Born: 24 July 1738, Netherlands
Died: 5 November 1804
Country most active: France
Also known as: Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
Her parents, well-to-do people, had a country house where Betji acquired her love for country life.
She read much, Rousseau being her idol. At the age of sixteen she was carried off by an ensign. This adventure which she had in no way willed, had a decisive influence on her life. She left her native town where public opinion was against her. Deeply disappointed she thought that she was done with love. She expressed her feelings in poems. In 1757 she began a correspondence with a fifty-one year old clergyman, who, taken with her earnestness, asked her to marry him. She accepted this proposal and followed her husband to North Holland. She was then twenty-one, not beautiful but had an irresistible and charming air. She was lively, witty and rather unconventional for a clergyman’s wife. She spent her time writing to and visiting her many friends. Notwithstanding the gay tone of her letters at that time they reveal a lasting desire for an ideal love. ‘‘One thing is a pity,” she writes, “that my wish has not been fulfilled. The world would never have been troubled then with my poetic nonsense. I should have done nothing on earth but love my dear boy and I should have racked my brain night and day to keep his whole heart, for I should not have been able to have missed one fragment of it.” She now sought for ideal friendship, which she found first with a literary man, and later, after her husband’s death, with Aagje Deken.