Creation of a memorial site

On Tuesday March 26, 1867, a memorial stone was placed in the facade of the house at Prinsengracht 32 in The Hague at the initiative of Jan Wap. Bilderdijk had lived here with his first wife Catharina Rebecca Woesthoven from 1786 to 1795, during the time he worked as a lawyer. On that day, it was 72 years ago that the immortal poet had accepted his exile. Wap gave a lecture about Bilderdijk's years in The Hague. Writer Jacob van Lennep recited a highly pitched 'Dichthulde' (‘Praise of Poetry’), in which he compared the poet with that other great author:

Soon [soon] he began and made sounds, Full of harmony, melodious, powerful, rich; And Holland cried: 'Look! Vondel is reborn; A Vondel has turned in Bilderdijk.'

The lithograph of the charter bears the signatures of many well-known literary scholars at the time, such as Nicolaas Beets, Abraham Capadose, JJ Cremer, Johannes Kneppelhout, Jacob van Lennep, JA Alberdingk Thijm and Matthias de Vries. It was clear: all of the literary circles in the Netherlands made an appearance on this day.