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The American Adventure of Frederik van Eeden
‘Unexpectedly beautiful and special. A wondrous city, destined for greater wonders.’ This was how Frederik van Eeden (1860-1932), the well-known Dutch writer, psychiatrist and social reformer, enthusiastically wrote about New York on 29 February 1908. He had stepped ashore there the day before. His great American adventure had begun.
He received the warmest of welcomes. Long before he arrived, reporters had already gone on board to interview him. It was a completely different atmosphere from the cool indifference with which he was treated in the Netherlands. The ensuing days were filled with receptions and ‘teas’, each of them involving yet more handshakes.
The big, restless land of America suited Van Eeden because of its great willingness to change and its ‘spirit of progress’. In an interview in The New York Times of 5 March, with the headline ‘Poet has Cure for Nation's Ills’, he expressed his expectation that America would be open to new ideas. During that first visit, which was to last until April, Van Eeden was sometimes dizzied by his experiences. He wrote to his eldest son Hans: ‘Oh, my dear young Hans, this is a good land full of wonders, which is destined for even greater wonders.’
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Salvation through cooperation
America had fascinated Van Eeden for years. Around 1890 the best-seller Looking Backward, a science fiction novel by the American Edward Bellamy, had made a great impression on him and caused him to realise how badly society was organised. Bellamy's Utopian socialism, his ‘clever common sense’ and ‘cheerful optimism’, had played a significant role when in the 1890s Van Eeden developed into a committed artist with social ideas which contrasted sharply with those of the social democrats. In his polemic essays and lectures he had fiercely criticised the social wrongs in capitalist society. He was convinced that, as a healer of society, he had provided the remedy which could heal the sick society. Time after time he had called for a federation of workers' cooperatives, to replace capitalistic businesses. The future,
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according to Van Eeden, would bring chains of farms, businesses and shops, equipped with the most modern resources, in which profits made were invested in further expansion of the system and in the development of care for the workers. The profits would also be used to found such things as schools libraries and museums, all of which would be owned by those working in the cooperative. Van Eeden's optimism had given him high expectations. In time, if people simply worked hard and lived soberly, if they displayed commitment and responsibility, then capitalism would be swept away without violence or revolution.
In 1898 Van Eeden had put his money where his mouth was and founded a colony on the edge of the Dutch town of Bussum; it was a living and working community where vegetables and fruit were cultivated and bread baked. The colony had given itself the name Walden after being inspired by the book Walden or Life in the Woods, written in 1854 by the American Henry David Thoreau. Like Thoreau, Van Eeden had tired of the ordered life of a respectable burgher, and had longed to work with his hands and to live at
‘Walden in America’ (Cartoon from De Ware Jacob, 6 November 1909).
one with nature. He had also been behind the founding of the Association for Common Land Ownership (Vereniging voor Gemeenschappelijk Grondbezit) and the setting up of the De Eendracht purchasing and selling combine. It quickly became apparent, however, that the businesses were not flourishing. Van Eeden and his colonists had piled error upon error. Van Eeden was unable to provide leadership, and the colonists and workers lacked discipline. Arguments were rife. The consequence was that the colony was unable to compete with the capitalist business community, and De Eendracht and the Walden colony were declared bankrupt in 1907.
Everyone thought that Van Eeden was beaten and had learned his lesson. It would take him years to pay off his huge debts (around 200,000 guilders) and to restore his good name. To make matters worse, his persona, life was also full of disasters: his brother committed suicide and his marriage to Martha van Vloten was dissolved.
But it was precisely at this time that he received the invitation to undertake a lecture tour of America. In December 1906 Van Eeden had received a letter from Rudolphine Scheffer Ely, a Dutchwoman who was married to Robert Erskine Ely, an American clergyman and director of a fairly influential organisation, the League for Political Education. The League numbered innumerable millionaires among its members. Van Eeden had let it be known that he would be pleased to give a series of lectures in America. Rudolphine had called on the help of her husband, who had arranged for Van Eeden to come to America. Success was guaranteed, Ely had predicted.
Ely was right. During his first tour Van Eeden commented on the wonderful ‘spirit of the people’; in addition to enthusiasm, there was a great willingness to learn. On 8 March 1908 he spoke about his social ideas before an audience of 3,000 in the Carnegie Hall. The structure of his lecture was simple: first he indicated all the things that were wrong in America, then went on to describe how the country could be saved. America, a land where democracy and freedom had traditionally been so greatly valued, was, according to Van Eeden, bowed down by the tyranny of capitalism. There was unprecedented profligacy and people had turned their backs on socialism. There was a strong chance that American civilisation would eventually collapse, as had happened in the past with other powerful empires such as
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Announcement of a lecture by van Eeden, ‘the William Morris of the present day’ (Universiteitsbibliotheek, Amsterdam).
Egypt, Athens, Rome, Florence and the Dutch Republic. There was a way out, however, if America would opt for the cooperative system. He discussed what he had learned in this respect at Walden. The key issue was the fair distribution of wealth. Shared wealth could be a blessing, unlimited private wealth a curse.
The lecture was a success. Wealthy businessmen were interested in Van Eeden's cooperative plans and promised funding. Walter Page, co-owner of the famous publishing house Doubleday, Page & Co., promised every support. William Hoggson, a rich building contractor, devised an organisation: The Cooperative Company of America. Although The New York Times and American socialists were sceptical about Van Eeden's unbounded optimism in predicting that he could make capitalists dance to his tune, he continued
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to cherish high hopes for America. In The Independent he wrote that, for him, America was ‘an ugly young duckling’, but that he believed in the swan which it would become. When he attended the opening of an enormous refectory for immigrants on Ellis Island, he was exuberant in his praise for American immigration policy.
A high point in his journey was his meeting with President Theodore Roosevelt. Van Eeden presented the President with a copy of The Quest, the English translation of his book De kleine Johannes (1887). The President was a vain, not unpleasant man, according to Van Eeden, and was anything but handsome with his little eyes. Roosevelt had used the occasion to warn Van Eeden against visionary people, and Van Eeden had gained the impression that the President was referring to him in particular.
Van Eeden felt that everything in that first journey had been above expectations. He would certainly be returning.
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The Palace of Circe
Van Eeden's longing to return became stronger when he returned to the Netherlands, where his flirtation with American capitalism met with a mocking reaction. But he was happy to discover that he was not alone in his idea of bringing in rich businessmen. Shortly before his second American trip, he read with approval the book Inspired Millionaires by the ex-cleric Gerald Stanley Lee. Lee considered that millionaires were a special type of people; they had vision, great daring and they were idealists. According to Lee, the greatest among them were even poets. Christ, if he were to return to earth, would believe not only in the poor, but also in rich people. The next Messiah would be ‘a Messiah for Millionaires’. He would be ‘an inspired Millionaire’, who would cause other rich people to realise that they too had a great task in the near future.
Van Eeden was able to make excellent use of Lee's book in his American plans. For his followers, of course, his belief in full-blooded capitalism was difficult to understand. How could Van Eeden now praise so highly the merchants and traders about whom he had uttered such harsh words in the past?
He himself did not hesitate. During his first visit he had made clear to the Americans what his social ideas involved. During his second trip, which began in February 1909 and lasted until early May, he was aiming to ask millionaires what they intended to do with his plans.
Van Eeden began his second tour in less buoyant mood than the first, but his visit to Gerald Lee in Northampton, ma lifted his spirits considerably. Van Eeden was naturally flattered when Lee saw in him the European who could give direction to the American belief in the future.
Van Eeden's second tour was targeted mainly at Western America. In Chicago he entered the nouveau riche atmosphere of the ‘Beef Trust’. Upton Sinclair had exposed the wrongs in the meat industry in 1906 in his famous novel The Jungle. Van Eeden stayed with the multimillionaire Ira Morris, the son of a notorious ‘packer’ from the Chicago meat industry. One evening Van Eeden lay in Morris' villa on huge bear skins surrounding a fountain in the middle of the room, discussing art with the guests.
American women showed a great interest in Van Eeden; in particular a
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Van Eeden (r.) on board the New Amsterdam in May 1909 (Universiteits-bibliotheek, Amsterdam).
certain Helen Smith, a rich divorcee, forced herself on him. She had organised a grand party for Van Eeden with Dutch costumes, flags, long Gouda pipes and pot beer mugs. The rumours flew: according to some she was a magnanimous woman, while according to others she was a Circe, who turned men into swine and her father into a wreck. Initially, she could do no wrong as far as Van Eeden was concerned. He stayed in her splendid villa, Lynden Lodge in Stamford, and enjoyed her company. But his enthusiasm tempered when he discovered that Helen Smith also had an eye for other men besides himself. During his third visit to America he was forced to conclude that she was ‘ a deeply depraved being and a practised liar’, who had a constant string of new men. Van Eeden portrayed Helen Smith and her world in his play The Palace of Circe ('t Paleis van Circe), written in 1910.
A very important event during his second trip was his acquaintance with Hugh MacRae, a banker from Wilmington, nc. MacRae was interested in Van Eeden's plans, because he himself was involved in agricultural reforms and was a member of an organisation which ran a horticultural enterprise near Wilmington. In the eyes of Van Eeden, MacRae was the prototype of the ‘inspired millionaire’ who fought courageously against the uninspired, unscrupulous financiers of Wall Street. Together with MacRae, the millionaire Tomlinson and the contractor Hoggson, Van Eeden held constructive talks on the plans for a cooperative.
On 21 April 1909 Van Eeden travelled to Wilmington to select a location for his colony. He talked to Dutch people there, who had settled in nearby colonies. On his return to New York he called on Washington where, together with the contractor Hoggson, he was granted an audience with
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President Taft, who was very interested in the colony plans. Van Eeden found Taft a simpler, calmer and more critical figure than Roosevelt.
Following his return to the Netherlands, Van Eeden thought seriously about whether he and his second wife Truida Everts should settle in America, and specifically in Wilmington, where the new colony was to be set up. Following his bankruptcy his financial position was weak. By writing and giving lectures he would be able to earn a decent living in America.
In the meantime he was busily recruiting workers in the Netherlands for the colony in Wilmington. He detected a trend in the Netherlands to emigrate to America. His method of recruiting workers drew a fair amount of criticism from the anarchists. There was as yet no evidence in the American colony of the ideals of Shared Land Ownership. For Van Eeden it was very important that he himself should go to America to supervise the setting up of the colony and ensure it had the right character, as well as to increase his knowledge about the climate and soil in Wilmington. On 9 October he left the Netherlands for his third American trip.
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Disillusion
Even during the sea crossing, with the waves crashing over the deck and Van Eeden in fear for his life, he knew for certain that this would be the last time he made this trip. The novelty of America had worn off. Moreover, he did not like the fact that he had only managed to make an impact in America as a social reformer and psychotherapist, and hardly at all as a writer. He now also clearly saw the ugly sides of America: the superficiality of the inhabitants, the neglect of nature and the pollution of the cities.
Together with William Hoggson he further developed the plans for the Cooperative Company of America. It was important to generate propaganda for the Company. Walter Page agreed to publish a book in which Van Eeden was not only able to describe his life but also the development of his ideas and his vision of the future of mankind. The book was published in 1912 by Doubleday, Page & Co. under the title Happy Humanity. Its propagandist nature largely determined the tone of the book and, what was even worse, its portrayal of the facts of Van Eeden's life. His autobiography was not a success, and in 1914 it was remaindered. Van Eeden also wrote a propaganda brochure under the title Van Eeden - Colony in North Carolina USA (Van Eeden - kolonie in N. Carolina usa), which appeared in 1912. In addition to photos and factual information about the geographical, climatological and social situation in North Carolina, the brochure also contained tips and warnings for the workers in the colony.
The most important aspect of Van Eeden's third trip was his stay in Wilmington, where he spoke with the Dutch people who had settled there in the preceding period and where he discussed all the plans with Hugh MacRae. He rounded off his stay in America with a visit to Kansas, where the students performed his play IJsbrand.
On his journey home in December 1909, Van Eeden was clear about one thing: he would never return to America.
In the years which followed Van Eeden was kept constantly informed by William Hoggson and Hugh MacRae of the situation in the colony. That sit- | |
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uation was anything but rosy. It was decided to build a preparatory phase without cooperative elements. Van Eeden's hopes were briefly raised that the cooperative would be established after all, when in 1911 MacRae reserved a plot of land for founding a colony, which was named after Van Eeden. But the organisation of the Van Eeden Colony, with its twenty Dutch families, in no way reflected Van Eeden's ideals. Lack of leadership and serious disagreements and discontent on the part of the Dutch colonists were a major cause of the decline. One of the problems was that Van Eeden had painted too rosy a picture when recruiting colonists.
Around 1915 it became clear that the colony was a failure. And in 1921 MacRae was forced to inform Van Eeden that ‘In one way the Van Eeden Colony has not been a success.’ In 1926 Van Eeden wondered whether his colony still existed. In 1939 an organisation from New York bought up the land to house Jewish refugees from Europe.
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Writers and friends
Van Eeden's view of America was formed not only by his experiences during his three journeys there, but also by his years of friendship and correspondence with the socialist writer Upton Sinclair. In 1908, when he and Van Eeden began corresponding, Sinclair had made a name for himself with his novels in which the wrongs in American society were described in great detail. Van Eeden was impressed by these novels, because they were so clearly based on Sinclair's own experiences and observations. Sinclair and Van Eeden had much in common. Before getting to know Van Eeden, Sinclair, who was eighteen years his junior, had led a life which was comparable in terms of adventure to Van Eeden's own. Their affinity was reflected among other things in their committed writership, their shared admiration of Nietzsche and their ideas about a society based on cooperation. From November 1906 to March 1907 Sinclair had begun a colony on a cooperative basis, the Helicon Home Colony. Moreover, both writers believed in close international cooperation between writers and intellectuals. They read each other's books and stimulated each other.
The two got to know each other personally in 1912 during a stay in England. Van Eeden considered Sinclair, whom he jokingly called ‘Brother Uppie’, an amazing person, with his easy social manners and his natural manner in everything he did. Sinclair, for his part, typified Van Eeden in his autobiography American Outpost as a vital man who, though his beard was grey, had a spirit which was ‘still omnivorous’.
Sinclair, with his many contacts, paved the way for Van Eeden's books to be published in America, resulting in the publication of The Quest in 1911, the translation of three parts of De kleine Johannes. The publisher, Mitchell Kennerley, promised to make Van Eeden's name as an author. But when sales of The Quest proved disappointing, Kennerley backed out of his promise.
For his part, Van Eeden helped Sinclair with his literary work, for example arranging the publication of Sinclair's novel King Coal in Dutch translation in 1918, with a foreword by Van Eeden. In his warm and critical letters to Sinclair, Van Eeden commented on the latter's books. Sometimes
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he criticised Sinclair's habit of writing in an openly autobiographical way, and advised him - a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black - to control his urge to preach.
He also helped Sinclair with his divorce. Sinclair had made a failed attempt to divorce in New York. Under the Catholic laws which applied there,
‘A Communist's Lunch’ (Cartoon from De notenkrakers, 12 April 1908).
however, divorce was only possible if Sinclair were to confess that he had used physical violence against his wife. Meanwhile Van Eeden had discovered that the courts in the Netherlands were empowered to pronounce a divorce between two Americans, provided one of them lived in the Netherlands. Sinclair promptly took up residence in the Netherlands in a small house near the town of Hilversum. The divorce was settled amicably; Sinclair did not even have to appear in court.
During this period Van Eeden was heavily involved together with the German Erich Gutkind in a bid to form a circle of intellectuals and writers, whose task it would be to save civilisation and set out guidelines for mankind for the future. Among others they managed to draw Martin Buber, Walther Rathenau and Gustav Landauer into their ranks. Van Eeden also urged Sinclair to participate. He even took Sinclair with him to visit Gutkind in Berlin. But the circle, which was named Forte-Kreis, fell apart when the First World War broke out in the summer of 1914.
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World City
During the war Sinclair and Van Eeden kept up a lively correspondence on the question of what the consequences of the World War would be. Whereas Sinclair believed that the struggle between the peoples would ultimately lead to victory for social democracy, Van Eeden believed that the War would sweep away monarchy as a constitutional structure, and that a federation of European democratic republics would emerge.
Van Eeden's letters were important to Sinclair, because they provided him with information hot off the presses about the War and the background to it. Their correspondence covered all manner of issues, such as whether America ought to take part in the War. Another question was the promotion of democracy in America and Europe. When the American President Wilson published his Fourteen Points in January 1918, in which he argued for the people's right to self-determination and the setting up of a league of nations, Sinclair wrote an open letter to the President which mainly stressed the need to uphold democracy in his own country. Van Eeden was in total agreement with Sinclair and published his open letter in De Amsterdammer, the weekly magazine of which he was editor. According to Van Eeden America, with Wilson at the helm, had to play a leading role in world politics. There was no other people which showed the world more effectively the power of ‘a well-ordered democracy’.
By the end of the First World War, Van Eeden was particularly interested in Wilson because he wished to involve him in his design for a world city. Van Eeden had designed this metropolis together with the architect Jaap London during a series of spiritualist seances. Via a medium, they received messages from friends ‘on the other side’ about the design of the metropolis and how the plan should be announced to mankind. Wilson was to be given a key role in this latter assignment.
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The City of Light or World City was to provide the essential unity for which people were crying out after the terrible experiences of the Great War, and in many ways resembled a religious dream design of the United Nations. The city was designed in such a way that a great dome, symbol of human unity, would arise in the middle. Within this dome or ‘World House’, the representatives of the whole of humanity would gather, at one in their worship of God. There would be no denominational services in the dome; there would only be singing and prayers. The City of Light was designed in three sections, in accordance with the image which Van Eeden had of the ideal human being. The centre, where the dome was sited, was the soul. Then there was a section for the spirit, where theatre, libraries and universities were established; and finally there was the outer city, or material body, which provided a home for financial affairs, hotels and inns. The City was to be ruled by a twelve-strong council of judges, chosen by an elite core of electors.
Van Eeden attempted, via an official of the American Legation in The Hague, to bring the design to Wilson's attention. But the official was afraid that Wilson would be too busy with the peace negotiations and would consider the plan impractical. He advised Van Eeden to go to America to ask Henry Ford if he saw anything in the City of Light project. The shrewd businessman Ford was after all known to be a genuine idealist, who had gained a reputation as a pacifist during the World War, when he had sailed with a Peace Ship to Europe in a stunt designed to set the warring nations on a different path. Van Eeden had attended the dinner given by the Ford expedition in The Hague in January 1916, and had made clear in a speech that evening his view that Ford and his followers did not realise what the War was about, namely the replacement of monarchy by democracy. The Americans could set a good example by making their own country as democratic as possible. The idealist Henry Ford was given a slap in the face when Van Eeden showed in his speech how Ford, as a capitalist businessman, had been forced to participate in a system in which exploitation was the rule rather than the exception.
The City of Light died a premature death. Neither Wilson nor Ford gave the plan their blessing.
In the years after the War Ford, as an ‘inspired millionaire’, continued to play an important role in Van Eeden's life. When reading Ford's autobiography My Life and Work, Van Eeden became aware of how closely Ford's ideas corresponded with his own. Workers and businessmen need not be opponents, was the Fordist idea. Van Eeden vainly showered Ford with letters and offered to write columns for Ford's favourite magazine Dear Independent. But the letters were answered only by Ford's secretary.
Van Eeden felt that Ford could also fulfil a spiritual role. He tried in vain to set up a meeting between Ford and the Dutch Archbishop Van der Wetering, who was in Chicago in 1926 for a Eucharistic Conference.
Upton Sinclair had no time for Ford and informed Van Eeden that he considered Ford ‘one of the greatest curses’ that had ever plagued America. According to Sinclair, Ford was an anti-Semite and ‘practically a Ku Kluxer’.
The relationship between Sinclair and Van Eeden had already deteriorated when Van Eeden became a Catholic in 1922. Sinclair had no time for the
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Dutch settlers in the Van Eeden Colony - with wooden shoes! (Universiteitsbibliotheek, Amsterdam).
Catholic Church, arguing that: ‘ It submits mankind to authority’, and that the Church supported Mussolini. Van Eeden, for his part, fiercely attacked Bolshevism which Sinclair greatly admired. Lenin was a persecutor of religion.
Towards the end of his life, the mentally ill and physically exhausted Van Eeden was afraid that his friendship with Sinclair was finished; but Sinclair reassured him. Van Eeden's last words to Sinclair, on 22 October 1929 - more than two years before his death - were: ‘Forget me not’. Nothing remained of the self-confidence with which Frederik van Eeden had embarked on his American adventure back in 1908.
jan fontijn
Translated by Julian Ross.
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Further reading
mooijnaer, marianne l., ‘A Socialist Eden in North Carolina? Frederik van Eeden and his American Dreams’. In: Rob Kroes et al., The Dutch in North America. Amsterdam, 1991, pp. 282-305. |
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