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