Dorus persevered. Finally, in January 1849, after three years of rejections, he was offered a position in a remote township on the Belgian border called Zundert. The outgoing minister called his congregation “a well-prepared field.” In fact, the persistent sower could not have found less fertile ground. The family chronicler, ever upbeat, described the new job as Dorus’s “ideal posting,”citing a popular poem about a quaint country parsonage on the moor. But the reality of Zundert, with its beleaguered band of Protestants set down in a sea of Catholic antagonism, bore no resemblance to the poet’s romantic vision. And no excess of family enthusiasm could disguise the hard truth that the Zundert congregation, whose very existence hung by a thread, represented the lowest rung of the Dutch Reformed Church. “This little flock has been small from the beginning,” Dorus noted ruefully, “and hasn’t grown appreciably in the nearly two and a half centuries since.”
And the future looked even grimmer. A succession of devastating potato blights and crop failures had plunged many farmers into destitution. Unable to feed their families for weeks at a time, they ate the food meant for cows, when they could get it. On their way to church, members risked encountering bands of desperate dispossessed farmers who roamed the countryside begging and stealing. The little congregation suffered severe losses as typhoid epidemics swept through the town, killing Protestants and Catholics indiscriminately. Between death and desertion, Zundert’s tiny Protestant population shrank by half in a single decade.
This was the unpromising plot of moorland to which Dorus put his plow in April 1849. He set an example of faith in the future by marrying and bringing his bride, Anna Carbentus, from The Hague. He raised money from Zundert’s handful of wealthy Protestants and bought an organ. In the spirit of self-help that animated the Society for Prosperity, he arranged with a carpet manufacturer in Breda to supply spinning wheels to widows in the congregation who were paid piece wages for the yarn they produced. Despite the hard times, he trimmed the church’s welfare subsidies—a thankless task that required evicting farmers from church-owned lands, with force if necessary, often with catastrophic consequences.
Sowing and reaping were more than just metaphors to Dorus van Gogh. Like his father, he worked the farmland of Brabant in every way other than with his hands. As the local administrator of the Society, he identified farms and farmland to be purchased; he evaluated their soil, drainage, and pasturage; he negotiated the leases. He advised farmers on how to drain and plow, what and where to plant, and how to manure (all-important in Zundert’s sandy soil). He was a demanding manager, grading each leaseholder on his skill, diligence, behavior, and cleanliness. Was his wife stupid, indiscreet, or disorderly? Did he have too many children to feed, or insufficient livestock for composting? For those who performed well, Dorus did what he could to shield them from the torments of poverty and debt. He pleaded their cases to the Society’s board—the “Gentlemen in Breda,” he called them—arguing that the church owed a special duty to “the handful of members who stand here, at the barricades.”
But even soldiers at the barricades had a reckoning. The Dutch God wasan understanding landlord, but neither His patience nor His pocketbook was unlimited. If a farmer died and his wife could not carry on, Dorus evicted her and sold the family’s possessions at public auction. Even the family of a typhoid victim was not immune. At the direction of the Society, Dorus evicted the dead man’s wife and ten children. Another widow pleaded that eviction would leave her with no way to support her five children except prostitution. But the Gentlemen were unmoved. When the carpet manufacturer complained about the poor quality of yarn produced by
And the future looked even grimmer. A succession of devastating potato blights and crop failures had plunged many farmers into destitution. Unable to feed their families for weeks at a time, they ate the food meant for cows, when they could get it. On their way to church, members risked encountering bands of desperate dispossessed farmers who roamed the countryside begging and stealing. The little congregation suffered severe losses as typhoid epidemics swept through the town, killing Protestants and Catholics indiscriminately. Between death and desertion, Zundert’s tiny Protestant population shrank by half in a single decade.
This was the unpromising plot of moorland to which Dorus put his plow in April 1849. He set an example of faith in the future by marrying and bringing his bride, Anna Carbentus, from The Hague. He raised money from Zundert’s handful of wealthy Protestants and bought an organ. In the spirit of self-help that animated the Society for Prosperity, he arranged with a carpet manufacturer in Breda to supply spinning wheels to widows in the congregation who were paid piece wages for the yarn they produced. Despite the hard times, he trimmed the church’s welfare subsidies—a thankless task that required evicting farmers from church-owned lands, with force if necessary, often with catastrophic consequences.
Sowing and reaping were more than just metaphors to Dorus van Gogh. Like his father, he worked the farmland of Brabant in every way other than with his hands. As the local administrator of the Society, he identified farms and farmland to be purchased; he evaluated their soil, drainage, and pasturage; he negotiated the leases. He advised farmers on how to drain and plow, what and where to plant, and how to manure (all-important in Zundert’s sandy soil). He was a demanding manager, grading each leaseholder on his skill, diligence, behavior, and cleanliness. Was his wife stupid, indiscreet, or disorderly? Did he have too many children to feed, or insufficient livestock for composting? For those who performed well, Dorus did what he could to shield them from the torments of poverty and debt. He pleaded their cases to the Society’s board—the “Gentlemen in Breda,” he called them—arguing that the church owed a special duty to “the handful of members who stand here, at the barricades.”
But even soldiers at the barricades had a reckoning. The Dutch God wasan understanding landlord, but neither His patience nor His pocketbook was unlimited. If a farmer died and his wife could not carry on, Dorus evicted her and sold the family’s possessions at public auction. Even the family of a typhoid victim was not immune. At the direction of the Society, Dorus evicted the dead man’s wife and ten children. Another widow pleaded that eviction would leave her with no way to support her five children except prostitution. But the Gentlemen were unmoved. When the carpet manufacturer complained about the poor quality of yarn produced by
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