De Nieuwe Gids and its informal patronage system

This paper focuses on the funding and finances of De nieuwe gids , a late nineteenth-century periodical believed by many to be the archetypical Dutch cultural magazine. The editors of De nieuwe gids introduced new ways of running their business and had new ideas about their role as professional writers and painters, about the pitfalls of creating for money, and about the relationship between art and finance. The paper argues that they alleviated their uneasy relationship with money through different forms of patronage. The editors acquired a substantial capital from a consortium of eleven backers, and used this money for the continuation of the magazine as well as for the upkeep of those members of their group who had no other resources. They made sure that money was circulated and transferred in such a way that all members profited: artists without money could keep on writing and painting, and artists who did have money invested in the continuity of the group as a whole and in their own place within it. This patronage system was remarkably successful, probably because it did not affect the artistic prestige or credibility of the editors, nor of the benefactors involved.


De nieuwe gids and its Informal Patronage System
For both individual artists and editors of magazines, the support of a rich patron was something to be proud of. It is interesting that Kloos wasn't the only Tachtiger to invent a patron. His fellow editor Lodewijk Van Deyssel also fabricated a protector. In 1885, he informed Albert Verwey, one of the other editors, that he 'had received an anonymous letter from Amsterdam, containing a sum (150 guilders) the sender intended me to put towards a trip to the mountains. I thought: I will do exactly that, and set off without further ado'.4 This benefactor, who supposedly nonchalantly sent Van Deyssel today's equivalent of nearly €2,000, was an even bigger fiction than Kloos's 'lady with the unfriendly eyes': Van Deyssel's patron never existed, whereas Kloos's benefactor did, even if she gave her money for very different reasons and under very different circumstances than he tried to make people believe in 1910.
The Tachtigers' relationship with money was an uneasy one. It is perhaps too strong to say that making money was taboo in their circle, but they certainly disapproved of linking art and earnings in any overt way. The editors and writers of De nieuwe gids strived for independence and autonomy, not only morally and artistically, but also financially. A few of them had side jobs, private incomes, or well-to-do spouses, but most Tachtigers tried to earn their living through writing or painting. The Tachtigers never had a very large audience, and getting by on what they sold was never easy. Getting a job as a journalist or leading a double life as a hack writer was seen as a dubious form of selling out. Their views and practices reflect the professionalization and autonomization of the cultural field at the time. As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has shown, power relations between writers, publishers, and the public changed profoundly in the second half of the nineteenth century. 5 In the Netherlands, as elsewhere, the changing social, economic, and cultural environment of writing and publishing led on the one hand to a larger number of 'professional' authors, who wrote for a living and catered to a mass audience, and on the other hand to the rise of a class of deliberately non-or even anti-commercial writers. This category was interested in selling their work to a very select audience only, without having to compromise or to pander to the 'ignorance' of the general public. The Tachtigers adopted a double strategy: they believed in selecting their followers and in catering to a small and elite public of connoisseurs, but aimed simultaneously at a form of financial self-sufficiency.
This, of course, could not but lead to a perpetual and collective shortage of money -an impecuniousness not only felt by individual Tachtigers, but shared by the group of writers and painters as a whole. The money earned, loaned, or obtained within the group tended to circulate through an informal, private system of gift and exchange from one member to another. Some artists often found themselves on the receiving end (such as Kloos and Van Deyssel); others tended to be mostly givers (such as the painter Willem Witsen, who had a wealthy father, and treasurer Frank Van der Goes, who worked in insurance). Still, the surviving letters and documents show that all Tachtigers, rich and poor, shared in a collective sense of financial vulnerability and apprehension -alternating with short-lived bouts of pecuniary faith and confidence.
Their system of extensive reciprocal support stands in the tradition of what art historian Peter Springer has called 'artists' patronage'. In the support artists give each other, he argues, roles are typically interchangeable, with recipients of help often acting as givers as well, and givers as recipients. 6 This system had its pitfalls. As I will show below, most of the time it worked beautifully, but it could also cause resentment and spite. I also argue that the Tachtigers combined their artists' patronage with more traditional forms of support. The editors of De nieuwe gids managed to attract a consortium of eleven backers that provided the means for publication of the magazine -Kloos's 'lady with the unfriendly eyes' was one of its members. The balance sheets of the magazine show that this group invested a total of 4,000 guilders between 1885 and 1891.7 Four Tachtigers stepped in as well, adding another 750 guilders to the capital of the magazine, making a total of 4,750 guilders (equivalent to nearly €126,000). This money was meant as a loan, but De nieuwe gids never made any profit and never paid any of it back. Some of the eleven bondholders supported not only the magazine, but individual writers or painters as well. And yet another group of patrons had nothing to do with the magazine, but gave extensive support to specific artists associated with De nieuwe gids. All-in-all, three systems of patronage seem to have functioned around De nieuwe gids: the reciprocal arrangement of the artists themselves; the efforts of the consortium of financiers who backed the magazine; and the involvement of a circle of regular patrons who subsidized individual artists. However, the question is whether these alliances always ran smoothly. It is very possible that the artists' need for autonomy and financial independence sometimes failed to match with the demands and wishes of the patrons.8 It is therefore not surprising that Kloos and Van Deyssel dreamt up fictive benefactors, whose support was not only generous, but above all, casual and off-hand 'without any strings attached'. The question is if the eleven (very real) backers of De nieuwe gids were prepared to be as compliant.

Backroom Business
De nieuwe gids was launched by a small group of friends: five young men who shared the same literary ideals and whose decision to collaborate was based on friendship and idealism. Some of them had money of their own; others were much less fortunate. None of them joined the venture to get rich: De nieuwe gids was not started as a business venture, but as an attempt to bring together like-minded people and to promote new ideas. From the beginning, the nature of the collaboration was essentially informal -the success of the magazine depended very much on colloquial relationships and exchanges, both within and outside of the small group of founders. The backroom business of the magazine was conducted in cafés, student rooms, and informal gatherings -and in hundreds of letters, most of which have survived, and upon which much of the research for this paper is based. Some financial records and minutes of meetings have also survived, but not many, in keeping with the casual, even careless way in which the magazine was managed.
Money was discussed at length in the hundreds of letters the Tachtigers wrote to each other. How to make their work more lucrative, but without artistic compromise? 6  How to pay the rent, but without 'selling their souls' to either publisher or public? Many who have published on the Tachtigers have since commented on their habit of ignoring their audience and their lack of concern for the commercial appeal of their work. However, the letters reveal that for many Tachtigers the fact that their poems and paintings had to be distributed or sold at some point was not problematic in itself. They actually liked presenting their work to a public. They did, however, feel uncomfortable with an all too obvious association of monetary value with artistic value. They would have preferred to completely separate the two, and were annoyed by the fact that creating art unavoidably had to be followed by an assessment of its economic worth.9 Tachtiger Frederik Van Eeden, who was a writer and a doctor, told his diary in 1895 that: 'there is no way of making money that I find right and proper'. 10  to what they called the 'narrow-minded hostile mob' that they considered would never even begin to understand.14 It would never do to try to meet this type of reader halfway. The worst reproach to any Tachtiger was to accuse him of trying to 'gain favour with the public, to make advances to the public […] just to satisfy his vanity and greed'. 15 The elusive 'N.G.-public', by contrast, showed promise. It could conceivably be gradually educated and enlightened. Van Eeden predicted that the magazine would be 'read by thousands' and pointed out that De nieuwe gids was meant for more people than for 'its coterie' alone: 'we want to stand among the people, and keep standing there.'16 Verwey, in June 1887, commented: This did not mean that Kloos rejected all payment for his work. He desperately needed the money De nieuwe gids paid him for his editorial duties and was convinced that the magazine owed it to him to pay him as much as he needed to survive. He claimed that taking a regular job would cause him to 'die or at least stultify'. He hated the thought of 'having to do taxing work that I would rather avoid'.22 As an editor of De nieuwe gids he earned 600 guilders a year, and this was, along with the variable payments for the poems he published, his only regular income. In 1890, he wrote: I have to have a regular income, something I can be sure of, and that will allow me to fulfil my basic needs. This is also what I have been promised when the N.G. started. They as good as told me 'we know you can't survive on 600 guilders, but our 17 'Is de heele N.G. wel iets anders dan een poging om de menschen te bekeeren tot het begrijpelijk vinden van  future is totally uncertain, the whole business may collapse, so we can't do more at the moment, but as soon as possible we will see what we can do. 23 And the editors of De nieuwe gids agreed with him. They thought that an eminent writer like Kloos merited the highest fee the magazine could offer, if only because of the value of his work -even if he would never put pen to paper again. Van Eeden wrote to him: We know very well that in these revolutionary times in our country hardly anything of value has happened that hasn't been influenced by you. And that you, of all people, have every right to any benefits this magazine can give in a country like ours. I am convinced that one day you will make a living off the magazine, and even if you produced nothing more, I would still find that just and proper.24 A closer look at the financial position of De nieuwe gids shows that the magazine found it hard to find a public. Van Eeden's prediction that thousands would read the magazine did not come true. very nicely, hardly has more subscribers than we do.'26 The question is why De nieuwe gids ran into so many financial problems. With the bond loan of 4,750 guilders the magazine was on firm financial footing. The contract with their publisher, Versluys, was not unfavourable either. Versluys took the usual twenty per cent cut of any money the subscribers brought in, and took care of promotion and distribution in return. 27 Kloos was content with the arrangement because: 'Versluys [also] put his name on the line, at a time when everybody else saw us as nothing more than young upstarts and laughed at us: without his name we would never have gotten this far, and that's worth some money.' And besides, the publisher was always 'willing to pay large advances'.28

Bondholders
From the very beginning, De nieuwe gids succeeded in finding a circle of well-wishers willing to invest in the magazine by buying bonds. A consortium of eleven backers succeeded in covering the debts of the magazine and supplementing the income of the group as a whole. As mentioned above, all they received in return was a neatly printed bond, with the conditions of the loan clearly stated (but largely ignored later) on the flipside.29 In the existing literature on De nieuwe gids, there is much incorrect speculation about the extent of this support and about the financiers involved.30 Table  2 below gives the full and correct list of backers.
As indicated in the last column, most of these eleven investors did not only support the magazine, but also individual Tachtigers. These patrons functioned quite anonymously behind the scenes of the magazine; even among specialists, their names are not readily recognized. Who were they? In a way, this consortium connected the world of art and literature to the world of money and investment. Some of the eleven patrons were wealthy family members or acquaintances of the Tachtigers themselves (numbers 2 and 4). Others were part of the large Jewish community in Amsterdam (numbers 9, 10, and 11 all worked as jewellers and diamond cutters). Some were representatives of what was called 'Young Amsterdam': the community of successful young urban people, socially dynamic and politically active, often working in industry or trade.31 Together, these youths formed the hub of the so-called Second Golden Age that took shape in the last part of the nineteenth century, propelling Amsterdam into prosperity and modernity. They paid for De nieuwe gids with money earned in finance (numbers 1 and 3), in law and insurance (numbers 6 and 7), and in the trade of tobacco, wood, or grain (numbers 3 and 5). More than half of these patrons were young, or at least very close 26  in age to the Tachtigers they supported (numbers 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, and 11 were members of the same generation). Even Kloos's 'lady with the unfriendly eyes' (who was called Koosje Jolles-Singels in real life, number 1) was only thirty-eight years old in 1885 (while Kloos was twenty-six at the time).32 And the eleven backers were very much interconnected: they all knew each other socially or professionally.
Also worth noting is the prominent role of women: two of the eleven patrons were female, and behind two of the male patrons (numbers 3 and 8) stood wives who were the driving force behind their commitment to De nieuwe gids. This prominence of female patronage wasn't restricted to the circle of the Tachtigers, or to the Netherlands: international research has shown that many female patrons were active in Europe during this period. At a time when married women were expected to be wives and mothers only, patronage offered them a unique chance to be socially active and useful, in a role 32 'Contemporary' in this case means born after 1855. Notes Table 2 Financial backers of De nieuwe gids that was widely accepted without being too conspicuous. 33 In Germany, France, and the United States, ambitious and intelligent bourgeois wives supported artists in a number of ways -sometimes only financially, but often in the capacity of salonnière and networker as well. Of the eleven patrons mentioned above, patronage seems to have had this function of liberation and empowerment for Marie de Gijselaar (number 4) and Jolles-Singels. 34 The question remains as to whether these eleven patrons did indeed keep a respectful distance and refrain from trying to influence or control the editorial policy. For the most part they did. The consortium believed in the magazine and in the people editing it, but did not mingle in the running/day-to-day affairs of De nieuwe gids. However, some of them monitored the progress of the magazine carefully. Jolles-Singels, for instance, immediately wrote a letter to Kloos  Jolles-Singels was no outsider. As we have seen, Kloos chose to fictionalize her as an 'older, literary, rich lady', a bourgeois philistine unlikely to be interested in funding his magazine. In reality she was a member of the most vibrant artistic circles of her day, and met and received artists on a daily basis. She read most of the important European magazines and collected volumes of French symbolist poetry. Kloos had known her for years before asking her for money, and, standing in her drawing room, must have been far more confident than he let on in his account. She did donate 1,000 guilders in the early days of the magazine (this wasn't a myth), but unlike Kloos would have us believe, she had every confidence in the magazine and truly wanted to help. For her the involvement in De nieuwe gids was 'a way to keep in touch with youth -it helped me, to some extent, to keep up to date and has brought me so much joy'.38 But she did tend to underplay her own importance as a patron: I am glad if all goes well, and I will be proud as a peacock if others accede that I wasn't so far wrong in deciding to give all of you a chance to show your worth. But I assure you that I am not vain enough to think that I contributed as much to De nieuwe gids as you seem to think. Talent will always find a way, and you could very well have done all of this without me.39 Kloos and Verwey did not need to worry about meddling or intrusiveness. Most patrons weren't even interested in getting their money back -or were wary of conflict with the editors of the magazine, who had a reputation of imperiousness and belligerence.40 'Calisch has been sitting around in old Israels' studio for two years abusing the N.G., but now he is happy to buy a bond, and this Mr. Tiele is totally unliterary and doesn't do politics either, but thinks the N.G. is an honourable magazine that deserves to be supported', Verwey wrote of the numbers 5 and 6 on the list of backers.41 Still, most of them must have been interested in the fact that their involvement with a magazine as highly rated as De nieuwe gids did enhance their position and prestige in the 'Young Amsterdam' community.

Informal Patronage System
Van der Goes was the treasurer of De nieuwe gids and one of the wealthier members of the Tachtigers circle. He played a central role in the other, more informal patronage system that was operating around the magazine. In 1890, he wrote in a letter to his fellow editor Tak: The truth is, that the money box of De nieuwe gids has always been at the disposal of [its founders] Kloos and Verwey. They lived for De nieuwe gids, and they more or less lived off it as well. It came down to constantly helping two people who hardly had any resources. It was Verwey who for years tried to collect a monthly allowance of about 25 guilders for Kloos, and he ran into difficulties often enough. I knew of all this exactly, and it proved necessary to give over-large advances to Verwey out of our general, one could say collective accounts.42 This quote offers an interesting glimpse of the informal exchange of money and gifts occurring. 'Of course I know that there is not one authority that would condone these 39 'Ik ben blij als het u goed gaat en ik zal grootsch als een gulden zijn als velen erkennen dat het noch zoo dwaas niet gezien was om u lieden de kans te geven ons te toonen wat gij kunt. -Maar ik verzeker je dat ik niet ijdel genoeg ben om te denken dat ik zooveel aan De nieuwe gids gedaan hebt als gij meent. Talent baant zich altijd een weg en gijlieden zoudt dit ook best zonder mij gesteld hebben.' Letter from Jolles-Singels to Kloos Kloos and Verwey substantial sums at irregular intervals -quite apart from the fees they earned for their work as editors. These added up over the years, and could not but lead to huge deficits. Van der Goes also gave Kloos and Verwey money out of his own pocket -up until 1890 his private support amounted to no less than 800 guilders (equivalent to €9,500 today).44 And at the same time, the other Tachtigers tried to cover the losses by collecting money among themselves and donating it to De nieuwe gids. They all knew where the magazine's money was actually going, and why it was necessary to chip in. The quote uncovers another initiative: the informal fund that Verwey tried to raise by collecting money from anyone who cared to give. The painters Witsen and Jan Veth, and the writers Van Eeden and Van der Goes (again) were among the contributors. Although the twenty-five guilders a month Verwey collected was meant to fund the magazine, it soon went to Kloos, as an addition to his salary of 600 guilders a year. This provided him with a regular annual income of 900 guilders (equivalent to almost €11,000 today), quite apart from the fees he earned as a poet. 45 And this was not all. On his own part, Witsen regularly supported Kloos: he paid part of his bills, paid the rent for his rooms, arranged visits to the doctor, and invited him to stay. 46 And things became even more complicated: Witsen did the same thing for the writer Jan Hofker and the painter Eduard Karsten -but was, at the same time, supported himself -by Albert Kapteyn (number 8 on the list, an engineer living in London) and Henri Samson, a physician and art collector.47 Karsten, for his part, received help from Andries Van Wezel (number 9 on the list).48 And Kapteyn was one of Van Deyssel's benefactors as well -and Van Deyssel was also subsidized (from 1890) by Van der Goes and Van Eeden (again).49 Those two were assisted, in turn, by C. F. Van der Horst, bond holder of De nieuwe gids (number 7 on the list), and by the poet Herman Gorter -who would, years later, be supported in turn by Verwey (who had by then married well). 50 And the list goes on endlessly. Wealthy Tachtigers privately supported their poorer colleagues -and when, in later years, the tables turned and those who had been poor had come in shortages of money to some money, the roles were reversed. The web of patronage relationships was woven so densely that it is hard to separate one support initiative from another. It is fair to say that the group as a whole carried the burden of the occasional personal and constant collective shortages of money.
Why would the Tachtigers have relied so heavily on this form of collective and reciprocal support? The easy answer is of course that this form of giving reinforced their common bond. As an artistic community, the Tachtigers had placed themselves quite apart from their peers and from the existing artistic and societal context -they needed each other to strengthen their position as a group. By giving and sharing, they made their relationships productive. And there was also the issue of power. In the view of most readers and critics, writers like Kloos, Verwey, and Van Deyssel were vital to the image and impact of the magazine. These three also happened to be poor. By some coincidence, the Tachtigers who had economic resources (Van der Goes, Van Eeden, Tak) did not reach the same level of artistic authority as those who did not. Kloos and Verwey (who reinvented Dutch poetry) and Van Deyssel (who did the same for Dutch prose) were the figureheads of De nieuwe gids, something an artist like Van Eeden (the driving force behind many support initiatives) was very aware of.51 The conclusion could be that by giving money to their poor colleagues, the rich Tachtigers invested in the right to team up with artists who were artistically much more groundbreaking. That way, gift giving earned them the right to present themselves as a Tachtiger. Another explanation could be that they invested in their colleagues to help them stay productive. Their support enabled their friends to keep writing, and this was (by way of the growing reputation of De nieuwe gids) a very effective way of strengthening their own authority as well. This whole idea of making gift relations productive to both givers and recipients can be related directly to anthropological gift theory. Sociologists like Marcel Mauss and Aafke Komter claim that people are more ready to give when their mutual dependency is larger. People who need each other, emotionally, socially, or professionally, are more willing to acknowledge or strengthen their bond by exchanging gifts. 52 But more personal artistic concerns may have played a role as well. Historian Jan Fontijn claims in his biography of Van Eeden that around 1890 there were strong rumours that '[Van Eeden] only sent money to Van Deyssel to get Van Deyssel to write favourable reviews of his work', or, reversely, that Van Deyssel wrote those favourable reviews only to ensure himself of Van Eeden's support.53 And it is very possible that things did indeed (partly) work that way. Gift theory states that one of the unwritten rules regulating gift giving is that gift relationships flourish if both parties invest and profit just about equally. Van Eeden and Van Deyssel both invested in their relationship, but in different ways: one of them gave money, the other what Pierre Bourdieu calls 'consecration' -the power to confer cultural prestige.54 Apparently, this did not keep them from perceiving their alliance as a relationship of equivalence and balance.
But it was not difficult to upset this balance. The relationship between Kloos and Van Eeden is an example. Interestingly enough, the ease and freedom of their relationship dissolved the moment they started to define and specify what they actually gave to each other -and especially what Van Eeden gave to Kloos. Van Eeden had been silently supporting Kloos for a long time, and by now the poet considered these gifts as no more than his due. He did not understand why benefactors, like Van Eeden, protested if he put the relationship under pressure by asking more than they were prepared to give. In the spring of 1890, he decided to ask Van Eeden for more money, forcing his colleague to reconsider their mutual investment.
If you tell me now that you need 25 guilders each month, quite apart from your salary, to make ends meet -then I feel quite silly, tiredly writing mediocre articles in the evening to fill the N.G., or to make 50 guilders if I go out to read them to people, only to give you half of these 50 guilders. Whereas you have all day to write as much truly literary work as you wish.55 Van Eeden invested time, effort and energy; he expected Kloos to reciprocate with the production of 'truly literary work'. But this seemed to happen less and less often. Van Eeden asked him outright 'if he couldn't produce more?' Kloos owed it to himself and to his benefactor to make an effort, because 'you can produce work of the highest rank like no one else can in our country, you have material in abundance and […] time as well'. 56 Kloos was astounded. He denied ever having received anything in the way of help or support from Van Eeden, and did not feel under any obligation to reciprocate: You said that I should not take other people's efforts on my behalf for granted, and especially not yours. But that's not true. You offered to help, and out of necessity I concurred, adding that I considered all this as an advance, to be paid back after the death of my parents. Nothing more than a good turn.57 A major discussion followed. Who benefited the most from their relationship? Their argument hit rock bottom when Kloos, denying ever having received any help, coldly demanded a list of items Van Eeden supposedly had paid for over the years: If somebody, even if he is my best friend, lashes out in a discussion, arguing (like you did) that he has helped me for years (financially), and I am not at all aware of his, then I have the right to ask: explain this to me […]. I am perfectly willing to acknowledge my obligations, if you can prove, verbally, not in any written form, that's not what I'm asking, that you have indeed 'helped me for years'. If you can't, then you cannot accuse me of anything, if you can I will apologize for my […] ignorance, or impudence, as you choose to call it.58 Van Eeden was hurt. He informed Kloos that he considered the 'jumbling of "interest" in matters of affection bad form'. Kloos clearly 'couldn't forgive that we have put you in a position in which you have to fend for yourself ', forgetting that 'this kind of pride is only appropriate for someone strong enough to be truly independent'.59 This discussion led to an imbalance in their alliance that proved hard to overcome and redress. Their relationship never really recovered. The main problem seems to have been that they made the conditions of their exchange too explicit or, as Van Eeden's wife Martha put it, because the gentlemen 'discussed things that should be left unsaid'.60

Conclusion
The Tachtigers around De nieuwe gids found some interesting solutions to the eternal question of money. As we have seen, they alleviated their uneasy relationship with money through different forms of patronage. My research has shown that they used the capital they acquired from their patrons for the continuation of the magazine as well as for the upkeep of those members of the group who had no other resources. As a group, they made sure that money was circulated and transferred in such a way that all members profited: artists without money could keep on writing and painting, artists who did have money invested in the continuity of the group as a whole and in their own place within it. The generosity and lack of intrusiveness of the consortium of backers of De nieuwe gids is striking -none of them demanded any form of control. A question that is still open, then, is what it was that these patrons actually received in return for their gift. If the structure and organisation of the circle around De nieuwe gids clearly begs for an actor network theory type of network analysis, the patronage arrangements could be analysed much more thoroughly than I have done here by shifting focus and making more use of gift theory or even cultural economic game theory. 61 What is clear, however, is that the different forms of patronage and of funding the magazine were successful because they did not affect the artistic prestige or credibility of the Tachtigers, or of the benefactors involved -if anything, their solution to the money problem enhanced their position. This was particularly true for Van Eeden, who took pride in the fact that he was the one who enabled Kloos to write his masterpieces. It was also true for Kloos, who liked to boast of the fact that people were prepared to hand him envelopes with large banknotes. And it was probably true as well for the ladies and gentlemen who were glad that the Tachtigers were prepared to accept their gifts. Kloos's mythical patroness may have had 'unfriendly eyes', but she was also proud of her support.
Helleke Van den Braber is Assistant Professor of Cultural Studies at Radboud University, Nijmegen, and wrote her dissertation (2002) on early-twentieth-century forms of patronage in the Dutch art world. She has published widely (mostly in Dutch) on the history and theory of patronage, on collecting and collectors, and on forms of strategic giving.