Lleis de semblança: una metodologia d’assaig

Husband and wife

The idea that marriage is a cornerstone of society is a conviction that was very much part of the early-modern mentality.⁴ As the popular writer Jacob Cats noted in his book“Houwelick”, or “Mar-riage”, the wedded state was a “groundstone of towns” and a

“breeding ground for regents”. Therewith the rest and unrest of households, God’s church and the common interest of the country depended on the quality of its marriages.⁵ According to Cats, it was therefore worthwhile to pay attention to how marriages“could commence properly” and how they could be “performed honour-ably”.⁶This was, at the same time, his motivation for writing this work, which described the various stages in the life of women. In each of the chapters, a particular stage, be it Bride, Wife, Mother or Widow, was the focus as Cats described the behaviour consid-ered appropriate for a woman in that particular phase of her life.⁷ The work was written in the vernacular and its intended audience was upper-middle-class women. It was already a popular book in the early seventeenth century and remained influential until the 19^thcentury.⁸

According to Cats, married life was honourable if both spouses were committed to the tasks required of married life. For the hus-bands, these tasks were threefold. First and foremost, the husband was obliged to take care of“the religion within his house”, to ren-der his household like “a small congregation of the Lord”.⁹ Furthermore, the husband should show perseverance and good governance in the maintenance of his household, and he should provide for it. Last but not least, the husband was to maintain a

“hearty love” and “friendly courteousness” towards his wife.¹⁰ Whereas the husband’s main task, as the provider of the house-hold, was to a large extent outside the home, the housewife’s tasks lay mostly inside the home.¹¹She took care of the house in terms of cleaning and maintenance, she bore and raised the children– at least for the first few years– and she was responsible for prepar-ing wholesome daily meals for both her husband and children.

Moreover, she was to support her husband in any way she possibly could. Naturally, what Cats described was an ideal-typical situa-tion; in practice for instance, a lot of families were unable to

sur-vive without the extra income brought in by the housewife.¹² Nevertheless, his work did offer good insight into what were then considered the norms of a successful marriage.

This emphasis on the mutual tasks and obligations of spouses within the institution of marriage does not leave a very romantic impression of early-modern married life. Add to that the general notion that marriages were contracts of mutual support between families rather than a loving relationship between husband and wife, and the idea of the arranged and therewith loveless and un-happy marriage is easily established.¹³ However, the choice of partner in the Dutch Republic was usually left to the partners themselves. They had considerable liberty in meeting suitable partners and in courting a possible spouse before fixing an official engagement.¹⁴ Therewith, the likelihood that two persons that would eventually marry could actually get along was rather en-larged. In that sense, the fact that the parents – after the an-nouncement of the engagement – arranged the marriage settle-ment did not necessarily interfere with the affection that had already developed between the couple.

The correspondence between Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft and Leonora Bartolotti from their courting period, offers a good exam-ple of how both affection and other interests played an important role in the marriage. In the summer of 1627, after the death of his first wife Christina van Erp, Hooft was courting Leonora Helle-mans, the widow of Jan Baptist Bartolotti, a wealthy Amsterdam merchant who had died in 1624. In one of his letters to her, Hooft tried to impress Leonora by offering her poems, which “fruit”, as he called it, he“abused for the occasion of offering her some ver-bal proof as leaves and flowers of his devotion to her obedience”.¹⁵ Hooft imagined that the (conventional) mediocrity of his poems would not prevent her from at least enjoying them. He used this and other well-chosen words to charm his way into Leonora’s heart, which leaves a very romantic impression indeed.

One can imagine that Leonora found it difficult to refuse his affections after Hooft’s flattering words, but as it turned out, things were slightly more complicated than that. Most of these complications did not deal with the emotions involved, but rather with practicalities, as Leonora told Hooft:“You affect me so much, I wish I had the inclination to marry”.¹⁶ She had called Hooft

“dear” a number of times, even after he had asked whether he had heard her correctly.

According to Van Tricht, who edited the publication of Hooft’s correspondence, Leonora’s reluctance was the result of complica-tions of a material nature. Leonora Hellemans was the daughter of wealthy southern Netherlandish traders and she had married well to Bartolotti; she was a woman of fortune. During her marriage to Bartolotti and after his death, she had lived in Amsterdam, but in order to maintain her southern Netherlandish property, she had herself officially registered in Zevenbergen, a town that had been declared neutral by both the southern Archdukes and the States General of the Dutch Republic. This neutrality offered people who had fled the south an opportunity to manage their southern properties from a non-hostile residence. Thus many of them either lived there legally or physically. Leonora knew that if she married Hooft she be with a man who was serving a country hos-tile to the southern Netherlands. Therewith the marriage would probably also harm her property rights in the southern Nether-lands.¹⁷This is why she was initially somewhat reluctant toward Hooft’s charming efforts.

In her writings to Hooft, however, Leonora did not refer to the Zevenbergen issue. From Hooft’s reaction to one of her letters, we learn that some of her doubts about marrying Hooft were of a religious nature. She was concerned that Hooft was not religious enough, to which Hooft responded: “religion is in the mind and not in the exterior”.¹⁸ Furthermore, she had also heard that Hooft’s friends had religious convictions different from her, which she also considered disturbing. Besides, Hooft, his friends and Leonora also did not agree on matters of state. Hooft, how-ever, claimed that she had been aware of these political and reli-gious differences all along, and that this had not discouraged her from developing affections for him. Moreover, he claimed that this could not possibly be a reason not to marry him.¹⁹

To these reasonable arguments he added the fact that he was sick of love as a means of convincing her to marry him. He had had some problems with his leg, but it was his emotional turmoil that had brought him close to death, or so he claimed. It may have been true that Hooft had been severely ill, but it may also have been a rhetoric trick to persuade her into marriage.²⁰ He used other strategies as well. Hooft wrote a charming letter to Susanna Bartolotti, Leonora’s daughter from her first marriage, in which he also referred to his ill health. He claimed that his doctor agreed

that the fever caused by his leg injury was compounded by the melancholy of Leonora’s refusal to see him.²¹

Leonora had by this time left for Zevenbergen to see her brother and sister-in-law. Presumably, she went to figure out the damage to her and her property if she were to marry a man serving the Dutch Republic.²²This ultimately turned out to be not much of a problem, it seems, since Leonora and Hooft got married a few months later in November 1627. Caspar Barlaeus, Willem de Groot and Constantijn Huygens wrote poems for the occasion.²³ The Hooft-Hellemans alliance seems to have been a happy one.

Hooft was a proper father to Leonora’s daughters, Susanna and Constantia Bartolotti, and the couple had two more children to-gether, Christina and Arnout Hellemans Hooft. It seems that the Hooft family had a pretty satisfying life together. Hooft’s friends even commented on how lucky Hooft was with a wife that was so lively and entertaining and who enjoyed receiving Hooft’s friends to their house. She was praised for her hospitable qualities.²⁴

So was this a marriage of love, or of strategy? It is obvious that Leonora went to great lengths to protect her property rights and it seems that she may have refrained from marrying Hooft if it was going to result in her losing her property. Yet, it is also clear that affection played an important part in their relationship. Hooft even argued that because she had feelings for him, she should marry him regardless of the other circumstances. In fact, both love – or at least affection – and strategy were important features in the establishment of marital relationships. It was important for both partners to develop a certain level of affection towards each other before the actual ceremony took place, but it was also impor-tant that their capital be secured for the family and the next gen-eration, especially if these generations were the results of earlier marriages.²⁵ In that sense, instrumental considerations did not necessarily interfere with the development of affection between the partners.

This not only applied to people who were free to choose their partners; even arranged marriages did not necessarily exclude feelings of mutual affection between the spouses.²⁶ Stadholder Willem Frederik van Nassau-Dietz, for instance, had promised his mother on her deathbed that he would marry a woman who would uphold the standards of the Van Nassau-Dietz family.²⁷ In his case, this meant that one of the daughters of Frederik Hendrik of Orange, stadholder of the provinces of Holland and Zeeland,

would be the most suitable, since Frederik Hendrik was the most powerful man in the Dutch Republic at the time. In his efforts to have one of the princesses married off to him, Willem Frederik felt it was important for the princess to develop a certain affection for him. He thus devoted a lot of time to the princesses whenever he visited the court of Frederik Hendrik in The Hague. He had dinner with them, he tried to make conversation and, every once in a while, he would offer them a small gift.²⁸

In order to increase his chances of being able to marry one of these girls, he also had to establish a relationship with their mother, Amalia van Solms-Braunfels. This took quite some effort, especially since Amalia and her husband, Frederik Hendrik, were still rather upset with Willem Frederik because he had taken the position of stadholder of the Northern provinces at the expense of Frederik Hendrik, who was eager for this position because this would allow him to become the stadholder general.²⁹

However, initial hostilities notwithstanding, Willem Frederik did manage to establish a more or less friendly contact with Ama-lia. Their relationship became especially close after the death of Frederik Hendrik. One particular evening, Amalia even confided in Willem Frederik that she missed her late husband terribly, add-ing that “she had been so happy with him, that they had loved each other dearly and that SH [His Highness] had communicated everything to her”.³⁰ “In somma: the happiest marriage in the world”, Willem Frederik remarked at the time. Still, he went on to note that if their relationship was actually as happy as she claimed, Amalia’s suffering over the loss of her husband must have been very painful. If Amalia had indeed expressed her sincere senti-ments as to the loss of her husband, this would go to show that even an arranged marriage, which an alliance in those circles usually was, could actually be a happy marriage. Or to put it differ-ently, the instrumental character of the alliance did not necessarily exclude the development of affectionate sentiments between the two spouses.

This does not mean that arranged marriages were never proble-matic. As Louise, the eldest daughter of Frederik Hendrik was said to have exclaimed:“Oh, if only I were either dead or a coun-trywoman for then I could pick someone whom I know, liked and loved.”³¹ Willem Frederik did occasionally complain in his diary about how unfair it was that he could not choose a wife who was totally to his liking. These heartfelt sentiments did not keep him

from pursuing his mission of marrying one of the stadholder’s daughters, however. Meanwhile, he had his physical needs taken care of by the occasional prostitute and one of his servants. This usually left him with a sense of unease, especially in the latter case, because he was always anxious about the possibility of this servant becoming pregnant by him, in which case it would be dif-ficult to deny fatherhood.

Willem Frederik also developed a relationship of a more affec-tionate kind with a certain young woman, whom he refers to in his diary as Pycke.³²She was the daughter of one of the regents who attended Willem Frederik’s court in Leeuwarden. The feeling was obviously mutual, but it never led to a public or official rela-tionship. They wrote letters and exchanged gifts, and they even entered a petting stage, but this ended abruptly when she was married off to another man.³³ Although Willem Frederik was rather sad about this turn of events, he did nothing within his power to prevent it. So, it seems that regardless of his despair at having to arrange a suitable marriage for himself, he saw no real opportunity to avoid it by actually marrying a woman he liked and loved.

In the end, Willem Frederik got what he wanted. In 1653, he married Albertine Agnes, Frederik Hendrik’s second daughter.

Even though he explicitly acknowledged in his diary that this was what he had “waited, worked and wished for”, he did express his desire to be“content, peaceful and happy” with his wife.³⁴In that sense, it seems that even though marriages in these circles were instruments of power and allegiance, it was still appreciated if they– at the same time – would lead to love, respect and joy for the partners involved.

Social and economic factors probably also played a role in the choice of spouse for those who were not rich and powerful. Yet also in these cases it did not mean that love, or at least lovingly behaviour, was not considered an important factor in the relation-ship between husband and wife. As Jacob Cats stressed in his book Houwelick, it was the task of both partners to avoid argu-ments and make an effort to live together in peace.³⁵ It was also considered good taste for the husband to praise his wife in pub-lic.³⁶ Furthermore, Cats considered it important for partners to accept each other’s shortcomings and that criticism be expressed within the confines of one’s own home and never in public.³⁷

Again, what Cats described was ideal-typical behaviour, and not necessarily how marriages functioned in practice.

The norm of a loving marriage was, however, not just some-thing prescribed in books. Other writers also expressed their ap-preciation for happy marriages. Constantijn Huygens, in the memoirs of his youth, stressed the fact that his parents had a

“very happy” relationship.³⁸David Beck, after noting in his diary that the housewife of a certain Jan Crabbens had died, noted that this couple “did not get along at all and had carried on badly”, therewith implicitly subscribing to the standard of the loving mar-riage.³⁹ So it seems that even in the seventeenth century it was considered important to have a “good marriage”, not only in the sense that it bring financial and social capital into the family, but also in the sense of the spouses respecting and loving each other.

As Jacob Cats observed:⁴⁰

No ring, no feast, no crown, no flowers, But true love makes the bride.

Rituals of marriage

This may have been true, but the ritual of marriage – including the ring, the feast, the crown and the flowers– was very important indeed. The importance of the institute of marriage as such was reflected in the event that symbolised this transition to the mar-ried state, the wedding.⁴¹ Unlike the period before, weddings in the seventeenth century were no longer a private matter between bride and groom but (semi-) public rituals that included first of all official public announcements of the intended marriage and sec-ondly the wedding itself, to which family and friends were invited to witness the transition.

As we mentioned earlier, Dutch youngsters enjoyed relative freedom when it came to finding a suitable spouse. Once the young man, after a period of courting, received a confirmation from his intended bride that she was willing to marry him, the engagement was announced to the families.⁴² These families would then join together one evening to discuss the wedding con-tract. These contracts prescribed what the partners would bring to the marriage, and what would remain in the hands of the family after the death of one of the spouses. According to Hieronymus

Sweerts, in his satire The Ten Joys of Marriage, these wedding con-tract discussions were bound to cause trouble.⁴³ According to Sweerts, it was obvious that the parents of both the bride and the groom would be unwilling to offer what the other party was ex-pecting for their child.⁴⁴ It also seems that the speed with which the dowries were paid by the respective families after the mar-riage, was something that often left room for improvement. Cats criticised parents for not paying their dowries immediately and especially urged the fathers of grooms to pay what they had pro-mised.⁴⁵

After the wedding contract was settled, the families and future bride and groom would join for a drink to celebrate their engage-ment. This was the beginning of a rather demanding period for both the bride and groom and their closest relatives, for once the marriage contract was signed, the wedding festivities began to be arranged. This meant many tasks as well as a reasonable amount of stress. First of all, guests had to be invited to the wedding ban-quet. This was usually done in person when the guest lived near-by, or otherwise a letter of invitation was written to the invitee.

After the wedding contract was settled, the families and future bride and groom would join for a drink to celebrate their engage-ment. This was the beginning of a rather demanding period for both the bride and groom and their closest relatives, for once the marriage contract was signed, the wedding festivities began to be arranged. This meant many tasks as well as a reasonable amount of stress. First of all, guests had to be invited to the wedding ban-quet. This was usually done in person when the guest lived near-by, or otherwise a letter of invitation was written to the invitee.