Casanova and the mysterious mister D.O.

Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) painted by Francesco Narici around 1760

A lockdown with imposed restrictions. For one person this is a paralyzing situation, for the other it is getting space to create. Giacomo Casanova (1725-1798) also found himself in restrictive circumstances in the last thirteen years of his life: the money of the well-known womanizer was gone and his lust for adventure was over. In 1785, he was forced to take up a position as librarian with Count Joseph Waldstein in Duchcov (Dux), now the Czech Republic. One of his creations during that period was writing his memoirs: Histoire de ma vie. Nowadays, his life story is seen as the most authentic source of European social life in the 18th century.

When I saw the empty streets of Amsterdam on television in corona time, I thought of Casanova. He had also been to Amsterdam. For the umpteenth time I read the part of his memoirs about him visiting Holland. What the historians are sure of is that Casanova stayed in Holland from Mid-October 1758 to January 1759, and again a year later from October 1759 to February 1760. What particularly occupied him were business transactions and his infatuation with a girl named Esther. She was fourteen years old and the only child of widower and banker whom Casanova called Mr. D.O.. Of who this high-ranking man really is, no irrefutable evidence was established. It gave me the idea and the impetus to write this research article: Who really was Mr. D.O.?

In the last century, several researchers searched for the true identity of Mr. D.O., but it did not develop further. I can easily do research with new insights, with the new digital means. After all, relevant archives are online. Books have been digitized and researchers publish their findings in online libraries. If you want to know something about an ancestor of a descendant, you can pose a question on social media!

 

Theo Kars

I am often asked: What is it with you and Casanova? For me, it is a great pleasure to read his stories . They fascinate me immensely. Casanova was an erudite man. A cosmopolitan. Without embarrassment, he describes with remarkable details his love adventures, his scams and especially his emotional state. It was the Dutch non-conformist writer and translator Theo Kars (1945-2010) who showed me the way to Casanova. Kars is also the one who translated his memoirs (Brockhaus edition)of almost four thousand pages: The history of my life (1991-1998) into twelve parts.

For decades, Histoire de ma vie has been researched by interested parties. These researchers are called Casanovists. An important researcher who searched archives about Casanova for decades was the American diplomat J. Rives Childs (Casanova). He checked the facts Casanova mentioned through correspondences, newspaper announcements and more. If things weren’t right, for example the years, it was probably due to Casanova’s forgetfulness or sloppiness. In his memoirs, Casanova, for example, calls widower Mr. D.O. a man in his forties but he may have been humanly mistaken. He couldn’t look inside his passport.

Abbreviations

Why did Casanova use abbreviations of names in his diaries? The main reason was to protect people who were still alive. The first person to give a possible name to the banker D.O. from Amsterdam is Prince Charles Joseph de Ligne (1735-1814). He was the nephew of Count Waldstein and regularly visited Casanova at Dux Castle. De Ligne was the first reader of Casanova’s memoirs. Years later, De Ligne writes in his own memoirs (Mémoires et mélanges historiques et littéraires) that Casanova met the daughter of the wealthy banker named Hope. But is that true? Did he really hear that it was Hope?

The well-known Casanovist Marco Leeflang also tried to find out the abbreviation of Mr. D. O.. He writes in his article that if you look at the original handwriting of Casanova, you sometimes see the letters ‘OP’ under the scratching of D.O. One explanation between O and Ope is that in French the ‘H’ is not pronounced and an apostrophe is written. Mr. D.O. would then stand for ‘monsieur d'(H)ope’.

 

Source: Marco Leeflang

Hope, Ope, or Hooft?

But how do you translate that into Dutch? Can you assume ‘Hope’ is a proper name? Or a corruption? Director of the Amsterdam city archive H. Hardenberg came up with a possible explanation in the seventies of the last century. Dr. D. Hoek, wrote it down in Casanova in Holland. From the archives Hardenberg found information that Mr. D.O. must have been the merchant and later mayor of Amsterdam: Henrik Hooft Daniëlszoon (1716-1794). Hooft’s daughter Hester (1748-1798) stood for Esther.

However, this historical research was contradicted two years later by the famous historian Mrs. Dr. I.H. van Eeghen. She writes in her extensive article Thirty years of archival research Casanova-Symons-Hooft that it could not have been Hooft. Although he was a widower and had a daughter, Hester was eleven (not fourteen) and her profile did not match Casanova’s description. The house where they lived on the Herengracht, now house numbers 507/509, was also incorrect. As a suggestion, Van Eeghen mentions another high-ranking figure: the banker Thomas Hope (1704-1779) but he only had a son: John Hope (1737-1784).

If you look at the translation of Theo Kars (part 5, The Hunt for Money), you will read that Mr. D.O. ‘is probably Thomas Hope, an Amsterdam banker of Scottish descent‘. But probably is not certain. Maybe Kars was wrong? Or was Van Eeghen mistaken? Of course, the latter has indicated with very good factual material that Hooft cannot be D.O., but that does not mean that this is true still. What is certain, and I also assumed this, is that in the past forty years new facts about Casanova have been found. These data have never been linked and are therefore worth investigating.

Secret assignment

What was the motivation for Casanova to come to the Netherlands? Casanova himself assumedly arranged and received a secret assignment from the French state. The occasion was that at a wedding in Paris he spoke with banker Kornmann about the scarcity of money in France. Casanova went to talk to the inspector general and was ordered to exchange French shares and securities for securities in the Netherlands. It would be about 20 million guilders.

Casanova had previously commissioned the French state and even peppered the French state treasury with a profitable lottery he had set up in 1757 together with the Calzabigi brothers.

When he arrived in Amsterdam in 1758, he first went to the bank Pels & Zoonen. This commercial bank is in a sense not a strange choice, since this bank lent France 14 million in 1744. Pels & Zoonen probably had more loans outstanding and referred him to the wealthy Mr. D.O. Who was an important figure of the commercial banks. According to his own words, Casanova had received all kinds of recommendation letters to make contact with figures such as D.O.. Only the documents,  which clearly highlight that Casanova had to borrow money for France, were not found.

 

Lender Marquise d’Urfee

Despite the fact that no French recommendation letters have been found in the Dutch archives, bills of exchange from Casanova have surfaced and some notarial documents that explain how he made money. He received this money from his patron, the illustrious lady marquise d’Urfee (1705-1775). Among Casanova’s papers an act was found (7 December 1758) by notary Gerrit Bouman. In the aforementioned article by historian Van Eeghen, a copy of these papers was included. It states that Casanova was commissioned by d’Urfee to sell a Swedish share package of the East India Company in Gothenberg. In a second act (11 December 1758), also from the notary’s office of Bouman, it is stated that marquise d’Urfee transferred an amount of 235,000 livres (French pounds) to him. Casanova himself had not written about this; this was found among his papers.

Portrait of lady d’Urfee in the pastoral novel L’Astree

Why did d’Urfee give him so much money? She and Casanova shared the same interest: the world of occultism. The marquise was well-versed in alchemy and found a master in the mysterious Jewish numeral game Kabbalah in Casanova. Casanova used Kabbalah to entertain or scam people. D’Urfee was completely captivated by Casanova’s predictive abilities. He convinced her that he could help her be reborn into another body. A transmission into a man. However, costs were involved, but the marquise didn’t hesitate to achieve her goal.

When Casanova returned to Paris in 1759, the adventurer was rich. That same year, however, he was forced to return to Amsterdam. His state of fortune was turned against him. He was on the run because he didn’t want to end up in prison again. He had blown his money and was accused of a fake money exchange. Casanova was imprisoned in 1755 without trial in the Piombi in Venice. A year later, he managed to escape in spectacular fashion and fled to Paris.

 

Making connections

In order to gain insight and make connections about what has already been written about Mr. D.O. in Casanova’s memoirs, I looked up events by date in various archives online. Casanova wrote (part 4. A man of prestige) about when he visited Amsterdam for the second time in 1759:
Mr. D.O. invited me to have dinner with him with the lodge of the mayors. This was a special favor, for, contrary to all the usual rules of Freemasonry, only the twenty-four members of which it was composed were admitted. Its members were the richest millionaires of the stock market’. The secret society of Freemasonry suited Casanova completely. He met like-minded freethinkers there and offered a lodge a place to network and do business.

The aforementioned Historian D. Hoek reports that this ‘lodge of mayors’ must have been ‘La Fidélité’; a private exclusive Masonic section of 24 members of wealthy bankers and merchants. It could just be that the rich Thomas Hope came there frequently, just like Henrik Daniëlszoon Hooft,  who was also a rich merchant.

Freemasonry in the Netherlands

My search started with casting various digital lines and writing to authors who have done research on Freemasonry in the Netherlands. Soon there were reactions. I received a response from the Masonic Museum in The Hague. The curator sent me a print of a sheet that Casanova did not visit the Masonic lodge ‘La Fidélité’, but on 30 November 1759 the Amsterdam lodge ‘La Bien Aimee’.

I was wondering if it was also possible to get a copy of his registration from this lodge visit? It might state who accompanied him on that night. I had to wait for the copy, because a new lockdown caused a difficult communication. All museums were closed.. Finally, after weeks of waiting, I received a digital print: Casanova is in it, but no Hooft or Hope. Also, not another name that you could identify as ‘Ope’.

Copy visit Casanova 30 November 1759

An e-mail exchange followed with professor by special appointment in Freemasonry Professor Ton van de Sande. He assumed that Casanova had in all likelihood indeed visited La Fidélité. He referred me to all kinds of sources. Among other things to the anniversary book about the history of the lodge La Bien Aimee and the dissertation of Floor Meijer Gedekt voor het oog der ongeweiden, Vrijmetselarij in Amsterdam 1756-1800.

Historian Dr. Maarten Hell, known for his PhD thesis The Amsterdam Inn, explained that La Fidélité was only accessible to regents. He writes: ‘And then probably also exclusively to the men that stadholder William IV had appointed. Because of the stature of the members, the lodge eschewed any form of publicity: even to other Masonic lodges the names of the brothers were not disclosed.’ Unfortunately, searching for a list of members of La Fidélité in the Masonic Museum yielded nothing.

Wandering on the internet, searching for all kinds of genealogical quarterly records on the name Henrik Hooft Daniëlszoon I came across a book: The citizen and the mayor, written by Jhr. Mr. H. G.A. Hooft in cooperation with Sir Christopher Ondaatje. The author Hendrik Hooft was a descendant of Henrik Daniëlszoon. It is a book about the family history of Hooft and Ondaatje, of which their ancestors each played an important role in the 18th century in a democratic movement of patriotism.

Via a detour I came into contact with the author squire Hendrik Hooft. He also writes about Casanova in his book. Before the writer Hoek had published about Casanova, Hooft had never heard within his family that his ancestor and his daughter Hester had engaged with Casanova. He writes: ‘Casanova would not have called her father a banker in his memoirs but ‘bourgemaïtre’. And that’s right, because Hooft Daniëlszoon was still alive at the time and had been mayor for years. For me it is clear: Henrik Hooft Daniëlszoon was not Mr. D.O.

 

Thomas Hope

I focused all my attention on Thomas Hope. At first, I limited myself to reading an informative online page. This page reveals that Thomas Hope and his older brother Archibald Jr. (1698-1734) set up a trading house. When Archibald died, Thomas continued it with his younger brother Adrian Hope (1709-1781). This resulted in a bank with allure: Hope & Co. This bank flourished by giving international loans and by trading shares. In addition, Thomas was appointed by stadtholder Prince William IV as director of the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company. He also devised a system of cost calculation for money trading.

It was standard information, but I didn’t get any further. This changed when I saw a large article, written by Taco Tichelaar, about the huge canal house where Hope lived: at Keizersgracht 444-446. This article contains an important footnote about the book: De vroedschap van Amsterdam about the elite of Amsterdam written by Johan Engelbert Elias (1875-1959). In it you can read that Thomas Hope married Margaretha Marcelis, daughter of a wealthy Amsterdam merchant. She was born in 1705 and died in the summer of 1758. This means that the banker had become a widower in the year that Casanova came to Holland.

Keizergracht 444-446 source: amsterdamsegrachtenhuizen.nl

It was also stated that in the same year 1758 this Hope bought the spacious building Keizersgracht 444-446. This building had a stable and coach house that had been vacant for some time and belonged to Mattheus Lestevenon (1715–1797), he was the Dutch ambassador to France. Coincidentally, Casanova got his passport for Holland in Paris in September 1758 from this Lestevenon.

Casanova wrote about D.O.’s house (The Hunt for Money) after he first ate with him and Esther: ‘After dinner, Mr. D.O. showed me his house. This was uninhabited, because after the death of his wife he had moved into an apartment on the ground floor, where he was comfortably housed. The part of the house he showed me had six or seven rooms, with a treasure trove of antique porcelain. (…)’. Did I come across a clue here? Records show that the Hope family were avid art collectors, particularly Uncle Adrian and Thomas’ son, John Hope.

What was mentioned further in ‘De Vroedschap’, is that Thomas Hope bought a large country estate on the Amstel in 1748: hofstede Vreugdenhof (formerly called Dubbelloon).

Casanova also writes (The Hunt for Money) about a country house on the Amstel where Esther and her friends taught him how to skate on this frozen river. ‘At eleven o’clock we got into a sledge and went to the small house where, to where she had told me (..) ‘Come with me, come along,’ Esther said cheerfully, ‘Let’s put on skates and go quickly to the Amstel (…). If you look at the above drawing from about 1730 (Leon Schenk), then the distance from the country house to the waterfront with skates is a short distance. Casanova may have walked his way towards this river on skates.

Later he again refers to a house on the Amstel. He had just visited the Admiralty Building (Prinsenhof) on the Oudezijds Voorburgwal. ‘When I left the Admiralty building, I sent back my carriage and my servant, and ordered him to be at mr. D.O.’s house on the Amstel at eleven o’clock. I went there on foot. (…) Esther saw me from the window, a cord was pulled on the second floor, the door opened‘ (…).

Among Casanova researchers, there is a lot to do about this country house. If Casanova means the ‘Vreugdenhof’ with the house on the Amstel, then that is not right. This country house (see drawing) does not visibly have two floors. And how can he see that a rope is being pulled? He would never have walked to this country estate because, according to Google Maps, that would have taken him an hour. And in the icy cold at that! It is more likely that if it was indeed Hope’s house, he walked to the Keizersgracht and may have entered the enormous building through another entrance. That he mentions the house near the Amstel instead of the Keizersgracht is not surprising: the river was still flowing through the city at that time.

In my search I have written to many people who possibly knew something about ‘friends’ of Casanova whom he mentions in his memoirs and has met in the Netherlands. It yielded a lot of correspondence, but no proof that Thomas Hope was really Mr. D.O.

 

Finnish translator

I was hoping for a small miracle and I got it. I came into contact with the Finnish translator Seppo Sipilä who is translating Casanova’s diaries into Finnish. Histoire de ma vie was purchased in 2015 by the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. Casanova’s memoirs were then digitized and can be viewed by everyone. Seppo Sipilä, unlike Theo Kars, translates directly from a copy of the authentic diaries.

Sipilä also quotes Prince De Ligne with his memoirs ‘Fragment sur Casanova’: that ‘D.O.’ is the wealthy banker Thomas Hope (1704-1779) and has been a widower since 1758. A remarkable addition to Sipilä is that Casanova often writes ‘Mr. D O.’ instead of the French way ‘M. D.O.’. ‘Mr.’ This implies Hope’s English heritage.

When I asked if Hope might have been affiliated with the Freemasons, he reports: ‘I have not found the evidence that Thomas was in Freemasonry, but according to the internet his older brother Henri Hope (1699-1737) was. I wouldn’t be surprised if Thomas was one too.’

Surprisingly and decisively, the Finnish translator reports about the girl Esther: ‘Thomas Hope did not have a daughter himself, but ‘Esther’ could be the daughter Agatha Maria of his brother Zachary. She was born in 1745 and her mother (Agatha van Vlierden) died in 1747. So it is possible that she was raised by her uncle Thomas and his wife. Agatha Maria was fourteen years old in 1759. Since she was still alive when C. wrote his memoirs, it would be understandable to keep her real name a secret. The Finnish writer finds it convincing that ‘Mr. D.O.’ in Casanova’s manuscript is Thomas Hope.

 

Counterarguments

The aforementioned historian Van Eeghen wrote about the girl Esther in her article ’that serious commentators had put aside the name Hope and possibly a niece or foster child’. Van Eeghen and previous researchers have therefore not looked further into this. Let me give it a try.

A certain Dr. Marten G. Buist searched the (bank) archive of the Hope family and then wrote his research: At spes non fracta: Hope & Co. 1770-1815 (1974) published by the Bank Mees & Hope. He came to the conclusion that Casanova could never have visited Hope there. Here are some counterarguments. Buist’s research shows that Hope was not affiliated with the Reformed Church. The banker was probably a Quaker. He was a son of a Quaker and a Quaker believes that there is something of God in every human being and each possesses an ‘inner light’ This is an undogmatic belief that is open to other worldviews.
It could explain that Casanova, with a completely different cultural background and faith, was welcome as a guest of the Hope family. Moreover, if Hope was a Freemason, he took advantage of receiving Casanova and taking him in and doing business with him. In addition, the name Agatha Maria Hope does not appear in Buist’s research, while she does appear in all kinds of notarial deeds.

 

Agatha Maria Hope

Online records about Agatha Maria Hope can be found stating she was baptized on December 30, 1745. She died in Rotterdam in Haringvliet on 5 December 1805. She has always remained unmarried and died far from poorly. For example, she left the Ypenhof country estate in Kralingen behind. It is striking that there were few marriages or remarriages in the Hope family. Her father did not remarry, her Uncle Thomas did not remarry, and Uncle Adrian did not marry at all. Her cousin Henry Hope also remained unmarried (1735-1811) and because he had no children, Henry Hope adopted his clerk, John Williams.

The Amsterdam archive reveals that Agatha Maria is mentioned in all kinds of testamentary documents. Thomas Hope and his brothers not only secured their property in their immediate family, but also involved their nieces and nephews. It is also noteworthy that there are several documents in the city archive of Amsterdam of freight tickets registered by the Hope brothers of the ship The Agatha Maria.

 

Jewish name

Supposing you assume that Agatha Maria Hope is the girl Esther, why did Casanova give her the Jewish name Esther? It’s guesswork, but Casanova introduced Esther and her father to the aforementioned number game kabbalah. He writes about this (The hunt for money):
I found her writing at a table. She entertained herself with an arithmetic question. (…) My good genius gave me the idea to give her a test of my Kabbalah. I told her to write down a question that related to something she didn’t know and that she wanted to know the answer to. (…) I taught her to form pyramids from the numbers that yielded the words, (…). The oracle would then give her an answer.”

Mr. D.O. was also enthusiastic: ‘My dear Casanova, since my youth I have known of the existence of the science in which you are adept, and I have known a Jew who has thereby acquired a great fortune.’ Casanova writes very entertainingly about the experiences of kabbalah with Esther and D.O., how he manipulated the game, but also how he almost got himself into trouble. For example, Casanova supposedly found a missing wallet of Hope, and he made the banker believe that a cargo ship that was on its way to the Netherlands would arrive (without really knowing it). Hope then insured the cargo for thousands of extra guilders, which could have meant a big loss. Fortunately, the ship did arrive.

Geert Kimpen, a publicist in the field of Kabbalah, knows that a rabbi (a spiritual teacher) who deals with Kabbalah will give you a different name that suits you better. For Esther, Casanova was the master who introduced her to kabbalah. And later when he wrote about her in his memoirs, he gave her a suitable name.

Finally

Based on my findings in the search for the true identity of Mr. D.O., I dare say that Mr. D.O., most likely, is Thomas Hope. Casanova’s descriptions of Hope, his house and his country house, are my grounds for proof. Hope was a rich and powerful man who, as an international banker and administrator of the VOC, belonged to the regents of Amsterdam. Hope, unlike the patriot Henrik Hooft, was royalist. He was a freethinker, a worldly man who knew trade and numbers. Casanova, who was a gifted mathematician, was extremely interesting to Hope and all his financial transactions.

The following can be said about the initials of D.O. Thomas Hope died in 1779, but his bank Hope & Co still existed when Casanova began his memoirs. The ‘D’ is not a proper name in French, but translated as ‘from’ and refers to his banker’s house. It could mean: Mr. of banker’s house Hope. In addition, we do not yet know everything about Agatha Maria Hope, but the (Dutch) archives will reveal much more about her in the future.

 

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