their living relatives. Distinct liberal notions about the hereafter we find in Justine's family archives, in rare examples of Dutch poems about grief. In two of them, family members who died are mentioned as spiritual manifestations: a deceased great-uncle of her mother's and the deceased twenty-two-year-old great-uncle Johan Wilhelm Hoek (JWH). Johan's deeply bereaved parents play a part in a stylistically classical, mournful poem. Elements of this poem are obviously derived from the poem on Julius Willem Bilderdijk (JWB). The inspiration probably was caught from the combination of faith, literary taste and from an idea of some similarity: initials and age of the two deceased young men are to some extent comparable. In the consolation segment of the poem, Johan's mother (Justine's great-grandmother Hoek), becomes aware of the still existing liaison of kindred souls: In the direct vicinity of Justine's family we find the poet widower Jan Brand van Cabauw (1785–1847), Lord of Cabauw and two other villages near Schoonhoven, for whom grandfather Slingeland worked as a steward and trustee. Great-uncle Gabriël Leonard van Oosten Slingeland was Brand's successor as Lordship of the villages Cabauw and Zevender. In one of his poems the poet remembers seeing his dead ten-year-old daughter Isabella. As a singing young angel, Belle descended from heaven to comfort her grieving father. Education The young Justine Constance van Mansvelt lived in Schoonhoven and The Hague. The Van Mansvelt family from the provincial capital of Utrecht, she belonged to, already since the 17th century was an upper-middle-class family. During two centuries (since 1601) Van Mansvelt's were member of the Utrecht city council. Justine was taught French during her youth. The private tutor Marie Madeleine Rivoire, from the Italian town of Torre Pellice, began her Dutch teaching career as a young woman, in 1880. Rivoire belonged to the Northern Italian Protestant family Rivoire (Rivoir) of the medieval religious movement of the Waldensians. In or shortly after 1889 Rivoire moved to The Hague, where she taught French at a private school. She might have been giving Justine secondary French education because of the planned Brussels period (see next). In her book (published 1929/1930) Justine credits Marie Rivoire as her first guide in the literary world of the medieval Italian poet and writer Dante Alighieri, which would inspire her for the rest of her live. Around 1895 Justine was sent to finishing school in Brussels, in the vicinity of the Warande