Briefwisseling 1 juli 1885 tot 15 december 1888

J.C.G. Grasé aan A. Verwey 5.11.86

Wellington House.

Eton Road. N.W.

5 November, 1886.

Dr Verwey,

I am ashamed to own that I addressed an envelope to you a fortnight after I reached London. It has been reproaching me ever since. I thought of including some scrawl in yr Shakespeare; but after it had gone, there was the same woeful look about this identical envelop as before. It was maddening; so I put it away for some time. Tonight it has been literally swearing at me for neglect of duty to a friend, far, far away! Having some leasure time at my disposal I resolved to clean myself from this lasting reproach on my fair fame. I have now fairly begun an epistle & am afraid fairly filled up 2 pages with twaddle. I am glad to see that you are pleased with the reprint;¹ but I cannot at the present moment give you any further information re Donelly, as nothing has transpired since of his whereabouts.

1 Vermoedelijk het overdrukje van Percy M. Wallace, ‘Mr. Donnelly's Shakespeare cipher’. Zie: j.c. grasé aan a. verwey 14.6.86, noot 1.

[p. 251]

A late apology is rather a lame sort of thing & yet I cannot go on before having offered my excuses for not returning yr call before I left Amsterdam; not only as a matter of courtesy, but because I like it. However I went away at least a week before I expected to go & so was obliged to give up many our[?] engagement & disappointed myself very much.

The Nieuwe Gids is as interesting as usual to me, & I am by no means sorry that I have subscribed. I found the article on the riots² very much to my taste, & am glad to see that there is a reform ahead for that body.³ Is it going te be carried out on the lines suggested by the N.G. on the Handelsblad? I can't find any details in the English papers. I always take most interest in the political part of the magazine; because I know nothing whatever about Dutch literature, I own it to my shame; at the same time I admire your hard work & am delighted with the success yr paper continues to meet with. The views of your body are so exactly identical with mine, that I seldom differ from their doctrines. Pity that there is so little pure politics in our country. Here you can argue with a man on any social or political object, without being obliged to differ from him on religious opinion or to have any such thing at all. In Holland, there are still so many people, who believe that, de vreeze des Heeren is het begin aller wijsheid,⁴ & who would sooner be taught geography from the bible, than say book-keeping or read Huet. There may be great deal of bash & exaggeration in the talk of ordinary English men about Russia, Constantinopel, Socialism & Cambridge lectures; but there is more life here than in A'dam, without the horrible curses & solemn faces drown by the disputing parties in ‘kerk of staat.’

I just mentioned Cambridge lectures. I am not aware of any dutch paper being in the habit of chronicling Eng. literary news, but I suppose that you have heard somehow from this great cry raised by the Quarterly⁵ against Mr Gosse, the professor in English Literature at the Univ. of Cambridge. This poor fellow, a literary amateur, has to the lasting disgrace of his University, published a book with the sanction of the fellows, on poetry from Shakespeare to Pope in which he appears to have blundered in the most elementary facts about dates & authors.

The Quarterly devotes whole pages to mistakes in dates, in the book, about such men as Hobbes & Corneille. Statements as f.i. ‘the dactyli & anapaestic movements were entirely unknown to the Elizabethans’, make the book conspicuous somehow.

I shall be in Amsterdam within a fortnight. If you want anything from London, you had better let me know at once. Believe me ever yr sincerely

Grasé

Hope my letter does not wake you unusually early on Sunday morning.

2 Diederik van Amstel [J. de Koo], ‘Het palingoproer’. In: De nieuwe gids 2 (1886-1887), deel i, p. 1-25.

3 In september 1886 werd op aandrang van verschillende politieke partijen in het parlement de regering bereid gevonden een parlementaire enquête in te stellen met betrekking tot sociale wetgeving (De Amsterdammer. Weekblad voor Nederland 9 (1886), nr. 481, p. 1.).

4 Spreuken 12:1.

5 N.N., ‘English Literature at the Universities’ [over: From Shakespeare to Pope. An inquiry into the causes and phenomena of the rise of classical poetry in England. By Edmond Gosse, Clark Lecturer on English Literature at the University of Cambridge. Cambridge: at the University Press. 1885]. In: The quarterly review 77 (1886), nr.326, juli-oktober 1886, p.290-329.