Eeltsje Hiddes Halbertsma (; ; 8 October 1797 – 22 March 1858)Breuker 1993, p. 592. was a Frisian writer, poet and physician,Breuker 1993, pp. 592–594. member of the Halbertsma family, and the youngest of the Halbertsma Brothers.Breuker 1993, p. 587. He became well known when he and his elder brother Justus published the poetry and short story collection De Lapekoer fan Gabe Skroar in 1822.Breuker 1993, p. 594.Dykstra and Oldenhof, p. 37. Afterwards, this work was continually expanded, and also came to include contributions by a third brother, Tsjalling,Wiersma, p. 9. until all the Halbertsma Brothers' prose and poetry was posthumously collected in 1871 to become the famous work Rimen en Teltsjes.Breuker 1993, pp. 603–606. This book played a role of crucial importance in the development of a new literary tradition after Western Frisian had been used almost exclusively as a spoken language for three centuries.Jensma, p. 197. Of the three Brothers Halbertsma, Eeltsje was probably the most talented, en his poetry especially is still very much admired.Wiersma, pp. 9–10. His oeuvre included the poem De Alde Friezen, which later became the national anthem of the Western Frisian people.Fryslân Sjongt, pp. 10–11.Oppewal and Boorsma, pp. 90–93.
Life Youth and background Eeltsje Hiddes Halbertsma was born on 8 October 1797,Wiersma, p. 7. in his parents' house on Kowemerk ("Cow Market") street in the village of Grou, in the central part of the Dutch province of Friesland. He was the fourth son of the baker and small-time merchantOppewal and Boorsma, p. 16. Hidde Joasts Halbertsma (1756–1809)Terpstra, p. 317. and his wife Ruerdtsje (or Riurtk) Tsjallings Binnerts (1767–1809).Wiersma, pp. 7–8. He had three elder brothers: Justus ("Joast") (1789–1869),Breuker 1993, p. 588.Terpstra, p. 316. Tsjalling (1792–1852),Breuker 1993, p. 591. and Binnert (1795–1847). Two children who were born later died in early childhood, the little boy in 1803, and the little girl in 1805. The brothers were very close, possibly as a consequence of the fact that both their parents died at a relatively young age in 1809, when Eeltsje was only eleven years of age.Wiersma, pp. 8–9. Justus, Tsjalling and Eeltsje, who, as authors, became known as the Brothers Halbertsma later in life,Hemminga, p. 56. were much like their father, while Binnert more resembled their mother.
This mother, Ruerdtsje Binnerts, was a scion of a prominent family in Grou. Her people were Mennonites, and although her husband had been raised a Calvinist, he converted after marrying her. From the letters of Eeltsje's brother Justus Ruerdtsje emerges as a smart businesswoman, a loving mother, and a deeply religious person.Wiersma, p. 8. About Hidde Halbertsma, the father, much less is known. It is thought that he might have been a mariner before his marriage. He is described as a gentle soul, who was, however, apt to take offence, and could be quite sharp-tongued in such cases. In 1784, he published a long Dutch-language poem under the title Schrikkelijke IJsgang en Overstroominge in Gelderland ("Terrible Ice-drift and Flooding in Gelderland"). From this intriguing work it is clear that his sons' literary talents ran in the family.
Education Like his elder brother Justus, Eeltsje Halbertsma was sent to the French school in the provincial capital of Leeuwarden for a year by his mother, and after that, he was enrolled in the Latin school, also in Leeuwarden. There, he started following lessons probably just before Ruerdtsje Binnerts' death in December 1809. As their father, Hidde Halbertsma, had died in January of that same year, the brothers became orphans because of this unfortunate event. Justus, the eldest brother, was studying in Amsterdam at the time. Eeltsje could continue his education in the Latin school because the middle brothers, Tsjalling and Binnert, kept their father's bakery running with the help of their father's baker's mates. As commuting from Grou to Leeuwarden and back again on a daily basis was out of the question with roads and transportation being what they were at that time, Eeltsje boarded in the city with one Hawerdink, an acquaintance of his brother Justus, who apparently introduced him to the most vulgar form of City Frisian, a Dutch (not Frisian) dialect which is spoken in the cities in Friesland.
When he had finished his training in the Latin school, towards the end of 1814, Eeltsje Halbertsma left for Holland, where he started a study of medicine at the University of Leiden which lasted until April 1818.Twerda, p. 296. In the student city of Leiden, however, he became caught up in the rough night life, and that was why, by way of reorientation, he left for Heidelberg, in Germany, for half a year in the spring of 1818.Breuker 2016, p. 1124.Twerda, pp. 296–297. There he enjoyed himself tremendously at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, and later in his life he always looked back on his Heidelberg period with a sense of wistfulness.Terpstra, p. 318.Wiersma, p. 10. The lessons he followed in Heidelberg for the most part had to do with obstetrics. After the summer, he returned to Leiden, where he ended his study by obtaining his doctorate in medicine on 13 October 1818.
Afterwards, Halbertsma became physician in Purmerend, in northern Holland, where he lived for a year and a half, and also became involved with a local girl whom he referred to as "the Little Peacock" in his letters to his brother Justus. Eventually, though, he became ill, and was brought back to his family in Grou, probably towards the end of 1820. When he had recovered, he did not go back to Holland, but instead started a practice in the village where he was born. He would spend the rest of his life there, because, he wrote to his brother Justus, "Grou is always lovely to me." Because of his good education, but also because of his compassionate bedside manner, Halbertsma had a very spread-out practice, with patients not only in Grou, but also scattered around the countryside and in neighbouring villages. This required him to travel a lot, for which he often had to depend on boats in the marshy lake country of Central Friesland.Terpstra, p. 319.
Nature and views From stories of people who knew him, Eeltsje Hiddes Halbertsma emerges as a man who was quickly moved, but could also have a lot of fun.Dykstra and Oldenhof, p. 40. According to the bookseller and historian Wopke Eekhoff, who was acquainted with him for many years, Halbertsma was big-hearted and generous, and a droll story-teller. One of Halbertsma's biographers described him as "a fine-feeling spirit, an idealistic dreamer, an independent and courageous man, afflicted by periods of melancholy and doubt; a bohémien and a rascal, such as there has been no second of in all of Western Frisian literature."Wiersma, p. 13. Halbertsma's letters to his brother Justus are lively and open-hearted, and also quite entertaining still. As for his views, Halbertsma had become influenced by Deism in his student days, but according to himself he had changed his opinion after reading the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder.
Halbertsma tried to stay away from politics. In the company of others he was sometimes seduced into speaking on that subject, but he was always afraid to say too much; his father had been a supporter of the Patriot movement, and Halbertsma could never forget how badly that had ended. For all that, he did not just stand by when his sense of justice was violated, as is shown by his poems De Grytman ("The Grietman"; about corruption in the political upper classes in Friesland) and Batthyany's Dea ("Batthyany's Death"; about the execution of Lajos Batthyány, the leader of the Hungarians in the Hungarian Rebellion of 1848–1849). He also wrote, in Dutch, a poem in which he rages against the fact that Frisian members of the Tweede Kamer voted against the proposal to abolish slavery in 1853.Breuker 1993, p. 593. On the other hand, he was not so progressive that he felt himself in any way connected to those he called, in 1855, "red democrats" (that is to say socialists and other political radicals), whom he separated from "the decent-minded", with which he meant the progressive, liberal section of the settled middle class, to which he himself belonged.
In 1827, Halbertsma became a member of the Provinciaal Friesch Genootschap ter Beoefening van Friesche Geschied-, Oudheid- en Taalkunde ("Provincial Frisian Society for the Study of Frisian History, Antiquities and Linguistics"), but in 1834, he cancelled his membership because he felt this club was full to the rafters with silly people.Van der Schaaf, p. 38 He could not stomach the affected poshness of the middle class gentlemen, and neither could he reconcile such graveness of bearing with the 'gluttony and wine-guzzling' which followed the gatherings. "Es gibt Narren aller Art" ("It takes fools of all kinds"), he wrote to his brother Justus. Justus did remain a member of the society, but because he was a Mennonite minister in Deventer, in the province of Overijssel, and was therefore mostly a member by correspondence, it was somewhat easier for him to look at things with a certain detachment. Later, Eeltsje Halbertsma became a member of the Selskip foar Fryske Taal en Skriftekennisse ("Society for Knowledge of Frisian Language and Literature"), where he felt much more at home.
Family In June 1823, Halbertsma married Baukje Fockens (1795–1877), a woman from a well-to-do family from Bolsward, whom he had met in the autumn of 1822. She was the daughter of Livius (Liuwe) Regnerus Fockens, a mayor of Bolsward who had died not long before. Halbertsma and his wife had four children: two sons and two daughters. Only their son Hidde would survive his father, as the other son, Liuwe, died in 1854, and both of the girls, Ruerdtsje and Anna, were laid to rest yn 1851. The death of Anna (1832–1851), with whom he was exceptionally close, hit Halbertsma especially hard; about this loss he wrote the touching poem Op Anna's Dea ("On Anna's Death"), which was published in 1854, in the poetry and short story collection Leed en Wille en de Flotgerzen ("Grief and Pleasure and Down Upon the Lee Shore").Brothers Halbertsma 1958, p. 347.Brothers Halbertsma 1993, p. 258-259.
Halbertsma's marriage was, after the first few years, not very happy, as he was much too fond of alcohol, while his wife nagged constantly, was distrustful and reproached him continuously for living off her money. It is therefore probably not coincidental that in several of Halbertsma's stories the main characters are a drunken man and his angry wife. In 1853, when both marriage partners had neglected their household for years, the parents were placed under guardianship by both of their sons, which was done especially on the initiative of Liuwe. Although Halbertsma managed to become his own master again in 1857, this was a humiliation for which it was not easy for him to forgive his son, and there is no elegy for Liuwe's passing in 1854, as Halbertsma did make for both of his daughters.
Writing career Halbertsma felt the drive to write for the first time, as his brother Justus would later tell it, when he came back from his half-year in Heidelberg, and noticed that the street songs in the Netherlands were of a very low quality compared to those in Germany. According to Justus, Eeltsje Halbertsma set out writing poetry to replace the existing songs with better ones of his own making. The linguist Philippus H. Breuker, who added an extensive and penetrating afterword to the reprint of Rimen en Teltsjes of 1993, observed, however, that this assertion could "never be more than half the truth," as Halbertsma's early poetry was not of a high literary value; quite the opposite, in fact. According to Breuker, it seems more likely that Halbertsma wanted to emulate these Dutch street songs.