Rudolf M. Dekker

‘Private vices, public virtues’ revisited: The Dutch background of Bernard Mandeville1

During the last half century the English writer of Dutch origin, Bernard Mandeville (1670-1733), has come to be one of the better-known authors of the early eighteenth century. His name is cited in the same breath as Hume, Swift and Defoe, and he is recognised as having influenced both Adam Smith and Voltaire.2 His works are being reprinted and dozens of studies have appeared in recent years.3 This growing popularity is partially due to the reevaluation of the literary genre that Mandeville practised: satire. Mandeville also benefits from the attention being given to less prominent figures in the history of ideas. It is true that his humorous poems, dialogues and essays are not high-minded philosophical treatises, but their contents are nonetheless striking. His slogan ‘private vices, public benefits’ has made him immortal, for it represents a highly original view of the economy. Failings such as greed, lust, vanity, extravagance and even crime, are given a positive value by Mandeville, in contrast to earlier authors, since in his opinion they stimulate the economy. In this way private sins add up unintentionally to strengthen society. This moral of the ‘Fable of the Bees’ makes Mandeville a forerunner of economic liberalism. In religious matters, among others, Mandeville also expressed a very tolerant point of view. His message had important consequences for ethics. He settled accounts with the idea of earlier moralists that personal virtue was a condition for being a good public servant. But the question is whether we should always take Mandeville literally. The recent tendency is toward an increasingly nuanced view of his ideas. It is much too simple to see him as a sarcastic misanthrope with an extremely pessimistic view of human nature. His works contain a double meaning in many places that makes his message compatible with classical opinions on honor and virtue after all. Mandeville may have made use in many places of a stylistic device with a long tradition: inversion. A recent biographer therefore speaks of ‘the two Mandevilles’, describing him on the one hand as ‘a pious Christian, an ascetic, and an unusually austere moralist, who finds corruption even in apparently laudable or at least innocent activities’, and on the other as ‘a cynic, a scoffer of all virtue and religion.. .‘.4 Mandeville remains a puzzle for modern scholars. The titles of studies devoted to him speak volumes: ‘The Ambivalence of Bernard Mandeville’, ‘Mandeville: Cynic or Fool’, and ‘Paradox and Society’.5 Mandeville research still has to fill many gaps, the greatest of which is the relationship between his ideas and his

Book Review: Madness in seventeenth-century autobiography.

This study on madness in seventeenth-century England is based on three autobiographical accounts. Katherine Hodgkin starts with an expose of madness in a historical context including a useful discussion of ideas that have developed during the last decades. She stresses not only how blurred the border is between madness and its opposite, but also how closely madness and religious inspiration were connected in the seventeenth century. The discussion on autobiographical writing in the past is less elaborate. This subject is elusive because of changing definitions and blurred borders with other genres, in particular between fiction and described realities. Tales of madness and religious autobiography seem to overlap to a great extent. Three texts are analysed. The first was written by Dionys Fitzherbert, daughter of an Oxfordshire landowner. Her tale of recovery from mental disorder was written around 1610. Besides the surviving autograph, there are fair copies still kept in libraries. She described a delirious condition lasting several months which is, however, not presented as madness but as spiritual affliction. The second author is Hannah Allen, daughter of a Presbyterian merchant family living in Derbyshire and London. She descended into melancholy in the 1660s, after she was widowed and left with a child. Her life story was published in 1683. She tells her readers about her conviction that she was damned, worthless and monstrous, and how at one point she refused to eat. This is all a familiar part of a conversion story, but her sufferings are not presented as a punishment by God, but as an illness from which she recovered. George Trosse, the third author, also had a mercantile background, and after his spell of madness became a nonconformist minister in Exeter. He wrote his Life in 1693, which was published after his death in 1713. He describes his hallucinations, deliriums and violent behaviour, which in this case are all seen as Gods punishment for his sinfulness. This text even more resembles a conversion story, especially with the happy outcome. Besides belonging to the same genre, the three stories have another thing in common: all the authors were cured of their madness. They give some information about the physical and spiritual help they received. In the end, guidance was more important than medicines. Fitzherbert thanks the wife of her doctor for her counsel, without even mentioning his medicines. Hannah Allen was cured by an unnamed minister. A kinsman also proposed to bring her into contact with the nonconformist divine, Richard Baxter. Trosse was cured by a lay woman, maybe also a doctors wife. The escape from madness was in all three cases through conversation. How the process of healing should be phrased, is a point of discussion. Hodgkin stresses the metaphor of travel as well as, in the case of Trosse, actual travelling through Europe. Writing down this experience was perhaps of help too. Unfortunately, little is said about the authors themselves and their texts. Is it important that the first has survived only in manuscript and the two other texts were published in print? In fact the existence of fair copies of a manuscript point to a form of manuscript publishing still common in the seventeenth century. In the other two cases, the possible role of an editor or publisher is not even mentioned. The text of Trosse is obviously studied only from a modern edition. The important work by Michael Mascuch in this field is mentioned, but not really used. However, the next publication by Katharine Hodgkin will be an edition of the manuscripts of Dionys Fitzherbert, which will offer an opportunity to return to this aspect of madness and autobiographical writing.

Humour in Word and Image

The sixteenth century witnessed a steady growth in the volume of printed works in Dutch as the Republic became a centre for book production and the book trade. The number of printers quadrupled to reach the figure of 247 in the first half of the seventeenth century. More than half of them were based in Amsterdam.1 They printed almanacs, songs, novels, religious tracts, plays, text books, travel accounts, newspapers, pamphlets, etc. There was an expanding market for all this printed material because an increasing number of the Dutch could read. In 1630 more than half of the male population and one-third of the female population were literate to some degree, as can be concluded from the signatures in marriage registers in Amsterdam. There are other signs that the country had a relatively high level of literacy too. The theologian Voetius, for instance, considered that anyone who could not read should be read to from the bible by a neighbour.2 He must have been confident that there would be someone who could read in the immediate neighbourhood of every illiterate. Of course, Voetius was aware that the neighbours might be asked to read from other books too, which is why he warned against almanacs and similar frivolous material.

Conclusion: The Return of Laughter

The Dutch sense of humour had an international reputation in the Golden Age. Comic genres like the jestbook were more popular than ever. There was an equally strong comic element in painting. We can sometimes catch a glimpse of everyday humour in diaries. We can also do so from the collections of jokes that have survived in manuscript form. The largest of these is the Anecdotes by Aernout van Overbeke, with its huge number of more than 2,000 jokes and anecdotes.

The Laughing Dutch

The Dutch are considered a humourless people par excellence.1 A well-known sociologist characterised the Dutch in the 1940s as a ‘joyless people who are rarely cheerful’.2 The widespread image of the humourless Dutch has a long history. Back in 1833 a German traveller noted that the Dutch ‘are by nature unreceptive to humour’.3 More than a century earlier, an Englishman wrote: ‘The Dutch are more famous for their industry and application, than for wit and humour.’ Another concluded: ‘There is more sense than wit, more good nature than good humour.’4 And a French traveller from the middle of the eighteenth century commented: ‘Their character is cold and heavy.

Polarity and Inversion

Aernout van Overbeke was a member of the legal profession, a clearly defined and identifiable professional group.1 Barristers were invested after swearing an oath. They wore prescribed dress — the toga and beret. Although enjoying prestige, they were mistrusted rather than esteemed. A manual to prepare for confession listed the sins of several professional groups separately. For lawyers there are no fewer than 19, including the extension of trials in their own interest.

Aernout van Overbeke and His Jokes

Aernout van Overbeke came from a family of Flemish merchants. His grandfather converted to Protestantism and was forced to flee from Antwerp to Germany during the Eighty Years’ War. He settled in Frankfurt-am-Main, a refuge for other Flemish merchants too. Various members of his family were scattered among different cities in Germany. His son Matthijs van Overbeke later moved to Amsterdam, which had a population of around 10,000 immigrants from the Southern Netherlands by 1620.1 A year later Van Overbeke and his wife Agatha Scholiers settled in Leiden, where he bought a house overlooking the Rapenburg canal. He also owned a country house. He had them both renovated on a grand scale. Van Overbeke was very rich: his wealth was estimated at 400,000 guilders.2 That was 1,000 times the annual income of a craftsman. However, Van Overbeke ran into financial problems towards the end of his life, as can be seen from the comment of an English traveller on his country house in 1634: ‘[It is] a great house promising much, but entering into it and examining the rooms I found nothing answerable to what was expected.

Egodocuments in the Netherlands from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century

ABSTRACTEgodocuments include autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, and other personal texts in which authors write explicitly about their own affairs, experiences, thoughts and feelings. The article reports on an ongoing research project which began with an inventory of over a thousand egodocuments from the period 1500 to 1814 in Netherlands libraries and archives. It discusses the development of the genre, the geographical spread of the documents, their physical form, the language(s) and style they employ, the social status of their authors, the stated motives for which they were written, and their intended readership.

Reviews : H.F.K. van Nierop, The Nobility of Holland. From Knights to Regents, 1500-1650. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-39260-8, 1993, 252 pp.; £37.50

The study of the nobility in the Dutch Republic has never attracted many historians. At first sight it is a rather depressing subject. As early as the seventeenth century, the currently accepted view had already taken shape: The nobles lost their political and administrative powers during the Dutch Revolt, which was followed by a gradual economic decline, and finally most noble families simply disappeared because they lacked male heirs. This image of an extinct species is attacked by van Nierop on three fronts: demographic, economic and political. His conclusions are original, based on sound research, and presented in a very readable way. Anecdotes are scattered through the book, but always serve to reinforce

Reviews : Florike Egmond, Underworlds. Organized Crime in the Netherlands 1650-1800, Cambridge, Polity Press, ISBN 0-7456-0644-X, 1993; x + 256 pp.; £39.50

Bandits are not readily associated with Holland. This type of criminal seems as alien to the country as the mountains where they are supposed to dwell. Florike Egmond, however, has discovered a long history of organized crime in the Netherlands which was until recently hidden in the archives. The book spans even more than the title suggests: the first bandits traced were active from 1612 onward, while the author has extended her research to the year 1810. After an introduction in which definitions are discussed and criminal