Geertruida Carelsen

Amy Geertruida de Leeuw (10 April 1843 – 4 June 1938), known by the pen name Geertruida Carelsen, was a Dutch author and journalist.

Life and works Provenance and early years Amy Geertruida de Leeuw was born at the family home alongside the Nieuwe Gracht in Haarlem, the oldest of her parents' four children. Her mother was Maria Cornelia Elisabeth Penninck Hoofd (1815/1816–1876), half-niece (following the re-marriage of Geertruida's widowed grandmother) of the landscape architect Louis Paul Zocher, and a professional translator of English provenance. Johan Carel de Leeuw (1816–1880), her father, was a water engineer who was in charge of the draining of the Anna Paulownapolder north of Alkmaar. In 1848 the company that had been set up to drain the Anna Paulownapolder filed for bankruptcy and her father lost a large part of his savings and the handsome salary which he had hitherto earned. The family's circumstances were suddenly much diminished, and a sense of shock formed the background for this part of Geertruida's childhood. In 1855 her father accepted a job as a "Dijkgraaf", becoming a senior administrative official with a water company. This meant relocating to the newly available drained lands of the Anna Paulownapolder. It was no longer possible for Amy Geertruida, by now aged 12, to attend the school in Haarlem where she had received her early education. Instead she and her younger sister Albertina Carolina were educated by her mother in the evenings. Their two brothers were sent away to boarding school for their educations. Thanks to her mother's English background, Amy Geertruida de Leeuw was able to master the English language relatively young. "... niet omdat ik dat zo graag wou worden. Maar omdat ik iets te zeggen had." in which she demonstrated literary talent and a botanical knowledge that was both broad and deep, evidently acquired from her mother's kinsman, the landscape architect Louis Paul Zocher. It was as a journalist - a female journalist - that she would later become more widely known.

Nurse Carelsen's mother died in 1876 and her father in 1880. Her siblings had already left home, and finding herself, for the first time, alone, she took work in an Amsterdam hospital as a trainee nurse. There was no preliminary requirement to study for any sort of diploma, but she evidently brought commitment and energy to her hospital training and duties, possibly supported by the experience gained looking after her own parents during their final years.

London She worked at the hospital till 1888, which was when "family circumstances" called her to London where for not quite three years, she lived with maternal-side relatives. She was struck by the way that in England great affluence and gut-wrenching poverty could be found side by side. Great industry brought both great benefits and great destruction. She was no doubt influenced by the intensely spiritual and deeply intellectual circles into which, through her cousins' network, she was welcomed. She found she was forced to think deeply: looking back, she would later recall that it was mainly during her time in England that she learned to be a journalist. in 1893 she accepted membership of the Leiden-based Dutch Literary Society ("Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde"/ MNL) which had, up till this point, been an all-male association.

Final years Increasingly troubled by blindness, Geertruida Carelsen lived out her final fourteen years in Haarlem, the city of her birth. Her public profile was by now diminished, but she continued to write for a number of magazines until well into her old age. Her themes were frequently horticultural or otherwise concerned with nature. She was also over many years a persistent advocate of improved vocation training for women, and promoted the need to open horticultural schools for girls. She also continued to attend meetings of the Dutch Literary Society. She devoted much of her time to tending and developing her garden. She published her memoires in 1928, and then a second volume of memoires which appeared in 1933. She wrote of it in 1932 in a letter to her friend, the playwright-businessman Frans Mijnssen, "It may well be my final book, but my soul is in it 100%".