Now aged fifteen, Tamara was also impatient for adult love. One night she was invited with her aunt to a costume ball, at which she planned to create a stir by dressing herself up as a peasant girl and making her entrance with a pair of live geese walking at her heels. As a social strategy, this proved to be a mortifying miscalculation. Alarmed by the crowds and by the highly polished floor of the ballroom, the two geese started flapping and squawking in noisy distress, and for a few stricken seconds Tamara felt the whole ballroom laughing at her.
Yet even in the middle of this humiliation she had sufficient clarity to register the presence of an extraordinarily handsome man in the room. He was tall and slim-hipped, his chiselled Slavic features given an almost insolent glamour by dark, slicked-back hair. Tamara observed the number of women hovering around him, and it was competitiveness as well as lust that made her decide that one day she would have him: ‘Right away I fell in love with him because he was so good looking. And because he was alone with ten women around him.’5
Within the small upper-class community of St Petersburg it was easy for Tamara to discover the identity of her future husband. He was Tadeusz Julian Junosza Lempicki, a twenty-two-year-old lawyer and son of a wealthy Polish family. He was also rumoured to be a womanizer, and while his worldliness and beauty ought to have overwhelmed a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, Tamara was already wedded to the idea of him, and willing to wait.
The next time she was in St Petersburg, she tracked Tadeusz down at the Mariinsky, and approached him with an invitation to tea at her Aunt Stefa’s – she was, she reminded him boldly, the girl with ‘two geese as my friends’.6 It was simply a marker, but the following year she was able to lay siege to him in earnest when her aunt and uncle invited her to come and live with them full time.
Having no daughters of her own, Stefa had taken a fancy to Tamara. It amused her to have a seventeen-year-old girl in the house to dress up and spoil, and in anticipation of this new arrangement she had already taken Tamara to Paris to buy a wardrobe for the new season. Aunt Stefa proved to be a liberal as well as generous guardian during that visit, and Tamara was permitted to explore much of the city on her own. As she’d walked the cobbled streets of Montmartre, hearing snatches of the blaring music they called ragtime, and sat in a café on Saint-Germain, awkwardly smoking her first cigarettes, Tamara felt she was becoming a woman at last. She was ready to make good her claim on Tadeusz.
Back in St Petersburg, as she accompanied Stefa on her social rounds, Tamara studied the way other women looked and behaved. She was intrigued by the ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska who lived in one of the city’s finest private mansions, and possessed an astonishingly showy collection of jewellery that, as Stefa intimated, had come to her through her many ‘protectors’, among them two grand dukes and the young Nicholas Romanov, before he married and became Tsar.
Just as Diana’s imagination had been jolted by the spectacle of Luisa Casarti, Tamara saw in Kschessinska some blueprint for her own half-formed fantasies of a life that could be bigger and more splendid than a conventional marriage. As yet she had no idea how that life might be attained; she was determined only that it would be magnificent and that it would involve having Tadeusz by her side.
Inserting herself into her beloved’s world was easier than she had dared hope. Aristocratic Poles formed a small, elite group within St Petersburg society, and several of Tadeusz’s circle were known to the Stifters. Tamara conspired ways of seeing him several times a week, taking afternoon coffee with him and his friends in one of the fashionable cafés along the Nevsky Prospect, or drinking in the Stray Dog Café, where writers gathered, and where Tadeusz liked to amuse himself by listening to firebrand ideologues as they debated socialism and art. In the evenings there were concerts, parties and balls, and always Tamara stayed as close as she could to Tadeusz’s side, waiting for the moment when he would ask her to dance.
So obsessive was her pursuit that when war was declared in the summer of 1914, the news barely registered. Whilst her brother Stanzi was preparing to leave Moscow for the Front, Tadeusz, the only man she cared about, was debarred from military service (or so he claimed) by a slight defect in his foot. Not only was her beloved free from danger, but he was at last beginning to pay her special attention, visiting her at home, singling her out at parties, even intimating marriage. Money had recently become a pressing issue for Tadeusz, as his formerly sober father had begun squandering the Lempicki capital on women and drink. He had little desire to put his legal qualifications to more than dilatory use, and as he cast around for other options, Tamara seemed to be one of the best. It was hard not to suppose that her banker uncle had deep and generous pockets, and she herself had definite potential. The adoring schoolgirl he’d first met was fast maturing into an attractive woman; she was lively and intelligent, she dressed well, and her enthusiasm for life carried a definite promise of sensuality.
But if Tamara quivered with hope over Tadeusz’s new attentiveness, her uncle and aunt viewed him less favourably. They knew about his father’s slide into dissipation and were concerned it might be a family trait. Even more worrying to them was Tadeusz’s failure to settle down to responsible employment. His only serious interests appeared to revolve around a group of rich young men in the city who were setting themselves up as defenders of the Imperial order, ranging themselves against the growing threat of revolution.
The Romanovs’ corrupt and antiquated rule had long been unpopular, and during the last decade St Petersburg* had been gripped by intensifying spasms of political unrest. After the mass casualties of Bloody Sunday, in 1905, when the army had shot indiscriminately at a peacefully demonstrating crowd, the city had witnessed more violent outbreaks of militancy. The war had done little to unify the people: in fact as Russia suffered a series of grave setbacks, including the loss of Poland and part of Lithuania to the Germans, the Tsar’s regime grew significantly weaker. 1915 was a year of strikes and protests and Tadeusz hinted, boastfully and probably untruthfully, that he’d been enlisted by the Tsar’s secret police as a counter-revolutionary spy. Tamara was riveted by his claims, but they made Tadeusz even less desirable in the eyes of the Stifters. Gently they began to urge their niece to see less of him, while in private they began to discuss whether the city was not in fact too dangerous and whether they should take her away from Petrograd altogether.
Tamara was stubborn, though, her relatives’ opposition only steeling her determination to possess her beloved, and because he was still hesitating on the brink of a marriage proposal she elected to force the issue. It’s not clear exactly when she and Tadeusz became lovers, but in the spring of 1916, when Tamara proceeded triumphantly up the aisle, she was already pregnant.
It was a fairy-tale wedding. Tamara glided through a chapel packed with titled nobility and foreign dignitaries; the train of her dress, or so she claimed, stretched all the way from the altar to the door, and at first the fairy tale extended to her married life. Tadeusz acquiesced gracefully to his capture: Tamara’s dowry allowed them to take an apartment on Zhukovsky Street, one of the city’s most fashionable addresses, and even the birth of Marie Christine, nicknamed Kizette, in September 1916 failed to interfere with their married life.
As soon as was decent and practical, Tamara packed their baby daughter off to live with Malvina in Moscow, while she remained happily occupied with Tadeusz. Life was still good in Petrograd, despite the war and the worsening political situation. The theatres were full; the champagne flowed; women wore their Parisian dresses and diamonds; and the city buzzed. The latest gathering point for the smart young set to which the Lempicki belonged was the Comedians Hall, a vast pleasure palace, whose several dining rooms were designed in the style of a Montmartre bistro or Venetian palazzo and whose nightly programmes of entertainment featured satirical comedians, Futurist-designed stage tableaux and bands playing the latest American songs.
All these pleasures were far more absorbing to Tamara than bad news from the battl
e front or the plummeting value of the rouble. She didn’t pay much attention to the food and fuel shortages that affected most of Russia as the country’s archaic distribution systems collapsed, nor did she register that barely a mile from her pampered world, hungry children were scavenging in the streets. However, by the spring of 1917 even she was forced to take notice. A succession of strikes and mass defections from the army had finally forced the Tsar’s abdication, with power now uneasily divided between the new Provisional Government and the left-wing Petrograd Soviet. As panic flared among Tamara’s friends and neighbours, many began packing up to leave. Not only was their city teetering on the brink of anarchy, but everyone feared the power of the revolutionary Bolshevik party, led by the exiled Vladimir Lenin and waiting in the wings of Russian politics.
By now Maurice Stifter had transferred as much money as he could to foreign holdings and he and Stefa were preparing to travel to Denmark, where Malvina, Kizette and Adrienne were already heading. Urgently they begged Tamara to join them, but even though she could see the dangers around her, she preferred to listen to the confident pronouncements made by her husband and his friends, who insisted that after a short sharp struggle, the counter-revolutionaries – the Whites – would restore the Tsar to his throne. Tadeusz’s posturing heroics promised Tamara the drama she’d always craved: in her eyes she was already standing by his side as he fought for the Imperial cause. By the time she was forced to accept the true peril of her situation, there was hardly anyone left in the city to help her.
All through the summer the balance of power wavered: and by October, Lenin and his Bolshevik party were able to take control of the city, quelling opposition with their secret police force, the All Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Struggle Against Sabotage and Counter Revolution. The Cheka, as they became known to a terrified city, targeted anyone in the city with right-wing connections, Tsarist sympathies or visible wealth, and not surprisingly, Tadeusz was on their hit list. When they came for him, however, he seems to have been unprepared. According to Tamara, the two of them were making love when the door of their apartment was kicked open and she had to grab a sheet to cover herself as men in black leather overcoats swarmed into their bedroom.
Immediately they began ransacking the place for incriminating papers, and even though none were found, Tadeusz was ordered to dress, and marched out of the building at gunpoint to a waiting car. Tamara ran out, too, begging piteously for her husband’s release, but a blow from one of the men sent her sprawling, half unconscious, onto a bank of hard snow. By the time she recovered her senses Tadeusz was already being driven away; and to her panic and disgust she realized that she had narrowly missed being pitched onto the remains of a dead horse. Animal carcasses were a common sight in the city: dogs and horses that could no longer be fed by their impoverished owners were routinely abandoned on the street, where their emaciated bodies were butchered for remaining scraps of flesh. Tamara had always averted her eyes from them, but now the ravaged mess beside her on the snow seemed to symbolize her own pitiful situation.
Naive and blind as Tamara had been, however, she was brave in the days that followed. She knew the Cheka might return for her – wives who remained loyal to their counter-revolutionary husbands were also in danger of incarceration. Even if she managed to evade arrest, she was still alone in a city where survival was becoming more precarious by the day. Her servants had run away; she didn’t know how to obtain food and coal, she didn’t even know how long she could stay in her own apartment, given the campaign of targeted evictions already underway.
Her natural impulse might have been to flee Russia and join her family in Copenhagen, yet she was determined to find help for Tadeusz first. There were still foreign diplomats based in the city, several of whom she knew personally, and as she began doing the rounds of the embassies in Millionnaya Street she was, initially, hopeful of success. However, all those men who had once been so gallant and eager now had nothing to offer. Their own situation was uncertain, given that Lenin had not guaranteed to honour Russia’s former diplomatic allegiances; and there was only one, the Swedish consul, who didn’t turn her away.
He had been a guest at her wedding the previous year, so Tamara had expected a sympathetic hearing at the very least. His treatment of her, however, turned out to be humiliating, even sadistic. The consul was eating his dinner when she was shown in to see him, a rich succulent meal, which indicated that some people at least were protected from the city’s food shortages. Half starved herself, the meaty aromas in the room made Tamara nauseous, yet the consul ignored her distress and implacably told her to sit and eat with him so that he could hear the details of her case. Just as implacably, he made it clear that if he became involved, he would expect certain sexual favours in return.
When Tamara told this story she claimed that as soon as she left the embassy she had vomited violently in the street: a reaction to the consul’s food as well as to the offensive terms of his offer. Yet wretched as she was, the consul had convinced her to trust him, and grimly she accepted his help. He’d been able to reassure her that Tadeusz was almost certainly still alive. Lenin was trying to curtail the bloodletting, and as yet very few death sentences had been passed. He stood a good chance of securing Tadeusz’s release, too, as long as nothing more serious could be proved against him than running with the wrong crowd. But the consul also persuaded Tamara of the danger she was in, and of the little she could do to help Tadeusz by remaining in the city. He offered to organize a forged Swedish passport, advised her to pack just a few of her most valuable possessions, and promised to travel with her on the slow train to the border with Finland and the West.
Tamara would later recall that journey through a sequence of searing images. The hammer and sickle that was newly emblazoned on the train, in place of the Tsar’s insignia. The heavy tread of the Red Army soldiers as they walked through the carriage to check everybody’s papers. Her own dizzy stumble as she walked across the narrow footbridge that took her into the safety of Finland. The night she spent with the consul in the border hotel, as the final instalment of her payment.
What was done was done, however, and by the time Tamara had journeyed by boat to Copenhagen to be reunited with her family, she was almost ready to boast of her courage and her adventures. Thanks to her uncle’s prudence the whole family were installed in a pleasant hotel, and Tamara could feel her old optimism stirring as she waited for news of Tadeusz and the political developments in Russia.
The Stifters still assumed, as did most of the other refugees in Copenhagen, that the revolution would be short lived. In response to Lenin’s tactical withdrawal from the war, the Allies had begun an invasion across Russian borders, which was expected to restore the Tsar. Yet in the months that followed, the Bolshevik’s own control of Russia spread and reluctantly Maurice Stifter was forced to make alternative plans. Settling in Warsaw, the family’s other home, was no longer an option given how politically fraught that city had also become.* Although they spent a short time there, during which they were finally joined by Tadeusz, Maurice judged that they would only be safe if they travelled as far as Paris. In the spring of 1918 he arranged for the family to make the 850-mile journey in separate groups, in order to minimize the attention they might attract (as Poles with Russian residency both their national status and their war affiliations were in doubt). By early summer, they had all arrived safely, but it was then that news came through of the Tsar’s assassination. The family’s exile now seemed to be permanent.
* * *
Tamara may have exaggerated her heroism in the retelling of her wartime adventures, but she had discovered a new and resilient independence in herself, and a less deferential attitude towards her husband. Even in Copenhagen, where she had been genuinely anxious for Tadeusz’s safety, she had grown tired with the long wait, and been happy to distract herself with another man. By a seemingly odd coincidence, the consul from the Siamese embassy in Petrograd had appeared at the Stifters�
� hotel. He, too, had been a guest at Tamara’s wedding, but in contrast to his Swedish colleague, the consul’s physical attentions were very welcome to her. Tamara willingly entered into a brief affair with him – relishing his elegance and his worldly company she even accompanied him on a short diplomatic mission to London and Paris.
Tamara had a very clear sense of what was owing to her – it had been bred into her since she was a child – and given the traumas of her recent ordeal, she felt she deserved nothing less than the comforts this pleasing man could offer. She didn’t even feel much remorse when Tadeusz finally arrived in Warsaw, haggard from weeks in prison. She was relieved that he had escaped, of course, and was ready to devote herself to being his wife, but the man who’d come back to her was not the husband she had known. Incarceration had broken his spirit and all he could talk about was his own humiliation and pain, showing irksomely little interest in anything his wife might have suffered.
It was a mystery to Tamara how her confident playboy of a husband could become so unattractively mired in depression. She missed the man she had married, and, because she had so little talent for empathy, his self-pity struck her as unworthy. She began to develop a germ of contempt for him and, even in Paris, where she too began to experience depression, she felt no twinge of sympathetic recognition for his suffering. It was one reason why, when Tamara found the resolve to turn her life around, she did so entirely on her own terms and without bothering to consult Tadeusz. Once she had decided to become a professional painter she immersed herself completely in the project, certain that from now on her own ambitions would take precedence over his.
Such ruthless focus would of course prove very useful to Tamara over the next few years as she forged ahead with her career. But she was also fortunate to be situated in Paris, where the art world was comparatively sympathetic to women of ambition like herself. Even though most of the French academies had only recently opened their doors to mixed students, and many female painters depended on the mentoring and support of men*, there were a significant number who had achieved highly visible success. Among them were Suzanne Valadon, who became the first woman elected to the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1894; and the Fauvist Emilie Charmy – of whom it was always said that she looked like a woman but painted like a man.
Flappers: Six Women of a Dangerous Generation Page 10