Between the opening and the final episode of Paul and Frédérique’s love lie, as if between bookmarks, the stories of other couples, and, too, of those Nature has marginalised. Of these Eline herself is not merely a representative but at times a passionate spokesperson, too often foolish and futile, but in her sensibility rightly judged worthy of having named after her one of the richest, most satisfying novels of the late nineteenth century.
Couperus wrote as a summary of himself:
ZOO IK IETS BEN, BEN IK EEN HAGENAAR
Whatever else I am, I am a man of The Hague.
His love of his native city pervades his first novel, so that to visit The Hague, and nearby Scheveningen, is to live again the experiences it recounts. But Eline Vere reveals also that, through being so faithfully and feelingly a man of The Hague, Couperus could speak to, and for, the whole human world.
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