The adventures of Hendrieka IN WONDERLAND
How is it possible to pay tribute to a lifetime of festive meals and an absolute drive to collect – from art and food expertise, plants and gold weights, to wire bicycles, birds’ nests and flattened chameleons? Hendrieka Schmitt of Standerton’s friends finally persuaded her, at the age of 78, to compile a keepsake cookbook containing her favourite recipes.
This sovereign goddess of the senses does not live in a land far, far from here. Contrary to what fairy tales have lead us to expect, since the end of 1967 this livewire has made her home in an unremarkable street, behind an unremarkable wall, in an unremarkable rundown industrial and farming town – in Mpumalanga, of all places.
Yet observant passers-by will detect a clue on the pavement outside JeanCharles and Hendrieka Schmitt’s house, something that says: “Don’t be surprised if you cross this threshold and, like Alice in Wonderland, are transported down the rabbit hole to a wonderland full of curiosities.”
This sign is a tower, just at knee height, of five rocks perfectly balanced on top of one another, with no cement to hold them in place, as if they were destined for each other for centuries and simply awaited someone who had “the eye” to unite them. Someone like Hendrieka Schmitt, the incognito sovereign goddess of the senses.
As befits a born artist, Hendrieka doesn’t only have “the eye”. All who have been fortunate enough to go down this rabbit hole into the Schmitts’ home or studio – or who have been privileged to take a seat at their table to enjoy an outstanding meal or a cup of coffee accompanied by a slice of pear-and-cardamom tart – will know that, apart from “the eye”, Hendrieka also possesses the tongue, the ear, the nose, the sense of touch, the eternally elusive sixth sense and the two modern “senses” identified by experts: the vestibular system, which controls your body’s “perception” in relation to gravity, balance and movement (it’s how you know whether you are standing up or lying down, or whether you are moving in a lift); and proprioception, the sense that ensures your body parts know where they are in relation to each other (and the environment), as well as how much effort is required to move them “correctly” (for example, the pressure you have to apply to a pencil in order to write, or how, with your eyes shut tightly, you still manage to clap your hands).
PROBABLY THE MOST WONDERFUL PART of this fairy tale about Frenchman JeanCharles Schmitt and Wits art student Hendrieka de Haan is that it’s all true. The story began in the early Sixties, literally in the heavens, on a flight between former Lourenço Marques and London. Hendrieka and two of her classmates had saved up to be able to afford a visit to England and Europe. And so she ended up occupying a seat in an old Douglas DC-6 opposite Jean-Charles, a native of Villeurbanne northeast of Lyon. In those days he was working at a large textile factory in Standerton, the town he had immigrated to in 1951 with his parents when he was 15 years old.
Jean-Charles had his eye on the pretty art student right away and he asked her for her phone number. Weeks later he was still on her trail, almost to no avail, but fortunately Hendrieka was at home for his third attempt and she answered >
the phone… They were married on 19 December 1964 and Hendrieka moved to Standerton, a town that in those days boasted several textile factories and a strong farming and immigrant community.
This is where their two daughters, Nicole (who now lives in Pretoria) and Michelle (an accountant in Canada) were born, and they blew a small fortune – R1 500! – on an old burger erf. Today it’s possibly the only one in the town that hasn’t yet been carved up and sub-divided, and they asked renowned Johannesburg architect Michael Sutton to design a house for them – a home that still feels just as distinctively modern as when they moved in here more than 50 years ago.
“My friend and mentor, artist Cecily Sash, whom I was assisting with her large mosaics at the old Transvaal Provincial Administration Building in Pretoria and the former Jan Smuts Airport, knew Michael. We went to him with ideas and pictures from old Elle magazines and we bought a lot of the building materials second-hand from demolition companies – from tiles and Cape teak window frames, to doors from the old Carlton Hotel, or our front door, which came from the first Standard Bank in Standerton,” she says.
In 1970 Hendrieka and Jean-Charles start their own business, Coq d’Or (The Golden Rooster), where Hendrieka creates original graphic works of art inspired by Mother Nature. Jean-Charles prints them on top-quality fabric, which, in time, is transformed into anything from clothes, handbags and table linen, to pillow slips, potholders and toys.
“It’s over – we’re retired now,” says Hendrieka nonchalantly. “Best of all were the wonderful people we met along the way.”
It’s been a long time since the Schmitts’ wonderland was just a home for people, old building materials and their own work. It also houses wonderful
art (from Edoardo Villa to Cecily Sash to Judith Mason – “almost all of it gifts or trade exchanges”, says Hendrieka). There is craftwork (including magnificent cloth from the Fulani tribe) and there are old implements – from gold weights and a peach peeler with a crank handle to a replica of an 11th-century Scottish chess set that is displayed in the British Museum. There are all sorts of finds from nature that Hendrieka has collected on the property or during her morning wanderings: skulls and skeletons, dead chameleons she picks up in the road after they have been driven over, shed rinkhals skins, eggs, birds’ nests, rain-spider nests, seed pods, plants, a wall of gossamer wire bicycles, almost all of them made by Cainus (Kleinboy) Radebe, who has worked for them for years…
Hendrieka nods. “There are a lot of things, but that’s how it is. That’s life.
whole life. Maybe it just feels like a lot because we’re no longer spring chickens.” Yes, one forgets that. On 20 July 2018, exactly 49 years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, Jean-Charles slipped away. JeanCharles, the French culinary sounding board for whom Hendrieka had cooked and baked – painstakingly and with love – for 50 years, was gone. JUST LIKE HER ART, Hendrieka’s food transports one to faraway places, Jean-Charles explained, just a month before he died. “I think you can say with relative certainty that there are French influences,” he grins, “but the most important thing is that her food always takes you on a journey, an exciting adventure. And look, if it doesn’t turn out too well, something that really doesn’t happen often, everyone learns something. Then I usually say to her: Thank you, my love, that was wonderful, but this isn’t one
of those dishes that one would want to eat at least once a month.”
It’s Hendrieka’s turn to laugh. “In Standerton we battle to find ingredients sometimes and Jean-Charles doesn’t always have them freshly available in the vegetable garden. And after all, I’m not even a chef. I’m a cook. Who improvises. And at 78, I’ve had plenty of time to practise.”
Since 1981, the couple have been members of a wine club that meets every second Thursday of the month. It’s a serious business, because apart from the hostess’s food and a lot of otherworldly chatter, six wines are judged at each meeting.
Hendrieka is also the oldest member of the Ten Tipsy Tarts, a stokvel that’s been running for 11 years.
“For me, good food comes down to simple, seasonal ingredients – always the best quality you can find – that you try to prepare in the best possible way to create a meal that hopefully pleases all the senses. And you can’t have good food without good eaters. It’s what we all crave, what we all need every day: food for the body, food for the intellect.”
Now, after friends have been nagging her for years, all the best recipes – favourites of hers and JeanCharles, their family and friends – will be appearing in a book. A book that comes too late for Hendrieka’s beloved husband to hold in his hands, but that promises to please all eight senses in lands both near and far from here.
• A limited number of Hendrieka’s
Favourite Recipes is available at R400 a copy (excluding postage). Go to
liedjiesbos.co.za (click on the “Shop” icon at the top) to order yours or send an email to info@liedjiesbos.co.za.