A Brill Calendar: January 23

A "Gentleman's Agreement"

Few arrangements between gentlemen deserve the laudatory epithet ‘gentleman’s agreement’ truly as long as both men live.

If & when broken, it is usually the most gentlemanly party who foots the bill. Such a disillusioned opinion doesn’t apply to the arrangement Adriaan van Oordt (1840 – 1901) made with his life-long friend Frans de Stoppelaar (1841 – 1906), when he bought the Brill publishing & printing company as soon as the enterprise unexpectedly came up for sale early in 1872; after the untimely death of Evert Jan Brill, the driving force behind the continuation of the Luchtmans publishing tradition.

Soon after his weighty decision – taken in a professional world in which the French dictum ‘Noblesse Oblige’ ruled - Adriaan, blessed by a total lack of hands-on experience in running a complex commercial business, called on his friend Frans – then teaching Dutch in a secondary school in Deventer city, Overijssel Province, deep in the country seen from Holland – to help him direct and run his acquisition on a daily basis.

The co-operation between the two was eventually confirmed in a notary deed, dated October 17, 1872. De Stoppelaar’s role was spelled out, while the mutual obligations and the arrangement would be valid for one year, to be renewed as long it suited both gentlemen. Before too long, the annual renewal became standard procedure, whilst Van Oordt owned the total Company personally.

It is seldom that so delicate a relationship became so self-evidently rewarding for both parties of the contract. It culminated January 23 1881, when both gentlemen put their signature under the legally binding document which made De Stoppelaar co-owner of the firm; an arrangement that would see the Brill company through fifteen more years.