DÉJAZET, PAULINE VIRGINIE (1798–1875), French actress, born in Paris on the 30th of August 1798, made her first appearance on the stage at the age of five. It was not until 1820, when she began her seven years’ connexion with the recently founded Gymnase, that she won her triumphs in soubrette and “breeches” parts, which came to be known as “Dêjazets.” From 1828 she played at the Nouveautés for three years, then at the Variétés, and finally became manager, with her son, of the Folies, which was renamed the Théâtre Déjazet. Here, even at the age of sixty-five, she had marvellous success in youthful parts, especially in a number of Sardou’s earlier plays, previously unacted. She retired in 1868, and died on the 1st of December 1875, leaving a great name in the annals of the French stage.
See Duval’s Virginie Déjazet (1876).
DE KALB, a city of De Kalb county, Illinois, U.S.A., in the N. part of the state, about 58 m. W. of Chicago. Pop. (1890) 2579;
(1900) 5904 (1520 foreign-born); (1910) 8102. De Kalb is served by the Chicago Great Western, the Chicago & North-Western, and the Illinois, Iowa & Minnesota railways, and by interurban electric lines. It is the seat of the Northern Illinois state normal school (opened in 1899). The principal manufactures of De Kalb are woven and barbed wire, waggons and agricultural implements, pianos, shoes, gloves, and creamery packages. The city has important dairy interests also. De Kalb was first settled in 1832, was known as Buena Vista until 1840, was incorporated as a village in 1861, and in 1877 was organized under the general state law as a city.
DE KEYSER, THOMAS (1596 or 1597–1667), Dutch painter, was born at Amsterdam, the son of the architect and sculptor Hendrik de Keyser. We have no definite knowledge of his training, and but scant information as to the course of his life, though it is known that he owned a basalt business between 1640
and 1654. Aert Pietersz, Cornelis vanider Voort, Werner van Valckert and Nicolas Elias are accredited by different authorities
with having developed his talent; and M. Karl Woermann, who has pronounced in favour of Nicolas Elias is supported by the fact that almost all that master’s pictures were formerly
attributed to De Keyser, who, in like fashion, exercised some influence upon Rembrandt when he first went to Amsterdam in 1631. De Keyser chiefly excelled as a portrait painter, though he also executed some historical and mythological pictures, such as the “Theseus” and “Ariadne” in the Amsterdam town hall. His portraiture is full of character and masterly in handling, and often, as in the “Old Woman” of the Budapest gallery, is distinguished by a rich golden glow of colour and Rembrandtesque chiaroscuro. Some of his portraits are life-size, but the artist generally preferred to keep them on a considerably smaller
scale, like the famous “Group of Amsterdam Burgomasters” assembled to receive Marie de’ Medici in 1638, now at the Hague museum. The sketch for this important painting, together with
three other drawings, was sold at the Gallitzin sale in 1783 for the sum of threepence. The German emperor owns an “Equestrian Portrait of a young Dutchman,” by De Keyser, a late work which in general disposition and in the soft manner of painting recalled the work of Cuyp. Similar pictures are in the Dresden and Frankfort museums, in the Heyl collection at Worms, and the Liechtenstein Gallery in Vienna. The National
Gallery, London, owns a characteristic portrait group of a “Merchant with his Clerk”; the Hague museum, besides the group already referred to, a magnificent “Portrait of a Savant,” and the Haarlem museum a fine portrait of “Claes Fabricius.” At the Ryks Museum in Amsterdam there are no fewer than twelve works from his brush, and other important examples are to be found in Brussels, Munich, Copenhagen and St Petersburg.
DEKKER, EDWARD DOUWES (1820–1887), Dutch writer, commonly known as Multatuli, was born at Amsterdam on the 2nd of March 1820. His father, a ship’s captain, intended his son for trade, but this humdrum prospect disgusted him, and in 1838
he went out to Java, and obtained a post in the Inland Revenue. He rose from one position to another, until, in 1851, he found himself assistant-resident at Amboyna, in the Moluccas. In 1857 he was transferred to Lebak, in the Bantam residency of Java. By this time, however, all the secrets of Dutch administration were known to him, and he had begun to protest against the abuses of the colonial system. In consequence he was threatened with dismissal from his office for his openness of speech, and, throwing up his appointment, he returned to Holland in a state of
fierce indignation. He determined to expose in detail the scandals he had witnessed, and he began to do so in newspaper articles and
pamphlets. Little notice, however, was taken of his protestations until, in 1860, he published, under the pseudonym of “Multatuli,”
his romance entitled Max Havelaar. An attempt was made to ignore this brilliant and irregular book, but in vain; it was read all over Europe. The exposure of the abuse of free labour in the
Dutch Indies was complete, although there were not wanting apologists who accused Dekker’s terrible picture of being over-coloured.
He was now fairly launched on literature, and he lost no time in publishing Love Letters (1861), which, in spite of their mild title, proved to be mordant satires of the most rancorous
and unsparing kind. The literary merit of Multatuli’s work was much contested; he received an unexpected and most valuable ally in Vosmaer. He continued to write much, and to faggot
his miscellanies in uniform volumes called Ideas, of which seven appeared between 1862 and 1877. Douwes quitted Holland, shaking off her dust from his feet, and went to live at Wiesbaden. He now made several attempts to gain the stage, and one of his pieces, The School for Princes, 1875 (published in the fourth
volume of Ideas), pleased himself so highly that he is said to have styled it the greatest drama ever written. It is a fine poem,
written in blank verse, like an English tragedy, and not in Dutch Alexandrines; but it is undramatic, and has not held the boards.
Douwes Dekker moved his residence to Nieder Ingelheim, on the Rhine, and there he died on the 19th of February 1887.
Towards the end of his career he was the centre of a crowd of disciples and imitators, who did his reputation no service; he is now, again, in danger of being read too little. To understand his fame, it is necessary to remember the sensational way in which he broke into the dulness of Dutch literature fifty years ago, like a flame out of the Far East. He was ardent, provocative, perhaps a little hysterical, but he made himself heard all over Europe. He brought an exceedingly severe indictment against the egotism and brutality of the administrators of Dutch India, and he framed it in a literary form which was brilliantly original. Not satisfied with this, he attacked, in a fury that was sometimes blind, everything that seemed to him falsely conventional in Dutch religion, government, society and morals. He respected nothing, he left no institution untouched. Now that it is possible to look back upon Multatuli without passion, we see in him, not what Dutch enthusiasm saw,—“the second writer of Europe in the nineteenth century” (Victor Hugo being presumably the first),—but a great man who was a powerful and glowing author, yet hardly an artist, a reckless enthusiast, who was inspired by indignation and a burning sense of justice, who cared little for his means if only he could produce his effect. He is seen to his best and worst in Max Havelaar; his Ideas, hard, fantastic and sardonic, seldom offer any solid satisfaction to the foreign reader. But Multatuli deserves remembrance, if only on account of the unequalled effect his writing had in rousing Holland from the intellectual and moral lethargy in which she lay half a century ago. (E. G.)
DEKKER, JEREMIAS DE (1610–1666), Dutch poet, was born at Dort in 1610. His father was a native of Antwerp, who, having embraced the reformed religion, had been compelled to take refuge in Holland. Entering his father’s business at an early age, he found leisure to cultivate his taste for literature and especially for poetry, and to acquire without assistance a competent knowledge of English, French, Latin and Italian. His first poem was a paraphrase of the Lamentations of Jeremiah (Klaagliederen van Jeremias), which was followed by translations and imitations of Horace, Juvenal and other Latin poets. The most important of his original poems were a collection of epigrams (Puntdichten) and a satire in praise of avarice (Lof der Geldzucht). The latter is his best-known work. Written in a vein of light and
