CONSCIENCE, HENDRIK (1812-1883), Flemish writer, of mixed French and Flemish parentage, was born at Antwerp on Dec. 3, 1812. His father, Pierre Conscience, from Besancon, had been chef de timonerie in the navy of Napoleon, and was appointed under-harbourmaster at Antwerp in 1811, when that city formed part of France. About 1826 he retired to that Kem pen or Campine which Hendrik Conscience so often describes in his books—the desolate flat land that stretches between Antwerp and Venloo. At the age of 17 Hendrik left Kempen to be a tutor in Antwerp, and to prosecute his studies. He volunteered as a pri vate in the new Belgian army at the revolution of 183o, and served in barracks at Venloo, and afterwards at Dendermonde, until 1837, when he retired with the grade of sergeant-major. Thrown in this way with Flemings of every class, the young man formed the idea of writing in the despised idiom of the country —an idiom which was then considered too vulgar to be spoken, much less written in, by educated Belgians. His poems, how ever, written while he was a soldier, were all in French. He re ceived no pension when he was discharged, and going back idle to his father's house, he determined to write a Flemish book. A passage in Guicciardini fired his fancy, and straightway he wrote the wonderful series of sketches of the War of Dutch Inde pendence entitled In't IV onderjaar 1566 (Ghent, 1837).
His father thought it so vulgar to write a book in Flemish that he turned his son out of doors, and Hendrik started for Antwerp, with two francs and a bundle of clothes. An old school fellow gave him shelter, and soon various people, amongst them the painter Wappers, interested themselves in the young man. Wappers presented him to the king, who expressed a wish that the Wonderjaar should be added to the library of every Belgian school. It was under the patronage of Leopold I. that Conscience published his second work, Fantasy, in the same year, 1837. A small appointment in the provincial archives relieved him from want, and in 1838 he wrote the historical romance called The Lion of Flanders, which was followed by How to become a Painter (1843), What a Mother can Suffer (1843), Siska van Roosemael (1844), Lambrecht Hensmans (1847), Jacob van Artevelde (1849), and The Conscript (185o). It was long before the sale of his books, greatly praised but seldom bought, made him in any degree independent. His ideas, however, began to be generally accepted.
At a Flemish congress which met at Ghent so early as 1841, the writings of Conscience were mentioned as the seed of a really national literature. In 1845 was published his History of Bel gium, but he was well advised to return to those exquisite pic tures of Flemish home life which form his best work. He was now at the height of his genius, and Blind Rosa (185o), Rikketik ketak (1851), The Decayed Gentleman (i851), and The Miser (1853) rank among the most important of the long list of his novels. These had an instant effect upon contemporary fiction, and Conscience had many imitators. In 1855 the earliest transla tions of his tales began to appear in English, French, German and Italian. In 1867 the sinecure of keeper of the Royal Belgian museums was created for him. He died in Antwerp on Sept. o, 1883, and was awarded a public funeral.
The portraits of Conscience present to us a countenance rather French than Flemish in type, with long smooth hair, contempla tive dark eyes under heavy brows, a pointed nose, and a humorous broad mouth; in late life he wore the ornament of a long white beard. In spite of too rhetorical a use of soliloquizing, and of a key of sentiment often pitched too high for modern taste, the stories of Conscience are animated by a real spirit of genius, mildly lustrous, perhaps, rather than startlingly brilliant. What ever glories may be in store for the literature of Flanders, Con science is always sure of a distinguished place as its forerunner and its earliest classic.