Author’s interview with Litka Goldberg-Fasse, Helena Rubinstein’s second cousin, June 2009.
5 Alfred Silberfeld, genealogist.
6 O’Higgins, Madame, op. cit.
Helena, Pauline, Rosa, Regina, Stella, Ceska, Manka and Erna Rubinstein: the litany of their names sounds like a nursery rhyme. They were all pretty dark-haired young women with milky white skin. The eldest and youngest were ten years apart. The atmosphere was always lively in their huge, gas-lit house: they would fight over a ribbon, a scarf; they would prance in front of the mirror. The centre of this den of females was Gitel Rubinstein: model mother and housewife, who performed miracles to make sure her family had everything they needed. Given her husband’s erratic temperament, she was often lacking housekeeping money. Gitel sighed at the thought of her brothers and sisters who lived comfortably in Kraków, Vienna, Antwerp and beyond.
There were the things they had inherited: finely carved furniture, mirrors, silver chandeliers, linen in the wardrobes and an abundance of books. But they had to skimp on everything else – soap, bread, candles, servants. So many mouths to feed were a burden on their meagre income.
Eight daughters. Eight treasures. But also eight dowries.
Each one would have to be married, to a good match, if possible. This occupied Gitel’s thoughts as soon as each was born. She was a good woman, plump with childbirth, and she wore a wig styled in the chignon customary for Orthodox Jewish wives. She scrupulously observed all the commandments of her faith, but that did not mean neglecting appearances, which counted as much as the purity of one’s soul. She taught the little girls to sew their shirts and to knit and embroider, all things Gitel excelled at, and she made the patterns for their dresses and coats herself. Above all, she taught them the art of good grooming. She showed them how to take care of their hair, which they were very proud of. One hundred strokes of the brush every night before bedtime. That way the girls could practise their counting while brushing their hair. In the Rubinstein family, not even time was squandered.
Gitel was convinced that charm and inner beauty would enable her girls to win the love of the men who would marry them. It was out of the question for her to allow her girls to wear make-up. Only low women, or actresses like the great Helena Modjeska, were allowed to wear cosmetics. But it was still possible to protect one’s face from the redness caused by the wind and frost, and remain respectable at the same time. So Gitel brought out her secret weapon.
Face cream.
Gitel’s was made from plants, spermaceti, lanolin, essence of almond and extracts of Carpathian conifer bark. Every night, especially if it had been a bitingly cold day, her daughters would line up in their nightdresses according to height and impatiently lift their little faces like baby chicks seeking their food.
‘Mama, Mama! On me! And me! No, Pauline, get out of the way, it’s my turn!’
They liked to tell stories at home, and Gitel’s story was that the cream had been made originally for Helena Modjeska by the Lykusky brothers, two Hungarian chemists who were customers of Hertzel’s. Modjeska was the most famous actress in Poland. It was highly doubtful she ever visited the Rubinstein family, despite Helena’s claims to the contrary, but the elder Lykusky brother, Jacob, probably came to dinner quite often. And he brought with him a big jar containing the precious mixture, wrapped in newspaper.
Gitel would transfer it into little ceramic pots that she stored in a cool spot in the pantry with the jars of pickles and onions. Her sense of thrift ensured the cream would last until the next delivery. The handful of beauty principles she passed on to her daughters would change the life of the eldest. Before Helena left for Australia, Gitel gave her twelve little jars, like twelve little talismans, to protect her.
Helena’s position among her siblings shaped her personality significantly. ‘When I was very young I already had to help my mother control the rebellious little troop. When you’re the eldest of eight girls, you get into the habit of running things.’1 She didn’t altogether mind this, given her domineering character. She was both a tomboy and an accomplished young lady. A steamroller full of grace.
Control and charm – you could sum Helena up in those two words. At the age of twelve she was in charge of running the household. She became the ‘department head’, buying the food and linen ‘with a spontaneous taste for what was finest and sturdiest’. In all likelihood these precocious duties shaped her talents as an organiser. ‘I was the one who had to intervene and mediate between my younger sisters and our parents, which is the best training I could have had for managing my future employees.’2 But she also had to carry out the other household tasks that their solitary servant could not handle on her own: making the beds, putting the water on to boil, fetching wood for the stove, helping the little girls to wash, overseeing their homework and separating them when they began to fight.
‘Shh, shh, silence! Papa will punish you. And if he doesn’t, I swear that I will!’
And then there was the table to set and clear, and the dishes to put away, keeping the ones for meat and dairy separate. And there were the preparations for the Sabbath and all the religious festivals – Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Passover, Sukkot, Purim, Shavuot. She had to get out the tablecloths, iron them, polish the silverware, light the candles, lay out the prayer books, keep an eye on the dinner in the kitchen – the chicken broth where the kneidels or the gefilte fish were cooking – then knead the challah bread with her mother. Gitel’s sole ambition was for her daughters to become good balaboostas, accomplished homemakers. Because it wasn’t enough just to catch a man: you had to know how to keep him.
That was clearly not Helena’s ambition: she hated being stuck at home. From early adolescence she would hurry to join her father in the store to evade the chores her mother sought to burden her with. When she left school, she quickly found her place behind the counter. She would have preferred to continue her studies, but that was not an option.
Besides, she liked going to the store. She managed much better with the customers than her father did, she could count faster than he could, and she knew the inventory, orders and amounts owed or due down to the last zloty. Hertzel was better suited for reading holy texts than for commerce, so he appreciated her energy and skill with the bookkeeping. But he also got annoyed with her natural authoritarianism. They would have to marry her off quickly, but to do that they needed a dowry, and Hertzel never managed to put aside even the tiniest amount – not for Helena or any of the other sisters. The mere thought of it made him sigh. Then he would return his attention to his old books, submitting to the will of the Almighty, who was bound to help him sooner or later.
Helena was frequently irritated by her father’s feebleness. Books, nothing but books … what was the point of all that studying if he couldn’t feed his family? On two occasions she got him out of a tight spot. The first time, she went to bargain over the purchase of 20 litres of kerosene from a supplier who lived in Lemberg, the capital of Galicia. Her father had been stuck in bed with a bad back since the day before, and Gitel had far too much to do at home to go in his place.
Hertzel could
