The young Julius

This portrait supposedly represents the young Julius Willem, although it is not entirely certain. In early 1817, Julius left for the Indies as a sailor on the ship Hoop en Fortuin (Hope and Fortune). His parents could not have imagined then that they would never see him again. Because his letters sometimes took months to arrive, they were often uncertain about his fate.

On May 7, 1817, his father and mother sent a letter to him in Batavia. Bilderdijk told his son he should always perform his duties with nobility. His mother wrote to him: ‘We embrace you with unparalleled tenderness. Farewell, dear good Julius, farewell!’ It was not until December 12 that Julius received these messages in Batavia. In his reply in January 1818, he expressed the hope of returning home in three months. Bilderdijk and his wife would not receive that letter until June – it would turn out to be Julius' farewell letter.

On December 12, 1818, Bilderdijk wrote: ‘I can think of nothing but the arrival of my son Julius, of whom I hear nothing, however.’ He and his wife hoped to be able to embrace him at any moment. But at the start of 1819, they were informed that he had died of consumption on August 26, 1818, at the age of twenty. That is the context of the note that Bilderdijk wrote to a friend on January 11, 1819: ‘It is as it is! he has been! Your sad Bilderdijk.’

Bilderdijk and his wife were crushed. It is not surprising that even in this heartbreaking situation they grabbed the lyre and tried to find expressions for their grief in verses. Whereas they wrote one, two or at most three poems on previous deaths, they devoted an entire collection to Julius: In Memory of Julius Willem Bilderdijk, who died on his sea voyage the XXVIn of Harvest Month MDCCCXIIX (1819) (Ter Nagedachtenis van Julius Willem Bilderdijk, op zijnen zeetocht overleden den XXVIn van Oogstmaand MDCCCXIIX). A moving paper monument.