by Clare Mulley
The Goldfeders were not without their own conceits and connections, however, mostly among rich merchant bankers and industrialists. Christine would later laugh that while her Skarbek cousins had names reminiscent of the marble plaques adorning Warsaw’s churches, the Goldfeder relatives were even better known, displayed as they were among the shop signs in Warsaw’s most fashionable streets. The Goldfeder bank itself was a beautiful three-storey building, with French windows on the upper floors leading to balconies overlooking the broad streets in the centre of the city.* But the Goldfeders also had respectably cultured connections. Stefania had two younger brothers. One married the sister of André Citroën, the motor magnate; the other became the Polish honorary consul for Japan. Their mother, Roza Goldfeder, the unchallenged matriarch of the family, lived in considerable style between her houses in Warsaw and the country – a style that Stefania was keen to maintain. Stefania’s furs and dresses were imported from Paul Poiret in Paris, her pleated negligees from Mario Fortuny in Venice. Guerlain supplied her perfume, as they had Queen Victoria’s. Her eau de toilette came from Lubin, historic Paris perfumiers to the Empress Josephine, and to supplement her heirlooms, Stefania’s jewels were created for her by Bulgari in Rome. All of this show Jerzy Skarbek understood. He too liked the fine things in life: his Bunting riding boots, ‘for the hunt, polo and the park’, were imported from London and Paris, and his bay rum hair tonic came from Vienna. Together Jerzy and Stefania toured Europe with a large retinue of servants, collecting small business cards and paying large bills.
However, beyond their love of luxury and deep respect for social status, the newly-weds had little in common. Not only was Stefania Jewish, she was also intelligent and well educated, having been immersed in European culture, and she was essentially kind-hearted and ‘much respected and liked by everyone’.9 One story has her arranging for the daughter of the family’s cook to have a prosthetic leg fitted after discovering that the girl had been hidden away for fear that her parents might lose their jobs. She then employed the girl for many years. Once the newly-weds had returned to Poland, Stefania yearned for the peace in which to read literature and poetry, and the time to listen to music. She did not mind the country-house hunts and shooting parties, or even Jerzy’s visits to the casino, but she could not find lasting happiness with a husband who fundamentally did not respect her, and who refused to curb his womanizing upon marriage. But, so long as appearances were maintained and funds were available, Jerzy saw no reason to change his lifestyle to suit anyone other than himself.
Stefania, at least, was fulfilling her side of the marriage bargain. Having restored the family fortune, in 1900 she completed her duties by producing a Skarbek heir. But Jerzy was disappointed in his son, Andrzej, who seemed to lack his own robust constitution and lust for life. Perhaps most damningly, Andrzej was not keen on riding, and would shelter behind his mother’s skirts at the very sound of approaching horses; whether it was the arrival of the horse or the rider that caused him most anxiety is not recorded. It would be another eight years before Stefania safely delivered Christine. Although slight enough to cause concern at her birth, and staying slender as she grew, Christine soon proved herself to be tough and strong-willed and was drawn at once to her powerful, charismatic father. Jerzy meanwhile liked to think that Christine, unlike his son, had inherited his Skarbek good looks. Delighted to see his reflection in his daughter, he gave her his almost exclusive affection, calling her his ‘Happiness’ and his ‘Star’.
At the beginning of 1912, when Christine was three, Jerzy bought another manor house, this time at Trzepnica in the Łódź uplands whose rivers run into the Vistula. As Stefania was named joint owner in the deeds it is likely that the 200,000 roubles it took to buy the estate from a famous Polish opera singer came from the Goldfeder fortune. The Trzepnica house followed the traditional style, built in rendered brick, long and low, and given distinction by a colonnaded portico, under which the family’s dogs would greet arriving guests, ‘their eager paws leaving sandy imprints on their clothes’.10
The formal family rooms, with their polished parquet floors, ornate stucco ceilings and French windows, were heated by a huge and beautifully painted porcelain wood-burning stove. Family portraits in gilded frames, some adorned with heraldic coronets, covered the walls. It was all very fine, but Christine rarely gazed into her ancestors’ eyes or sat in the Biedermeier chairs, and she learnt early on not to risk setting even a vase of flowers on the rosewood-inlaid table from Zelazowa Wola, upon which her great-grandfather was said to have held the infant Chopin to be baptized. These rooms, filled in summer with a soft green light filtered through the maples beyond the windows, and in winter with ‘the shadowless reflection of snow on the lawn’, were Stefania’s sanctuary, and held little appeal for her energetic daughter.11 More fun were the annexes for guests, tutors and nurses, and the numerous kitchens and larders that kept the estate pretty much self-sufficient.
The house was surrounded by acres of beautiful gardens, the more formal lawns bordered by roses, flowering cherries, maples, and ancient oaks so large that four men clasping hands could not reach around them. Beyond, a meadow led to a series of paddocks, woods and farm fields, all with their own outbuildings, and all belonging to the manor. In fact the estate was so large that it contained three small villages: Trzepnica, Jelica, and, two kilometres away, Bęczkowice, the steeple of whose parish church could be seen, rising above the flat horizon, from the porch of the house.
For a few years Jerzy revelled in the role of local landowner, holding grand house parties, hunts, dinners and receptions for his two brothers and his sister, his distant but wealthy Skarbek cousins from Lwów, and his society friends. He would show Christine off at these occasions, at first proudly lifting his pretty dark-haired daughter high to the ceiling, or standing her on a table and asking her to sing to them. Later he enjoyed watching his guests choke back their often coarse vocabulary to fit the sudden presence of the young lady now curtsying before them, her almond-shaped eyes demurely lowered but still taking it all in. Their ‘cogs were visibly screeching’, Christine would later laugh.12
Despite such distractions, Jerzy quickly grew bored with his country seclusion, and was already tired of his socially questionable wife. Much as he loved his fiery young daughter, even Christine did not suffice to keep him home for long, and his visits to friends’ estates and to Warsaw were ever extended. Even there he could not entirely disassociate himself from his wife. A scurrilous song popular in Warsaw at the time ran: ‘Listen Count and take heed, not to step into debt. It may land you in a stew, having as a wife, the daughter of a Jew.’13 His response was to drink hard, and laugh harder. As a child Christine could never understand why people would laugh at her father’s jokes recalling family stories about Chopin and causing hilarity with his imitations of Polish Jews speaking Polish, and yet when her grandparents spoke with the same accent it wasn’t funny. And when his friends praised Jerzy as a master at ‘little Jewish jokes’, he would only reply darkly that he had paid dearly for the knowledge. Stefania responded by retreating increasingly to the sanctuary of her upstairs room, laid low with migraines.
Too young to understand the dynamic between her parents, Christine felt more and more irritated, and slightly embarrassed, by her mother and her constant indisposition. Her father, conversely, seemed strong, handsome and obviously wonderful. Widely adored but unconstrained by those around him, delighting in life and yet wearing it lightly, to Christine her father embodied the romantic, courageous and fiercely independent spirit of Poland. Spending time with Jerzy was exciting and challenging and yet, unlike Stefania, he never had quite enough time for his daughter. Christine was already developing deeply divided feelings towards her parents, and forming a complex picture of love, loyalty and courage.
When Jerzy was at Trzepnica, Christine led a charmed, and very privileged, childhood, basking in her father’s attention, and supported behind the scenes by her mother’s love and money.
Bright, adventurous and supremely self-confident, she had quickly eclipsed the older but more gentle Andrzej in Jerzy’s affections, and as a child she was indulged with every opportunity and freedom. In summer she roamed the estate from sunrise until dusk, spending hours trying to spot deer or buck, searching for wild strawberries or climbing the great oaks. In winter she would be ferried between the snow-covered trees in a sledge drawn by horses straining at their bits, the coachmen holding the reins taut and standing erect, or she would seek out warmth and stories in the stables or servants’ quarters. Sometimes, for instance after the leatherworkers’ annual call to carry out repairs to the harnesses, she might even receive a present, such as a whip or a riding crop.
Ignoring Stefania’s protests, Jerzy mounted Christine on a pony almost before she could walk, teaching her to ride confidently astride a horse like a man. She also learnt to hold a gun, use a knife, and tend to the estate animals. Alike in many ways, father and daughter loved nature, above all sharing a passion for dogs and horses, with whom they seemed to have a deep natural connection. Christine was rarely without a hound at her heels, even – to her mother’s chagrin – inside the house.
The first races Christine watched were dachshund ‘steeplechases’, set up among the topiary hedges on her aunt’s sweeping lawns. But Jerzy was an enthusiastic horse-breeder whose colts ran on Warsaw’s racetracks, and it was not long before Christine was racing first ponies, then her saddle-mare, Liza. She loved pleasing her father with each new achievement and soon learned to take pride in them herself. At one house party Jerzy walked his guests over the field to the stables, only to find that his fierce black stallion, Satan, who had thrown his last rider and broken the man’s legs, was missing. The groom feared the horse must have been stolen, but after a while they noticed that Christine was missing too. Aged only twelve, she had saddled up the forbidden horse and was finally seen riding him back. Clearly, for Christine, there were already worse things than the risk of serious injury, such as being bored or perhaps being ignored. Later she would ride competitively with such success that one of Jerzy’s younger friends, Colonel Bobinski, was reduced to unscrupulous tricks like distracting her horse by bringing out its stable-mate, to try to protect his bets. Christine just laughed at him. When she came in first her father would tell her not to take credit for her horse’s victory, from which she understood that he was proud of her, but that she should also wear her pleasure as lightly as she took her knocks.
Christine always loved the exhilaration of competition, but she was equally happy riding out to inspect the Trzepnica fields with her father, and occasionally with her brother. She had quickly realized that with charm she could coax whatever she wanted from people. Animals responded to her. Land demanded greater respect. Like her father, she grew up to believe herself to be the lord, and protector, of all she surveyed. But it was still the stables where she felt most at ease. One afternoon in 1919 she showed off the Skarbek stud to the young son of one of her father’s friends, whom she had been left to entertain while the adults talked horses, business and politics. It was then, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, that a precocious eleven-year-old Christine first met Andrzej Kowerski, a boy of seven, who had also been riding since the age of three. Although not particularly notable at the time, it was a meeting that they would later recall quite differently: she with some amusement, he with a sense of the prophetic.
Two million Polish troops had fought with the various armies of their three occupying powers in the First World War, sometimes in opposing forces. Over half a million died. By then in his forties, Jerzy Skarbek was too old to have been called up, but he celebrated in style as the Russians were finally driven out of Warsaw in 1915, when Christine was seven years old, and three years later when the defeated Germans were also forced to withdraw. But although the capital was quickly festooned in red and white flags, and Poland was a nation once more, the end of the Great War did not mean the end of the conflict.
In the winter of 1919 the Bolsheviks prepared to export their revolution through Poland to Germany. By August the following year, the Red Army had reached Warsaw’s defences and defeat seemed inevitable. But the Russian front collapsed in the face of a daring assault led by the country’s newly appointed regent, Józef Piłsudski. In the 1880s Piłsudski had spent five years in Siberia supplying Lenin’s brother with explosives to throw at the tsar, but he wasn’t about to support Communism above the independence of his own nation. His brilliant attack on the Red Army outside Warsaw, which became known as the ‘Miracle at the Vistula’, crippled the Russian forces and brought an unexpected and decisive Polish victory. In Lenin’s own words, the Bolsheviks ‘suffered an enormous defeat’ which effectively ended Soviet hopes for a cascade of Communist revolutions in Poland, Germany and other countries economically devastated by the First World War. Piłsudski was, in the words of one Polish historian, ‘a national hero, embalmed in the legend of a life of struggle for the freedom of Poland, embodying rebellion as well as authority’.14 This celebration of the Marshal, as he became known, and all he stood for, made a deep impression on Christine.
Despite the inevitable years of political instability and economic depression that followed as war-torn Poland rebuilt itself as a cohesive nation, Warsaw quickly became one of the liveliest cities in Europe. Music, film and theatre flourished. The aristocracy might have lost many of their ranks and much of their property, but in Warsaw they continued to live in high style, Jerzy among them. One warm evening in 1920, he was distracted from a production of Tosca by the stench emanating from a soldier in some nearby seats. This young man was still in his uniform, with the heavy leather boots that were worn not with socks but strips of cloth, or webbing, wound round the feet. On his chest he wore the Virtuti Militari, Poland’s highest military honour. Noticing that all the ladies nearby were turning their heads and covering their noses, Jerzy stood up and announced that the smell of a national hero was a perfume. He then invited the soldier to join him for vodka after the performance. The young man’s name was Stanisław Rudziejewski and, only eight years older than Christine, he was soon a firm favourite of both father and daughter, and a regular at the Warsaw races and Trzepnica house parties. He also became an early confidant of Christine’s, and someone to whom she would later turn in one of her greatest moments of need.15
Jerzy Skarbek was not known for his piety, so when, in 1920, he took Christine, then aged twelve, to Częstochowa at Jasna Gora, the Polish equivalent of Lourdes, it was as much a statement of patriotism as a journey of pilgrimage. Like thousands of others, Jerzy was giving thanks for the ‘Miracle at the Vistula’. Whatever his motives, on arrival father and daughter did what every pilgrim did: offered a bow to the icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa and a nod to the priest, who then gave Christine a medal of the Madonna, believed to protect worthy bearers from misfortune. The famous Black Madonna of Częstochowa, ‘Queen and Protector of Poland’, was brought to Poland from Jerusalem in 1382. According to legend, when it was stolen by Hussite plunderers just fifty years later, the horse carrying the icon refused to move. One of the thieves threw the painting to the ground, slashing it with his sword until it bled, whereupon he died in agony on the ground beside the bleeding image. Terrified, the other Hussites retreated. Christine treasured the medal, revealing perhaps a faith, or an inner vulnerability, that she otherwise chose to keep well hidden.
In 1921 Poland signed a peace treaty with Russia and the Ukraine, defining her eastern boundaries. Anticipating a period of stability, Jerzy and Stefania sent Christine hundreds of miles away to a well-known convent boarding school in Jazłowiec, a town that had been won for Poland with, it was believed, the help of the Blessed Virgin, after a long and bloody battle between Poland and the Ukraine.* Christine was fourteen, but as she was starting school two years later than most of her peers she was put into a class of twelve-year-olds. It was an inauspicious start. She was clever. She quickly excelled in French, the language in which the nuns took cl
asses and corresponded with parents, and which well-educated Poles spoke amongst themselves when hoping to prevent their children from eavesdropping. She also enjoyed Latin, maths, drawing and singing, and was often top of her class in history, geography, nature studies and sport – all subjects that would stand her in good stead later in life. However, not used to having to toe the line, follow routines, or take instruction, Christine was naturally indisciplined, fractious and often bored. The school did not cater for this type of clever but ‘difficult’ child.
Established for the daughters of the Polish aristocracy, while their brothers were tutored at home or educated at boarding schools, lycées or militaristic boys’ academies, the school aimed to turn out young women who were the embodiment of discipline and decorum. The girls were unquestioning thoroughbreds, privileged from birth and socially conservative, and although they formed a close-knit group, there was a clear hierarchy. Christine did not at first understand why, but it quickly grew obvious that she did not entirely fit in: something about her was embarrassing. The truth was that the girls of the ‘best’ families looked down on her for having a Jewish mother. However, it was also the case that few spirited girls were happy at the school. One of Christine’s friends was expelled for imitating a dog barking during lessons, another first for standing on a pudding to prove it was inedible, and then refusing to wear her modesty-saving nightdress while having her bath.16 A third was removed for climbing the trees in the grounds – not an offence in itself, but made so when done without knickers.
