A Brill Calendar: October 17

Adriaan van Oordt and Frans de Stoppelaar: "Devil take the Hindmost"

Few men were less likely to succeed Evert Jan Brill so successfully as publishers than Adriaan van Oordt and Frans de Stoppelaar.

This happened after the Grand Old Man died at 60, quite unexpectedly, in the seventh month of his first marriage, on November 29, 1871. In his Testament, Evert Jan willed his dearest position, his publishing house - cherished for more than four decades - to both his brothers: to scholarly Willem Gerard, the Professor, and to Hendrik Johannes (to whom he was less close perhaps) artist, draughtsman and author of children’s books. Willem lived in Utrecht, Hendrik in the small town of Woudrichem.

After proper deliberations with E. J.’s widow, Cornelia Dibbets, it was decided to put the prestigious company up for sale; lock, stock and barrel. It didn’t take much time to find a buyer in the person of Van Oordt (31), educated as a theologian but who had decided to try a profoundly different calling in his professional life and who had just settled in Leyden to study law at the University.

When E.J. Brill’s company became available, Van Oordt must have felt like Paul on the road to Damascus. Van Oordt, a stranger in the Jerusalem of printing & publishing, needed all the help he could get and decided therefore to ask his friend de Stoppelaar (30) to run the company together, following perchance the rather trite Dutch dictum that two know more than one.

De Stoppelaar’s lack of knowledge of the far-flung business equalled that of his friend. “Devil take the hindmost”: a legal agreement, first judiciously on a trial basis, but quickly adapted to an indefinite period, was drawn-up for both god-fearing men; and signed October 17, 1872, just before the first anniversary of Evert Jan Brill’s death.

E.J Brill had been married to his company with love and dedication for a long time. Yet, it is seldom that so scant preceding experience in a complex trade generated so rich a harvest. The mutual co-operation prospered; and was only terminated by Van Oordt’s demise, more than thirty years later in the dawn of a new century.