THE long life of Tamara Tailbot Rice (1904-1993) extended from Tsarist Russia to Thatcherite England, but the ups and downs of 20th century despotism and the exigencies of politics in general were evidently of only marginal interest to the author of these charmingly light reminiscences of social privilege and cultural ardour.
Although, in her words, she "witnessed the death throes of the Age of Reason and the birth pangs of the Age of the Atom, the Computer and the Chip", and though she could not dissociate herself from the outside world, she decided to write seldom about her "inner self" the quotation marks seem to protect her privacy. This is an autobiographical work with few glimpses of the autobiographer and none of her three children.
Her daughter Elizabeth, a military historian, provides a framework of biographical and historical information with commendable diligence and inherited self abnegation. The linking passages and copious footnotes give the book a solid factual basis that would be lacking without them. Tamara, as she was known to a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, has been given freedom to indulge in luxurious nostalgia, recalling houses, restaurants, people and art that she loved.
She was born in St Petersburg, the apparently adored only daughter of a wealthy merchant, at a time when elite Petersburgians were able to live with dazzling extravagance, in town mansions and on large country estates. The Abelson family were Jewish. Tamara, however, according to Elizabeth, celebrated Christian festivals, and "in later life . . . was a non believer". But from the beginning she was a devout believer in servants.
"The servants who meant most to me were Ilya, our major domo an even keener stamp collector than Ivan, our superlative chef our fat, tearful and earnest head laundress, Polish Tonya notice that head laundress, and my own maid, gay Nastya. Minna mother's Lettish lady's maid, was bad tempered and as quick with her tongue as she was neat with her hands.
"My beloved nurse, Anna," Tamara goes on, "was the only member of the household who never found fault with me From early childhood until the outbreak of the first World War 1 was provided with three resident governesses, one French, one German and one English. Each took it in turn to look after me from breakfast time to bedtime although it was the English governess who had daily care of me, getting me up, putting me to bed and taking me for walks."
The family entertained lavishly. For important banquets fruit and flowers were ordered from the south of France. Tamara and her brother presided over luncheon parties exclusively for children, as many as 40 of them at a time.
"Our meal," she recalls, was served by our servants' older children. Ivan took as much trouble in producing small spun sugar centre pieces for my tables as he did over the larger ones required for my parents banquets. Following the custom in force at the Congress of Vienna, many of the decorations were architectural. Unlike our elders, without hesitation we devoured them at the end of the meal.
"My luncheon parties were followed by games . . . They ended with dances, chiefly the waltz, minuet and gavotte, as well as the Georgian lesghinka and the Polish mazurka."
The Abelsons travelled to western Europe in private railway cars for their long summer holidays, to fashionable resorts such as Venice, Marienbad and Biarritz. Tamara's coats and shoes were custom made in London, while her mother's underwear (of course) was made for her in Paris. A Parisian couturier made miniature replicas of Mme Abelson's dresses to fit Tamara's favourite doll.
The early memoirs make it easy to understand the inevitability of the revolution which sent many of the wealthier white Russians the lucky survivors into exile.
Being polyglottal and, as photographs show, a strong and confident young aristocrat, Tamara adapted remarkably well to the life of a cosmopolitan emigre even with very few servants. As one of the first "undergraduettes", as they were called at Oxford in the early 1920s, she managed with only a modest allowance to enjoy a lively social life.
She sympathised with Evelyn Waugh, who was also hard up and socially ambitious, and forgave him his drunkenness, which has already been documented in many other books. When he visited Tamara in Paris, her mother took pity on the poor lad and darned the threadbare knees of his mauve plus fours. When he became deaf in later years, Tamara gave him two elegant, antique ear trumpets.
W.B. Yeats impressed her at Oxford, not because she got to know him she didn't but because, on the briefest acquaintance, he allowed her to visit his house any afternoon she wanted to use his bathroom.
She enjoyed she university's tutorial system, which reminded her of one to one instruction in Russia, except that a Pembroke philosopher, R.G. Collingwood, though "aloof" and "incisive", had the prankish habit of interrupting her weekly essay by releasing at her feet a clockwork mouse.
She remembered Christ Church for the excellence of the meringues she ate there. She briefly investigated British politics by simultaneously joining the university's Conservative Liberal and Labour's societies. When fellow members discovered she had committed her allegiance to none of them, she was expelled from all three. She preferred the company of men whose interests were apolitical.
"David Talbot Rice," she writes, "whom I was later to marry [in 1927], was, I think, a founder member of the Hypo crites Club. He had beautiful rooms in Tom Quad, where he often gave exceedingly entertaining and delicious luncheon parties."
Unfortunately, she does not record what made them exceedingly entertaining. Throughout the book, she mentions innumerable famous people she meets Monet, two of the Mitford sisters and Cocteau, for example but usually gives only little fingernail sketches of them (Isadora Duncan is dismissed as "sozzled and sad"), and the reader will have to take her word for their fascinating personalities and eloquent wit. On the other hand, she gives rather more than enough space to the often memorialised Rosa Lewis and her raffishly chic Cavendish Hotel.
Tamara's husband, who was a secretly hard working student, became a distinguished Byzantinist. On one archaeological dig, he employed 400 Turks, including Istanbul convicts, some of them murderers on leave from serving life sentences.
During the 45 years of a happy marriage, Tamara shared the excitement of his travels and his work as an art historian. She contributed articles to various learned journals and encyclopaedias.
Their principal home was in the Cotswolds, but she accompanied him to Edinburgh, where Talbot Rice was an influential professor and eventually the Vice President of the University. Her life wasn't all spun sugar.