Justine Constance Wirix-van Mansvelt (22 December 1876 – 18 August 1937) was a Dutch Protestant expert on the oeuvre of the Italian poet and writer Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).
Birth Justine Constance van Mansvelt was born in Schoonhoven as the second child of Rinse van Mansvelt, who retired with the rank of artillery major, and Augustina Maria Wilhelmina Slingeland. Their first child, Justine's brother George Louis, died very young.
Justine's ancestors clearly had a vivid interest in literature. Her grandfather from mother's side, the magistrate Leendert Slingeland (husband of Geertruy Hoek), was a former literature student and worked on behalf of the Schoonhoven residents at the placing of the new statue of Laurens Janszoon Coster (ca. 1370–1440) at the Grote Markt in Haarlem. Dutchman Coster was at that time thought to be the inventor of the printing press.
Two of Justine's great-grandfathers played a small role in the literary scene of the Netherlands: On her father's side this was the artistic Utrecht lawyer Anthony Jan van Mansvelt, who must have known the 18th century Dutch poet Jacobus Bellamy (1757–1786) personally. He painted the two Bellamy portraits, now in the collections of the Zeeuws Archief at Middelburg and the maritime museum MuZEEum at Vlissingen. On her mother's side this was Melchior Hoek, an ennobled infantry officer in Napoleon's Grande Armée, who wrote his memoirs about his experiences of the Russian and German campaigns. Parts of this document were published during his lifetime. Justine's paternal great-grandfather Rinse Koopmans, a Professor at the Mennonite Seminary in Amsterdam, played a more substantial role in the literary scene. This near ancestor published in the literary and cultural magazine Vaderlandsche letteroefeningen (1804) about the 17th century works of Dutch men of letters.
Faith
Justine had a Protestant background. Later in her life, she chose for the Walloon church, a Dutch Reformed denomination. In the way the relatives on her mother's side of the family believed, there was room for specific notions about the afterlife. It is very likely that grandfather Leendert Slingeland, during his Leiden study, had visited lectures of history teacher Willem Bilderdijk (1756–1831), in the Netherlands a celebrated poet and a contemporary of the English poet and mystic William Blake (1757–1827). Bilderdijk wrote a mourning poem on Julius Willem Bilderdijk, his twenty-year-old son who perished at sea, stretching his poetic text into the hereafter. His rhyming declamation De Geestenwareld (1811) mentions celestial beings looking after their living relatives.
Distinct liberal notions about the hereafter we find in Justine's family archives, in rare examples of Dutch poems about grief. In two of them, family members who died are mentioned as spiritual manifestations: a deceased great-uncle of her mother's and the deceased twenty-two-year-old great-uncle Johan Wilhelm Hoek (JWH). Johan's deeply bereaved parents play a part in a stylistically classical, mournful poem. Elements of this poem are obviously derived from the poem on Julius Willem Bilderdijk (JWB). The inspiration probably was caught from the combination of faith, literary taste and from an idea of some similarity: initials and age of the two deceased young men are to some extent comparable. In the consolation segment of the poem, Johan's mother (Justine's great-grandmother Hoek), becomes aware of the still existing liaison of kindred souls:
In the direct vicinity of Justine's family we find the poet widower Jan Brand van Cabauw (1785–1847), Lord of Cabauw and two other villages near Schoonhoven, for whom grandfather Slingeland worked as a steward and trustee. Great-uncle Gabriël Leonard van Oosten Slingeland was Brand's successor as Lordship of the villages Cabauw and Zevender. In one of his poems the poet remembers seeing his dead ten-year-old daughter Isabella. As a singing young angel, Belle descended from heaven to comfort her grieving father.
Education The young Justine Constance van Mansvelt lived in Schoonhoven and The Hague. The Van Mansvelt family from the provincial capital of Utrecht, she belonged to, already since the 17th century was an upper-middle-class family. During two centuries (since 1601) Van Mansvelt's were member of the Utrecht city council.
Justine was taught French during her youth. The private tutor Marie Madeleine Rivoire, from the Italian town of Torre Pellice, began her Dutch teaching career as a young woman, in 1880. Rivoire belonged to the Northern Italian Protestant family Rivoire (Rivoir) of the medieval religious movement of the Waldensians. In or shortly after 1889 Rivoire moved to The Hague, where she taught French at a private school. She might have been giving Justine secondary French education because of the planned Brussels period (see next). In her book (published 1929/1930) Justine credits Marie Rivoire as her first guide in the literary world of the medieval Italian poet and writer Dante Alighieri, which would inspire her for the rest of her live.
Around 1895 Justine was sent to finishing school in Brussels, in the vicinity of the Warande Park. This was probably the 'Institution de demoiselles' run by the widow Jouret in the Rue Ducale. Thanks to a guestbook used by the twenty-year-old Justine, we know she was back in The Hague in November 1897.
In the first years of her marriage Justine learned to speak and write Italian. Most probably tutor Marie Rivoire had already planted the seed of the Italian language. As appears from her 1911 article Justine mastered this language long before the Florence edition of her book came out (1930). It seems possible that future university professor of Italian Romano Nobile Guarnieri (1883–1955), from the town of Adria in Northern Italy, was her second tutor. At the beginning of the 20th century Guarnieri taught Italian in Arnhem, a Dutch city near the German border. Justine then lived in the nearby garrison town of Venlo. If the interest in Dante's works already truly existed, Justine could have been attracted to the Italian language because of it. At any rate, it is likely that the contacts of Justine's husband (see next paragraph) boosted her interest for the language. Her spouse met as an also abroad competing fencer several Italian sportsmen at fencing matches in Ostend (Belgium) and The Hague. Postcards and photographs remind of cordial relations with husband Anthonie as well as Justine. The longest lasting contact seems to have been the contact with the 1908 Olympic fencing champion cavalry captain Alessandro Pirzio-Biroli (1877–1962). The family archives contain, among other things, a small pile of unused military postcards signed by him, dating from the first decades of the 20th century.
Marriage On 21 September 1899, Justine married the above-mentioned cavalry officer Anthonie Petrus Wirix in The Hague, who would eventually retire as a Colonel and Knight in the Order of Orange-Nassau (military division). Their marriage produced two children: Bella Virginie Wirix (1900) and René Paul Wirix (1902). The son would later be part of the Dutch resistance in World War II. The family Wirix-van Mansvelt lived mostly in The Hague at Heemskerkstraat 23, in the 'Zeehelden' quarter near the gardens of the Noordeinde Palace.
Anthonie Petrus Wirix was also a military author. One of his articles, on the use of cavalry, in 1928 came out in the Italian language. It is very likely that the text for this article was translated by Justine. As to the reputation of Italy's military leader at that time: it was just in the second part of the thirties that Il Duce became widely unpopular with the Dutch people. As an expression of the much changed opinion of him, the newspaper De Telegraaf of 24 September 1937 shows a satirical cartoon on the peace policy of the Italian and German dictators by the celebrated political cartoonist Louis Raemaekers (1869–1956), who was married to Johanna Petronella van Mansvelt, one of Justine's cousins.
Just as his wife Anthonie Wirix had a fascination with Dante's oeuvre. Inspired by the illustrations in Jacob van Maerlant's 'Rhyme Bible' (1271), Anthonie made as many as 670 coloured miniatures for the 34 cantos of 'The Inferno' section of Dante's epic poem The divine Comedy (La divina Commedia). These pen drawings, which he probably meant to publish, are part of the archives of the family of the mentioned great-grandfather Hoek. The 28 pen drawings illustrating Dante's Vita Nuova in the Wirix-van Mansvelt collection at the National Library of the Netherlands are most probably by the hand of Wirix too. Artisticity may have been a Wirix family feature, because Anthonie's sister Victoire Leonhardt-Wirix (1875–1938) was an artist with a lifelong passion for painting and drawing. Examples of Antonie's miniatures below illustrate the first three segments of canto XV of The divine Comedy. Dante (in red) and his guide Virgil walk along the banks of an infernal water stream and in the canto a comparison between Flemish and Italian water defences is made.
Dante study In the Netherlands around 1900 the interest in the ancient Italian culture and language revitalized. In 1904 the Dutch Department of Internal Affairs grounded the 'Nederlandsch Instituut' (Dutch Institute) in Rome (at present the Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut Rome (KNIR)), to catalogue the documents on Dutch history in the just released Vatican archives. From the beginning the institute also stimulated the research of Roman Antiquity and art. In 1914 the first Dutch branches of the 'Società Dante Alighieri' (Dante Alighieri Society) in Rome were grounded, to provide Italian cultural events in the Netherlands. In 1919 and 1920 the Universities in Groningen and Leiden appointed their first tutor Italian language.
The keen interest in Dante's works is somewhat older in the Netherlands. This curiosity dates from the era of Dutch Romanticism (1820–1880) and stretches into the 21st century. The oldest Dutch book on Dante regards the 1865 translation of Dante und seine Theologie by Dr. Ferdinand Piper, Theology Professor in Berlin.
The young Justine was touched by the works of Dante. We may assume that the Dante fascination originated from her youth and early years of marriage, probably from the time of the French and Italian lessons: the lessons that could have been given by the tutors Rivoire and Guarnieri, in The Hague and Arnhem. She tells in her book that Marie Rivoire made the works trusted to her. Justine was introduced by Rivoire to the story of the journey of Dante, guided by Virgil, through the realms of the afterlife of The divine Comedy. But it is hard to conceive that Guarnieri, who knew her for at least ten years (and sent her Dante postcards from Italy) has not played a significant part in the growth of the knowledge Justine acquired. Guarnieri (in 1914) founded the above-mentioned Amsterdam, Arnhem and The Hague branches of the 'Società Dante Alighieri'. In fact, in the beginning, both persons might have helped her getting (further) acquainted with Dante's enigmatic creations of the Middle Ages.
It seems that by 1911, Justine, thirty-four years old, was ready to publish an article in the men's world of Dante experts. It concerned an article about her interpretation on Dante's 'The Inferno' section in the then in the Netherlands well known cultural and literary magazine De nieuwe Gids. In this article she gives – brave but modest – her vision on Dante's description of the way the fallen archangel Lucifer hit the earth. Interpretations on this issue by other Dante experts could not satisfy her.