Aafje and friends: strolling around eighteenth-century Amsterdam

Jacobus Verheyden, Diaconie Oude Mannen- en Vrouwenhuis (Stadsarchief Amsterdam)

Ego-documents are a precious source when investigating someone’s life and personal circumstances. They give an interesting insight in an individual’s day to day life. For the FOSGUS research project diaries or autobiographies provide an extensive overview of the daily life and (social) activities of the female protagonist and are therefore interesting primary sources. Making a summary of available ego-documents was the first challenge. The Dutch website egodocuments.net provides a comprehensive quantity of more than 1.200 documents in handwriting or in print. They were found in public archives as well as in family records, some in handwriting while others were transcribed and sometimes published. All documents were provided with a description of among others the author, the type of the document, the number of pages, the period which is covered by the document, and some remarks about the content of the diary of biography. The editors have limited themselves to diaries, autobiographies and biographies. Correspondences and for instance family books are not included. The documents on the website are organised in three parts: ego-documents written between 1500 and 1814, between 1814 and 1914 and a section with travel diaries.

The first step of my research was to compile a preliminary list with documents that might be interesting for further research. The aim was to find autobiographies or diaries written by women in which Amsterdam and their mobility and use of the streets could be detected. Texts written by men could also be interesting to review if the family lived in Amsterdam and a distinctive part of the text was spent on family affairs. From the first collection of the ego-documents (1500-1814) 32 texts were selected for further research of which 13 were written by women. For the second part, 1814-1914 of which just documents were traced till 1860, 8 texts were labelled as potentially interesting, of which six were written by a female author. The section of travel diaries provided 13 documents to be further examined, of which three were written by a woman.

For this blog post three titles were selected for analysis. First: ‘Het dagverhaal van Aafje Gijsen van 1773 tot 1775’. Second: ‘Verhaal van mijn droevig leeven’ van Maria de Neufville(1699-1779) and third ‘Memoriaal ofte mijn levensraijsinghe’ from Hermanus Verbeeck (1621-1681). The selection thus comprised two female authors with one diary and one life story from the eighteenth century and an autobiography in alexandrines about the different periods in his life by the seventeenth-century inhabitant of Amsterdam Hermanus Verbeeck.

From the three selected documents we only have one day to day record: the diary of Aafje Gijsen. Although the two other written texts are no day to day diaries there is still a conclusion that can be made: in both texts strong women play an important role. Maria de Neufville wrote her life story not long before she died in the age of eighty years old. The text is not more than ten pages and seems to be written to give a retrospective meaning of her live when she looks back on it. The text does not give any insight in her way of living Amsterdam only that she, unmarried, was caretaker in two households of her family. The first time when the spouse of her brother has died and the second time at her sister’s house who was in charge of the family business. The text does not give details about her mobility in Amsterdam, but without doubt Maria had commuted often between the houses of her parents and of her brothers and sisters who all lived in Amsterdam. After her mid-forties she lived with one of her nieces in six different country houses not far from Amsterdam. She bought, sold or rented them. She was an independent woman who made her own decisions. 

The text of Hermanus Verbeeck, a male author, is one big lament of all the setbacks of the live of an Amsterdam based shopkeeper. It is a more or less literary text (in alexandrines) full of self-pity. It did show something extraordinary: in all important situations in Verbeeck’s life he depends on strong women. When he was ill, which often was the case, his wife Clara run the store. When he needed a new job, which happened a few times, he contacted women in high positions to help him. His mother-in-law maintains the family by taking them into her household so he could rent out his own house. His sisters in law, during a period a few years later, supported Verbeeck and his family by moving into them and paying for their maintenance.

The diary of Aafje Gijsen is a summary of her daily activities of almost three years of her life as a young adult between the age of 20 and 22. Although Aafje Gijsen did not live in Amsterdam, she lived ten miles to the north, in Westzaandam, she describes in her diary more than twenty trips to Amsterdam. Aafje writes about her numerous social contacts, her trips to Amsterdam and to others cities in the northern part of Holland, family matters and her visits to the church and the bible texts that were used during the mass. She had a busy social life with family and friends. She was frequently making trips to places in her region like Haarlem, Alkmaar and Purmerend for shopping, visiting the market or for a fair. In the almost three years of her diary she made more than twenty visits to Amsterdam, often to visit friends or for a combination of shopping and a social visit. Most of these trips were daytrips, in some cases she stays one or two nights in the city. From February 13th 1775 tot February 27th she stayed 14 days with the Hodson family for a sleepover. The three oldest daughers of this family (Anna, Leentje and Catootje) were more or less from the same age as Aafje and good friends of hers. Although the Hodson family belonged to another social class, they could be defined as upper-class while Aafje and her family were middle-class, this does not interfere with their friendship. 

It seems a well-accepted practice for young women in the 18th century, they were all between 18 and 23 years, to wander and stroll through the city without a chaperone or an older male relative. Aafje mentioned several times going out with her friends just to walk ‘een gragtje’ (canal), to go to the river Amstel, do some shopping, or walk to the Oude Mannehuys. Never in her diary Aafje mentions any restrictions or approval needed. Women not only seems to have quite some freedom to move around, but they also could participate in a party or be in the company of men without a chaperone. Aafje describes how she travels alone with Joan Hodson, the father of her friends, from their country house to Amsterdam while visiting a dinner party with seventeen other guests later that evening. She also mentions a dinner on a ship in Amsterdam with twelve men. She was the only female at the commander’s dinner table. 

The diary is quite factual, seldom shares Aafje her opion or emotions. Aafje describes where she was going and in most of the cases who did accompagny her. She hardly tells what she sees, only when she visits the fair in Amsterdam she mentions the animals. Even when she was going to visit the newly built theatre she does not mention the fact that the old one burned down two years earlier. The only remark that reveals that she knows what had happened is that she wrote: ‘We liked the play as we did the building.’

So her diary is just a factual display of her life and may be that can be declared because of her youth. She might concentrate on her own life and is not aware of the actuality around her. Although the published diary is very well annotated the question remains why Aafje wrote a diary and why about this period in her life.

Her style is in contrast with the two diaries Bébio Amaro described in his post? In her writings Kuroda Tosako pays more attention to the important incidents in Edo. Her style, with poetry and fragments of popular literature, is completely different from the accounting style of Aafje’s diary. The second diary Bébio has mentioned in his post, is written by Inoue Tsujo, a female house teacher in Edo. This diary is not only about her visits in and around Edo, the diary also includes the interesting things she saw on her walks, the general weather conditions and the temples she visited. Inoue Tsujo also incorporated some literary components in her texts, like poetry.

In all three Dutch texts from the 17th and 18th century strong and independent women seem to play important roles. It seems in accordance with the two writers of the Japanese diaries of which Tosako was a widow who managed her husband’s estate and Tsujo was serving as a teacher. But as we can read in the Japanese post, the women in Japan were confronted with much more restrictions for travelling outside the city than Aafje had in Holland.  

For the Dutch situation more ego-documents have to be analyzed, especially those from women, to discover to what extent women were part of the public life in the city of Amsterdam in this pre-industrialized period. It might change the narrative as we know it for such a long time. 

 Bibliography

Gijsen, A., Het dagverhaal van Aafje Gijsen van 1773 tot 1775’(Wormerveer 1986).

Neufville, M. de, Verhaal van mijn droevig leeven’(Hilversum 1997).

Verbeeck, H., Memoriaal ofte mijn levensraijsinghe’(Hilversum 1999).