Memories and Letters: Nadine and Lina Lewin’s Friendship with Christina Stead

Abstract

Christina Stead met my grandmother Lewin by chance at a restaurant in Paris in early 1929. a letter to my mother Nadine Mendelson following the death of Lina, Christina writes from her home in Elmers Court, Surbiton in January 1970: Lina was so very kind to and me from the first time of meeting - by accident, as you must have heard from us both, in a restaurant in Paris: and then there were the years we were in Paris and I came to know Lina's story and to meet you. Dear Lina! People loved her. She was so gallant. last time and I were in N.Y....we called upon and she received us beautifully and elegantly in the old Russian way, tea, brilliant conversation, entertainment on the piano, a whole culture in one afternoon, as she did know how to do I was thrilled and touched.This description evokes so well my own visits to my grandmother in her apartment on 68th streetSixty-Eighth Street where she would play Chopin for me, and I would draw or sometimes dust for her as she told me the stories of where each object in her apartment came from: the samovar from the Marche aux Puces in Paris, the old painted wooden egg that looked like a hut from Riga, objects that I now keep carefully in my own home, hoping to share their stories my own grandchildren some day. Reading through the correspondence between my mother and grandmother and Christina Stead brings this back to me and perhaps sheds some light on Christina's life for those readers who seek further memories about the great novelist. Stead was called by Edmund White The Woman Who Loved Memory: Memory, not observation, is Stead's mode - and memory causes her vision to be heightened, mythic, often operatic.1 this brief reflection, I cannot rise to the operatic, but can perhaps provide some background notes.A photograph that my mother took of Christina Stead and Blake sitting at a cafe in Paris, quite likely similar to the one at which Christina met Lina, shows Christina beaming into the camera while lounges comfortably, arm draped over the back of a straw fauteuil perhaps looking for a waiter to refill their wine glass. This joyous image, in which Christina looks radiant, speaks to their love and pleasure in life. So do the many invitations that my mother and grandmother received in New York. There is one a reproduction of a 17th seventeenthcentury grande dame inviting Nadine and to an egg-nog on Christmas day, and another for a little cocktail party to celebrate Pilar's name day. Included is a word-maze with the names of all the invited guests...you can get a drink however, without solving it. It comes as a shock to read in a later letter, dated April 30, 1971, that Bill did not like my parties. believed in the plain-living highthinking system; but he helped when I gave parties, immensely, immensely - for one thing, I never had to think, What are the guests doing? Are they being entertained? They were being entertained. In Letty Fox Stead writes about the misleading nature of a photograph. After the old gardener Jape dies they find an old photograph of Letty's grandfather: showing that he had been a remarkably handsome, gentle-looking man, a sweet, sad smile and a face that looked Nevertheless, there is no doubt he was far from spiritual. 2 This is perhaps born out by another photograph of Christina, alone in the same cafe in which she looks considerably more subdued, dour even and keenly aware. Here the watchful Christina, sandwiched between two empty chairs, is contrasted to a strolling couple beyond the terrace and the lush trees of the Paris boulevard.Are they waiting for Bill? Has he just left? Judging from the neatly ranged chair to her left, this photograph comes first. This seems especially true given a third photograph surely taken that day that shows the couple, again a smiling Christina Stead and again a somewhat skeptical looking Blake. …