didn’t lift a finger to help her.

A neighbour was waiting outside in his cart, a kind farmer who had agreed to drive her to Sandford. She climbed up on the seat and adjusted her hat, while the good man put her trunk in the back along with all the sheep.

‘Good riddance,’ was Bernhard’s blessing, as the horses pulled away.

The pharmacist set her salary at twenty-two shillings a month to work all day long without interruption. It wasn’t much, but it was a first taste of independence. Besides, Helena enjoyed meeting the customers. The women sought her out, just as they had done in her uncle’s store. She listened to them with a mixture of curiosity and empathy, asking questions about their children, their husbands, their health. She did everything she could to help them, went to fetch the potions they needed from the back of the shop, filled their prescriptions. Working in the pharmacy gave her a heady feeling: she never tired of the infinitesimal sense of power her customers gave her by blindly following her advice.

Old Henderson taught her what he knew. Learning as she went, she mixed spermaceti and lily bulbs, paraffin and almond peel, wax and herbs, lavender and honey. She read the scientific treatises he recommended and more than once she rued the fact that she had not been allowed to study medicine. And she thought about handsome Stanislaw, the boy she had loved in Kraków, but less and less often now. His features had faded long ago. He must be married by now, she mused, with a horde of children. Helena was not the sort of woman to pine for a lost love, whether real or imaginary.

Helena took the last remaining jar of Lykusky’s cream and examined it under the microscope, trying to identify its ingredients. She stayed up late night after night, straining her eyes and nearly falling asleep on her feet as she climbed the staircase leading up to her attic bedroom. In the morning she would get up before sunrise to clean the pharmacy, mop the floors and wipe the jars with a dust rag. In the evening she had to count up the day’s takings after exhausting hours on her feet where she hadn’t a moment to catch her breath. She didn’t complain. She had always been a hard worker and now she was driven by her plan.

Gitel eventually wrote to her. She sent a few jars of cream with her letter. ‘I can’t send you more than that, my girl, everything is expensive here. Money doesn’t grow on trees in Szeroka Street.’

Helena quickly read the two pages filled with news, but that was not what interested her. Gitel had no end of complaints: ‘Oy gevelt, your sisters are growing up, it’s hard to marry them off without a dowry, your father is bankrupt again.’

She was beginning to feel discouraged when she came to the postscript: here was what she had been waiting for so impatiently. The magic formula. Or at least what her mother had gleaned of it. Herbs, pine bark, sesame, almond essence, oil, wax … With the letter in one hand and a pestle in the other, Helena scurried back to her research. It couldn’t be as complicated as all that. And yet it was. She could not get the texture right. It was too liquid, or not liquid enough; too dry or too sticky.

Helena became her own guinea pig. Every night before going to bed she would try some of the day’s mixture on her face. There were times she panicked: what if she woke up with her face covered in pimples? No, there could be no danger of that, at least not with these ingredients. But there was still something missing if she was to make her haphazard concoctions resemble a beauty cream worthy of the name.

Until one night a flash of inspiration came to her. It happened by chance, just as she was about to drift off. This often occurred between wakefulness and sleep, in that strange in-between state where thoughts and dreams collide and great revelations appear out of nowhere. Just when she least expected it, Helena started thinking about sheep. She had read in one of Mr Henderson’s old books, hardly paying attention at the time, that their wool secreted a substance that was indispensable for the manufacture of cold cream (as the English ladies would say, carefully rounding their lips). That ingredient was lanolin. And suddenly she remembered what she had read. It all became crystal clear; it was as if the last piece of a jigsaw had fallen into place. Lanolin was exactly what she needed to add in order to obtain a cream that would be both soft and moisturising.

In one of the pharmacist’s old tomes on cosmetology she found everything she needed to know about the softening properties of lanolin and also how to extract it from the fleece and purify it, because in its raw state suint – sheep sweat – gives off an unbearable stench.

She remembered how she used to wrinkle her nose whenever she went along certain narrow streets in Kazimierz where the tanners dried animal hides before transforming them into leather. To get rid of the smell, she would have to add rosewater or lavender and then water, too, which was essential for moisturising.

Lanolin was the missing link that would change lead into gold. Or more precisely, the lumpy mixture in her kettle into a finished product. Just a bit more patience and she would be rich. She was already savouring her revenge. But it would require a lot more hard work if she was to afford all the costly ingredients she needed, particularly with the pittance that Mr Henderson paid her. Helena was in a hurry. The years were flying by.

Then she recalled the pleasant face of Lady Susanna, the wife of the aide-de-camp to the Governor of Queensland who she had met on the Prinz Regent Luitpold on her crossing to Australia. Helena had her address in the little white silk purse in which she put her most precious documents for safekeeping. She wrote to Lady Susanna straight away and received a reply by return of post. Of course Susanna remembered Helena very well. How could one forget such a charming person? She finished her letter with an invitation to Brisbane. ‘Stay as long as you like, my dear. You’ll see, you’ll love the town. Of course it’s a bit provincial, it’s not London or Melbourne, but you can find everything here.’

By now Helena was a master at packing her trunk, and she put together a few reasonably presentable outfits. Then she said farewell to her benefactor and boarded the train that would take her to a new life. It was a long journey, particularly for a young woman travelling on her own, but Helena was starting to get used to it. To reach Brisbane she would have to travel 1,200 miles through three colonies: Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

At last, after an endless week spent sleeping and staring at the landscape, Helena arrived, exhausted and dusty, at the central station in Brisbane.

But she was free, once again.

As she looked out from the hackney carriage taking her to her friend’s house, Helena was mesmerised by all there was to discover around her. Brisbane, the capital of Queensland, was a pleasant, modern city, with wide avenues flanked by low buildings, restaurants, theatres, clothing stores and a brand-new electric tramway. English and German colonists had built the city fifty years earlier on the banks of the river of the same name, notorious for its repeated flooding. The last and most terrible flood had been in 1893, and everyone had a vivid memory of it. Every time the Brisbane flooded they had to rebuild all the houses along the river banks.

Helena took in all the sights of the city like a person starved of beauty for too long. She gazed in awe at the monuments in the classical style: the cathedral, the parliament, and the old mill that had been built by convicts; the entire country had been created by the sweat of their brows. The first convicts had arrived in Sydney in 1788, transported from England on the eleven ships of the First Fleet. At a time when British prisons were overflowing, Australia had become the ideal place to get rid of the surplus criminals. For nearly a century, convicts had been put to work building the country, often in terrible conditions. Transportation finally ended in 1868. Altogether, 160,000 souls – men, women, and children – had been transported, many of them younger than fifteen.

Helena had felt like a prisoner for so long that she couldn’t help but sympathise with their story. In Coleraine if you went alone into a pub you were immediately taken for a loose woman. She wondered how she had managed to last there for so long.

On arrival at Susanna’s, after their initial effusive greetings, followed by a good cup of tea, she shared with her friend her sanitised version of the years spent in Victoria. Her motto might well have been, ‘Never complain, never explain’. Helena refused to be pitied. In her memoirs, she always gave the most basic outline of the more painful episodes in her life. She claimed her uncle was a big landowner, that she had had everything she needed but she refused to marry his brother, who had been making overtures to her. Helena must have smiled to herself whenever she delivered this particular lie, lowering her eyes like a terrified virgin. So it would have been awkward to stay on any longer, she explained. Besides, she was bored to death living the life of an idle young woman.

She said nothing about Bernhard’s general store, or Louis’s brutality, or Mr Henderson’s pharmacy and the hours of relentless labour, washing, drying, preparing, selling … The only time Helena told the truth was when she asked her friend to help her find a respectable job, because she had to earn a living. Touched by Helena’s story and guessing at the sordid truth she had left unspoken, Susanna promised she would help.

The few weeks Helena spent in Brisbane were like a dream. Torn between her admiration for Susanna and her friends and her awareness of her own humble background, Helena no longer knew what to think. Her makeshift outfits seemed wretched in comparison to the latest London fashions the Brisbane ladies wore. But the sun and wind had wrought irreparable damage to their fair complexions, and they went into raptures over Helena’s flawless skin, with its velvety texture and lack of wrinkles. These compliments restored her confidence in herself and, above all, her project. Soon she would be as wealthy as all these inaccessible women.

True to her promise, Susanna set about finding her friend a job and a place to live. By chance she heard that Lady Lamington, the wife of the Governor of Queensland, who was very popular for championing the cause of the Aboriginals, was looking for a reliable person to assist their nanny. The couple lived in Brisbane, but they had settled their two young children at their estate in Toowoomba, a hill resort located 80 miles from the town.

In Brisbane, the Lamingtons lived in the governor’s residence, an imposing colonial manor set in vast gardens. As the wife of the aide-de-camp, Susanna had no difficulty in obtaining an interview for her friend. The couple seemed quite taken with Helena. They found her pretty, well mannered and reserved. As for Helena, she was more intimidated than she would have liked by the luxury of the house and its many servants. As was her wont, she revealed the bare minimum about her past. But the Lamingtons were curious, and plied her with questions.

‘Seven sisters!’ exclaimed Lady Lamington, amused. ‘How can one have seven sisters?’

‘Do you speak German?’ asked Lord Lamington. ‘That’s very important. Oh really, you lived in Vienna? And French?’

‘In Poland, where my father has a vast estate, I had a governess from Paris,’ replied Helena without batting an eyelid. As the conversation progressed, touched by her hosts’ interest, she began to feel more at ease.

The Lamingtons would never check up on what she told them. Helena lied with such unflinching candour that she could not fail to inspire trust. Moreover, the young woman was instantly at ease with the two small children, who in no time would be following her everywhere, seeking refuge in her arms. Her vivacity and intelligence made her more than an ordinary nanny. In a matter of days the family had adopted her, and she was promoted from household servant to lady’s companion. To Helena this was every bit as humiliating, but the new position now gave her access to their world, and it opened a door to the aristocracy – even if it was by taking the back staircase.

Whenever the Lamingtons came to Toowoomba, Helena was invited to all the dinners and garden parties. Her initiation into the ways of high society began at the manor house. She learned the customs of the English aristocracy, something which would serve her well later in life in London, when she would keep company with the upper classes. For the time being she was observing, imitating, storing up impressions. How to behave at table, how to use an oyster fork, how to sip wine and smile when she had nothing to say, how to listen patiently while the gentlemen talked about hunting or the ladies about their household concerns.

Seen as a sort of charming, exotic creature in a country which had no lack of them, the young lady from Kraków was beginning to lose her rough edges. At the same time, she was able to continue her research on her cream.

All the states in Australia are richly endowed by nature, but Queensland’s flora is perhaps the most diverse. Its treasure trove of plants could be used as ingredients in ointments and beauty creams. When she had time away from the nursery, Helena would go gathering plants. In Coleraine, the bush had never called to her, but here, when she went exploring around the estate, a basket on her arm to collect her treasures, she felt inspired.

Back in her room she carefully examined each of her finds, looking up the plant’s properties and how it could be mixed with others to obtain the best effect. The library in the house was overflowing with books about botany, ancient tomes with plates, and encyclopedias, all of which added to her rudimentary knowledge of medicinal herbs.

The hours she spent poring over the old treatises were moments of pure happiness. She absorbed everything she read, memorising formulas. She learned that cosmetology was considered an art in its own right during antiquity, and formulas were recorded in the treatises of Galen, physician to the court of Marcus Aurelius, in those of Heraclitus of Taranto, and in those of Criton, who treated the wife of the emperor Trajan. The word came from the Greek cosmos, which means both adornment and order. Plato dismissed face paints and ointments because he was of the opinion that they created a foreign beauty, something unnatural, that he opposed to the beauty of the body, which could be shaped by gymnastics.

Another etymological theory suggests that the word comes from kemet, the black earth on the banks of the Nile which women used to protect themselves against the dry air and desert winds. The Egyptians were genuine chemists where beauty was concerned, capable of creating synthetic products that both embellished and healed the body. They made their favourite powders with ground gypsum perfumed with myrrh and frankincense. Other pomades included ochre to lighten the skin, olive oil, beeswax or rosewater. The use of toilet articles was common: ancient tweezers, combs, hairpins and mirrors have all been found, nestled inside pretty boxes.

In Athens and Rome, elegant women would soak in baths perfumed with aromatic oils obtained from pressed olives or bitter almonds and mixed with spices like cardamom and ginger, or essences of lily or iris. They applied white lead to their skins, unaware that it was poisonous, and made face masks with clay, starch, honey and asses’ milk.

In the Middle Ages, barley beer was prescribed to give colour to the face, and belladonna to add sparkle to the eyes. Broad bean flour and chickpeas were added to the composition of beauty masks. A woman would remove all the hair from her face and body with strips of hot wax, and combat her wrinkles with the help of pomades made of wax, almond oil, crocodile fat, and the blood of hedgehogs, bats, or snakes. But the Church was opposed to any sort of embellishment, which it viewed as an attempt to alter the work of the Creator, leading women to indulge in futile occupations rather than working for the salvation of their souls. For clerics, the pursuit of beauty was the work of the Devil.

Helena never wearied of learning and writing things down. She couldn’t get enough of the Marquise de Pompadour’s natural recipes, like honey beaten with fresh cream and tonic chervil water to refresh the face. In the seventeenth century the skin’s alabaster qualities were highly valued but difficult to preserve. One had to avoid the sun and the elements, but also the excesses of life at court, staying up late and eating rich food, all of which were devastating for the complexion. Ointments made from slug secretions and aromatic plants were applied at night to restore pallor and treat pimples.

This recently acquired knowledge merely confirmed what Helena had always suspected: the sun is bad for the skin and moisturising can repair many ill effects. She waited impatiently for the parcels of cream that her mother sent from Kraków every two or three months. The number of jars would vary depending on how much money Gitel had at her disposal. Helena would then invite all the women in the Lamington circle to test it, and her cream always met with the same success.

On 1 January 1901, a year after Helena’s arrival in Toowoomba, the Australian Commonwealth was proclaimed, a federation of the country’s six major colonies. On the twenty-second of that month, Queen Victoria died at the age of eighty. Her son Edward VII succeeded her, and several months later the first Australian Parliament in Melbourne was inaugurated.

The Lamingtons moved their children and servants back to Brisbane and were very busy with the coronation celebrations. In spite of herself, Helena was caught up in the whirlwind that would mark her real debut in society. Lady Lamington introduced her to all her friends as a beauty specialist. For shy Helena, who was still not at ease among the scornful, exclusive aristocracy, the only way to arouse people’s interest was to talk about her cream and her plans to manufacture it.

They all found this terribly amusing and encouraged her as if it were some charming eccentricity. The English adored people like Helena. She played at being light-hearted, but her mind remained alert. She must not allow herself to become intoxicated by a world she knew she could never belong to, no matter what she did.

The interlude came to a sudden end when Lady Lamington informed her of the family’s departure for Bombay. Over time the two women had developed a real respect for each other. But there was no room in Helena’s heart for regret. She had never seen her stint as a domestic servant – albeit a privileged one – as anything other than temporary. It was time for her to start teaching Australian women how to be beautiful.