At the end of May 1823, two young men who had just finished their studies in Leiden set out from Amsterdam to spend a summer exploring the Netherlands on foot. Both were members of distinguished, patrician families: Jacob van Lennep was the son of a classics professor, and would become a well-known author, editor and politician (amongst other things he was responsible for getting the controversial first edition of Max Havelaar into print), whilst Dirk van Hogendorp's father was one of the most distinguished statesmen of the day (...but the son would be remembered for little else after this walk).

They were on the road, walking, sailing and taking coaches, for just over three months, in one of the wettest summers they could have found. The trip was obviously partly a student adventure holiday, to get away from parents and burn off a bit of post-exam energy (the predictable feats of physical endurance, drinking sessions, gambling, and the occasional opportunity to flirt with young women met along the way...), but there was also an element of social and political responsibility. Both men had come under the influence of Willem Bilderdijk's post-Napoleonic reactionary political theories, and were keen to see for themselves how enlightenment liberalism was failing Dutch society (as it surely must be). Consequently, when they arrive somewhere, they don't just look at the church and the town hall, but they get shown around the workhouse, prison, orphanage or hospital and ask sharp questions about how they are funded and run. There seems to have been an element of "tour of inspection" too - the local officials are well aware that van Hogendorp senior will be hearing about any deficiencies they identify.

And there was some serious social networking going on - everywhere they go they meet important people who are related to one or other of them, have children who studied with them, or are friends of their parents or professors. A lot of connections are being made with a view to the roles the two of them expect to play in later life. (In the later chapters there's an element of farce in this - every coach that passes them on the road seems to have a few van Lennep cousins in it...)

So there is quite a lot of arrogance and privilege going on here, and occasionally it all gets a bit too much - when they are mistaken for ordinary people by an innkeeper or arrested as suspected vagrants by a gendarme, the pleasure they take in humiliating these unfortunates (by raising their voices, dropping names or flashing their credentials) is positively revolting. But van Lennep is a magnificently engaging storyteller, and he can somehow charm us into going along with his presumption of superiority most of the time. And he isn't quite as bad as all that. When he isn't standing on his dignity, he is as often as not falling into the mud, getting blisters on his feet, or regretting how much he drank at lunchtime. And he has a sympathetic insight into the lives of many of the people he meets that transcends differences of class and standing.

The diary was never intended to be read in its original form by anyone outside his immediate family (it was written as serial letters to a sister), and it's wonderfully frank about people he considers vain, ugly, hypocritical or dim-witted. And there are some glorious scenes which are built up with all the care of a chapter in a 19th century novel, like the incident when they meet two young women in an inn who seem to be members of their own class, but they aren't quite sure - there's a glorious description of their carefully circling conversation, in which neither side can be so rude as to ask the other's names directly, but they both try to home in on whom exactly they are talking to by means of leading questions. Eventually it turns out that they know the brother of one of the girls, so that's all right...

There is little obvious structure in the course of the journey, which zig-zags around in most confusing ways, but the diary does have a kind of structure, starting off with highly detailed descriptions of everything and gradually petering out until it finally disappears into the mud of Zeeland.

There is a clear emotional climax with the description of the Ommerschans, an institution set up by a charity with the entirely benevolent intention of ending the problem of vagrancy and giving beggars the chance to earn their living, but without any thought for the fact that most people who became beggars did so because they were physically unable to work. Ommerschans solved the problem by permitting inmates who couldn't work to starve to death well out of sight of the people who sent them there. Van Lennep described the cruelty and horror of the system with merciless precision, and identifies the things that have to change, but obviously no-one wanted to listen to him at the time. It's not surprising that the jolly student-romp atmosphere of the trip rather fades away after this point.

(The diary was never published in van Lennep's lifetime - a heavily redacted edition was brought out by M. Elisabeth Kluit in 1942. Mathijsen's edition originally appeared in 2000 under the title Lopen met van Lennep as a tie-in to the TV series directed by Theo Uittenbogaard and presented by Geert Mak. A revised edition with updated notes appeared in 2018 under the title De zomer van 1823.) ( )