Family

The Child

When I sleep, you wake me again; And, when brother lay in the little cradle, Mother did not wake him, But he slept through night and day.

Tell me why, dear Mother, Did he always have his eyes shut down? Does he who is dead, never live again? Tell me then, Mother, tell me how?

No, my child, awakening the dead Can no mother, dear lad! No, God’s voice alone, Gods Omnipotence, Awakens the dead from their nap.

In a letter from 1803, Bilderdijk noted ‘that his constitution did not allow him to live without a wife.’ He had two wives. From 1785 to 1802, he was married to Catharina Rebecca Woesthoven (1763-1828). With her he had five children, three boys and two girls. Three of them died in infancy and one (Elius Isaäc) at the age of twenty. Only their daughter Louise Sibille would survive her parents.

From 1796, Bilderdijk had a relationship with Katharina Wilhelmina Schweickhardt, who was twenty years younger and who, as a poet, would become known as ‘Lady Bilderdijk’ (‘Vrouwe Bilderdijk’). With her, he had eight children, five boys and three girls. Almost all of them died as babies, toddlers or infants. Only the eldest son Julius Willem, born in 1798, reached adulthood. He died in India at the age of 21. That was a shock that Bilderdijk and his wife could never get over. When Bilderdijk died in 1831, there was only one child left from this second marriage, his son Lodewijk Willem, who was born in 1812. Lady Bilderdijk had already been dead for a year by then.

Such a high infant mortality rate was extreme even by nineteenth-century standards. And that's not even including the dozens of miscarriages. Sometimes, Schweickhardt was pregnant again after just having had a miscarriage. It is not unusual, however, that they lost so many children. What makes Bilderdijk and his wife unique is that they wrote one or more poems about each child. These verses are among the most poignant of their oeuvre. There is no doubt that these poems helped them cope with their grief. Bilderdijk said about this: ‘They have enlightened us in the weeping, to which they gave vent, yes indeed they have comforted us’.