Inhoudsopgave
Lydia and Bartle van der Heyde in the Netherlands
Quote from Nikolai van der Heyde – how his parents met
One day – in the early 1930s – my father and a friend (a Frisian artist [Elzinga]) decided to go to Paris. The friend needed my father as he didn’t speak any French. And my father needed a distraction. Travelling in those days wasn’t as common as it is now and so they both left full of excitement. I think my father was playing it a little, as he had just returned from a long sojourn in the Dutch East Indies. In Paris they went straight to Montparnasse, where everything worthwhile was happening: Hemingway and John Dos Passos were having their famous parties at Le Select – Gertrude Stein was entertaining people at her fabulous bookstore, while at La Coupole (that most fantastic of all Parisian restaurants) Modigliani and his inseparable companion Soutine were holding court. But at La Rotonde, my father and his friend became acquainted with Kees van Dongen and another Frisian artist Tjerk Bottema. My father and Bottema became close friends (we still possess quite a few wonderful sketches he made; even a small red-framed painting of me as an infant) and one of the very first things Bottema did – as an act of true friendship – was to bring my father to his all-time favourite restaurant in Montparnasse: Djiguite – (named after a group of Russian Cossacks, very famous at the time). This was the small restaurant my grandfather had started (after other businesses in Nice and Berlin, Germany, had proven to be unsuccessful). And here, one day, my father laid eyes on my mother and his heart started singing. And the rest is history.
Nikolai van der Heyde – letter to Natasha Lord-Kamendrovsky
The Netherlands
So Lydia moved to the Netherlands. To Friesland. Where she was one of the first foreigners, which could be hard at times. Since she had been a mannequin, she painted her fingernails red. The Frisians thought she had put them into jelly. And then the difference in fashion…
Children
But she did seem to find happiness. She finally had a home again, she started her own family and had three children, Nikolai, Feodor and Elena.
Staying in Holland
When my grandfather died quite early she could have gone back to the Russian community in Paris, but by then that had changed so much. She stayed in Holland.
I remember her in Leeuwarden, with a picture of the Tsar on her wall with her icons. Her strong Russian accent with rolling ‘r’s. She would not leave the house without her gat (hat) and when my mother would comment on her cold hands, she would always reply with a smile: ‘Cold gands but a warm geart.’ Food was always shared, and even when you politely declined it was offered at least three more times. And I remember her whole group of Frisian older admirers, who were charmed by her, taking her out for tea in little Frisian tea pavilions.
Alzheimer
Then Alzheimer struck her and after a time of desperation, after a while, her mind was back in her beloved Russia. She forgot her Dutch, only talked in Russian now and whenever my father Nikolai would come to visit, her face would shine and she would yell: “Brother Dmitry! How I have been looking for you!”
My grandmother Lydia Kamendrovsky. So modest. So strong. May she Rest in Peace.