Summer House H. Roland Holst + Heerkamer

On the 199 hectares of Oude Buisse Heide there were leased farms, a forester's house and a farm, but Henriëtte's mother also decided to have a villa built for Rik and Jet. That became the Angora Hoeve, or 'de Hoeve' for short, a white country house under a thatched roof, which was designed by Rik and inaugurated in the spring of 1900. They went there every summer, often with friends. Among the guests of the first hour were the poet Herman Gorter and his wife. The Gorters came there almost every summer until 1910 and Henriëtte described those holidays as pure happiness between the summer glory of forest and heath, the cockcrowing and mooing of the animals on the farm. "The days went by with much walking, cycling and swimming, lounging in the woods or on the veranda of the little country house a little above the road, which looks from the south side of a meadow, closed by a row of old, gnarled willows. A place so lovely, peaceful, and idyllically charming, that every man who comes there is struck by its silence, joyful harmony." If you go there now, you can see with your own eyes what the poet described back then: everything is still precles. This is also the atmosphere in the 'gentleman's room' of the guesthouse in the Buisse Hoeve, where Henriëtte and Rik spent the evenings with their friends during the summer holidays. They would sit around a round table in the light of the oil lamp and talk. Henriëtte was fond of the estate, which inspired her to write many nature poems, of which Aan den Bosch pond from the collection Between Time and Eternity is perhaps the most beautiful. Henriëtte told us that this poem originated at the pond, which she used as a swimming pool.

Toineke